Hacker News: falafelite

New comment by falafelite in "Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (May 2023)"

falafelite — Tue, 02 May 2023 01:21:40 +0000

Location: NYC

Remote: OK, prefer hybrid

Willing to relocate: No

Technologies: Python (Pandas, Dagster, SQLAlchemy, Flask, FastAPI, SKLearn, etc.), SQL (big Postgres fan), Svelte, GitHub Actions, Terraform/Pulumi, Kubernetes/Helm

Resume: https://www.linkedin.com/in/raaid-arshad/

Email: raaid@protonmail.com

Hey I'm Raaid. I'm a software engineer who is particularly experienced with data engineering + the backend but full-stack capable. I'm interested in making something that works, works well, is well documented, and helps the world. I'm not interested in pointlessly moving fast to try to make a quick buck. Super interested in anything that aims to address climate or socioeconomic issues.

New comment by falafelite in "Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (March 2023)"

falafelite — Wed, 01 Mar 2023 18:09:55 +0000

Location: NYC

Remote: OK, prefer hybrid

Willing to relocate: No

Technologies: Python (Pandas, Dagster, SQLAlchemy, Flask, FastAPI, SKLearn, etc.), SQL (big Postgres fan), Svelte, GitHub Actions, Terraform/Pulumi, Kubernetes/Helm

Resume: https://www.linkedin.com/in/raaid-arshad/

Email: raaid@protonmail.com

Show HN: DbDeclare – A Python declarative layer for your database

falafelite — Mon, 27 Feb 2023 16:04:44 +0000

Hi HN! I made and just published v0.0.1 of DbDeclare. I use Python a lot, and interact with Postgres a lot. I like using SQLAlchemy, and I love Alembic. Those wonderful tools primarily operate on tables, though, and I often find myself writing custom code to declare what databases, roles, schemas, privileges, etc. I want, and I have a hard time updating them reliably and in a repeatable fashion.

That's where DbDeclare aims to help: declare what you want in your cluster (in addition to SQLAlchemy-defined tables and columns) in-code, alongside your tables. There is a lot this can't do yet (thus the v0.0.1), but I think there's a decent foundation here to build on and eventually have really nice features like autogenerating change statements between your in-code definition and what is actually in your database cluster (like Alembic).

This is also my first attempt at building an open-source project, so I'm sure there are plenty of mistakes. Please feel free to provide feedback, I'd love to make it better.

For what it's worth, I'm aware that you can do some of this at the infrastructure-as-code layer using a tool like Terraform/Pulumi. My personal preference is to have all this sit closer to my tables rather than my infrastructure, so here we are.

Anyway, let me know what y'all think. Thanks!

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34957974

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

Ask HN: How do you communicate (if at all) about mental health at work?

falafelite — Tue, 21 Feb 2023 18:00:42 +0000

My last place of work was very open and understanding about mental health. If someone was having a tough time, they were supported, deadlines were pushed back if needed, there was enough redundancy that one person having interrupted productivity didn't mean a project was going to fail.

I don't know how my current place of work thinks about mental health, and it's a very very small team. I am having a harder time the last few weeks, but I am also a bottleneck (i.e. the only person fluent in certain things) and there is a non-negotiable deadline.

All to say, I'm curious about other experiences dealing with this stuff. Do you say anything? Do you just wait to get through it and hope the lower output goes unnoticed? I'm all ears, happy to learn from other points of view and experiences.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34884407

Points: 1

# Comments: 2

New comment by falafelite in "New Hampshire set to pilot voting machines that use software everyone can see"

falafelite — Fri, 04 Nov 2022 14:52:23 +0000

Interesting okay. Is a combo of paper and automated counting not ideal then? To my mind automatic counting is probably great for the speed you mentioned, and I'm sure those who have to perform the counting/run the election like it, but then keeping paper to hand-count as a backup or to verify seems sensible too. Or is the very possibility of a compromise too bad to entertain?

New comment by falafelite in "New Hampshire set to pilot voting machines that use software everyone can see"

falafelite — Fri, 04 Nov 2022 14:50:27 +0000

Why are they always a bad idea in your view? I'd imagine that they're quite nice from the point of view of those who run elections and actually have to count them. I'd love to hear your thoughts!

New comment by falafelite in "New Hampshire set to pilot voting machines that use software everyone can see"

falafelite — Fri, 04 Nov 2022 14:48:50 +0000

Is a paper-vote a reference to literally marking a piece of paper, or a human counting said piece of paper? Sorry if that's a dumb question, just want to make sure I follow. It seems like this tech works with marking a piece of paper that is then read by a machine. I suppose if the paper is kept, perhaps it's nice from the point of view of the election-handling-folks to automate the counting process, but be able to audit the paper ballots?

New comment by falafelite in "New Hampshire set to pilot voting machines that use software everyone can see"

falafelite — Fri, 04 Nov 2022 14:10:59 +0000

A lot of skepticism and negativity here, with a focus on "open source means something to me, not the layman" as well as mentions of is that really helpful, is it auditable, etc. Valid concerns, but I guess my reaction is hopeful because hey there's at least one group of people who are trying to build something that is more transparent.

Maybe it's not perfect, but (at least to me) seems like a step in a good direction. Also for what it's worth the company making the tech has a product for auditing as well. Idk guess I'm feeling more optimistic this morning.

New comment by falafelite in "How to build software like an SRE"

falafelite — Mon, 17 Oct 2022 17:29:03 +0000

Yeah as some of the responses to your reply said, agreed, and I've always found value in unit tests, and the "too many deployments and not enough development" comment from jsight rings loud in my head. Deploying to a real non-prod environment as a "test" can be fine for a team, but to do so while not testing for how you expect the code to behave... maybe that works for some folks and if you're moving super fast, but I wouldn't be super comfortable with it myself.

New comment by falafelite in "How to build software like an SRE"

falafelite — Mon, 17 Oct 2022 09:35:20 +0000

Big +1 to “ Never give up on local testing”. The current code base I’m dealing with has many tests that require interaction with a dev environment on the cloud, and occasionally these tests fail due to a timeout or some other thing not related to actually testing the code (and instead reveals that I forgot to refresh my MFA).

Additionally the dependency thing can be huge; we ran into a weird bug for installing a particular dependency on our CI system so our test there keeps failing, but being able to run it locally let’s us know that the changes did not break our actual code tests.

Ny.gov does not recognize my protonmail address as valid

falafelite — Fri, 12 Aug 2022 15:39:20 +0000

Article URL: https://twitter.com/RaaidNajeeb/status/1558109281437859840

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32440173

Points: 6

# Comments: 5

Ask HN: Have you ever inherited a code base you thought was well done?

falafelite — Mon, 08 Aug 2022 12:44:51 +0000

I see and hear a lot of complaints around inheriting code bases that are less than stellar. If anyone has, I'd love to hear about cases where you inherited a "good" code base, whatever that may mean: awesome test coverage, good documentation, solid organization, consistent styling/formatting, abundant best practices, whatever!

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32384769

Points: 143

# Comments: 150

New comment by falafelite in "Stackoverflow Is Down"

falafelite — Fri, 29 Jul 2022 15:48:54 +0000

Hah tried to post this and it didn't work, glad for the confirmation. Not sure if its the right place to look, but https://stackstatus.net/ is also not working for me.

New comment by falafelite in "“No convincing evidence” that depression is caused by low serotonin levels"

falafelite — Wed, 20 Jul 2022 10:51:44 +0000

I found the author to have cherry-picked and poorly-cited information earlier on in the book when talking about antidepressants, and then a complete lack of rigor when discussing the various lost connections. I think he has a point, but I just didn't find it very well done, and as another comment here has quoted: > Other clinicians say, however, that the notion of depression being because of a simple chemical imbalance is outmoded anyway, and that antidepressants remain a useful option for patients alongside other approaches including talking therapies.

It is also notable that the author has had plagiarism issues and other questionable behaviors in the past: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Hari#Plagiarism_and_fab...

Ask HN: Do you also get frequent Amazon recruitment emails?

falafelite — Wed, 06 Jul 2022 16:55:43 +0000

I, a fairly average and not at all notable software engineer, receive anywhere between 1 and 7 emails from people claiming to be recruiters with addresses that end in @amazon.com every week. It’s different names, sometimes the same content and layout, sometimes unique. I find this quite bizarre, and I imagine it’s some kind of “ask everyone on LinkedIn with software engineer in their title to apply” strategy. Does anyone else experience this? Do you know if these are just bots? I’d love to turn it off too as I have no interest in working there but yeah just curious if others experience this weirdness.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32003664

Points: 58

# Comments: 53

Ask HN: Do You Use RSS?

falafelite — Fri, 24 Jun 2022 12:50:00 +0000

I know there's discussion around RSS readers every here or there on HN. I'm curious about how many of you (especially those of you who write code) interact with publishing to or subscribing from RSS feeds as part of your work or side projects, and if you have any common pain points or favorite tools/libraries (and if it's something you can share here, please do!).

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31860969

Points: 50

# Comments: 97

New comment by falafelite in "LinkedIn Returning 500 Error"

falafelite — Tue, 07 Jun 2022 14:54:46 +0000

This happening for other folks? Happened to me briefly yesterday too.

LinkedIn Returning 500 Error

falafelite — Tue, 07 Jun 2022 14:54:45 +0000

Article URL: https://www.linkedin.com/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31655257

Points: 12

# Comments: 2

New comment by falafelite in "Show HN: A Reddit style site to discuss podcast episodes"

falafelite — Fri, 27 May 2022 13:33:00 +0000

I listen to a lot of podcasts, and I think this is really really cool. Would certainly become a better and better experience (I think?) as more people leave comments on episodes.

New comment by falafelite in "Manifest v3 in Firefox: Recap and Next Steps"

falafelite — Thu, 19 May 2022 06:58:20 +0000

I’m not sure, I don’t publish one for Safari! Good question, I’m sure someone else here with more experience would know.