Hacker News: dbrumbaugh

New comment by dbrumbaugh in "A skyscraper that could have toppled over in the wind (1995)"

dbrumbaugh — Mon, 16 Jun 2025 18:40:18 +0000

There's actually a recording of a talk that LeMessurier gave on this incident on YouTube. It's a very interesting listen, though he clearly is a bit... defensive... about the whole thing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=um-7IlAdAtg

Asynchronous Dependency Management with Promises and Futures [C++]

dbrumbaugh — Tue, 25 Feb 2025 15:49:20 +0000

Article URL: https://douglasrumbaugh.com/post/promise-ordering/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43173426

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

Are Correctness Conditions Descriptive or Prescriptive?

dbrumbaugh — Thu, 20 Feb 2025 21:42:45 +0000

Article URL: https://buttondown.com/jaffray/archive/are-correctness-conditions-descriptive-or/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43120644

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by dbrumbaugh in "A secret poker game you can play on the subway"

dbrumbaugh — Thu, 20 Feb 2025 17:30:52 +0000

> [...] adding a layer of excitement and unpredictability to your journey.

That's the bit that did it for me.

New comment by dbrumbaugh in "AI killed the tech interview. Now what?"

dbrumbaugh — Thu, 20 Feb 2025 16:53:31 +0000

>Take maximum subarray problem, which can be optimally solved with Kadane's algorithm. If you don't know that, you are looking at the problem as Professor Kadane once did. I can't say for sure, but I suspect it took him longer than 30-45 minutes to come up with his solution, and I also imagine he didn't spend the whole time blabbering about his thought process.

This is something that drives me nuts in academia when it comes to exam questions. I once took an exam that asked us to invent vector clocks from whole cloth, basically, having only knowledge of a basic Lamport clock for context. I think one person got it--and that person had just learned about vector clocks in a different class. Given some time, it's possible I could have figured it out. But on an exam, you've got like 10-15 minutes per question.

The funny thing about it is that I do the same damn thing from the other side all the time when working with students. It's incredibly tempting once you know the solution to a problem (especially if you didn't "solve" it yourself, but had the solution presented to you already) to present the question as though it has an obvious solution and expect somebody else to immediately solve it.

I'm aware of the effect, I've experienced it many times, and I still catch myself doing it. I've never interviewed a candidate for a job, but I can only imagine how tempting it would be to fall into that trap.

New comment by dbrumbaugh in "Using eqn for static website equation generation"

dbrumbaugh — Mon, 03 Feb 2025 15:17:27 +0000

Hey all--the author here.

I just want to clarify one thing that I didn't think to mention (but probably should have) in the article itself. I went out of my way to use eqn specifically because I wanted to use that particular tool here. I write LaTex a lot on a day to day basis, and wanted to play around with something else. So this wasn't a case of picking eqn because I thought it was the best tool for the job.

New comment by dbrumbaugh in "Using eqn for static website equation generation"

dbrumbaugh — Mon, 03 Feb 2025 15:08:13 +0000

Oh, absolutely. I just have an unhealthy fascination with old tech, so I went into this with the specific goal of using eqn, rather than LaTex. I write LaTex all day for my day job, and I wanted a reason to use something else.