sethetter

I sure wish I could tell if this is a joke or not.

I'm curious how big of a factor a consistent core team is to having long-term sustainable and stable software. When companies have people rotating on projects constantly and the original vision and design principles of the product are lost or changed, I can only imagine that contributes to the problem.

I've tried to retrain myself to open Obsidian (and have Obsidian configured to always jump straight to my daily note upon opening) if I compulsively pick up my phone. From there, I'm either going to write about what I'm actually trying to accomplish in the moment, or realize I had no real goal and just compulsively picked up my phone as happens more often than I'd like. It's then much easier to just put my phone back down instead of getting locked into browsing random internet streams, or I just do whatever thing I actually got my phone out to do.

I've injected some intentional friction into an otherwise compulsive habit, which opens up the opportunity to redirect that behavior. It's been very a helpful switch so far.

Not to mention it prevents people trying to legitimately access these services from doing so by putting extra barriers in place, defeating the purpose of the assistance program in the first place.

It's a tricky balance to strike!

Perhaps there is something to be gained by being forced to slow down anyways. Speed for the sake of speed isn't always the highest priority. Certainly there are contexts where "keeping up" is a priority, but not always.

Being covered by independent.co.uk: https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/in...

Edit: formatting

Ad Hoc employee here -- this is spot on.

Well said!

I'm with you here -- constraints like that can definitely be useful! The constraint of slowing down to write by hand is also useful for me in this context.

Most of my thoughts are vague, no judgement ;)

You're touching on a reason I like paper too -- in a digital format, I end up thinking too much about how I'm going to organize the information as opposed to just getting my thoughts down.

Organizing the information is important too, but worrying about it before your thoughts are clarified is a quick way for me to get pulled away from my focus on the problem.

Each tool has it's place!

Definitely agree -- paper is something that should compliment your overall system, it's pretty hard to get by with paper alone these days.

If my goal is to focus in on what I'm thinking about, pulling myself away from the computer and putting pen to paper does a better job than anything digital has been able to provide me.

Ah thanks for the catch! I also just switched over to a new SSG for my site, must have missed this :)

The article does not explain what the value of pen and paper has over a digital note pad. It just declares it has one.

The advantage is being clear from potential distractions. A lack of "features" providing a direct line of focus on what you're writing.

Apologies if that wasn't clear from the article!

This! There's also plenty of research backing up the idea that writing with a pen commits the information to memory more effectively than typing. It makes sense if you consider the extra time and effort being dedicated to what you're writing.

I've ditched pen and paper in the past because it was too slow for me. Over time I've realized that desire to "go fast" can be good in some contexts, and bad in others. Slowing down with pen and paper does a much better job of clarifying and directing my thoughts.

It is very easy to have a "apps and services"-free experience: just kill notifications. Why would the paper make a difference? It's not like your "attention-clawing" misconfigured device is not still at your reach.

Absolutely true, this article is generally a reminder for people (like myself) who can struggle with attention and are a little too easily pulled into things once I'm engaged with a screen.

I try to keep my notifications groomed appropriately, but I also have many allowed through thanks to work. I can groom all I want, but a computer is always going to offer more distractions than paper.

Accountability! It can be scary, but it's also important and a driver for positive change.

I deal with all of these things as well, but have pretty much decided to not go the anonymous route, because I would rather try to build that confidence in myself and embrace the accountability that comes along with it.

That said, I still don't comment or publish much online out of this same anxiety. /shrug. It's a work in progress :)

I am constantly worried by the history of how many things we historically applied historical-purposeful reasoning to, totally confident at the time that our explanations made sense – which we now know are not historical-purposeful at all.

I worry about this a lot too. We tend to make sense of the world through the stories we apply to our experience, but with unreliable memories and a desire to find a story that fits what we want to think, confirmation bias even about our own identities leads us to false conclusions.

I think the larger complaint about electron is the memory usage, not disk space usage. Go may have large binaries, but they run fast and efficient.

It seems like the idea of a universal basic income would achieve much of the same long term goals, while not getting things tied up in the complications of treating the US like a business.

The problem that's trying to be solved by this is legitimate, but I don't see much value here beyond it sounding a bit clever. There are ideas out there already that aren't making headway for the same reasons this idea wouldn't.

I've seen a couple comments on emotional well-being and kindness, and I couldn't agree more. Life is about people, and when we optimize for our relationships, life is better for everyone, and everything else falls into place.

As for professional goals, I'm often too aware of the fact that new information over time causes me to change my goals, but that's a natural part of the process and I try not to resist that. Instead I just try to make sure I'm learning and growing in some way or another.

One struggle I've had along the way is balancing what I choose to learn about between what I think will make me more employable or better at my day-to-day work and what I am genuinely interested in. Trying to lean more towards the latter, it's much more rewarding and generally still pays off career-wise.

I think there is still a lingering mentality that you don't have to be an expert with JS to do front end work, and that's just not the case anymore.

Couldn't have said it better myself. There is nothing to be gained from elitist attitudes. Sounds to me like they want to hoard their own job security.

On top of all that, the "every man for themselves" mentality is a way to make sure that developers look out for themselves instead of the company as a whole. This is of no benefit to the company, and the leadership should recognize this and act accordingly.

What good can come from behavior that ensures other teammates don't improve at the rates they should be?

I heard a quote recently:

"What if we teach them everything and they leave?" "What if we don't, and they stay?"

"Expressiveness" seems like a subjective measurement to me. Also, from what I've gathered, Go attempts to be more convention oriented and is centered around doing things the "one true way". The Go formatter is an example of this. Perhaps this is just a result of that philosophy.

The whole article is criticizing a decision he made, which caught me off guard as well.

Content creators have always somewhat had to bend to the will of the major promoters. It is unfortunate that Google has gained a position that allows them to dictate the means of content promotion, but overall the goal of any content creator is to have it seen. As far as I'm aware, they've always had to fit their way of sharing into some other external system. Creators have to get their content to the audience, and if Google is bringing the audience, then they will do what Google says.

Again, it's unfortunate, but not surprising.

I agree with this. We are hired to be technical experts. Though management doesn't want to hear our suggestions if it doesn't line up with their business model, or what customers are yelling about. They hear the people who pay them money over the people they pay money to all day.

It's a difficult situation to try and stand up to an employer who is telling you to do one thing when you know it's the worst possible decision they can make. It's a great idea to think we should stand up for our knowledge better, but chances are the arrogance and determination of the employer is going to stomp you right back into place, or even worse, out of a job.

If you're in a position to comfortably take a stand in this fashion, congratulations, you must be very well off. I consider myself lucky to have a boss that listens and understands when we have a concern. That doesn't mean the rest of the company does, but to have one layer between me and the real decision makers that will listen to what I have to say and protect my job in the process is a blessing.

That said, until developers are the ones with all the cash and say-so, it's going to be difficult to take this stand.

I feel like I'm seeing a lot of discussion about what should be commented. Just like with tests, this can be hard to put your finger on. Even more so, the level of detail a comment needs to have for it to be useful/useless will vary for each developer reading/working on the code. In my opinion it's better to be overly helpful than it is to leave it all difficult to understand.

Also, it's obvious that outdated comments are terrible. It is my expectation that if comments are going to be in the code at all, they should be maintained just like the rest of the code.

I expected it to be a given that these kinds of comments are unnecessary. It's better to comment on the "why" than the "how" or "what". Comments are useful when they help explain a piece of code's integration into the rest of the system. Why is it there in the first place?

Perfect. There's always going to be an edge case, and with code there is always going to be some logic that can't be understood at first glance. Tests are great, but comments help too. As long as comments stay updated with code changes they are useful.

It's obvious that _why (before his disappearance) kept to this name, as opposed to his real name, because he wanted to hold on to his privacy. Now that he's relied on that to vanish and not be bothered, he's been found out and I'm sure people are still bothering him. I feel sorry for the guy, he did awesome things for the community, but everyone has a right to be left alone should they so please. Let's keep remembering what he did for the community and honor that, and him, by catering to his wishes of privacy and a peaceful life.