hopia (u/hopia) - Readit News

hopia commented on Launch HN: Wasp (YC W21) – DSL for building full-stack web apps · Posted by u/matijash

hopia · 5 years ago

I thought you were on to something really nice last year, and left you a long list of feedback on Indiehackers: https://www.indiehackers.com/post/launched-landing-page-for-...

Nothing makes me happier than seeing you guys having come so far since then and having stayed so determined!

hopia commented on I received my first donation on my open-source side project gourav.io/blog/first-dona... · Posted by u/jerrygoyal

emilfihlman · 5 years ago

The iirc court of appeals has confirmed that merely having a donation link is okay.

So you might legally be somewhat limited in what you can write there (like "donate to me SO THAT I can write more code YOU enjoy"), but saying

"Support me / donate to me / Support my work through Ko-Fi"

is entirely fine.

hopia · 5 years ago

You have to remember that we're talking about a country whose police considered Wikipedia to be fundraising money illegally with their global donations based system, due to Finnish laws: https://yle.fi/uutiset/3-7144745

I don't think it's a worthwhile risk to take for Finnish open source developers to accept donations and think it won't be considered illegal by the authorities.

hopia commented on Helsinki Relocation Package: City as a Service helsinkibusinesshub.fi/90... · Posted by u/mannylopez

throwawayzRUU6f · 5 years ago

Well, good luck hauling small kids, furniture, gardening or construction materials by bike or public transportation. Most of the adults are not singles in their twenties or early thirties, living in a rented flat.

Once you get a family or buy a house, owning a car is basically a must. And the price tag for it in Finland is very high. 1000e a year just for mandatory car tax, mandatory yearly checkup and liability insurance. ~70% of the price of gas is taxes. Cars themselves are so expensive that Finland has one of the oldest car fleet in the developed world (12.2 years).

hopia · 5 years ago

Unfortunately, this is the reality on the ground. Finland is the least densely populated country in Europe, and one of the most arctic countries in the world. A lot of the people simply need a car to commute to work.

Cars in Finland have not only a value-added tax (VAT) of 24% but also a separate car tax slapped on them. At the extreme cases this can result in over 100% additional tax to be paid on top of the retail price of a car.

hopia commented on Helsinki Relocation Package: City as a Service helsinkibusinesshub.fi/90... · Posted by u/mannylopez

nextlevelwizard · 5 years ago

4-6k seems high even for Helsinki. For starting position you can expect 2-3k, then as you build towards seniority you can get to 4-5k range, but you can expect to work for 5-10 years before you get to that 5k/mo (before taxes).

Now all kind of exceptions will come out the wood works telling me how they are "easily" making 10k/mo by doing something and working for someone who they won't admit. Yes even I know someone who is (or at least was) making 10k/mo, but he was very specialized expert, actual 10x developer. Most people are making far less. 3k/mo seems like the most common salary (again before taxes) for generic tech job.

hopia · 5 years ago

This looks about right to me. To add for reference, something like 5200 € / month gross puts you to top 10% earners in Finland already. So it is an excellent salary to get locally.

I also know of a few developers making 10k€ / month but I have to say they're very rare to come across in this country.

hopia commented on Helsinki Relocation Package: City as a Service helsinkibusinesshub.fi/90... · Posted by u/mannylopez

_RPL5_ · 5 years ago

You are getting a lot of critical responses, and I hate to dog pile, but:

>Amazon/Google/etc happily pay ten times that salary

In the thread, they say Helsinki juniors start out at ~$3k/mo after taxes. In the Bay Area, let's say you are a junior at a FAANG and are getting $150k/year. This works out to $8k/mo after taxes. So the difference between a FAANG and Helsinki is more like 3x. Maybe, 4X if you account for bonuses/options. But it's not 10x.

Obviously, 3-4X is still a lot. If it's a choice between Helsinki and SF, SF wins hands down.

Problem is that most of the engineers working in the US are not working for a FAANG company in the Bay Area. If you look at what engineers are getting paid in places like Houston or Atlanta, you will find that juniors start at $60k/year, which is $4k/mo after taxes. That's very close to the reported $3k/mo rate for Helsinki.

There is this weird trend I noticed on HN. Whenever the subject of money comes up, people start casually quoting Bay Area numbers like they are representative of the industry as a whole. I don't think they are.

hopia · 5 years ago

This is a good exercise to make a rough comparison like ths.

However, actually a junior would make something like ~3k€ before taxes in Helsinki, not after taxes. The taxes are (very) progressive, at that income level it's something like 27% in Finland.

hopia commented on Helsinki Relocation Package: City as a Service helsinkibusinesshub.fi/90... · Posted by u/mannylopez

csomar · 5 years ago

> public healthcare is great until you have something difficult to work with or non acute. Enjoy the months longs waiting times to see a dentist.

Months long waiting times for a dentist? I'm not sure if that qualify their public healthcare as great. In a months time your dental issue might actually become acute.

hopia · 5 years ago

When I book a dentist or an oral hygienist, the first available times are usually at miminum 8 months ahead. The cost is 60 €. This is at the public healthcare.

Granted, this is another Finnish city, not Helsinki.

hopia commented on Haskell RecordDotSyntax language extension proposal (Accepted) github.com/ghc-proposals/... · Posted by u/harporoeder

hopia · 5 years ago

Nothing is better than seeing the broken pieces of the foundation fixed in Haskell.

Records were my number one gripe in the language that otherwise does so many advanced things so uniquely well.

hopia commented on Elixir Is Erlang, not Ruby preslav.me/2020/09/06/eli... · Posted by u/stanislavb

MildlySerious · 5 years ago

Gleam[1] is a typed language on the BEAM. It's still in its early days, more so than Rust. May still be worth keeping an eye on. Nim[2] and Crystal[3] also exist. No idea what their web situation is like, but Nim has a JS compile target, that might be interesting.

[1] https://github.com/gleam-lang/gleam [2] https://nim-lang.org/ [3] https://crystal-lang.org/

hopia · 5 years ago

There's also Elchemy which is semantically and syntactically like Elm but compiles down to Elixir:

https://github.com/wende/elchemy

hopia commented on Elixir Is Erlang, not Ruby preslav.me/2020/09/06/eli... · Posted by u/stanislavb

dnautics · 5 years ago

If you're willing to be patient, I think that in the next year Elixir is going to get an add-in aggressive static typing library (better than dialyzer) enabled by compiler hooks. It's going to happen, and it's going to be very good.

hopia · 5 years ago

Do you have more info about this? It does sound promising.

hopia commented on Elixir Is Erlang, not Ruby preslav.me/2020/09/06/eli... · Posted by u/stanislavb

smabie · 5 years ago

Scala is probably the most expressive statically typed language around, so I personally wouldn't feel bummed about having to use it. Java on the other hand...

hopia · 5 years ago

Scala's type system is more expressive than Haskell's? I didn't know that. What makes it more expressive?