Hacker News: hinchley

New comment by hinchley in "Bro pages: like man pages, but with examples only"

hinchley — Sat, 25 Jan 2014 22:38:13 +0000

I know the "man" in "manpages" is short for "manual", but when I first saw this site, I took the "bro" in "bropages" to be short for "little brother". If the "man"-page is the old, official, formal documentation for a command, the "bro"-page was the young, informal, still-evolving version of the documentation. In this sense, the name is rather apt.

The negative connotations of the word bro appear to be rather US-centric. I am Australian, and I have several friends from New Zealand who use the word bro as a term of mate-ship and affection (I've even heard one friend call his mum bro).

With that said, it's great that people are conscious of the affect of matters like this on the inclusiveness of the community - but in this case, when the word "bro" has such a variety of associations, perhaps we should judge the book by its content, and not its title.

New comment by hinchley in "Mozilla Labs: The Location Bar Has To Go"

hinchley — Tue, 24 May 2011 21:23:16 +0000

A potential side effect of hiding the address bar is that over time web developers may become less motivated to use "clean" human readable URLs (out of sight, out of mind). This could in turn reduce the ability of advanced users to easily understand the link structure of site, and thereby extrapolate the URLs of other pages (something I do regularly).

New comment by hinchley in "Joel Spolsky: Lunch"

hinchley — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 21:34:43 +0000

It seems Joel finds it difficult to believe that people can eat alone without being lonely. I am an introvert that is rejuvenated by spending time alone. I like eating lunch by myself. It helps clear my mind.

The idea that new starters are "not allowed to sit by themselves in a corner" is draconian, and in my case, it would prove counterproductive. It would make me feel like I was back in school, being told where to sit by my teacher. This is not the mindset you want to instil in your employees.

I think the best approach is to provide a working environment where people have the opportunity to gather together. Those that want to socialize can do so, and those that prefer periods of solitude aren't made to feel guilty for spending time alone.