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Joined 14 years ago
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247
Submissions
231
Member since
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Recent submissions
Comment · 12 years ago
Care to elaborate, or are you just throwing mud?
Comment · 12 years ago
neither of us is qualified
That kind of thinking is how we got the government sanctioned food pyramid. I'd rather think for myself, thanks.
Comment · 12 years ago
He's not the only anti-startup commenter here. I'm curious, have you ever worked at a startup as a programmer, not as a founder? Sometimes, it's easier to see the downside of a system when you're not the one profiting from it.
Comment · 12 years ago
You're the only one in this thread talking about human automatons, outsourcing and broken corporate structures. I'm explaining why a healthy corporation would want to use a simpler and easier to understand system over a more complex, harder to understand one. Nothing more, nothing less.
The thing is, the level of intelligence to maintain the software has to exist somewhere.
Yes it does. Nothing I've said suggests otherwise. But, let's say you can lower the amount of intelligence required to actually understand the system. Not much, just from "exceptional" (by which I mean 10x or the top 1% of programmers working in the field) to "average" (by which I mean the median level of intelligence for programmers working in the field). If you can do that, you lower your risk over the long term. If someone leaves, you can easily hire a replacement and get them up to speed.
Comment · 12 years ago
I couldn't agree with the article more. I should have come up with a different tl;dr for the previous post, considering everything I wrote in this thread has specifically been about corporations and not startups. Sorry about the confusion.
Comment · 12 years ago
tl;dr: there's a reason most startups prefer javascript to smalltalk.
Which is a quality of a fundamentally broken organizational system
No, it's a quality of a robust organizational system. Let's take a program that parses html as an example. What would you think of an html parser that only works well with high quality, strictly structured html and breaks under poorly formatted html? You would call it a fragile, broken system. But a parser that deals equally well with low quality html would be a well thought out, robust system. And here's the key to the point I was making: the robust system could be relied upon to do its job consistently even under less than ideal conditions.
A system that requires exceptional engineers to maintain it is a huge source of risk for any company. If your current exceptional engineer leaves for whatever reason, you have to find another one. If the reason your engineer left is your company is suddenly facing insolvency thanks to a nasty patent dispute, all you may be able to afford to hire is a college grad to maintain what you've already got.
Comment · 12 years ago
For corporations, consistant work is often more desirable than exceptional work. Amassing thousands of lines of code that only exceptional programmers can use, understand and modify is a liability, not an asset, no matter how efficient it is.
Comment · 12 years ago
This could revolutionize SCA combat (and let me keep all my teeth!)
Comment · 12 years ago
Judging from these comments, it's already there.
Comment · 12 years ago
Neither of which actually require going to a coffee shop. It's the human interaction that most people find appealing.
Comment · 12 years ago
If you're a software engineer, you really ought to be living in the Bay Area. There's no other place like it.
I agree there's no other place like it, but that's not necessarily a good thing. I've been there, done that and won't go back. Then again, I prefer blunt honesty to polite lies and I need my space. Just saying, it's not for everybody, even if you're a software engineer.
Comment · 12 years ago
Something in between would be ideal for me. A center console with a touch screen for configuring settings when you're not driving, but physical buttons, switches and knobs on the steering wheel for when you're driving.
Comment · 12 years ago
I think the question the parent is trying to raise is, is HN the right place for gender discussions in the first place? I have a dotjs script that filters out any political or social posts here because the conversations that occur are simply not constructive. That and the hate in those comments can be felt by anybody within a 10 foot radius who can see the expression on my face when I read them. I don't need that kind of poison derailing my day, so I stopped reading them.
However you feel about the original topic, you have to ask yourself: are those comment threads helping or hurting the community here?
Comment · 12 years ago
and he should give a damn about whether you agree or not because... ??
Comment · 12 years ago
Have we gotten to the "threaten the dissenter with bodily harm" bit already?