mmartinson (u/mmartinson)

mmartinson commented on On second thought, just throw plastic away city-journal.org/greenpea... · Posted by u/mhb

xtracto · 3 years ago

So what? It is raising some interesting points in a decent way and developing discussion. There are points that make more sense to me than others, and I dont share their conclusions. But I appreciate the discussion it raises.

Americans shouldn't be so fast to discount the idea of each other just because they are from the other end of their political spectrum. US politics would improve if both sides avoided that.

mmartinson · 3 years ago

The problem is that it frequently detours from interesting discussions points to do things like dump on Greenpeace. Not interesting. Being elsewhere on the political spectrum doesn’t discount the interesting points, it just injects too many wacky ideas to make it possible to engage with. Ratio of density between interesting points and fever swamp ranting too low. Trash rag.

mmartinson commented on Doing what you love when the money won’t follow loveofallwisdom.com/blog/... · Posted by u/rzk

_chu1 · 3 years ago

My generation (I am 14) might need something hammered into their heads. Just drawing pictures or making mediocre music isn't gonna bring you a lot of success or money, either get better or find a way to monetize it. But doing something you don't care for and making it your life kind of makes you into a slave in a way.

mmartinson · 3 years ago

Y'all should enjoy drawing pictures and making mediocre music without worrying about how that relates to success or money. Your career is important, but it's only one part of a good life. Things that are enjoyable but unproductive often have a way of building skills and character that can later help you in unexpected ways.

mmartinson commented on The most-regretted (and lowest-paying) college majors washingtonpost.com/busine... · Posted by u/mikequinlan

buscoquadnary · 4 years ago

> Humanities specialists argue that these majors open up higher-earning opportunities later in life because they don’t lock students into a narrow programming language, certification or career path. The critical thinking taught in humanities courses allows students to adapt to jobs that may not have existed when they enrolled in college.

I've experienced the exact opposite with that, that often those with humanities specialization are the least able to think critically and most likely to inject personal biases. They often adapt to another job not because they have some edge but more because their unable to pay bills and forcing yourself to learn something is very easy when the alternative is starvation.

Further this points to the ugly truth, a college degree doesn't matter any more than your HS GPA, the important part is you have it. It serves simply as an easy way for employers to filter people out when attempting to determine who to hire. It functionally serves as an easy way to vets large swathes of people.

mmartinson · 4 years ago

> Humanities specialists argue that these majors open up higher-earning opportunities later in life because they don’t lock students into a narrow programming language, certification or career path. The critical thinking taught in humanities courses allows students to adapt to jobs that may not have existed when they enrolled in college.

I've experienced this exactly. I have a philosophy degree. I floundered a bit career-wise post undergrad, self-studied for a practical entry vector into a programming job, and 8 years later have a super rewarding career as a software engineer. I felt my humanities undergrad, especially the critical thinking and writing skills I developed, have helped me advance much more quickly.

If I were to change anything, I would have liked to do a CS minor.

mmartinson commented on Ask HN: What is the job market like for niche languages (Nim, Crystal)? · Posted by u/akudha

GuB-42 · 4 years ago

Does language really matter? Any experienced programmers should be able to pick up any language in a matter of days if he knows the underlying concepts. Similarly, the language is not what makes a job interesting.

I mean, what don't you like about JS? Is it the syntax or is it the environment? The code base? The framework? Maybe web dev is not for you? Maybe you are asked to do thing you personally disagree with (ex: ads). Language rarely was the main thing that defined the project, though there are correlations: if you are doing JS, you are probably doing web dev, with a higher chance of front-end work. But chances are that a NodeJS back-end and one written in, say, Elixir, won't feel much different after the honeymoon is passed.

If you want something different to JS, why not try good old C instead of niche languages? It has a significant job market, you will learn about memory management, and get your foot into embedded, high performance, and system programming, far from the world of JS. These skills will translate into the other (niche or not) languages you may use next. Even in high level languages, having an idea of how that works on a lower level is a good thing.

mmartinson · 4 years ago

> But chances are that a NodeJS back-end and one written in, say, Elixir, won't feel much different after the honeymoon is passed.

This is very, very far from my experience, having worked extensively with both of these particular examples.

At my current job I deep dive into a lot of years old, kinda sketchy Elixir code, and it's almost always less effort to learn/fix something than I've found in other languages, especially other dynamic languages. Except when macros are overused.

mmartinson commented on Ask HN: What is the job market like for niche languages (Nim, Crystal)? · Posted by u/akudha

blocked_again · 4 years ago

Best strategy for becoming a high paying/good software engineer would be to think of yourselves as problem solver and language as just one of the tool for problem solving.

Thinking of yourselves as someone who is a writer of a certain programming language is self constarining and missing the point.

mmartinson · 4 years ago

> Best strategy for becoming a high paying/good software engineer would be to think of yourselves as problem solver and language as just one of the tool for problem solving.

I'm not sure becoming a high paying/good software engineer are necessarily relevant to the stated goals of the OP's question. There can be inherent reward in working with a set of less popular, well crafted tools. Yes you might grow faster as a professional by working with a group of industry best JS programmers, but working with a small team building in Elixir and moving fast without ever hitting a NaN can be a pretty rewarding experience.

mmartinson commented on Ask HN: What is the job market like for niche languages (Nim, Crystal)? · Posted by u/akudha

rco8786 · 4 years ago

> I've wasted so much time digging into tools that I've never used again.

Don’t think of it this way. Learning new tools is almost never a waste of time, you just don’t know when you’ll need the lessons learned next. But you will.

mmartinson · 4 years ago

It's valuable to consider the opportunity cost of this compared to a deepened knowledge of an already productive tool

mmartinson commented on Internet drama in Canada nytimes.com/2022/05/26/te... · Posted by u/ChrisArchitect

BlargMcLarg · 4 years ago

So out of curiosity and someone who isn't Canadian, what exactly is keeping individuals?

Most countries I see, the problem is one of the two. Non-English industry and one doesn't speak the native language. Missing a desirable education + experience combo (e.g. any masters or PhD, STEM bachelor, software dev with 3+ YoE).

I'd imagine most individuals looking here would hit one of the requirements on the last, and English tends to be the language spoken in software dev in most of the world (or at least, the ability to). Several may be willing to accommodate non-native language speakers on several other fields, too.

At the very least, I know much of Europe is bending over backwards for skilled workers (backlash from trying to cheapen everything and from the US taking EU's skilled workers, I guess) and the US is Canada's neighbor.

mmartinson · 4 years ago

Out of curiosity for someone who is Canadian, what’s the assumed pull? Historically it would be income and career opportunities, but the tide has turned on that quite significantly in the last 5-10 years. Outside of that, it’s safe, clean, people are friendly, there are nice things. With a middle of the road tech salary the price of internet is a non concern.

That said, Canadian politics and crony capitalism are a grind sometimes, but looking over the fence it’s not totally obvious that other systems aren’t trading one set of intractable problems for another.

mmartinson commented on Please stop calling it “magic” (2017) zverok.space/blog/2017-10... · Posted by u/todsacerdoti

mmartinson · 4 years ago

Nothing makes me long for boilerplate as much as seeing Ruby code with heavy use of metaprogramming.

mmartinson commented on Erlang/OTP Profiling: Fprof medium.com/erlang-battleg... · Posted by u/elbrujohalcon

mmartinson · 4 years ago

fprof, recon trace, observer have proved to be the holy trifecta for me for debugging challenging production issues. I miss these deeply when working in other languages.

mmartinson commented on Ask HN: Which tech stack is the most fun? · Posted by u/chickenWing

davidw · 4 years ago

> broader set of strengths than Rails imo

What are those, in your experience? The BEAM platform is certainly better for concurrent work where you might be holding open something like a web socket. But other stuff...? I'm a pretty happy Erlang programmer and feel like I 'get' the functional programming aspect of things, but to me ActiveRecord just feels like such a great fit for DB work in that it makes the simple things really easy and intuitive, lets you do some more complex stuff, and gets out of your way if you just want to go to SQL. I don't have too much experience with Ecto. It feels like it "does the job", but is maybe not quite so quick and intuitive for basic/simple stuff like AR.

mmartinson · 4 years ago

Having worked with both ActiveRecord and Ecto, Ecto is consistently easier to reason about and change than AR. It feels closer to the DB without compromising composability, and better avoids surprises. Ecto is IMO one of the killer features of the Elixir ecosystem that is undercelebrated compared to the neat things that are rarely used.