Hacker News Reader

whichdanon Ask HN: Would you hire a blind software engineer?

I'd imagine there are plenty of companies who would be accommodating; especially if you were working on backend or infrastructure services. I would primarily look for companies that are already inclusive and would be excited to find a way to support you.

Have you considered speaking about the challenges you've faced as a blind software engineer? That may be a way to get noticed in your community and help others in a similar situation.

whichdanon Ask HN: How to be a great Junior Engineer?

100000% this. If someone is hiring you as a junior developer, it's because they want to mentor/train you!

whichdanon ES7 Proposal: The Pipeline Operator

Yep; same reason Lodash implements _.flow and _.compose.

It also encourages you to write methods that take a single argument and return a single value, or partially apply those that don't.

whichdanon Ask HN: Do you like code pairing interviews? I hate them

Would it be easier if you had half an hour to chat with the person before you jumped into writing code?

A lot of companies prefer pair programming so they can talk through problems with a candidate, both to get a feel for how they approach their work, and to make sure they aren't blocked on anything, given the limited amount of time. Was your interviewer talking with you while you paired?

whichdanon Ask HN: Who is hiring? (November 2015)

Society of Grownups | Boston, MA | ONSITE (WFH options) https://www.societyofgrownups.com/careers#senior-software-en...

We're trying to democratize financial literacy and change the way people talk about money. We need strong Javascript engineers to help us build an accessible, robust financial education platform. We have an inclusive culture, work cross-functionally, and trust each other without resorting to micromanagement. Email careers@societyofgrownups.com if you'd like to talk!

Tech: ES6, Lodash, Ember CLI, Ruby on Rails, Elixir + Phoenix

whichdanon Ask HN: Who is hiring? (October 2015)

Society of Grownups | Boston, MA | ONSITE (WFH options)

https://www.societyofgrownups.com/careers#senior-software-en...

We're trying to democratize financial literacy and change the way people talk about money. We need strong Javascript engineers to help us build an accessible, robust financial education platform. We have an inclusive culture, work cross-functionally, and trust each other without resorting to micromanagement. Email careers@societyofgrownups.com if you'd like to talk!

Tech: ES6, Lodash, Ember CLI, Ruby on Rails, Elixir + Phoenix

whichdanon Ask HN: Who is hiring? (September 2015)

Society of Grownups | Boston, MA | ONSITE (WFH options)

https://www.societyofgrownups.com/careers#senior-software-en...

We're trying to democratize financial literacy and change the way people talk about money. We need strong Javascript engineers to help us build an accessible, robust financial education platform. We have an inclusive culture, work cross-functionally, and trust each other without resorting to micromanagement. Email careers@societyofgrownups.com if you'd like to talk!

Tech: ES6, Lodash, Ember CLI, Ruby on Rails, Elixir + Phoenix

whichdanon The gimp.org domain has expired

https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/expired-2013-05-03-en

Domains have a renewal grace period. Since it expired recently, they'll be fine.

whichdanon Taking the 'D' Out of CRUD with Soft Deletes

Let's go a step further: if we're worried about data persistence, should the table also be append-only? Soft deletes won't protect against a user manually wiping every field in their account.

whichdanon Ask HN: Who is hiring? (August 2015)

Society of Grownups | Boston, MA | ONSITE (WFH options)

We're trying to democratize financial literacy and change the way people talk about money. We need strong Javascript engineers to help us build an accessible, robust financial education platform. We have an inclusive culture, work cross-functionally, and trust each other without resorting to micromanagement. Email careers@societyofgrownups.com if you'd like to talk!

Tech: ES6, Lodash, Ember CLI, Ruby on Rails, Elixir + Phoenix

whichdanon Ask HN: Does anyone still read High Scalability?

I check it once a month or so.

whichdanon Ask HN: Who is hiring? (July 2015)

Society of Grownups | Brookline, MA (Boston)

https://www.societyofgrownups.com/

We're a startup focused on promoting financial literacy, with a mix of in-person classes and a suite of online tools ranging from virtual classrooms to financial plan generators. We do all of our content development in-house, and are looking for talented engineers to help us reach grownups nationwide.

We're specifically looking for a senior engineer who wants to take a mentorship role, helping our team become better Javascript developers, through functional programming concepts and automated testing. You should have experience with other languages, but with a deep knowledge of Javascript.

Want to know more? Send an email to careers@societyofgrownups.com, or reach out to me directly via the address in my profile.

whichdanon Get rid of boolean function parameters

This would be a great case for pattern matching in Elixir.

whichdanon Ask HN: Who is hiring? (June 2015)

Society of Grownups | Brookline, MA (Boston)

https://www.societyofgrownups.com/

We're a startup focused on promoting financial literacy, with a mix of in-person classes and a suite of online tools ranging from virtual classrooms to financial plan generators. We do all of our content development in-house, and are looking for talented engineers to help us reach grownups nationwide.

We're specifically looking for a senior engineer who wants to take a mentorship role, helping our team become better Javascript developers, through functional programming concepts and automated testing. You should have experience with other languages, but with a deep knowledge of Javascript.

Want to know more? Send an email to careers@societyofgrownups.com, or reach out to me directly via the address in my profile.

whichdanon Show HN: Parex – Simple Elixir module for parallel execution

In your parallel code sample, hang2 is only 1000ms instead of 5000ms.

This is very cool though!

whichdanon Mozilla's page talking about privacy has Google analytics enabled

What about funnel analysis?

whichdanon Ask HN: Who is hiring? (May 2015)

Society of Grownups | Brookline, MA (Boston)

https://www.societyofgrownups.com/

We're a startup focused on promoting financial literacy, with a mix of in-person classes and a suite of online tools ranging from virtual classrooms to financial plan generators. We do all of our content development in-house, and are looking for talented engineers to help us reach grownups nationwide.

We're specifically looking for a senior engineer who wants to take a mentorship role, helping our team become better Javascript developers, through functional programming concepts and automated testing. You should have experience with other languages, but with a deep knowledge of Javascript.

Want to know more? Send an email to careers@societyofgrownups.com, or reach out to me directly via the address in my profile.

whichdanon Ask HN: Who is hiring? (April 2015)

Society of Grownups - Washington Square, Brookline MA (Boston)

https://www.societyofgrownups.com/careers#software-engineer

Want to help build an online financial education platform?

We need a Sr. Software Engineer who can talk intelligently about unit and integration testing, dive into Javascript framework internals, mentor other developers, and help define the technical direction of new projects. While we primarily work in Javascript, we're looking for someone with experience in other languages, who sees Javascript as a part of their toolbox, rather than their only tool.

We're a tight knit team with a flat organizational structure, fantastic benefits, and goals based on how many people we can help, rather than how much money we can make.

Send a brief cover letter and your resume to careers@societyofgrownups.com, and mention that you're from HN!

whichdanon Ask HN: Why should I not use a recruiter when moving?

On the flip side, if the recruiter is a personal recommendation from someone you trust, and you don't feel comfortable negotiating salary or writing cover letters, they can be a quick way to get the ball rolling with several different companies. It's not like you can't research the companies that the recruiter is working with before applying.

That said, pixeloution's advice is spot on and applies to 90% of the recruiters you'll find via Google/LinkedIn/etc.

whichdanon Lyft

Not sure; I think they implied gross, but probably meant net.

whichdanon Lyft

I actually emailed Lyft for clarification on this! They said that tipping is considered optional, and more of a reward for good service than a supplement for low pricing.

That said, for both Lyft and Uber, the drivers seem to be underpaid as a whole, and several have remarked to me that hitting $20/hr means they're doing well.

whichdanon Lyft

I live in Boston and hugely supported Lyft (using it exclusively over Uber), but as soon as the weather started getting bad (late December), it seemed as if all of the Lyft drivers vanished. I'm back to using Uber exclusively and not even checking Lyft, since I most likely won't be able to get a cab during peak time. Sure, it'll probably pick back up now that the weather is improving, but how they handle bad situations is much more defining than how they handle good ones.

whichdanon Why didn't you back me up?

It's a matter of being objectified by her coworkers. Isn't it obvious that the comment has sexual undertones?

whichdanon Understanding Monoids using F#

  you can define them as monoids in two ways
  (with 0 and addition, and with 1 and multiplication)

Thank you for pointing that out!

whichdanon Ask HN: Who is hiring? (March 2015)

Society of Grownups - https://www.societyofgrownups.com/careers - Boston, MA (Washington Square, Brookline)

As a Senior Software Engineer, you’ll be a key member of our team by being an advocate for unit and integration testing as we build out brand new financial education software from the ground up.

We’re a small team of talented developers looking for someone with a history of shipping scalable production-ready code in a highly collaborative environment. Our entire team comes from different backgrounds with different levels of experience, and we’re looking for a friendly engineer who can focus on helping us become better testers and developers. In that capacity, you’ll also work closely with our QA Lead to write integration tests, while keeping a keen eye on the user experience of our platform.

As our testing infrastructure becomes more robust, you’ll shift into writing isomorphic Javascript applications in Node.js and Ember. We’re a flat team with a high level of autonomy and personal responsibility, so the code you write will almost always be the direct result of an idea that we came up with -- together. You’ll have a rare opportunity to take ownership of the software you develop, and rely on your instincts and intuition to deliver a world-class experience to our grownups.

What you’ll do:

- Ensure that we’re using the best tools for unit and integration testing

- Help each developer figure out a personal workflow for testing

- Author code using Javascript and Ruby, while occasionally pair programming

What we’re looking for:

- Significant experience with unit testing and integration testing

- Strong knowledge of Javascript, SQL, and atleast one other programming language

- Experience with, or a desire to, mentor other developers

We offer very competitive compensation, a fantastic benefits package, flexible hours + WFH, and a level of individual trust, respect, and autonomy rarely found in most engineering teams.

Interested? Send us any questions, or a brief cover letter + resume to careers@societyofgrownups.com

whichdanon Another new era of WordPress

Meh. With short tags, and a helper function which can be abstracted away in your stack, you can write the following:

  <? foreach($row in $results): ?>
    <div><?= $row['field'] ?></div>
  <? endforeach ?>

(Assume the helper function maps htmlspecialchars over an array returned by PDO::FETCH_ASSOC.)

whichdanon Ask HN: Who is your go-to web hosting company?

He runs AussieHost.com now.

whichdanon Ask HN: Why is learning to code difficult?

A lot of programmers who have an easy time coding (even in a new language) are relying on several years of experience and StackOverflow. When I look at a select box on a page, my brain automatically thinks "okay, was this rendered using HTML or JS? what styles have been applied? is there an onchange callback? how is the data being populated? what's the data model look like? is it using two-way data binding or posting with a form?" I can only speculate about these aspects because I've had to build them all before. I absolutely struggled when I first had to deal with new concepts like Javascript frameworks or unit testing, but after sticking it out for a few months, I was able to internalize how they work and see the underlying design patterns, rather than just the implementation details.

If you could elaborate on certain issues that you're running into, we might be able to give you more insight into what exactly is tricky about it.

whichdanon Ask HN: Do you hate iTunes?

Oh, yeah, the Steam and iTunes stores are both abysmal! Slow loading, no tabbed browsing, poorly designed views -- it all gets in the way of spending money.

That said, I do quite like the iTunes album cover view.

whichdanon RegExpBuilder – Create regular expressions using chained methods

HN doesn't support Markdown. You'll need to prefix each line with >= 2 spaces for it to be treated as code.

https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc