skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> complaining about needing to do documentation

The article's formulation:

> You will be asked to write a 50-page documentation for some little code you wrote.

The author does not complain just about writing documentation, but about writing an unproportionate amount of it that presumably isn't being read by anyone. I've seen that happen. People writing essays about software that are bound to get outdated and will never be read by anyone. In systems that are disconnected from the source code.

> The writing is smug and shows no self awareness

Maybe I share the author's disdain for the corporate setting, but I don't see the smugness.

While the article may not acknowledge the cost and value of doing things slowly and bureaucratically, I fail to see how that is an expression of lack of self-awareness. It is mainly an expression of a preference for seeing direct change to business logic in a short amount of time, even for aging projects, because of direct ownership.
Everyone is at a different stage in their lives. It feels like the author hasn't had much challenges and found most of the work boring. I agree with some of the points the author has raised but not all. I don't agree with your comment about "writing is smug and shows no self awareness". It feels like you're jumping to a conclusion.
On a technical side, ubiquity of javascript ensures that performance of common cases will be looked at and improved, if not yet.

But as a fellow former low-level, my humble advice is: stop worrying and write clear code. Clear code eventually will run fast and stay clear. Nuanced code eventually will run as fast but stay nuanced.
This sounds just like the "Don't be poor" solution for economic problems that has been floating around.

Your devices are made to extract attention from you these days. The companies that makes them and the online services most of us use derive their money from the time we spend using their services (so they can profile us or upsell us). It is all designed to interrupt you and draw your attention in.

As a writer, let me say that it is increasingly hard to be focused for extended periods of time while writing if I don't switch to a either a distraction-free device or switch all the stuff off like you said. These distraction-free devices reduce friction in being focused, not only they don't provide distractions but since they are built around the notion of focus, just picking one up puts you on a more focused mindset. Much like putting on some apron puts some people (mostly me) into a cooking mindset. I'm totally able to cook without my apron, but wearing it is part of the ritual. These devices are a tool and also a prop to help us focus.
Working directly for clients and being personally responsible for the entirety of the development process gives you this perspective. You can have successful multi-person projects with almost no documentation and project management contained entirely in a single trello board with basic features.

Then, when you land in a corporation you can see how large teams barely manage to match your former personal productivity by choosing wrong technologies, taking wrong approaches, discussing irrelevant things in countless meetings and producing tons of write-only never-read documentation that gets obsoleted almost as fast as it is written. If you are too youthful and idealistic you can get a little arrogant experiencing this inefficiencies when you have a context to fully appreciate their insanity.

Or you may take another approach. That efficiency actually doesn't matter. People don't work to achieve anything. They work to get paid. And corporations have a lot of money. So the game is no longer about building stuff efficiently. It's about raking in as much money as you can for as long as you can and every inefficiency that justifies further work is actually best friend of everybody involved.
Author is every software engineer I hate to work with. One who thinks that code is the only truly important part of a project. It's not.

"Delivering a product that solves end user needs and is as maintainable and reliable as possible" is the only truly important thing, and only some of that is code.

Meetings generally aren't for developers. They're to keep everyone else involved with the project sync'd up.

Do I and every software engineer wish we had fewer meetings? Absolutely. Do I recognize that meetings are valuable to people not me and are critical in helping them deliver their (often non-code) parts of the project? Absolutely.

Not recognizing that after 20 years in the industry is baffling.

I'd be curious if author has ever worked on a large, 1 year+ project that went awry because the requirements were incomplete and the end users' needs poorly understood. If so, then I'm not sure they took the right introspective lessons away from that.

Edit: And I recognize that some companies are incapable of delivering software, due to broken development processes. I've worked for health insurance companies and know how baroque it can get. But that's been the exception rather than the rule.
Unfortunately I'm restricted on the programs I can use at work, but it does look good! Good luck with it!
Sapere Aude -- Dare to think by yourself
Personally, I would think there are two answers to this:

a) the "we" in the question is exclusive, i.e, it only includes those that are part of the deal. In this case, I think "maybe". It brings to mind a perhaps slightly seemingly unrelated tale of how, prior to the current Paramount+ show, Halo was to be a film made by Niel Blomkamp, when that project was killed due to paramount's acquisition of the rights after years in development hell, a celebration was held by those rightfully glad to be free of shit management and the chance to move on. I have seen similar incidents in tech, but I don't want to elaborate.

If the "we" is inclusive, than the answer is no, no one is even slightly obligated to celebrate other's business deals, society, as is, seems to demand we celebrate far too much already.
Do you think that sw engineers at startups aren't largely writing code for most of their job?
Oh man, that open source article is hilarious! Thank you for sharing.
> The author does not complain just about writing documentation, but about writing an unproportionate amount of it that presumably isn't being read by anyone. I've seen that happen. People writing essays about software that are bound to get outdated and will never be read by anyone. In systems that are disconnected from the source code.

This has been the norm more often than not in most companies, especially larger ones. Hence the Agile Manifesto, written by people who've been there again and again.
Almost all searches on my independent search engine are now from SEO spam bots
I did a quick google since I’ve never heard of misfolded albumin in the serum before and didn’t find anything.. are you asking from any prior research or discussions? Just from my knowledge I’d be surprised if there’s any amount of misfolded protein in the blood stream - every protein molecule in the blood stream needs to be actively salvaged (in your kidneys and macrophages) from degradation and this salvation is provided through their binding to receptors. If albumin is misfolded it should be cleared out quite fast. Note this is why antibody based drugs are more popular now - you get month long half lives for free.
Your comment sounds like an ad.

I think what OP meant is 'why would one want to collect user data on a page that is a collection of 10 links?'. Just add a pageview counter if you really want some numbers.
Second paragraph in the article
Imagine actually caring, my aim is to get away with as little work as I can while still earning good money. ‘No nonsense coding and learning’ cringe, imagine actually liking to write software. After 11 years of embedded dev, I can safely say I rather not write a single line of code ever again. This whole industry is 99% bullshit. Thankfully I could exploit it for a lot of monetary gains
That's limited to free tiers that usually deactivate or delete if there's too much usage.

Anything with production usage and pay-as-you-go pricing means data at rest still costs money - and requires deleting to avoid accruing new charges. Do you want your databases and volumes and object storage deleted when your app stops?

And if this was offered then there would be a whole new class of mistakes leading to lost data. Like I said, billing is easier to negotiate than deleted accounts.
Well, I managed as well some hardware and in the long run, they paid themselves. I started to mine with FPGA and then with asicminers. I mined in total, 23 BTCs. Then I stopped and kept the BTCs, (sold some), sold my hardware via ebay (which helped to return almost all my investment). I then got the BTCs doubled when bitcoin cash was created, which I sold well enough too. So when I read this whole "it doesn't worth to mine, etc", i think that is relative. It worked well, even for me, running it in Germany.
IO game https://krunker.io. Fun game that you can start playing immediately as a guest, but also has some depth to it.
I keep reading this here but this is forbidden by law in France (as they call it "100% pur jus"). They could add vitamin C if they wanted but they don't seem to, given the nutritional data.

Is Tropicana juice different in the US and in the EU?
Don't you mean... proof of steak?
As mentioned below, the main problem is the detector. Most detectors are Si CCD. meaning the Si is fundamentally limited to 1100nm due to bandgap. Going beyond that means you need a different material such as InGaAs or Ge, unfortunately CCDs are not as common or are expensive for these materials.
Which then gives you two choices:

- an array detector, which is pricey.

- a single detector such as a photodiode behind a second slit. a detector such as these https://www.thorlabs.com/newgrouppage9.cfm?objectgroup_id=12...
With a moving(rotating) grating, so that the wavelengths can be reached by moving the grating.

The latter is quite common in lab spectrometers.
Is fly.io based on erlang?
There's scale, and then there's _scale_. And I can happily believe that Twitter is working at the latter.

It's like something like AWS or Azure. You can provision and deploy a K8s cluster? Awesome! Now, can you do that consistently for the next 100 thousand K8s clusters you're selling to your clients?

It's a very different kettle of fish.
Biggest YouTuber PewDiePie Moves to Japan
E-ink smartphones do exist.

https://www.e-ink-info.com/e-ink-devices/mobile-phones
That's what I am thinking. E.g. I am looking at lichess which has a massive user base and is developed by one full time developer and a few dozens volunteers. Twitter is obviously bigger, but I simply don't buy that you need more than 7000 people to run that site.
Neither of them work with javascript disabled, do they?
Well, that's complicated. You're talking about music theory. It's a fascinating topic, and not taught enough, or early enough, in conservatories (at least in my limited experience in France).

But, it's a different topic. Learning (western) music theory involves scales first and foremost. There are hundreds of scales; even if we limit ourselves to 1 major and 3 minor scales (a big limitation), that still leaves us with 12 x 4 = 48 scales. Then you have chord progressions, cadences, types of resolutions, time divisions... rhythm... everything else...

And none of that deals specifically with sight reading. In principle, you could learn music theory without ever knowing how to read music. IIRC, Paul McCartney, arguably one of the best song writers of all time, can't read music fluently (if at all).

I think it takes a very long time (a lifetime?) to actually learn music theory. But it can take from a few months to a couple of years of dedicated practice to learn to read music well. That's what I'm trying to do with this app.

Now, recognizing patterns, chords, chords in arpeggios, chord progressions would be a natural evolution, yes. For now, I don't know how to deal with any of that (esp. from a UI standpoint) but it's something that's on the radar, for sure.
Every company I have worked at has been the same - very depressed people who have no enthusiasm for anything slowly dying as they sit there staring at the computer. It is in stark contrast to the physical labour jobs I have had, which have been very lively and happy places to work.

I think the assumption that these people want to program for more than 2 hours per day is probably wrong, and you will just burn yourself out trying to do 8 hours of programming every day. In fact, many of these people burnt out long ago and just try to find anything other than programming to do.

I wonder though, it is true that these companies are very inefficient, yet they never get taken over or superseded. Why can't the group of rogue programmers that are more productive take over any of these companies?
Gentle reminder that oil companies knew climate change was coming in the 70s, and their response was to use tobacco lobby tactics to spread misinformation.

Media and politicians helped - and are still helping - them do it.
Life was pretty decent before the internet. You still could research the world, it just took reading, going to libraries, listening to radio and TV. You saw people more, interacted more. Entertainment usually involved gathering with friends, more time was spent outside.

It is nice to have everything at our fingertips, and it has made many things easier - shopping, banking, paying bills, working remotely. And yes, it is good for wasting time enjoyably when you aren't busy.

But I have to disagree 100% that the internet is vital to life. I can understand why someone who did not live before it can feel that way, but to me that is a red flag that you already have zero self-awareness and are just chugging along checking virtual boxes. I believe that getting off the internet for a decent chuck of time each day is vital to life.
> If only there were some permissionless internet payments

Card fees are consequences of their pricing decisions, not marginal cost of transactions. And, the reason they have "pricing power" is the size/market position of their networks.

> browser extension from letting you anonymously pay a penny per request

Of course, and there is no need for crypto currencies. Paypal could have implemented this for twenty years.
I hope they don't listen to you, because paying per use is the best option and you can just get over it.

If they have a monthly fee I'll hesitate since if I reduce my usage for a unspecified while I'll never know if I should cancel it or not. It requires being able to predict the future, which is a cognitive cost I can't overcome.
Hi there! With the upload of your first file (congrats!) you should have received an email summarizing the file infos as well as a link that leads you to your fruits account, asking you to fill in your payout info. :-)

As for smaller purchases, it is probably best to go for quantity - you can also use our price calculator, to see how you should price your product to receive amount x in the end. Also definitely noting down that GBP should be an option.

Thank you for your input :-)
Barium sulfate specifically.
Hi there :-) for now, licensing is the creator's / seller's responsibility.
Using a typical desktop operating system, but on an eInk screen, is one of those things that sounds cool, but I suspect the reality after using it for a while will be "Never mind, this sucks, because no software (including the OS itself) was designed with working well on sluggish & image-persistence-afflicted panels in mind".

I think doing this concept properly is as much of a software project as a hardware project.
yes. But it was $65 million.
$35m for the idiotic design.
and
$30m in lost sales when it stopped people buying it.
> The writing is smug and shows no self awareness

Definitely. This style of writing immediately put me off the rest of the piece. I've worked with software engineers like this, and it's no fun.
Vala and - optionally - GTK
Software engineering is a group effort with lots of components other than coding.
It is very very seldom a lone operation and all those are tiny products with tiny scope (if results in a viable product at all!).
Deciding upon the features, figuring out what is the best to do in a plethora of criteria involving finance, technology, organization takes much longer than the actual coding and involves the communication (spoken, written, presented, etc.), no suprise there.

Management could many times done better of course, managers are as lazy or incompetent as other people, if not more.
not sure that fulfills the "discreet" requirement
Thanks <3 we'll be shortly providing you with a demo / tutorial video as well as an animated run-through of the product. Good points!
What is the highest PPI, pocket-sized, e-ink display?

I'm imagining a 3.5" handheld device for kids, that can't be broken. Very low power. Could show comics or other graphics, but usually just text.

The maximum information density would be to fill that "cheat sheet" with Traditional Chinese characters, written top to bottom, left to right. And that depends on the PPI.

https://www.quora.com/Can-literate-Chinese-people-easily-rea...
Mod parent up! I don't understand why these comments are being flagged. Too much white-knights in HN in opposition to open innovation.
That's an expensive premium. How much is a crisp benj worth compared to a gently used one, laced with trace amounts of cocaine?
Interesting. Not even older people? In Romania it's definitely more prevalent among those over 60 say.
> imagine a dentist who is passionate about pulling teeth out

That's a great metaphor for code-before-you-know developers.

> finally solved by tweaking a single software parameter that dictated how far a release mechanism moved

I think of this type of work as programming by other means. The problem couldn't have been "fixed" without all the discovery meetings and understanding. The "fix" couldn't have made it to production without political agreement.

Is that computer code? No. Is it building a solution to interact with a complex system (of people), using the primitives available to you (less than VP-style "Just do it"), to realize a desired outcome? Yes.

Others may be different, but I find hacking obtuse process problems and corporate political structures just as fun and rewarding as a nice piece of code.
I've worked at all company sizes from big tech, scale ups, and early stage startups. From my experience, I've learnt the most and done a lot of interesting work when the company size was smaller. Although a lot of people seem to care most about what I did at the big tech company and get surprised when I tell them I spent the whole sprint fixing some line on some sub menu.
Consider, (in my own syntax),

on(table)
select(blah)
where(blah)
groupby(blah)

this is basically just,

table.select(blah).where(blah).groupby(blah)

but this becomes inflexible when we want `table` to track more than just itself:

table.connect().select(blah).where(blah).groupby(blah)

suddenly, `table` holds fields which function like your "global variables". instead,

on(table, connection)
select()
...

In otherwords OO already has this implicit mechanism at work in a highly action-at-a-distance manner, with unweildy objects functioning like a box-of-globals.

By being explicit about which "nonlocal"s are required for an API, we can control this better. And also compose-in other APIs, etc., add toJson() at the end.

(NB. nonlocal in the sense that they are common to most/all uses of an API)

Python does this with decorators, but if it would add a little function chaining/compositon syntax, it would be more powerful.
People writing essays about software that are bound to get outdated and will never be read by anyone.

I write a lot of documentation entirely with the awareness that no one else will read it. I write it for myself. I don't want to have to remember the intricacies of a system. I want to write things down, then move on immediately, and have the security of something I can refer back to if I need it when I revisit the system.
If a society is unable to accept and help assimilate immigrants, it seems it’s probably for the best that that society maintains a policy of strictly limited immigration. It’s very apparent neither the host country nor the immigrant benefits from moving there.

It’d be ridiculous to say Bhutan needs to make efforts to help people assimilate, wouldn’t it? Most people have zero desire to adopt their culture (and thus don’t move there) and Bhutanese have zero desire to invite people into their country to reside if they’re not ready to adapt quickly (and thus don’t invite them). And I think that’s perfectly okay.
Also, Marc Rubinstein covered Pix in his newsletter some time ago https://www.netinterest.co/p/paying-faster-99d.
Unscan.co – Keep your platform safe of NSFW content, all for free
Interesting observation. I wonder how much of the difference is between high physical activity, where often the work requires multiple people manipulating the same physical object (I hold the door, you attach the hinge),

vs

low physical activity, where often the work requires multiple people manipulating highly abstract concepts with purely imaginary connections (I write the API, you write the caller).
giving people needles and drugs is called harm reduction for a reason - it's to reduce the risk of dirty needles and street drugs, these policies don't solve drug addiction, they just keep drug addicts safe(r). Solving drug addiction is actually a tremendously hard problem but it starts with helping rather than punishing addicts. Portugal is a good example of doing this right: drugs are broadly decriminalised and the government provides help to addicts. Here's an article on drug policies across Europe (and some other countries): https://www.foundationswellness.net/drug-abuse/do-other-coun...

Portugal: https://deserthopetreatment.com/addiction-guide/drug-industr...
> How do you solve the issue when your ideals are rejected by parents (adults) of children being taught?

The best one can do is teaching about the existence of the variety of values (i am against teaching ideals) walk through some of the consequences, discuss it and encourage students to reflect. If the memetic power of values of the parents are so low that knowledge of the existence of values which conflict with them causes them to not be transmitted to the next generation then i say "tough luck". If soley one set of values is being taught and all others are demonized that would be something parents can be justifiably enraged by.

I wouldn't trust the americans education system to get things right anyway but it can get things less wrong.

> (whether democrat or republican?)

I do not care much about this destinction.

> No, my suggestion is to view schools as politically agnostic.

My suggestion is to have schools teach tolerance and give people a rough enough understanding of the different value systems so they do not cause offense because of ignorance. I find this preferable. If existence of different values causes offense to the parent "too bad for them".

> Political beliefs can, and should be, left to adults to decide on their own.

For people to be able to make their own choice, they should be guaranteed the right to learn about other choices. (I am against home schooling, if you can not tell but i am not sure abolishing home schooling would be worth while use of political capital as it is used to plaster over a lot of problems in education system that would have to be fixed first).
Great input, the seal for secure payment etc. will be live shortly.
This it totally weird. I was born in the 80s, and as a kid I learned about CO2 and climate change in school. In elementary school in the US. I even had a "ninja turtles save the environment" book. Nobody can claim we didn't know, or the oil industry kept the information secret.

One of the reasons I believe our current political system is bankrupt. It can't do the right thing even when it is crystal clear.