Recent submissions

Comment · 12 years ago
I'm not sure why I got down voted to eternity.

If you have a great dev box with a ton of ram then using docker or a VM is irrelevant. You can just set the whole thing up in a ram drive and things are nearly instant, assuming you're using virtualization for short lived tests on some provisioned server that matches your prod env.

With an older machine and a 32bit OS (ie. 2 gigs of ram) you can't do anything except run 2x 512mb VMs side by side within a host or a single ~1GB VM on its own so it's a real let down to see they decided to use docker instead of just plain LXCs which do work with a 32bit OS.

Comment · 12 years ago
I almost got excited but then yawned.

It's nice but it still doesn't fix the issue with people who have medium end machines where you develop in a VM full time and want to be able to run a VM within a VM.

For example with fairly old but still reasonable hardware you cannot run virtualbox inside of an existing virtualbox instance.

If you have a windows box and develop full time in a linux VM you cannot run vagrant inside of that linux VM because unless you have a modern CPU it lacks the instruction sets required to run virtualization within virtualization.

Now using docker instead of a VM would work but docker only supports 64 bit operating systems so anyone stuck with a 32bit host OS still can't use vagrant and has to resort to using raw linux containers without docker which is really cumbersome.

Comment · 12 years ago
I wouldn't sweat it too much.

I've also noticed that really in depth questions with a lot of code examples and explanations doesn't help either because then they get no responses or votes.

It's funny when you're asked to supply detail but when you supply detail no one replies because they can't be bothered to spend 4 minutes reading the setup/code details.

Comment · 12 years ago
I wish Netflix would just deny access to every Comcast subscriber. Maybe that will knock Comcast into reality after like 20% of their subscribers instantly cancel their account.
Comment · 12 years ago
You can't ignore things until it's a huge problem, that would be a mistake no matter what.

Do you have a real code example from a non-trivial domain?

Comment · 12 years ago
The menu I was talking about wasn't the typical channel listing. That's even worse to the point where I never use it. When I goto my friend's house where he has a ton of premium channels you can literally spend 3 hours just looking through that list to find something.

I hope that market segment with half a dozen choices never becomes fully main stream. I like choice in moderation (ie. web frameworks with opinions) but movies are just entirely different.

There's just too many interesting genres and type of movies to filter a list of 100,000 movies down to a handful. It's a very complicated problem to solve and might be unsolvable until we have huge break throughs in how machines process human input.

Example, how would you solve this problem: Customer A watches 5 comedies in a row then is proposed a choice of 3 movies. 1 comedy, 1 sci-fi and 1 romance.

If customer A picks the sci-fi movie you cannot conclude that he didn't like the comedy or romance choices. He just happened to prefer watching a sci-fi movie that night. You don't even know the outside conditions too. Maybe his friend is over sitting in the room while they pick the movie, you simply cannot know.

Comment · 12 years ago
I never tried accessing it through a console. Only through a fairly modern $40ish DVD player and a web browser, no complaints.

I'd drop them instantly without thinking twice if a better solution existed with equal or better selection, cheaper prices and more promising short term goals.

Comment · 12 years ago
Are you a Netflix subscriber? Their interface is pretty good. It's about as good as you can ask for given the technology we have and the selection that Netflix has.

Things are broken up by genre or new releases just like they used to be in video stores because it's pretty intuitive way to browse movies. "I feel like watching something funny, show me all comedies". Netflix also takes it 1 step further and tries to sort it by relevance based on previous watches.

Their interface for DVD players is quite good too. The search is smart and it only takes seconds to go from the DVD player being off to watching a stream from Netflix.

I rarely load up Netflix knowing exactly what I want to watch. I have ideas based on genre what I want and Netflix lets me browse reasonably. I've been a sub for almost as long as they've been around and I still find good stuff. The only thing that lacks is newer releases on stream but you can blame the media providers for that.

My cable provider sometimes offers free access for a month to their on demand/pay per month movie service and it's a joke. Things are listed alphabetically with 90 pages to go through or it's by genre but you're stuck going through 28 pages of alphabetical results where you see nothing but the movie title and a 1 sentence plot. It's an awful user experience.

Comment · 12 years ago
A beginner with a passion and goal to improve will eventually become a professional. You don't get to professional status by just research and reading, you have to actually do things and figure out first hand what works and what doesn't.

Then you eventually learn to see things on your own. I don't need to read a popular programming pattern book to know how to structure my code. I know how to structure it based on feedback of using it on a regular basis while having a solid base of information to work off of.

If something feels off, I fix it where the solution is it no longer feels off. Until it feels off I'll likely leave it as is because at this point I haven't experienced the problem.

If something isn't a problem to me then it's not a problem. It's only a problem when it causes me to react in a negative way or is causing the system to react in a way that is bad.

I wouldn't recognize first hand that red on green is a problem for color blind people because I'm not color blind. If this hypothetical app had to work for color blind people then I would open a ticket and flag it as a feature request and then get feedback from someone who is color blind.

That's a good example of it's not a problem until it's a problem.

You can still constantly learn and keep up with things while taking DHH's advice btw. I have been coding and working with his mentality for quite some time now despite working with rails for only a year.

Comment · 12 years ago
He never said don't learn patterns. He said it's not worth spending all your time trying to memorize them before you even write a line of code.

Memorizing about 20 patterns for 3 months before you really write any code is way worse than just hacking together something and improving it because after enough time you know what's wrong.

The "you just know" thing is really powerful. I'm not a professional artist but I just know that if you had a yellow background and you drew something in the foreground with the same yellow code it wouldn't work because you couldn't see it.

When writing shitty code I just know it's bad because I find myself having to copy/paste something 8 times or maybe it's close enough to a copy/paste that it still feels wrong so then I fix it.

Comment · 12 years ago
This is the best keynote he's ever given. It boils down to actually writing code and forget memorizing patterns.

That can't be more true.

Comment · 12 years ago
It's not as simple as you think it is.

You mentioned wanting to allow farmers to make an account and add in their details of various stuff along with having their own profile.

That is much different than a typical e-commerce setup. Most product sites have products. Which account added the product doesn't matter. There's no "show me all shoes filtered by the user of Mary", it's "show me all shoes by price filtered by size, etc.".

I also encourage you to research shipping cost calculators that let you use them seamlessly in your custom site.

Also I'm not trying to discourage you from executing your idea. You're free to do whatever you want but I'm just saying you'll have to spend a decent amount of $ to get exactly what you want up and working as a reasonable solution.

Comment · 12 years ago
Comparing an e-commerce site to what you want is like trying to compare a tarantula's fangs to the rudders on a speed boat.

I'm not trying to bust your chops but I'd be curious as to what makes you think your idea is less technical than an e-commerce site. What basis did you use to make that conclusion?

Comment · 12 years ago
Safe isn't immune, also people are really strange around money.

What if I set a goal for 2 years from now. Suddenly I'm forced into maintaining a friendship with my accountability partner because if I don't then I run the risk of being blackmailed.

Comment · 12 years ago
It doesn't matter where the money goes to in the end, the only thing that matters is the risk taker loses the money.

There's a very big difference between "internet friend I've known for 4 years and I would consider him a decently close friend" and "I'm willing to hold this guy accountable for $1,000".

I think you guys under estimate at how hard it will be to find an accountability partner who is actually worthy. Your family members will have a bias to not let you lose the money. Really close friends (the people you can trust) might too but the questionably close friends aren't quite trustworthy enough to let them decide on your $500, etc..

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