110jawefopiwa (u/110jawefopiwa)

110jawefopiwa commented on Career Development: What It Means to Be a Manager, Director, or VP (2015) kellblog.com/2015/03/08/c... · Posted by u/AnhTho_FR

alistairSH · 9 months ago

I found it interesting that the author mentioned tactical planning for manager and director, but not strategic planning for the VP. That seems like a useful differentiator to me (with extremely contrived examples)...

C-level - sets highest level strategy (We're going to the moon!)

VP - adds level of detail to strategy (draws a map from earth to the moon, decides we need a rocket ship to get there)

Director - bridges strategy and tactics (creates high level requirements the rocket ship, makes sure there are enough gas stations on the way to the moon)

Manager - ensures tactical success (ensures the team builds a rocket that meets the spec, makes sure the rocket stops for gas on the way)

And of course, for a sufficiently large org, some of this gets offloaded to dedicated Product Managers, Program Managers, etc. But, that's orthogonal to the point of the article, I think.

110jawefopiwa · 9 months ago

C-level - sets highest level strategy (We're going to the moon!)

VP - Tells directors to work faster

Director - Tells managers to work faster

Manager - unblocks team

ICs - do real work

110jawefopiwa commented on So Long and Thanks for All the Words: A Toast to Douglas Adams multiverseemployeehandboo... · Posted by u/6forward

mykowebhn · 10 months ago

In my senior year of high school, it was midterms and I had to study. I had a horrible problem with procrastination. So there I was in the library about to start studying when I happened upon the first book of his "trilogy". I finished it without stopping to study. And then I found the next two books in the trilogy and devoured those too. I loved those books and luckily I passed my exams. It was stressful at the time knowing I had to study, but today I remember that time fondly.

110jawefopiwa · 10 months ago

> I had a horrible problem with procrastination.

"I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by."

-Douglas Adams

110jawefopiwa commented on When will we fix the tools that run the world? cgustavo.com/blog/tools... · Posted by u/cgustavo

bulatb · a year ago

Sometimes asking, "When will we..." is just a turn of phrase, but sometimes it's a serious misframing of the issue. There is no such thing as "we" that meaningfully acts or makes decisions. Thinking about "we" as if it's real because the individuals in "we" are capable of choosing is the fallacy of composition.

If you want collective outcomes that are different than the sum of uncoordinated individual action, you have to design them. Don't talk about "we." Who specifically is doing what, and for what purpose, and why would they do that, when they could just not?

Answering those questions often shows you that the problem isn't what you thought—because the mental model of a "we" that does things is so harmful.

Or you end up with a plan to solve the problem, so win-win.

110jawefopiwa · a year ago

Fine - for each industry "X", when will a CEO of a company who is given oligopolistic control over software which is deeply entrenched in a stranglehold over "X" decide to fund desperately needed improvements to said software?

Presumably the CEO would believe that improving the quality of their company's products will lead to increased profits/revenue.

110jawefopiwa commented on Static search trees: faster than binary search curiouscoding.nl/posts/st... · Posted by u/atombender

uecker · a year ago

This assumes that Rust is actually a better language. IMHO it isn't.

110jawefopiwa · a year ago

I think the main problem is that Rust doesn't allow for basic data structures like graphs or doubly-linked lists without extra effort, which is why I've generally always preferred pseudocode.

110jawefopiwa commented on Advent of Code 2024 adventofcode.com/2024/abo... · Posted by u/thinkingemote

seba_dos1 · a year ago

It goes into "too bothersome" territory in this case for me. Competing in a local leaderboard was fun and kept me engaged until the end, but it was only possible by choosing a comfortable language to be free to actually think about the puzzle itself to solve it fast. Choosing something that I'm not already familiar with (or that isn't well-suited for this type of tasks) is a great way to ramp up the difficulty and perhaps gain some bragging rights, but I can't see me doing it for longer than a few days before losing interest. Even in this "easy mode" in Python, there were four days that had me spend more than an hour (up to 5h) on the task. There's plenty of actually useful projects I could do in this time to learn new things instead after all.

110jawefopiwa · a year ago

> There's plenty of actually useful projects I could do in this time to learn new things instead after all.

I suppose. I do actually useful projects at work. AoC reminds me of why I personally loved programming in the first place - solving small technical puzzles. I don't like trying to make every single moment of my life "productive".

110jawefopiwa commented on Advent of Code 2024 adventofcode.com/2024/abo... · Posted by u/thinkingemote

neonsunset · a year ago

C# allows for terser and very functional-y implementations thanks to differences between LINQ and Java’s Streams.

110jawefopiwa · a year ago

I guess, but it's not really a fundamentally different programming paradigm, which is what I was getting at.

110jawefopiwa commented on Advent of Code 2024 adventofcode.com/2024/abo... · Posted by u/thinkingemote

seba_dos1 · a year ago

AoC is in this weird place where it's too easy to be fulfilling on its own, but too bothersome to just do it for leisure. I did it once (using Python with no imports for some mild challenge), waking up super early to actually start on time, then golfing my answers if I felt like it. It was a fun thing to do... once. I don't feel the need to repeat that and I don't find it engaging enough to do without time pressure, so I don't.

Perhaps if you aimed at global leaderboards it would be different, but that's neither my league nor I see any fun in that - getting there requires serious effort and preparation in things that aren't directly related to solving intelectual puzzles.

110jawefopiwa · a year ago

It's best for me when I do something that I ordinarily don't do for AoC.

I find no particular pleasure in using an everyday language like Python for it, because as you said it's too easy.

I have used Haskell, Racket, and in some easier cases APL and it's been fun. Treating it more like a puzzle than an actual programming assignment.

When learning new languages, it's best to do something that actually makes you think in a different shape. If you know Python, don't do Ruby. If you know Java, don't do C#.

110jawefopiwa commented on Self-Documenting Code lackofimagination.org/202... · Posted by u/tie-in

Izkata · a year ago

I'd like to propose weird alternative to this:

  function throwError(error) {
      throw new Error(error);
  }
  
  async function createUser(user) {
      validateUserInput(user) || throwError(err.userValidationFailed);
      isPasswordValid(user.password) || throwError(err.invalidPassword);
      !(await userService.getUserByEmail(user.email)) || throwError(err.userExists);

What if...

      [
          [() => validateUserInput(user), err.userValidationFailed],
          [() => isPasswordValid(user.password), err.invalidPassword],
          [() => !(await userService.getUserByEmail(user.email)), err.userExists],
      ].forEach(function([is_good, error]) {
          if (!is_good()) {
              throw new Error(error);
          }
      });

Also on the regex:

  const rules = [/[a-z]{1,}/, /[A-Z]{1,}/, /[0-9]{1,}/, /\W{1,}/];

No one caught that in all four of these, "{1,}" could be replaced with the much more common "+". A bit odd considering the desire for brevity. I do personally prefer "[0-9]" over "\d", especially considering the other rules, but can go either way on "\W".

I might have also added a fifth regex for length though, instead of doing it differently, if my head was in that mode: /.{8,}/

110jawefopiwa · a year ago

I assume this is satire, but for those who might take this seriously, please avoid doing tricks like this.

You're doing so much extra work here. Creating many new arrays, running a bunch of extra function calls, creating extra closures, and really obfuscating code from the engine. This will tank performance.

This is the point at which people come back at me with something about "premature optimization" being bad. That's all well and good, but if you prematurely pessimize and let these patterns creep throughout your codebase, you end up with products that are significantly slower than they should be.

I've spent quite a while working on JS engines, and it always impresses me how much extra work exists in JS developers' code, seemingly for no real reason, and it's slowing down the entire internet. This doesn't appear to be better for the developer, the user, or any potential future maintainers.

110jawefopiwa commented on Amazon reveals first color Kindle, new Kindle Scribe, and more aboutamazon.com/news/devi... · Posted by u/bookofjoe

jjice · a year ago

I own a Kindle Paperwhite (last gen, relative to this new one) and a Kobo Clara BW (purchase in the last 6 months). IMO, the Kindle is the premium e-reader when it comes to look and feel. It's just a fantastic experience. The issue is Amazon and how even if you want to put your own purchased ebooks on it, you have it send it through their servers. That tied with a few other privacy issues over the years led me to also get a Kobo.

The Kobo can run in a fully offline mode (called "side-load mode" or something like that) and I can transfer my ebooks directly via USB. I use the Kobo most of the time now since most of my reading lately has been independently published ebooks, but I still use the Kindle for books I purchase via Amazon directly.

With all that said, I personally think the Kindle Paperwhite is already the perfect size. It fits snuggly in my back pocket and strikes the perfect balance between screen size being large, but not too large to hold for my average male hands. I'd be a bit concerned about the size increase for my personal use case, but Amazon does a great job with the Kindle in general so I'd like to see some reviews.

As for the new Colorsoft, I'd really like to see some reviews. The color Kobos that came out earlier this year got some mixed reviews for colors, but I'm not sure if that's just the nature of color e-ink or not.

110jawefopiwa · a year ago

> IMO, the Kindle is the premium e-reader when it comes to look and feel. It's just a fantastic experience.

Interestingly, I switched from Kindle to Kobo because it was lacking various basic features that made it not feel premium.

* Kobo epubs can show "pages in chapter" progress so I know how much longer there is until a nice stopping point, while Kindle only shows "minutes left in chapter" which is functionally useless.

* Kobo had blue light blocking night shift before Kindle Paperwhite (I think both have it now?)

* Kobo had a convenient feature where you slide your finger along the side of the screen to change brightness, instead of having to go into multiple menus to do this.

It's possible these things have been remedied, but especially the chapter progress thing put such a bad taste in my mouth that I never wanted to touch Kindle again.

110jawefopiwa commented on Project Euler #912: Where are the Odds? projecteuler.net/problem=... · Posted by u/fzliu

joshlemer · a year ago

I've been thinking recently about how things like Project Euler, LeetCode, and to a bit less of an extent, Advent of Code, are so heavily focused on making clever use of math, data structures and algorithms, that it makes them suboptimal as a tools for getting familiar with a new programming language.

I know that that critique isn't new to anyone but it makes me think about how it would be cool if there were a code puzzler site that is specifically geared towards little self-contained tasks that are more to do with forcing you to get familiar with the common everyday tasks of software development.

Some example puzzlers could be like:

- open an http server on port 80

- open a file and write this data to it

- write temporary files to a location, deleting them when process exits

- query a database

- deal with such and such error scenario

- find a way to test this component

- bundle this code as an executable

- sanitize user input here

- make this behavior configurable

- take the config from environment variable variable and/or config file and/or arguments

- parse this data file

You do get a bit of parsing and file handling with Advent of Code but imagine a series of dozens of small problems that grill you on every corner of the python filesystem api. Would be a lot less dry than reading docs cover to cover.

110jawefopiwa · a year ago

> Advent of Code, are so heavily focused on making clever use of math, data structures and algorithms

I've done a fair amount of Advent of Code and I wouldn't say it's at all "focused" on this. The vast majority of the questions use hash tables and graph traversal as the full extent of their use of math/DS/algos.

There's always one or two puzzles every year that require some particular math/CS insight but most of them just need you to know BFS and/or how to write a parser.

Your examples are also not bad, but they seem to be primarily concerned with "getting familiar with a new programming language" in the context of writing a web server, which is one of the parts of programming I try to stay away from. Most of your examples require less familiarity with the language's features and more with libraries you might use, which is less interesting to me personally (then again, I'm a PL fan and I write compilers for a living).

Meanwhile, I like AoC because I've used language features to take the fairly straightforward potential implementations and write them more elegantly in the language I choose. e.g. I use Monads in Haskell, or use Rust's easy threading to parallelize solutions, etc.

For me, learning a new programming language is largely uninteresting unless it changes the fundamental "shape" I think in, rather than what the exact names of the libraries I use change to. e.g. I already know Java so I'm not really going to bother "learning" C#. I already know Python so I don't really bother diving deep into Ruby, etc. However, I learn Haskell, Rust, Forth, Erlang, Scheme, etc.