CookWithMe

Joined 14 years ago

Karma
389
Submissions
201
Member since
Mar 1
Software Dev, Entrepreneur. Based in Berlin, currently digital nomading.

Check www.screenscott.com or www.appeti.co for projects I've been working on.

Feel free to mail me at chris [at] screenscott.com

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Recent submissions

Comment · 8 years ago
I believe (hope) I haven't been the most distracted parent - I banned all news apps and facebook, twitter etc. from my smartphone long ago.

Three weeks ago I broke my iPhones screen on a Friday, and we did go on a family trip over the weekend, so I had to go without a smartphone. It was great, I felt more connected to my 2-year old son, but also to my wife.

After that experience, I've purchased a dumbphone. Yes, I really do miss some utility apps, but overall I'd say it has improved my life.

Comment · 8 years ago
I'm working since 3 years at a growing startup that has been hiring Scala Engineers at least every half year since I started.

In the last ~18 months, the amount of CVs we're getting has been constantly increasing. Part of that is probably that our startups hiring matures, but it's also the kind of CV that is changing.

I'd say that 3 years ago, there was an 80% chance that the applicant was highly self-motivated to learn Scala in their freetime, and tried/did introduce it at his/her current workplace. Today, there is an 80% chance that the applicant either "had to" learn it in their current workplace, or learned Scala when switching jobs. (Don't get me wrong, they're still motivated, and they took the chance when it was there!)

So there is a switch from the Early Adopters to the Early Majority (where the Early Majority now has worked 1 or 2 years with Scala at their current job, and is confident enough to look for a new one).

One driving force was definitely Spark, but there are a lot of Enterprise apps, unrelated to ML (usually with higher traffic requirements). The sort that would have most likely been done with Java or C# 5 years ago. It seems a lot of Enterprises introduce Scala when they try to break up their (Java) monolith into microservices.

So it seems that Scala has been carving out it's place in backend/microservices with scalability requirements, and is eating part of Javas cake there.

Comment · 8 years ago
Comment · 8 years ago
> The main concern with this approach is that the event store is no longer immutable

I think what happens when you delete all events of a (deleted) aggregate root (such as a customer who requested to be forgotten) can be interpreted more charitable, in a way that the event store can still be called immutable.

If you look at a functional programming language, you can not force a data structure to be removed from memory. However, that obviously doesn't mean that your program consumes infinite amount of memory. If a data structure is not referenced anymore, it'll be removed from memory (by the GC). Your program itself didn't mutate the state of the data structure, so from that point of view everything is still mutable.

Now, let's apply the same principle to an event store: A deleted aggregate root (the to-be-forgotten customer) should have been removed from all projections (as required per GDPR). If you replay the events, it shouldn't matter to the final state of a read projection whether it processed the events belonging to this aggregate root, or not.

Therefore, one could interpret that removing the events of a deleted aggregate root in a GC-like fashion leaves the event store immutable, in the sense that my program(s) can't mutate the state (themselves), and their output doesn't change.

Comment · 8 years ago
Volvo is also manufacturing a car with a pedestrian airbag, the V40: https://support.volvocars.com/uk/cars/Pages/owners-manual.as...

Both Volvo and Uber could have opted to use this car instead. Even choosing a SUV is question-worthy, as they're known to be more dangerous for pedestrians due to higher bumper heights: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_sport_utility_veh...

IMO there is at least some negligence on their part for not choosing a car that is more likely to protect pedestrians.

Comment · 9 years ago
Not if you get ulcerative colitis, cancer, or similar.

Or if you get a baby and want parental leave.

Or if you want to send your kids to university.

Comment · 11 years ago
I wrote some RAML recently and found it very good for creating a machine-readable representation of an API. We also wanted to make it human-readable and use it as our API reference (with the API console). I found it to be mostly good, but had some trouble when explaining larger concepts that span several requests. Also, it's harder to point to the "important" parts of the API if it's sufficiently large than it was with our "freeform" reference.

I haven't looked into Swagger deeply, but RAML seems better at re-usability. Swagger seems to have way more traction though, and also more tools.

Comment · 11 years ago
The Soviet Gas Pipeline explosion - if the whole CIA story is true at all - should not be labelled a bug... The code allegedly did exactly what it's creator intended ;-)
Comment · 11 years ago
Looks really cool. I was first thinking it saves the JSON with the new Postgres JSON support, but saving it as relational data is even more impressive!

I'd say if the OPTIONS would return a JSON Schema (+ RAML/Swagger) instead of the json-fied DDL, it would be even more awesome. With a bit of code generation this would be super-quick to integrate in the frontend then.

Comment · 11 years ago
What is so ugly about it? Swift tries to be somewhat close to the usual C-syntax (it's supposed to be the successor of Obj-C, after all).

For someone used to C-syntax, I guess the main deviation is that the return type is in the back and that there's a func keyword. As for the operaters, there is the addition of generics (what is wrong about <> ?), -> to describe signature of a function (a very sensible choice IMO) and ? for Optionals (again, fine for me).

I don't really see how a statically typed language can substantially improve this, but I'd be happy if someone can proof me wrong :-)

Comment · 11 years ago
I would walk away. Actually, consider yourself lucky that they've shown their true face so early on and you can get out now :-)

When considering hiring a lawyer etc., also take a look at opportunity cost: Even in the best case scenario, will you get more money out of it then if you freelance for a similar amount of time? Probably not...

(Also, learning from the Winklevoss twins, it seems preferable to sue a company when it is actually successful, because they got way more to loose at that point then now. Although I strongly doubt that they'll be successful...)

Comment · 11 years ago
> you look better each day than the day before

Again, this is only true if you are unfit. I have been doing sports regularly for the last decade and my body is in good shape. My doc says I'm healthy. Loosing more weight would make me underweight...

Yes, I could become more fit, but training for endurance won't change my body visibly.

> And everyday, as you think back to when you could only do X amount of Y

I have come back super-fit from two-week vacations were I spend nearly everyday mountainbiking or hiking. Back in the city, I can't spend 10-12 hours outdoors everyday. At the very best, I'm maintaining that fitness level, but most likely it is getting worse.

When I was younger, I had the attitude you're prescribing: My fitness became worse, and it was emotionally affecting me because I was searching for a feeling of success. Now I'm aware that my fitness level changes seasonally, reaching bottom at the end of the winter and peaking in the summer. I'm fine with it and I enjoy doing sports just for the sake of it.

Comment · 11 years ago
I'm 100% for doing some sports, and sticking with it while doing a startup.

I'm 100% AGAINST doing it for a "guaranteed win" :-)

First of all, there may be a direct relationship between effort and win when you're an unfit twenty-something, but if you get an injury - or just if your body gets older - you may be struggling to get back to the level you've been at before.

But, even more importantly, if you do sports with a "I have to win"-attitude, you'll start comparing yourself to others, and you'll always find someone who is better than you. Just don't start to be competitive. You're doing the sports for fun. Learn to enjoy sports for it's own sake, and you may be able to take that attitude towards other things in life.

(I've got a failed startup behind me, and one of the things that kept me sane was regularly going bouldering. Pro-Tip: Get a yearly membership as a birthday or xmas present from your parents or so. Even if you're in serious financial troubles, your membership will be paid for. Huge relief!)

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