thothamon

Is it just me, or do custom clouds make people nervous? Why can't it be on Dropbox or some other cloud that acts like regular files?

I don't trust third-party clouds for many reasons; for one, what's to stop them from holding my data hostage and making me pay a ransom? Or just charging for the service with no (or difficult) alternatives? How do I know the data is backed up well, so a server farm fire won't destroy it? How do I know how secure the cloud is, physically, by host, by software or any other way? I'm sure I could easily come up with a half-dozen other reasons why it's a concern without trying very hard.

I find it hard to believe that any cloud service with some basic primitives couldn't host my data just fine. Why must I use everyone's individual cloud service?

This complaint is no doubt semi-bogus in this case since it's OSS software, and I could fork it and add Dropbox support. That's valid. But everyone is using their own cloud, and it's bothersome.

Well, of course you're limiting yourself to lisps (except Scala, about which I share your dislikes). How about F#, which is a very practical functional language with good tooling on all platforms? Or Ocaml, or Haskell?

I think I'm gonna stick with calling it OS X, marketers be d*ed.

Just one more reason for me to avoid Windows whenever possible, for myself and for my companies.

I grant Microsoft today is a much better corporate citizen than it was 15 years ago, and I appreciate that. But a move like this feels very much like the bad old days to me.

This sort of thing is said all the time, but we do see significant policy changes based on voting, such as the switch to Barack Obama from George W. Bush. It's not clear to me that the corporations drove that in a major way. Another example is Herbert Hoover to Franklin Roosevelt. I imagine you wouldn't suggest that the corporations wanted the Socialist ideas proposed by Roosevelt.

Just because an election or a vote doesn't go your way, or the government doesn't shift dramatically every election, doesn't mean the nation does not have a working democracy.

I agree with all the ideas in the article, but at a bare minimum, Apple should configure devices so that no firmware update can be installed unless the user enters their PIN first. This would be an easy move that would make this whole debate moot. The problem is that Apple only partially protected users from Apple itself.

So the FBI is asking Apple to build a tool that will unlock security measures of an existing iPhone, like the one in the San Bernadino shooting, and allow it to be read.

The problem with this is that no such tool should be possible to build. It should not be a matter of yes or no; it should be simply impossible for Apple to build such a tool without the private key of the user, which Apple does not have.

If it is possible to write a piece of software which can circumvent the protections of the iPhone without the user's private key, then Apple wrote its security software incorrectly. Either they wrote it with an appalling lack of security understanding; or they left in important backdoors, either knowingly or through ignorance. But if they wrote the software correctly and did not create backdoors of which they're aware, then the government's request is actually impossible -- cannot be done.

So which is it, Apple? Is the point moot because you did this right? Or have you already placed backdoors in the product which the FBI is now asking you to exploit for their benefit?

Does this article actually have a specific message? I read the whole thing and it sounds something like "businesses will exploit you." (True, but duh.) Or maybe "startups are trying to be acquired." (Sometimes true, sometimes false.)

I'm not even sure she has a specific meaning for the word "startup," or that her usage means the same thing that most other people mean by that term.

Most people want most things as a means to an end, so it's hard for me to see how using product sales/adoption as a driver toward being an attractive acquisition is unusual, surprising or crazy; but either way, not every startup wants to be acquired, and not every startup is trying to drive toward that end. One of the many "facts" in the article that are not facts.

So it's really a zero exceptions, except for the ones you deliberately choose to ignore policy. But that's pretty much what we do now, except I'm not aware of a good method for muting certain exceptions. (There may be one! It just never occurred to me that we could mute certain exceptions.)

I think we could take it a step farther and say certain kinds of exception should never occur and should also never be ignored, like NoMethodError / nil pointer exceptions.

To me, the article doesn't really sell Java the language. The big benefits are in the JVM and libraries, which support many languages far superior to Java. The only virtue of Java the language might be the programmers who know it, and even there, many programmers are not familiar with the new features of Java 8.

Brilliant. The idea of being the dumbest person in the room is especially good. Another good way to manifest this is never be afraid to be first to speak up with the dumb question. If you're wondering about something, odds are someone else is, too.

If you're willing/prepared to be the dumbest person in the room, you're probably one of the smartest in the room.

Good point. I hate that word "resource" as applied to people, but I say it all the time, because everyone else does -- not a conscious choice, just a bad habit.

Software is very hard to do well, and you're right that many in-sourced projects fail or suffer extensive problems. But when you outsource, you keep all the normal, natural problems of software development and add many more enormous burdens and difficulties on top of that. In my experience, the failure rate of outsourced projects is much higher than that of in-sourced projects. We can't gloss over the differences by just saying that they both experience failures.

I agree that capable engineers are very important, but I have seen more than one project with high-quality engineers fail. Of course, you very rarely get high-quality engineers with outsourcing.

Even if that is true (which it may well be), it's yet another landmine for companies who seek solutions via outsourcing.

I'd agree with OP on this. I've never seen a distributed, outsourced approach work. The product has always been poor or even worthless.

Having said that, I have seen distributed, in-house projects work, sometimes very well, even when the teams were internationally distributed, and even with moderate language barriers.

The real value of an engineer is 10 or 20 percent in what frameworks they know, but 80 or 90 percent in what they can learn. That's especially true in today's embarrassment of riches world in which no one could possibly learn everything.

It's really a great time to be in software, despite the problems. The world runs on software and this will only be more true in the future.

You don't have to hit one of the pitfalls in the story. After all, printf himself ended up as a happy programmer with a human face. If you love programming and you can stay focused on doing what you love, then no matter what else happens, you win. And if you don't enjoy what you're doing, then you lose, no matter what kind of paycheck you take home.

I don't know. It feels like she's about as interested in suffering publicly for the cameras as she is in fixing the problem. If she really just wants her Facebook profile closed (as she says), that can probably be done with back-channel methods: no need for crying at all.

I don't think Facebook's failure to 100% accommodate all of the OP's demands is really a story. I'm sure Facebook has many problems, but this story is more about the author's problems than Facebook's.

I'm an exempt employee, but my time certainly does not all belong to my employer. I realize there are some who do, but I do not check email at midnight. My phone has a do-not-disturb setting that goes from 10 pm to 6 am. If I was asked to forego seeing my family for an extended period of time so I could, say, work on a report until 10 pm every night -- although I would try to help, any more than a small amount of this would be abusive, and I would decline to do it. If this was a real problem, I'd find another job.

Being exempt does not make me a slave. It does not mean all my creative power is used only for my employer. If I were to accept those conditions, I would have to be paid five or ten times more salary -- not even a linear increase, because the time is non-linearly more valuable to me.

I've been at a company that behaves like this. It was completely abusive of the meaning of exempt. I have nothing but contempt for companies like this.

Simple solution, at least for me: don't sign a contract that suggests that everything you think belongs to your employer; or at the very least, take your pound of flesh when you do sign something like that.

Incidentally, even the awful company above changed their contract for me when I refused to sign the over-the-top original document.

I wait until I have an offer, then I ask to see the company's non-compete. Then, if the document says I can't contribute to other projects, I tell them I contribute to a number of open-source and other projects, and I need anything done on my own time to belong to me. I've done this two or three times, and have always gotten the agreement to be amended.

Wait until you have an offer in hand. That is your moment of greatest leverage, when they are most invested in having you on board.

Which illustrates the original point: that scenario -- generous severances when the company is going out of business -- is incredibly rare. A much more likely scenario is your options become worthless and you're laid off. If you can leave a bad environment, I recommend leaving ASAP instead of letting the golden handcuffs keep you -- unless the golden handcuffs promise a huge return, and there's little or no doubt about getting that return.

A close friend of mine was recently -- as in a week or two ago -- recruited by Amazon. The process did not get as far as an offer, because the hiring manager told my friend that the expected hours would be around 80 per week on average. This was a non-starter for my friend, so the process concluded. (At least the hiring manager was honest up-front, and understanding when my friend said this would not be possible.)

Based on this, I think we can conclude two things. First, a lot of current Amazonians are unaware of other teams working insane hours, and second, those other teams are apparently doing so anyway.

I'd rather buy some Greek products that I know will make it back to Greece and help their businesses. I think that would help them more, and help me too. But, I'm not really sure how to do that.

The article probably does violate that section of the DMCA. But it is also a research/scientific piece subject to the protection of the First Amendment. I could be mistaken, but I suspect if one or the other had to go -- the First Amendment or this law -- the First Amendment would win.

Said another way, even as a very pro-copyright judge, I would have a hard time saying the author did not have a First Amendment right to publish his research. Now if he wrote a program to make it easy to crack these databases and sold it for $5 each, that would be a different matter.

Hmm. I don't think you have to be phony to be kind. In fact, I think it's easier to be kind, not more exhausting. If you think a little bit about how the other person might feel, you save an enormous amount of time dealing with them getting angry or upset. With egos out of the way, you can focus instead on the problem you both want to solve. This makes both of you look good and it might make a friend out of someone who could have been an enemy.

I'm a lot better at this today than I used to be, mostly because I don't take work so personally today. I still want to do well, but if I screw up, I don't take it as an indictment of myself as a person. This makes it a lot easier to, say, admit something is my fault QUICKLY -- if it is -- which allows us to focus on the solution instead of whose fault it is.

There are (IMO very rare) occasions where a soft word won't do the trick, and that is what the big stick is for. But almost everyone, even very obnoxious people, usually respond very well to a little bit of niceness, and it costs basically nothing to give it a try.

Same here. I am always the first guy in a group to ask the stupid question. Almost never do I get a snide response.

If I did get a snide response to a clarifying question in an interview, it would be an almost certain signal that I should run away from this company. Their rudeness is actually a favor, potentially sparing me months or years of unpleasantness in their company.

Well, I haven't started my web app yet. Right now I'm finishing up a Haskell app that plays Connect Four: maybe that could be the backend for a web app.

It looks like you're using Yesod. What resources did you use to learn it -- I think there's a Yesod book, was that helpful? Did you consider any other Haskell frameworks? What did you find hard about writing an app using Yesod? Do you think it took less time to write the app than it would have given a similar level of knowledge about Ruby/Rails?

Although I'm way faster writing Haskell than I was, say, six months ago, I feel I'm still really slow compared to how fast I can code in Ruby. Having said that, when I write a Haskell program, the only errors are usually logic errors, not process errors. NoMethodError (an unexpected nil) must be one of the most common Ruby/Rails errors. It's really great to just not get that anymore. :-)

As a Haskell programmer who has also come from Rails -- I'm a Rails developer now -- and who is also interested in writing a web app in Haskell, I'm very interested in your experiences. Are you on any forums or online communities that have helped you in developing a Haskell web app?

Sources for that? Wikipedia doesn't mention a divorce with his second wife, Dorothy Vanderpool.

I usually ask more senior people why they say that, and keep asking why until I get it. If this process seems to be going on too long, I ask if there's a book or reference I should be reading to understand the subject better. Honestly, most senior people will be very pleased that you care enough to find out why, including following up with external resources.

If a senior person won't explain something if you ask politely, usually either they don't understand it themselves, or they are simply not very good at explaining things. Not all senior people are good teachers. It sounds like your team lead is one of the latter.

I think you have to take each individual differently. Most folks react well to the criticism sandwich. Someone like you might prefer a more direct approach, as long as it is not phrased in a mean way.

At some point in my career, I stopped taking criticism personally. I just realized I was wrong so often that upholding the pretense that I knew it all was too hard. For that reason, I prefer direct suggestions.

If I was teaching a child or a new beginner, I would start with a lot of praise that they're even trying. I want to get them some early wins to help boost their confidence.

The main thing you need to do is convince HR and then a hiring manager that you have the skills to do the work. The best way you can do that is to have projects on Github that demonstrate your skill, and if you can get a little paid work using the toolset you're targeting, that would be great as well.

You have six months, so you can't be too ambitious on the size of your projects. Maybe target three interesting projects that demonstrate the skills you're interested in, each set to take two months of your time.

If you really throw yourself into this, you should be doing a lot of hard work, the kind of work a professional programmer does every day. After six months of that, I think you'll be well-positioned for a programming interview, and you'll have some nice projects on Github that will demonstrate your capabilities.

Good luck!