skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I've never specialized. Each of my jobs has been in a totally different industry, and my role has been very different many times. FinTech/EdTech/Green Energy/Gaming/Insurance, and Fullstack/FE/BE/Hardware/Data/Game/Data Developer.

Sometimes I get bummed at how deep my peers have gone in various subjects. Your brand kind of has to become "I can get production code working in pretty much any domain, but will be less great at hyper-specific areas of work". It's only bitten me once, and I even called out what was going to happen in advance and the employer just didn't listen.

There's always time to change though. I am mostly motivated by making money, so I just learn as much as I can about whatever tech my employer is using, but sometimes I think it'd be nice to reuse some of this knowledge sometime.

> I often hear it’s good to find a niche. Wondering if anyone can speak to the benefits of doing so?

Being more knowledgeable than most people because you've taken the time to learn the stuff that's harder to figure out/more nuanced, is the benefit. Being a mile wide and an inch deep means your expertise is in the wide, but there are problems that need the depth. The job that I did not get was hyper-specific to the JVM, writing high performance Java, which I said prior to the interview I wouldn't be able to do (and I was right).

If you're not interested in going deep on anything, don't. Keep chasing your interests. Just understand that the tradeoff is the lack of depth.
> if they were one function before they probably share some state

and this is exactly why you refactor to pull out the shared state into parameters, so that each of the "subfunctions" have zero side effects.
These are semantics, the concept of zero is still obviously everywhere in nature.

"How many fish have you caught?" "None."

Just because you reply none doesn't make it some wildly different concept than if you had replied with the word zero. In fact it's exactly the same thing.
"Last I checked stainless rebar was ~3x the cost of regular rebar"

But it's 5-10% of the total building cost, and if you bump that to 20% the corrosion goes from "always' to "probably never"
Lololol.

I bet you are in the global top 1% easily. If the top 1% finds it so easy to pass the buck to the top 0.1% of course things will keep getting worse.
Jubail Industrial City
All labor in Cuba is slave labor. No, the suffering of slaves under communism is not comparable to hippies whining about pipelines.
Not how what worked? 95% of desktops are windows or mac, 99% of mobile are android and iOS. That is computers sold, business included. What is this hallucination that all programs are some sort of command line chron job?

https://netmarketshare.com/operating-system-market-share.asp...
Persian legends and their Western counterparts (2020)
Someone send this to the Epic lawyers. Although I feel like Epic already has enough evidence of how robust Apple's app store review process it.
If rich people, like the guys here, stopped flying they could solve a lot of problems
Maybe a better link is Clojure Spec and Racket module contracts.

https://clojure.org/about/spec

https://docs.racket-lang.org/reference/contracts.html

https://docs.racket-lang.org/style/Units_of_Code.html
I'm still trying to figure out a simple way to sell a DIGITAL product. How to prevent anybody who buys a copy to make a thousand copies from it and share them on the internet. Is there such a way?
Apple buying NeXT worked out pretty well for NeXT. Youtube also seems to be doing well under Google.
Imagine posting this on the anniversary of George Floyd's death.
Depends on your personality and career goals. I prefer to specialize 70% in my primary skill (Ruby web development) and spread the other 30% in other langs/topics.
I suppose it’s a semantic difference.

In the startup world, being a generalist might mean “Python, Node, Go, some backend frameworks (Express, Django, etc.), HTML/CSS, some frontend frameworks (React, Vue), maybe some experience with cloud and devops, also maybe experience with GraphQL or gRPC, good knowledge of key/value stores and SQL databases, probably high-level knowledge of ancillary technologies like JWT, auth systems, a good understanding of data structures and algorithms, experience in optimizing queries, oh and also a little React Native and maybe Cordova.... <and so on, and so on>” (This is me.)

In a FAANG, one might be a generalist in something like “iOS” or “ML” and then develop a deeper subspecialty in that field.

To me, this looks like a specialist. But I understand that to someone who works at those organizations (FAANG+), a specialist is someone who developed a new language or exclusively builds compilers or does systems-level programming or something.

I suppose these are different vantage points. If you’re specialized enough, everything probably looks “generalist” to some degree.
The keyword here is "probably"
Or you could just ask them to put the offer in writing before changing jobs. In which case, you have a proper cause for a lawsuit much better than trying for implied contract.
I wrote a concrete corrosion simulation as part of my graduate research. You can use it at corrosion.smcf.io
> Second, everything is planned even though there are so many variables involved because implicitly by the sum total of our actions, we knowingly or unknowingly fill those variables with known values and so what we think as a serendipitous experience is actually a planned experience that we unknowingly planned by the sum total of our actions until that point.

A.k.a. determinism. In your example, it wouldn't just be the sum total of our actions, but also the sum total of everyone else's actions.
What's ridiculous is the scroll acceleration on this website.
Most Super 8 cameras could not record sound.

In the 70s, Kodak introduced a variant of Super 8 film that had a magnetic strip for audio, but it wasn’t widely used. Later in the 70s video on magnetic tape cassettes became popular, which was the first time most people had home movies with sound.

Both technologies arrived too late for the US war in Vietnam.
First off, you're wrong about Urbit - Urbit explicitly does not have the address space to give each human their own planet, believing that it's a political ideal that not all humans deserve the same rights. (It might be true that each human currently using Urbit does have their own planet, but the stated long-term goal of Urbit is for this not to be the case.)

But even if you were right about Urbit, it wouldn't change my claim. I understand your claim. I am not trying to claim that Mastodon is just like Urbit. My point is that sometimes, in Mastodon, there is no difference between an instance and a user, just like you claim about Urbit. Yes, sometimes, there is, but Mastodon's norms had to figure out how to handle the case where there is no difference, because that case exists. And yes, when people collectively refuse to peer with an instance, the user(s) on that instance are not stripped of their posts and do not have their identity taken away, because those things are under the Mastodon instance's control... but it would be pretty misleading to say "If you set up your own Mastodon, you can't get banned."

And there's no reason to expect that Urbit, if it grows to the level of popularity as Mastodon, won't develop analogous norms.
Such a fantasy time has never existed.
Scale brings different challenges but most of them have been solved already and been abstracted away (at least at Google). From what I have seen most people work on implementing some kind of business logic.
Like half my comp right now is stock, and I don't want to work more. I don't think anything I do makes a difference. Do you really think anything you do makes a difference? If so, curious how or why? Its a coin flip how the price moves every earnings ime. More profit, more users, stock drops. Its all speculation from investors.
They may be living in poverty, but they are living in self-respect. They have problems, but who doesn't. Do you think only money matters?

Such regressive thinking, that too about whole societies and nations. As if they are not human.
> It's truly disgusting.

But why are you not quitting. I am sure you can find another job within a week. Curious what you choose to stay.
Custom Team Portraits are also a nice personal thoughtful touch. Either sprinkled around the office and/or at home: https://POPteam.io
I have a hard time believing it’s possible to know such a thing so specific without some kind of supernatural knowledge, there’s simply too many assumptions that all have to be correct. It almost feels arrogant, but they even admit it: “Their findings provide a piece of the puzzle to the evolution of the universe, as we know it today”.
Here, with naive founders building the ultimate fruit-fly startup with no business model, YC has finally jumped the shark and become a cliche of itself.
TFA makes pretty good arguments.
This is cool. Was thinking it would be weird and creepy but cool if I could sign in with google and fb/insta to get a timeline of everywhere I’ve traveled. Wouldn’t mind that as a wall decoration.
Did the US government ads show a tortured hostage forced to "confess" to something?

No they didn't.

You are comparing apples to oranges.

We are seeing a dicator state broadcast their use of torture on a dissident via Google ads.

I'm appalled that you would trivialize this like it's a "business as usual" scenario.
Major left leaning newspaper

FTFY
If you ask for a start date, then cancel your offer are you not willfully doing damage? You're just saying, that damage doesn't mean that much to me. I'm guessing willful and intent are legal definitions though.
William Shakespeare, first UK man to get Covid-19 vaccine, dead at 81
It and Iraq in Fragments (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiu8cXhjpX4) are the two most incredible documentaries I've ever seen on this topic.
Are PWAs at an Inflection Point?
Here’s my experience from a different field.

I worked as a freelance translator—Japanese to English—from 1986 to 2005. From the beginning, I took whatever work was offered to me and ended up translating texts in a lot of different fields—business, advertising, engineering, public relations, etc. I didn’t know many other translators at first and just figured that’s what everyone did.

Around 1995, though, I started to get to know other translators through online discussion groups and meet-ups, and I discovered that some were very specialized—translating only chemical patents, for example, or only corporate financial statements.

The issue of whether to specialize or not was a hot topic on those discussion groups, with the specialists being especially fervent in favor of their choice. Their position was both that specialized knowledge is necessary to do good work in their fields and that, by being specialized, they could work more efficiently and make more money. The generalists, while recognizing the truth of what the specialists said, would respond that being a generalist allows a freelancer to respond more flexibly to changing market demand and that working only in one narrow field can get boring after a while.

Looking back, I’m glad that I was a generalist. Since leaving freelancing, my career has advanced in interesting and unexpected ways, and opportunities have opened up that probably would have been closed to me had I spent those twenty years as a specialist.
Yes, this is my sense as well. Interesting to see the variety of perspectives in this thread.

I suppose I might also just have particularly specialized friends/acquaintances. Who knows...
> There are literally thousands of companies that do not require you to serve brutal European dictators as your daily job.

That's right! There are plenty of other continents with dictators to give into!
And probably should be illegal. For one, a notarized version is supposed to have the same weight as original. Unless this is mentioned in the contract, they cannot legally hold your personal belongings either.
We'll use you as a distraction. You can walk up to the guards and fake a heart attack. Larry, Moe & Curly will then sneak behind the guards. I promise, it will not be an episode of Keystone Cops.
>Read some of his source code like I mentioned multiple times and tell me this somehow only applies to John Carmack.

I've read the Quake 3 Arena source code before. I wasn't impressed. In fact, it was what I would consider "bad code". Granted, his constraints were different so I don't judge him or his code for it. It turns out you cannot generalize from very specific scenarios with unique constraints, as I have been saying. I really don't see what general principles you think you can glean from the source code written by one unusually capable man in a mad rush to be the first to deliver a revolutionary gaming experience. The fact that you think you can is rather puzzling.
"exciting" tax-related ...

You keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means. ;)
Something similar happened when Snowden was trying to get away from the US. The US govt forced a plane down, on mere suspicion Snowden was on board.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales_grounding_incident
Are there some lists of most-downloaded packages?
I'm very much a generalist, though not a software developer. I help out with problems that most engineers either hate, or that are disruptive to normal project planning. I can prototype anything. But... without being active as a production developer or designer in any of the engineering specialties, I'm not up to speed on their tools, meaning that they can run circles around me in project work.

I think very much that moving up as a generalist requires developing "people" or "leadership" skills. If you're going to be thrust into ill defined or critical problems that can't be solved by any single specialty, there's also a much better than zero chance that you will also be dealing with the people who are affected by those problems, and with the specialists who will eventually need to be involved in order to implement a lasting solution.

I also believe that one way to be a generalist is to specialize in things that are inherently general, like math and physics. My parents advised me that no matter how much technology changes, an understanding of math and science will serve me for a lifetime. They are both retired generalists.
Or have gotten busy since. I worked at Coinbase in 2019 and saw a comment at the top of a file saying that something should probably be changed. I git-blamed and saw it was written six years earlier by Brian Armstrong.
But at least HH on time allocated from work does not demand more time from the participants, which is a win.
Oh boy, another Muslim who thinks Islam is an infallible faith...
Batman with giant robots. What a great show.
…for publishers. Stores have to compete for software to publish but users don’t get any additional choice when Facebook is only available on the Facebook App Marketplace.

This is a little like exclusives at physical stores but customers have a much less involved relationship in that case.
In general, yes. Now Stripe has it, and thus Stripe is now a viable competitor to these other payment providers, leading the competition landscape to shift further towards being based purely off of the percentage cut each service takes from transactions and not based on features.
This post is going to cost Tesla sourcers a few rejected calls, a small change for them.

It cost a person 6+ weeks of unemployment.

There’s never a balance between employee and employer, and it is always tilted towards the employer.
"Centurions" movie and more importantly the novel by the same name on which movie is based, written by Richard Lopteguy, offers an incredible French perspective of Vietnam experience including the demoralising defeat at Dien Bien Phu.
I got very deep into a niche business domain area for over a decade, but got bored with it and more recently branched out to a completely new and broad domain area that uses the same cloud provider and similar tech as the old one. I figured I can always go back to the old one of needed. It's good for job security I guess

Business domain is another dimension to consider besides tech generalist or specialist. What is the problem you are trying to solve, and how do you know it's the right problem to solve? That can be a lot harder to do than the tech side.
rasengan... nobody's buying your clown prince bullshit, bro.

Whatever sort of obsession you have with irc in general, all you've managed to do is give freenode an early funeral and turn the vast majority of the FOSS community against you.

Whatever was the 30 pieces of silver that you paid Christel, it doesn't matter what you say now to try to save face. You've managed to become more toxic than Stallman, for fuck's sake. At least THAT much has to be able to sink in.

I used Freenode for over 15 years. The only words I have for you is to "Go fuck yourself."
Being an advocate for Taiwan starting to be worse for your career than being an advocate for Palestine.

Ask John Cena.
I can understand that there was a Big Bang. But why does time necessarily have to start at that point?

Why not just assume that everything lay dormant for a very long time, maybe forever, before Big Bang. And then Big Bang happened. Like some quantum fluctuation perhaps.

Just because we don't know how we could measure time before Big Bang doesn't mean time didn't 'exist" before it, does it?
Isn’t that what NFTs are for?

https://www.wired.com/story/nfts-boom-collectors-shell-out-c...
Well except what is True, is more like what it currently politically correct. Stating that the Virus was created in the Wuhan lab got you banned, until last week. Stating that the election was rigged. Same. We will see which way the Arizona audit goes.
Winning a war and living with the consequences are two very different things. Vietnam won the war. At great cost. Things might have been different if they lost.

But the US did lose the war, come out of the region and its primary objective of preventing a socialist govt. in Vietnam could not be achieved.

Was it worth it for Vietnam to win the war, that is a totally different question. Was it worth it for US to lose the war? Definitely not. The mightiest nation on earth could not overcome a peasant nation with guerrilla fighters and outdated equipment. That is a slap in the face.
Can we discuss this for one second without such naked whataboutism? It’s really quite tiresome.
The US was fighting a proxy war with the soviet union. We had no interest in defeating the vietcong as much as stopping the spread of communism. Ho Chi Minh was a KGB agent and the communist revolution was largely born of soviet agitprop. So there is another layer to this conflict. Even though vietnam "won" they really were just puppets in a shadow war and it came at a huge cost for them. Much less than US.
Also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Eagle
Most people around you might.

There are people who don't like to drink and there are people who are not allowed to drink due to their believe/health problem. And they are not minority-minority in some places
It’s not clear to me from their comment that they actually work at Google.
I haven’t looked at the code but this stands out to me:

> When dealing with data, "testing" is most often done visually, with plotting.

Even if your validation process is entirely manual, you still can benefit from automated testing. Snapshot tests are completely agnostic from whatever serialization format. If you eyeball check something and say “yup this is good”, that’s something you could snapshot and never test again.
It seems like all the content is on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/roboticsqut/playlists
The expensive part is gathering good labels. Who wants to pay someone to tag things as snarky or angry?
Amazon has live chat? Where have you seen this? Do you have a link?
Sure, but they could actually put a train station in the airport itself and connect it to a meaningful local transit hub.

The planned people mover is close to what I’d want, and it’s kind of mind boggling that it took the olympics for LA to realize that you need to bring trains closer to airports.
You lost. Deal with it. The level of immaturity... coming up with stories to tell yourself.
The US avoided international courts because, technically, the chemical weapons were to clear forest covers and not intended for use on civilians and military personnel.
The NLRB would back it up
I feel really sorry for you if you believe a word of what you wrote above.
In the next 100 million years several stars will be within a 10th of a light year from us.

If you get the delta-V right you won't even have to slow down the whole way on the other end. But if that's still a problem then you're taking a one-way trip on a worldship anyway.
Slavery costs me money and that's why it's bad? I don't understand.
Have you heard of Jacques Ellul? No? He published a book or two and didn't bomb anyone... and only academics have even heard of him.
There's literally nothing to talk about.
Gravitational redshift didn't convince you?
> It’s a wild argument for gun rights.

Not really, because it changes the political calculus for exactly the reasons you mentioned. If the US government wants to forcefully take over, and they aren't aligned with gun owners, they have to go through them. In that scenario its more likely they are a shade of grey evil than "lets methodically exterminate all of our citizens". In the former, gun owners standing their ground would be a major political hurdle.

I'd actually argue pro gun rights are a bit silly because those same parties aren't pro encryption / privacy. So they give up the tools they'd need to defend themselves (encryption) from all but the most direct assault. And I'd consider a soft assault by violating their privacy much more plausible.
North Texas is littered with "contract to hire" "opportunities". BNSF burned me on a year long contract, after which they were supposed to hire me. I was fresh out of the military and stupid, so I did it. I asked two months prior all the way to the last week if they were going to hire me, at which point they told me that my contracting company had renewed my contract.

Since then, companies would call about contract to hire and I'd tell them, "Sure, I'll take the position but they have to be willing to fund a bond worth $10,000 (10% of expected salary) that is immediately transferred to me if the contract is renewed or ends without a hire."

I take a risk when I go a year without insurance, they're going to pay for that. Not one of these companies ever accepted. On a more rich note, there's no such thing as contract to hire - they have zero obligation and you retain all the risk. It's junk and marketing by malicious people.
Well, inlining by the compiler would be expected but we do not only write the code for the machine but also for another human being (that could be yourself at another moment of time of course).

Splitting the code into smaller functions does not automatically warrant a better design, it is just one heuristic.

A naive implementation of the principle could perhaps have found a less optimal solution

function positiveInt max(positiveInt value1, positiveInt value2)
return value1 > value2 ? value1 : value2

function positiveInt total(positiveInt value1, positiveInt value2)
return value1 + value2

function positiveInt calcMeaningOfLife(positiveInt[] values)
positiveInt total = 0
positiveInt max = 0
for (positiveInt i=0; i < values.length; i++)
total = total(total, values[i])
max = max(max, values[i])
return total - max

Now this is a trivial example but we can imagine that instead of max and total we have some more complex calculations or even calls to some external system (a database, API etc).

When faced with a bug, I would certainly prefer the refactoring in the GP comment than one here (or the initial implementation).

I think that when inlining feels strictly necessary then there has been problem with boundary definition but I agree that being able to view one single execution path inlined can help to understand the implementation.

I completely agree that naming and abstractions are perhaps two most complicated problems.