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stevebot

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This is great, and looks so much easier (as does Scaloid), but I have never found a commercial project that I can use it on. #1 by choosing Anko or Scaloid you are isolating future developers to only those familiar to Anko or Scaloid OR those willing to learn (as well as the fact that Scaloid doesn't sell very well on resumes IMO; my guess is the same for Anko).

It's a dilemma, as Java+XML is very verbose. still, with the amount of work Android Studio does, I'm not sure its a big problem for most of us Android Developers.

While I agree that Twitter has strained relationships with developers, Fabric is a great move. For anyone who hasn't used Fabric, it is the best mobile SDK integration I have ever seen. It seamlessly works with XCode, Android Studio, IntelliJ and Eclipse to easily let you add Twitter features, distribute builds ala the now POS that is Testflight, and get cross-platform crash analytics.

...if this is a fox luring me into it's hen-house, the hen-house sure is comfy and well-featured. Sad to see it diminished in this article, when IMO it's a far far better offering than any other major companies (looking at you Facebook) are putting out.

Funny how some of these are way off, while others are pretty spot on:

7. Don't disappear from the retail chains. Rent space in a computer store, flood it with Apple products (especially software), staff it with Apple salespeople, and display everything like you're a living, breathing company and not a remote, dusty concept.

I'd much rather spend my money on Dry Soda. I buy alot of their Cucumber flavor myself and the stuff is delicious. It doesn't leave you feeling gross and has much less sugar, plus natural flavor extracts and uses cane sugar.

http://www.drysoda.com/

More expensive, but worth it.

Edit: also, I like the Stevia soda, but no-calorie sweeteners always leave an acrid taste in my mouth, and upset my stomach so I prefer Dry Soda or just plain seltzer water.

yes, its usually IDE's emulator's for me. Put xCode and Android Studio on there and run an emulator.

Also, I've had a similar experience running Visual Studio + SQL Server.

Even false prediction have truth behind them. Just because the author mentions some truths doesn't mean that his conclusion is right. This is his case, and though he mentions some truths, his conclusion is "laptops will remain in niche markets".

If you read the last paragraph the author doesn't believe in the idea of the laptop and says they will remain a niche market. I honestly believe he couldn't imagine a light, affordable laptop with features being desired other than in niche settings like the military.

If that was the case, I wouldn't have had a problem with the authors viewpoint but it statements like,

For the most part, the portable computer is a dream machine for the few.

that really miss.

And then their is the conclusion, which comes after the author acknowledges the possibility of improvements in laptops.

But the real future of the laptop computer will remain in the specialized niche markets. Because no matter how inexpensive the machines become, and no matter how sophisticated their software, I still can't imagine the average user taking one along when going fishing.

What?! To me that just shows the author downplaying the idea of the technology. He just couldn't imagine any laptop ever being more than a "niche".

This is an amusing bit of opinion. It is always a risk to show an opinion for this very reason. At this moment, their are people siding one way or the other about tech bubbles, smartwatches, drones and self driving cars. 30 years from now it will be entertaining to see how it all ends up.

"People never did end up taking laptops fishing"

The article starts off describing laptops on airplanes, the tag about fishing just seems like an exaggeration by the author. I would say that the author was wrong and this is a good example of a bad prediction. I mean, did you read the line about floppy disks? The authors points were that laptops are #1 to heavy #2 their software doesn't stack up and #3 their price is far to high.

All of the predictions are wrong, so I see this author as betting on the wrong horse.

Guy who started out in math and ended up with a blended math and CS degree here. Their definitely were some parallels, but even in a program where they tried to combine the two, it didn't always mesh. I felt more like upper level math was a springboard for algorithms and proofs, so that by the time I got into algorithms I could say "hey I already have been doing combinatorics proofs very similar to this."

This should not be conflated with hacking though and software development. You can do both of those without any strong background in mathematics. Alot of software development and hacking is just using things people with CS skills built. I do not have to understand quicksort to use the native library sort.

How comfortable do you feel giving up raw fruits/vegetables in favor of Soylent? I feel like that is my main question about the product, and I would be curious to hear from a vegan what the experience is like.

I like the idea of Soylent, but everything I have read lately on nutrition seems to suggest that gettings vitamins and minerals from real food should be a priority and is against multivitamins. I wonder what is people's view on Soylent as a replacement for fruits/vegetables? Is the nutritional makeup somehow different from a multi-vitamin? If it isn't, then it just seems like an overpriced protein powder alternative. I can't seem to find any info on their site.

Bubble talk 11 years ago

Yes, WhatsApp doesn't have any real revenues, but Sam doesn't mention them. YC alum's are not building WhatsApp.

Uber has customers, real revenue (in the billions). So does AirBnb. So does SpaceX. So does Palantir.

Just name dropping WhatsApp is pretty low brow. There are alot of people doing incredible things (Sam's point I might add) and focusing on the Bubble makes you miss out on companies generating real revenues.

correct, I think it is actually a good interview problem for discussion and don't mind it. What I do mind is the attitude of some of my colleagues that if a candidate can't immediately jump to the optimal answer, then they are a pass.

You have the additional requirement that you change one character at a time, and end up building a graph of neighbors and doing BFS on it.

Edit: Why the downvote? Disagree? I would love to hear more about why this attitude is helpful.

I love algorithms, AND I think they are necessary in interviews, but I feel like the tech community has become ridiculous in how they interview for them lately.

Example problem: Given two words in a dictionary, transform one word into another, changing one character at a time, using only words in the dictionary.

A good interview would recognize most people have no clue how to solve this, give hints and still pass candidates who make a reasonable attempt but fail. Now it seems to be that most places will just fail you, if you don't know the most optimal answer and can't write it out without any syntax mistakes.

This is ridiculous, and I have experienced it and this attitude around major tech companies. What this has resulted in is Algorithm trivia. Your ability to succeed is your ability to memorize every algorithm question and approach in existence.

Yes it does matter, though its not usually very grand. Think about it this way, most of those algorithms you learned in college took someone in academia years to write. The algorithms I write in my day-job are usually MUCH more simple.

For example, I remember one developer (who know works at Amazon funny enough), who used dual for loops to iterate through data and find values in multiple places in our application. This caused a noticeable UI slow down. I ended up just loading this data in a Hashmap and it became instantaneous.

Consulting 11 years ago

My 5 cents of consulting vs freelancing from my own experiences in Business Intelligence and Mobile/Web development.

With consulting, you are not necessarily responsible for execution. Your job is primarily to make recommendations. That said, much of my consulting work has also been comprised of executing on my recommendations.

With freelancing, the work tends to be either in reality consulting or in most scenarios executing on a spec, or under another developer's guidance.

If I were to put it simply, consulting stems from offering recommendations and direction from a place of knowledge and experience related to your skillset, whereas freelancing tends to be more the application of your skillset.

Consulting 11 years ago

While you mention freelancing, I have found this sentiment very true of consulting as well. You have multiple clients, all likely without knowledge or consideration of the others.It becomes very difficult to manage deadlines and expectations. It becomes an art of estimation and project management as well as consulting, which makes the work in my opinion very interesting.