schneems

I loved it when I iterated on my question so much that I accidentally solved it before I got to posting.

I have engaged with some younger devs who don't even bother turning the thought into a question. They make statements and expect you to do the work of inferring the question. Which I feel like they got from chatbots since it's faster and LLMs don't care if you make them jump through hoops.

> The better my questions got, the fewer responses I got.

There is a sweet spot of providing just enough detail but not too much in asking a good question. And even the best only “bat 300”. I've posted answers to my own questions plenty of times when I got no response.

I hear you on the hostility. Also a lot of people didn't experience how bad things were BEFORE stack overflow. The first time I tried asking a question on IRC I got mocked so bad I logged out and never tried again. Most forums were like that.

I gravitated to Ruby back then because it was one of the only forums people would be patient and empathetic with me.

Not sure how it holds up in this day and age but a common setup was to have 3 products: free, cheap, expensive.

The free one gets people in the door. Cheap is could be something like a book or paid tool or course. And the "expensive" would usually be consulting but could also be a more premium tool or retainer service.

So your suggestion seems to fit the model.

I know LLMs will change the developer education landscape but I really hope it doesn't kill it. Interesting times.

> I think it's more than "interesting theory". I've seen dang comment more than once to the effect that comments > upvotes = off the front page.

The plural of anecdote is not data. I believe you. Also, I'm not going to set my priors on 0% chance it's not something else 100% of the time.

> Let's say that an article has 50 upvotes and 20 comments. Posting 31 comments

You're coming from an intentional actor angle. I was more thinking: people who are riled up and don't like something are more likely to post multiple comments (rage bait). So whether or not they intend to have that outcome, their emergent behavior has that effect. And if they're starting flame wars they only need N/2 number of comments if every comment draws a response. Fewer if multiple respond (which is usually true for the most horrible takes). I think it's cheaper and easier to do than you make out. If they can draw 5 responses per comment, they only need 7 comments total (round up).

The book "Building Successful Online Communities: Evidence-Based Social Design" by MIT press for where my head is at.

How did you stumble on this comment thread in a nuked (for whatever reason) post anyway?

Interesting theory. The consequence of such logic would effectively make it like like every commenter gets one (explicit, literal) upvote and unlimited (implicit via comments) downvotes.

I think this got killed by the mods. It has 46 points over 2 hours and isn’t on the front page anymore.

The number four story also has 46 votes and is 3 hours old.

The CEO of XYZ corp might pay more than a worker on food stamps. But they benefit massively by the food stamp program allowing them to pay workers unlivable wages and allowing them to keep margins higher. On net they are benefitting more as an individual than they are paying into the system.

America has some of the lowest tax rates for the ultra wealthy. And since I can tell you're in the "temporarily embarrassed billionaire" mindset. The delta between you and "them" is not even close. Even with a tech job even with options and bonuses. 50 million dollars a year is a nearly absurd amount of money.

I support Elizabeth Warren's "2 cent" tax on income above 50 million dollars.

> if we don't have a better way to spend it.

I agree that DOGE was disastrous and ended up costing us money. A pound foolish and a penny wise is not the way to run the government.

> 37Signals does it too

It has been “basecamp” for a long time. Also they had a pretty big blowup where 1/3 of their employees took a walkout offer.

David went on stage last year and told people he would fire an employee who used their commit signoff process incorrectly. A process entirely designed around reducing CI costs by putting burden on the individual through increased process.

Which is to say that even companies that make a brand out of how well they treat their employees are still companies at the end of the day, and sometimes marketing and PR doesn't align with reality.

I was wrong. The bulk of my notifications are from Austin Energy. But ERCOT does still send them too. This is my last one:

> Austin Energy: ERCOT expects tight grid conditions, requests conservation Tue., Jan. 16, 6-9 am. Similar conditions expected Wed. morning. More info: ercot.com/txans . Conservation tips: austinenergy.com/alerts . > > ERCOT espera condiciones de red ajustadas, solicita conservación Martes, 16 de enero, 6-9 am. Se esperan condiciones similares el miércoles mañana. Más información: ercot.com/txans . Consejos de conservación: austinenergy.com/alerts . Responde STOP para cancelar. Reply STOP to cancel.

> it's been addressed. We had one of our hottest Augusts on record this year without a single issue.

No significant changes to weathercation regulation. No significant changes to the energy market. What exactly, from a systemic perspective, do you feel "has been addressed"? What little I see is too little.

> If you think it's structurally broken there are energies futures markets you could use to make a lot of money on.

What on earth? My problem is that the market is built to incentivize profit over preventing human pain and suffering. That's not a "make money here" opportunity.

We had PLENTY of capacity at the time of grid failure. The problem was that natural gas plants didn't pay for cold weather weatherization so the pipes literally froze.

The wind turbines were plentiful but lacked de-icing capabilities (another cost cutting measure).

Batteries are good, but my power was off for 72 hours. Some lost it for double that.

To your point "great since the freeze" why would a corporation take on significant costs for a thing that happens only once every decade or so. Much cheaper to let people freeze to death in their own homes.

Regulations don't take away the cost. But they level the playing field. Without them, the market will punish "excess" aka "redundancy". An operator who does the right thing will find themselves unable to compete. Not just decreased margins but possibly put out of business.

Which is why the real failure is the design of the market. And that fundamentally hasn't changed.

Do you live there? I do. Do you get the texts from ERCOT saying "if you don't turn off some shit the grid will fail due to the weather" several times a year. I do.

> "Great since the freeze"

I take it you know nothing about the back story and didn't listen to the podcast. Prior to this "great freeze" there was another "great freeze" and thing went well for a long time between them until they didn't. Virtually nothing structural that caused the conditions of the failure have changed.

I knew a guy who was an EMT (or maybe a paramedic). He drank hard. Would give himself an IV to get over the hangover. He eventually enlisted to be a Marine medic. Absolute madlad.

I have a lot of respect for EMTs and I’m grateful for all of them, but the pay is (comparatively) low, the stress is high and you’re pretty much guaranteed to burnout.

> I think I could have been a pretty formidable startup founder had I been born five or ten years earlier.

I used to think that. I came to the realization that I could have technically built Facebook the product, but would never in a million years have built Facebook the company. But having just finished "Careless People" I feel kinda good about that.

I also just got back from a vacation to Alaska. Lots of gold rush stories from Skagway. One of my favorites was a lady who became massively wealthy by starting baking apple pies for the gold rushers. The classic "sell the shovel" story we hear. And one that also tells me not to lament not being first.

I see people who chased that with crypto or whatever hot trend. None of them struck it rich and feel burned out and have little to show for it. But instead to focus on your values and delivering value. Explorers at the time were suffering scurvy from too much canned and salted food so a pie served not just the soul but the body. She didn't have to be there first even.

I also think that the person I am today might not have even had the skills or gotten into the industry if it were 5 or 10 years earlier. It's the mighty ducks "a half inch and it would have gone in" but a half inch in the other direction could have also completely whiffed it.

Overall interesting piece.

> For any number of reasons, women seem to do better than men at making and keeping adult friendships

I think it’s social pressure and necessity.

When I fail to get my kids a thing they need to school people shrug their shoulders, and I think “I tried” but the pressure on my wife seems to be higher. She judges herself and others judge her harder. Likewise, to meet that pressure she uses her friend group for utility in the same way I might reach out to programmer friends I met at a conf to get a PR merged. She has a bench of mom friends who can pickup her kids and they will expect the same favor in return.

There is a family in our school group where the dad is much more active in that role as connector and planner, but it seems harder for him. I don't think people reach out to him as much for shared favors so he has to try harder. And beyond necessity, they are forming friends. I think the other primary caregivers that are usually women just do not think of him as friend material as quickly or easily as the other mothers. So overall it is harder for him (still do-able just noting a systemic weight).

I found myself taking care of a 10 year old in Taiwan for two weeks (with a group of other students/parents) and that short time was enough for me to do a 180 and really force me to be much more social. I planned things, and socialized. Both because it was fun and it was necessary. I controlled the calendar in totality, bore the risks and rewards and answered to myself. But when we rejoined as a family unit I slipped back into old patterns.

So now I know more what it feels like to have that connection and that symbiotic need. But I'm unsure what to do about it.

> replied on them

I think this is a typo.