HN user
Physicist, polyglot developer and general geek.
Also unemployed currently - get in touch if you have developer or manager roles.
For those saying it's not a lot of money, I shall gladly accept your donations. $650 would allow me to buy myself a new office chair, or sort out a DIY project. Sure, I can save for these things, but if it's an inconsequential amount for you - it's an amount of consequence for me.
$650 is a lot of money. Yes, definitely have those checks. I'd rather they call and check and everything is fine, than they not call, and things not be fine.
We're up to 10 hours of downtime on their services.
Anyone know what could have caused this? Companies generally [citation needed] don't go down for half a day across all their services.
If your experience has been entirely Python then a compiled language is the way to go.
SOLID principles still apply, but I've found multi-threaded applications to be more sensible in compiled languages.
More SQL is valid, up to a point. Make sure you're familiar with the basic syntax for SELECT, UPDATE, DELETE.
After a compiled language, try a different scripting language: JS, Ruby, PHP. JS is interesting because it's browser based. Ruby is interesting because of its ActiveRecord layer. PHP is interesting because of its legacy, and where it's going syntactically.
I wouldn't stop there either. Once you've done the above, write a Domain Specific Language on top of one you're familiar with. I wrote my first one on top of C#.
Write a terminal only application, and then extend it to be visual. Does it have to be HTML? Write a flashcard program, there are so few about.
In my experience, Ruby was good for prototyping, and then JRuby for performance. Python was good for quick science and then R, C or C++ for performance. PHP was good for prototyping websites, and then you switch it to become the view layer with API support for scaling.
Once you've done the above, try an esoteric language such as Piet.
Definitely learn a new language.
I'd add putting in a static code analysis tool in there because that will give you a number for how bad it is (total number of issues at level 1 will do), and that number can be given to upper management, and then whilst doing all the above you can show that the number is going down.
BuilderStorm | Mid Level Full Stack Engineer | Full-time | REMOTE (UK only) | https://www.builderstorm.com
BuilderStorm is an established software engineering company that provides a SaaS solution to the construction industry. We're a full plot-of-land to finished-building solution focusing specifically on document control.
We're looking for a mid level full stack engineer to help with day to day maintenance of our server, but ultimately helping to reduce our backlog of issues.
PHP 7.4/jQuery/MySQL/NginX with a bit of Redis on the side.
Salary - £36,000 to £40,000K per annum
To apply, please send a CV and covering letter to jobs@builderstorm.com. Please include a link to code examples and describe your existing server maintenance experience.
I've been doing a lot of flow diagrams and PlantUML has been invaluable. I specifically like it because sharing the flow means sharing some text, which itself is vaguely human-readable. There's an online renderer (bottom of the page in the above link), which means simple diagrams are also quick to create and view. It's got a few different modes that it understands but I'd definitely add it to the list when you need simple vector graphics.
World First Ltd | Millbank Tower, London | Full time | ONSITE
World First is an established currency company. We have a medium sized IT team looking for PHP developers to continue development on the existing World First systems. The stack is PHP, Apache/Nginx and MySQL.
Job links below: Senior software dev: https://app.jobvite.com/j/?cj=okPz0fws&s=AddThis#.VguQkA8d_D...
More information available by commenting here, or emailing victoria.bradford@worldfirst.com referencing HackerNews
World First Ltd | Millbank Tower, London | Full time | ONSITE
World First is an established currency company. We have a medium sized IT team looking for PHP developers to continue development on the existing World First systems. The stack is PHP, RabbitMQ, Apache/Nginx and MySQL.
Job links below: Senior software dev: https://app.jobvite.com/j/?cj=okPz0fws&s=AddThis#.VguQkA8d_D...
More information available by commenting here, or emailing victoria.bradford@worldfirst.com referencing HackerNews
World First Ltd | Millbank Tower, London | Full time | ONSITE
World First is an established currency company. We have a medium sized IT team looking for PHP developers to continue development on the existing World First systems. The stack is PHP, RabbitMQ, Apache/Nginx and MySQL.
Job links below: Senior software dev: https://app.jobvite.com/j/?cj=okPz0fws&s=AddThis#.VguQkA8d_D...
More information available by commenting here, or emailing victoria.bradford@worldfirst.com referencing HackerNews
World First Ltd | Millbank Tower, London | Full time | ONSITE
World First is an established currency company. We have a medium sized IT team looking for PHP developers to continue development on the existing World First systems. The stack is PHP, RabbitMQ, Apache/Nginx and MySQL.
Job links below: Senior software dev: https://app.jobvite.com/j/?cj=okPz0fws&s=AddThis#.VguQkA8d_D... Other openings: http://jobs.jobvite.com/worldfirst-uk/jobs
More information available by commenting here, or emailing victoria.bradford@worldfirst.com referencing HackerNews
World First Ltd | Millbank Tower, London | Full time | ONSITE
World First is an established currency company. We have a medium sized IT team looking for PHP developers to continue development on the existing World First systems. The stack is PHP, RabbitMQ, Apache/Nginx and MySQL.
Job links below: Senior software dev: https://app.jobvite.com/j/?cj=okPz0fws&s=AddThis#.VguQkA8d_D...
More information available by commenting here, or emailing victoria.bradford@worldfirst.com referencing HackerNews
World First Ltd | Millbank Tower, London | Full time | ONSITE
World First is an established currency company. We have a medium sized IT team looking for PHP developers to continue development on the existing World First systems. The stack is PHP, RabbitMQ, Apache/Nginx and MySQL.
Job links below: Senior PHP software dev: https://app.jobvite.com/j/?cj=okPz0fws&s=AddThis#.VguQkA8d_D...
More information available by commenting here, or emailing victoria.bradford@worldfirst.com referencing HackerNews
The nitpick is entirely fair. What's worse, is that I know the word is suffix, I just didn't use it. :(
I wasn't aware of Fix My Street, thank you for that.
The reason for bringing it to HN's attention was because I too read about the service on the BBC News website and their plight with Instagram.
I was a little perplexed - it's a British company, operating entirely within the UK - why is Instagram getting involved? The 'gram' prefix has been around for quite a while [citation needed], is it an infringement of trademark? Then again, the company is posting pictures with captions, which is very Instagram-y, so I can see a certain level of cross over.
World First Ltd | Millbank Tower, London | Full time | ONSITE
World First is an established currency company. We have a medium sized IT team looking for PHP developers to continue development on the existing World First systems. The stack is PHP, RabbitMQ, Apache/Nginx and MySQL.
Job links below:
Senior software dev: https://app.jobvite.com/j/?cj=okPz0fws&s=AddThis#.Vtbc6cf_hs...
Software dev: https://app.jobvite.com/j/?cj=oqLm2fwj&s=AddThis#.VtbdEzouGk...
QA: https://app.jobvite.com/j/?cj=oCMs2fwC&s=AddThis#.VtbdRerkMr...
Others: https://hire.jobvite.com/CompanyJobs/Careers.aspx?c=qj2aVfwa...
More information available by commenting here, or emailing victoria.bradford@worldfirst.com referencing HackerNews
In summary, he's made a speed camera and is now proposing the use of it to his local council. Are speed cameras not as ubiquitous in the USA as over here in the UK?
World First Ltd | Millbank Tower, London | Full time | ONSITE
World First is an established currency company. We have a medium sized IT team looking for PHP developers to continue development on the existing World First systems. The stack is PHP, RabbitMQ, Apache/Nginx and MySQL.
Job links below: Senior software dev: https://app.jobvite.com/j/?cj=okPz0fws&s=AddThis#.VguQkA8d_D...
More information available by commenting here, or emailing victoria.bradford@worldfirst.com referencing HackerNews
"One option for me would be to rewrite routebuilder to run on another mapping platform, but with an infant at home and a full-time job, I frankly don’t have the time or energy."
- Open source it (with or without the wrapper to Google Maps).
I'm getting the following in my console on going to the page:
WebSocket connection to 'ws://icra.eu-gb.mybluemix.net/ws/browsing' failed: Error during WebSocket handshake: Unexpected response code: 400
World First Ltd | Millbank Tower, London | Full time | ONSITE
World First is an established currency company. We have a medium sized IT team looking for PHP developers to continue development on the existing World First systems. The stack is PHP, RabbitMQ, Apache/Nginx and MySQL.
Job links below: Senior software dev: https://app.jobvite.com/j/?cj=okPz0fws&s=AddThis#.VguQkA8d_D...
More information available by commenting here, or emailing victoria.bradford@worldfirst.com referencing HackerNews
TL;DR: Amazon is trading at too high a price for massive movements, instead look at the volatility of the options market or for an instrument that allows buying part of a share of Amazon
Full thing: It might not have moved because of the liquidity of the market. Due to their stock price, people won't generally own lots of the stock, so any sell orders would go through the SOES (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small-order_execution_system). I'm not sure whether a Level 1 book would include that information, I have a feeling it doesn't. [citation needed]
However, SOES only works for lots of at most 1000 and only on stocks up to a value of $250. Amazon is currently trading at $535.
Occasionally another instrument will be set up that works in parts of the stock, which will be a lot more volatile, so you could buy 1/10 of an Amazon share. Alternatively, people start trading in options on the stock.
So you get the situation where the share price for Amazon looks fine, but the options market dries up or the volatility of derivative instruments is massive.
My employer covered the full cost of the tickets to the PHPUK conference this year (non-early bird). It was expected that I cover transport and accommodation.
My understanding of 'competitive' salaries are that the employer doesn't know what range they should be offering. The quickest method of resolving that is to phone them up and go, "You've specified a competitive salary range, I'm looking for a salary of £X for that position, if you feel that's sensible then I'll forward my CV", at which point my CV is then updated to reflect the amount I just specified.
If I'm applying for a job it's because what's there sounds interesting, if the salary backs it up then brilliant. If the salary is poor then maybe I didn't want to work there after all and that's very much their loss.
Their 'copy results' isn't terribly useful however:
My results, Chrome Version 38.0.2125.111 (64-bit) on Ubuntu 14.04
Links wrong. Go to: http://blog.cloudflare.com/participate-in-the-internet-slowd...
1. Rioting: The police want to be able to see where people are. People who live in the area just want to get home.
2. Shopping trips in places where old buildings have been converted. Knowing that the lane you want to walk down is utterly packed with people is useful.
3. Beach trips. All your friends get this app and say, "meet us at the beach". On arriving, not being able to see them, you check the app to see the pockets of people.
4. Traffic congestion. It stands to reason that if lots of people have this app you'll be able to see where the busy roads are and the less travelled.
It's going to relate to you as a person, whether you're 'right' for freelancing.
I'm not a freelancer, but I have some experience of helping set up other companies, so perhaps questions to help you decide for yourself (and the reasoning behind asking them).
1. Can you relate to people? Are you happy in a social environment? Can you 'market' yourself? Part of freelancing is you're going to need to find work for yourself. If you're happy cold calling and asking a company if they need work done then it'll work out, but you need to be able to sell yourself.
2. Are you self motivated? It's all very well getting out of bed to travel to somewhere you /have/ to work, but actually doing it for yourself when you could just hit that snooze button until midday, and then play some of that new game you just got...
3. Are you good with numbers? Starting out, you're probably going to be doing your own taxes, it's dire, and something that is frequently put off until the last minute. However, you're going to need to balance your own books, or hire an accountant ( which increases the initial money you need to earn ).
4. What capital do you have? If you get no money at all for the next 6 months, can you still survive? People throw figures around all the time, but the one that (for some unknown reason), has stuck with me is 1 year. Do you have enough in the bank to survive for a year without work, scraping by?
I can't answer the 'local or remote' part. It'll be related to what you know, what you want to be programming/doing, where in the world you are. Essentially - the opportunities around you.
I've found it's always easier to argue your way round to /not/ doing something, rather than the reverse, and in doing so opportunities are lost.
I think you should stand and give the talk. My reasoning is as follows:
If you don't do it, those that could listen to you and learn from you, won't be able to. If hundreds of people are going to be there, a few are going to come away having learnt something they didn't expect to. You wouldn't have been asked if the person asking you didn't feel you had the knowledge to impart. Being shy and introvert is absolutely fine, although this talk sounds like a one off, and then you've done it, tick that box. You either love it, and really find your stride, or hate it, and have a more legitimate reason for Never Doing One Again.
That's my opinion, however, you also asked for advice.
One of the games I was forced to play in school involved the teacher bringing in something horrifically ordinary and covering it with a towel. Us kids would file in, sit down and the teacher would pick one of us, who would then stand up, and look under the towel. They had 5 minutes to create a 15 minute talk on the item. This exercise, which is quite quick, will teach not only how to create a presentation, but will put you in the horrible situation of, "Where do I start?", "I don't know anything about that", "I do know something about that, but there's masses, where do I start?". It'll also teach you to link one section to the next. You've got 5 months - do it as a party game, write a blog. You don't need to give the talk, you just need to write it as though you were.
A pertinent questions here is naturally - How long does your talk need to be?
It'll be interesting to see what the rest of HN suggest, and maybe tell us where it is so people can go and support in person?
When timetotrade were hiring we needed a Java developer. We created a Java program that would compile and even run, but was horrifically inefficient. First task for the interviewee - how would they rewrite it. It had spelling mistakes, a mixture of variable naming schemes, differences in syntax ( brace inline, one true brace ). If just you as the tech guy leading the interview create that test and hand it to the rest of the team you'll have a benchmark. We gave a programming task before the candidate got their foot in the door. I believe we did generation of Pythagorean triples. Once again, we wrote one internally for comparison. Grab the latest version of mono and write something similar in C#.
I don't have any experience with COM objects, I imagine the above would work for them too.
Ultimately it's going to depend on what you want from a successful candidate. If you want someone who lives and breathes work then it's going to be attributes A, B and C. If you want someone outgoing, active, social then you want attributes D, E and F. There might even be some overlap.
Basic questions are going to be - development environment, source control preference, latest languages dabbled with, interests outside programming. Don't think I've had an interview where I haven't been asked at least them.