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trhoad

464 karma · joined June 14, 2021

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trhoad··on Embracing “Old” Tech
I can't take this article seriously when it refers to Next but then calls it Nest 15 times.
trhoad··on Is Turbopack really 10x faster than Vite?
The frontend tooling debacle has got to the point where I'm not only leaving frontend development, but tech entirely. To not have to think about this endless nonsense anymore is such a massive weight off my shoulders.
trhoad··on Show HN: I 3D scanned the interior of the Great Pyramid at Giza
If you open the image modals, and then click next, I see a blurred screen and cannot progress forward/back.

react-dom.production.min.js:209 TypeError: Cannot read properties of undefined (reading 'indexOf') at _l.render (ModalImage.tsx:79:21)

trhoad··on IR35 reform to be repealed; workers will determine employment status
There is no risk if you're genuinely running a small business.

If you're a permalancer, coining a freelance rate whilst paying very little tax (no PAYE), then you _should_ be caught out. You _should_ have the liability.

trhoad··on Ask HN: Are people oblivious to their audio quality in meetings?
Probably. The people who use professional quality studio microphones to send heavily compressed audio over Microsoft Teams also confuse me greatly.
trhoad··on Ask HN: Cloud certifications and job prospects. Is there a real connection?
I think it can only help. Employability aside, you might even enjoy doing them! The AWS certs aren't to be sniffed at, even if your experience after completing it is only theoretical (better than nothing).
trhoad··on Ask HN: Cloud certifications and job prospects. Is there a real connection?
I would say the skills are largely transferrable as the product offerings are analogous in many cases.
trhoad··on Sudden disturbing moves for IT in large companies, mandated by CEOs
The idea that Fortune 500 CEO's are cold-emailing companies to ask about assistance in re-platforming VM's is plainly ridiculous.

Leadership taking a strategic decision to shop around for options following the VMWare price increase isn't so crazy. In fact, I'd say it's expected.

trhoad··on Work is work, in which returns diminish (2020)
I must be stupid because I understood very little of this. The cynic in me says it sounds a lot like pseudo-intellectual-babble, but maybe I'm wrong.

I can pick out so many parts that seem to be an extremely odd take on things, but this one stood out:

> the total time spent communicating will grow quadratically as the work capacity of the organization grows linearly.

The assumption being that everybody needs to speak to everybody else as the organisation grows, which is a spectacularly daft assumption.

trhoad··on Ask HN: How much does private health insurance cost you?
£500 per year, Bupa, "comprehensive" cover (basically everything paid for)
trhoad··on Ask HN: Generalist contractors, what is your hourly rate?
Contracted for a few years. Almost zero expenses (a new laptop, an accountant, some PL insurance).
trhoad··on Ask HN: Generalist contractors, what is your hourly rate?
Most (all) the contractors I know can bill £500 per day outside IR35 pretty much indefinitely.
trhoad··on Ask HN: Generalist contractors, what is your hourly rate?
I mean this in the nicest way possible, but it's easy to say money isn't everything when you're already earning £120k/$140k pa.
trhoad··on Ask HN: What's the best business to start in 2022?
This isn't true. Many successful, profitable businesses were started by just surveying the landscape and being better/different to something pre-existing.
trhoad··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (September 2022)
At least I know within 3 seconds that I can't afford to apply, rather than investing hours to realise I've wasted my time.
trhoad··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (September 2022)
Surprisingly low salaries for a major bank. £35k for a London-based SRE?
trhoad··on How and why I built Japan Dev
> So we share your jobs on our site. A candidate applies. You interview them and decide to hire them. You notify us you hired them. We send you an invoice. You pay us a fee.

I'm absolutely stunned that this works.

> For one thing, our contract imposes a late fee for failing to notify us of a successful hire. And the fee increases every month that they don't tell us. This is a pretty good deterrent.

Is it? It sounds like a pretty good deterrent to being honest...!

Anyway, I can't argue with the figures, if true.

trhoad··on LocalStack and AWS Parity Explained
Would be great to have a single table that shows supported services vs. tiers. At the moment I have to scroll through 8,000 services AND their features to try and decipher if I'll need a paid plan right from the start.
trhoad··on Where Did Architecture Go?
> it means that everyone puts in ideas and the person or persons in charge only (gently) nix the ideas that don’t fit with their vision

This. Architects have to have a really quite rare blend of skills: superbly diplomatic yet inclusive, and ideally in it for the long-haul.

trhoad··on Where Did Architecture Go?
> "To stay relevant in today’s fast-moving world, architects must focus less on making the most important architectural decisions, and instead focus on building an environment where everyone makes better decisions."

They should be doing both.

trhoad··on Where Did Architecture Go?
I was actually going for the opposite - but that's my fault. What I meant was wishy-washy "guidelines" are often ignored or considered optional. Put in place tooling (rulesets) and processes that make it very difficult to architect a poor system.
trhoad··on Where Did Architecture Go?
> And to be enforced you need to actually be hands on in the code base.

I think this might be a difference in opinion on whether we're referring to the architecture of a codebase or architecture of a system. They're different things.

> The right answer to systems design in 95%+ of cases is a single application modularized using language tools talking to a single DB.

There are still a ton of systems design considerations to take into account with a monolithic approach. Good architecture doesn't necessarily always imply a microservices architecture, I agree, but it doesn't mean all architecture concerns can be ignored - you just have a different set of things to optimise for.

trhoad··on Where Did Architecture Go?
The utopia described isn't real in the enterprise, and my experience of 15 years working as a Software Engineer is that 90% of engineers are really good at coding, but pretty terrible at systems architecture - often taking the path of least resistance for their small domain.

It may be unpopular to prefer a top-down approach, but in my experience architecture set by an architecture team who understand how the building blocks fit together, who have a roadmap and a set of common rules and tools (not loose principles or "guidelines") have been the most successful, sane, and enjoyable projects to work on. YMMV - and there are certainly some terrible "architects" out there whatever approach you take.

Related: I am convinced that you will learn more about a Senior Engineer at interview during a Systems Design task than any coding task. This is what sets apart great engineers from good engineers.

trhoad··on A personal trainer is the best investment I've made
Too much emphasis is put on organised exercise. I think it's an American thing, where nobody seems to walk anywhere.

Better advice is to build more functional "exercise" into your day-to-day life. This is where real lifestyle change happens without you really knowing it.

Take the stairs, walk to the shops, cycle to work (where possible), household chores that involve getting on your hands and knees and breaking a sweat, do DIY/gardening (why people pay to go to the gym and deadlift, then e.g. happily pay someone to move a load of soil around the backyard always confuses/amazes me).

trhoad··on Ask HN: Buy a holiday house with a tight budget
I never really understood this. Unsure of the US, but holiday lets are notorious for being poor investments in Europe (just look at the markets in Greece and Spain). $100k buys you quite a lot of long-term lets (rentals) over the next 20 years. Why not just rent a place without the hassle of maintenance, taxes, stress, and hand back the property after a few weeks? Also your priorities and interests might change, so some flexibility on renting different places at different points (with children that grow up and also have different interests) might be appealing.
trhoad··on Ask HN: First-time dad-to-be. What do you wish you'd known back then?
Understand that whilst your world will revolve around the baby, the rest of the world doesn't.
trhoad··on Ask HN: What's the biggest problem you face as a parent?
I find it pretty mind-boggling that there is the assumption that your parents owe you time to look after your kids...
trhoad··on 10 Years of Meteor
Laughing at this, thanks for sharing.
trhoad··on Angular without SSR is faster than Next.js with SSR
JSX is the best thing about React, and the Angular templating is worst thing about Angular, so I can certainly empathise with that being the tipping point.
trhoad··on Angular without SSR is faster than Next.js with SSR
You can run a massive PHP application on a $5 VPS without many issues at all...
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