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scottw

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Long time HNer but I usually prefer to read than to comment :)

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Phrased as perceived. The author is probably too young to appreciate what his mother likely did for him. Becoming a parent has a tendency to change your perspective on parenthood.

Someone asked him a similar question at the last YAPC in Salt Lake City in June. "What's with the [colorful] shirts?" He replied, "I like the colors."

That quote is so insulting to me as an introvert because it takes such a solipsistic and ego-stroking view of the world: that people who are successful are successful because they fit into the world better, not because they are comfortable and adapted to living in a world that isn't perfectly suited to them.

This was my reaction too, but I was delighted to find that _Quiet_ does not have that tone as a whole.

This is not the same thing. Hamming worked with geniuses who knew the difference between "A moment Dick? Have you ever noticed how (some astute observation)?" and "Hey! Good weekend? (some bland filler)." See chapter 3 of said _Quiet_.

This is the kind of wisdom I wish I had when I started my career and assumed that everyone who did things differently from me was stupid. I wish I could give it to all my current smunderlings when they complain about "bad" code written by otherwise smart and capable people last year... There's always a story behind what is, and it's worth learning before passing judgement.

I built one of these:

http://iamnotaprogrammer.com/Ikea-Standing-desk-for-22-dolla...

and I've been using it since early July and spend most of my day at it. It has significantly helped how my back feels by the end of the day. It's plenty sturdy (I actually bought two of the tables: one for my monitor and keyboard, the other I cut the legs down to the same height as the keyboard on the other table. I put my laptop on this one).

I also have a Steelcase Leap chair I bought in February which helped with the back too. I still use it for writing in my notebook every couple of hours.

I stand barefoot on a cheap backpacking foam pad which I cut in half. I keep a pair of flipflops at my desk if I need to run around the office. Every so often I'll do some leg stretches. I'm considering buying a quality antifatigue mat, but I'm making this work for now.

Bing vs. Google 14 years ago

Given the results of this group (I was 3 for google, 2 draw), I wonder if Google simply has a stronger technical bias than Bing.

Orem, Utah

Company: BetterServers is a small (but well-funded—see below) Linux and FreeBSD VM-in-the-cloud hosting company (pre-beta).

Position: We need one or two awesome full-stack Perl or PHP devs. We have tons of work, including web design, DB and RESTful API integration.

You'd be employee #6. We have free food, drinks, a beautiful new office at the mouth of Provo Canyon. Our salaries are highly competitive (you'll work hard for it, too). Foosball and table tennis skills a plus.

Send a résumé to to mike at betterservers.com.

Wouldn't less ice at the poles (= more water at the equator = higher rotational inertia) mean a slower rotation? Maybe we can get that second back.

Provo/Orem, Utah - BetterLinux/BetterServers

Well-funded startup, full benefits. We're looking for Linux kernel hackers, QA engineers, and full-stack engineers. We use a lot of different technologies, so the ability to learn new things quickly is the most important skill. We're small (currently 20-ish employees) and we love foosball and table tennis. Lots of free sodas and food in the breakroom, etc. It's a nice gig :)

For Linux kernel hackers:

- familiarity with cgroups, scheduling algorithms, etc - exceptional C skills

For QA engineers:

- knowledge of TAP - solid Perl skills - ability to think like a customer and look at our products with fresh eyes

For full-stack engineer:

- working knowledge of HTML/CSS/Javascript - solid Perl skills - familiarity with Mojolicious a plus - Python/PHP skills also comes in handy - REST API design skills

Email résumé to scott@betterlinux.com.

"Population declines following economic collapse" should be "Population declines following sustained drop in birthrate." The population is going to decline regardless of what the future economy does.

> Computers are an extension of people's minds, not devices like a record player, typewriter, or printing press. Intrusion into somebody's processing and data should be treated the same as intruding into their thoughts. It shouldn't be done.

Well said. This is probably the most challenging analogy for people (and courts) to grasp.

Isn't that just a little ironic that the Unicode bullets have been converted to the prescription symbol?

The claim that "Debugging is one of the most expensive steps in software development- so you want incur less of it" is something we can all agree with, but "even if it is at the expense of more typing" doesn't follow.

Having programmed in both kinds of languages, I have to admit I love not thinking about the type. I don't buy the claim that static typing saves much in the long run (in terms of debugging or writing better code). In 15ish years of using both static and dynamic typed languages, I think I've been burned two or three times at most by not having static types—it's just not a big problem.

Using static types creates a self-fulfilling environment in which getting the right type is crucial (and thank goodness we have a modern IDE to help with that).

Thanks. I submitted this to hn earlier this summer, but must have hit the wrong time of day or something because it just languished. I don't think I got more than one karma point from it. The irony is that this coverage has only given me real karma points, and no hn karma (pg's URL de-duplication tester doesn't go back in time far enough) :)