Selfcommit

“I’m glad this book was well written”

That last line gave me a chuckle… the most positive feedback Bartik could provide, which somehow hurt more for the writing.

I respect some of what’s being said about “mappers” vs “packers” - but the article presents the idea that there are 2 kinds of programmer and you’re one or the other, largely based on growth as a “real” mapper.

I think a more realistic description is that everyone is a mapper. There isn’t a single body of knowledge that is “software engineering” - so it’s ok to encounter something new, “pack” it, then map it if it’s valuable.

Far better to encourage mapping than create false dichotomies that can easily work their way into cultural fit interviews.

“The candidate failed to find an obscure error in the JS console… clearly a packer - no hire”.

I lost 2 uncles that I loved, and 1 aunt I never met to CF.

I am incredibly happy for those who have gained literal decades of life from this new treatment.

I do wish the wheel of progress could have moved faster.

I wonder if your tone and advice still make sense in these similar scenarios:

1. You have a large number of peers who start chat conversations with “Hi, are you busy?” That question is begged with just “hi” and implies a forced urgency.

2. All your coworkers start email threads with “hi” and wait for peers to respond before continuing. If that seems ridiculous, you now have an idea what “hi” is like for remote workers.

Alright, I’m interested.

Any good reads to recommend on self determination theory?

Tools facilitate the process, but can’t replace it.

I wonder if there’s a measure for how well 2 GPT chat prompts collaborate with one another?

I had my “first Joel review” while applying to work at Stack. Joel still did the final interviews for all applicants back then. After 4-5 back to back on site interviews, I was spent. Somehow we ended up talking about old AutoIT scripts I’d written - many of which include apologies to future readers in the comments.

Joel was a great interviewer… that conversation turned into a game as Joel picked apart various ways he over compromise the script and asked how I’d respond in the next iteration.

Yes, I think that's the joke :)

So the overhead to begin a video stream is due to the size of video data? Would video behave generally more like audio data (could stream immidiately) if the typical user bandwidth was larger?