Hacker News: japherwocky

New comment by japherwocky in "Fake S3 – Save time, money, and develop offline"

japherwocky — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 22:04:57 +0000

there was a python implementation of something like this in tornado (s3server and s3client), though now I don't see it. Anyone follow that project and know what happened to it?

New comment by japherwocky in "Writing Browser Extensions - Comparing Firefox, Chrome and Opera"

japherwocky — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 04:02:42 +0000

figuring out how to sign a FF extension properly without an https cert was one of the most difficult things i've accomplished in my programming career. :(

New comment by japherwocky in "Failing with MongoDB"

japherwocky — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 15:40:00 +0000

Let me guess, you're the guy who makes sure there's a "Senior" in his title and you use django because the docs are so great.

I'm sorry you work with incompetent people. Sounds like you're in a cubicle farm somewhere. While you're in a meeting swinging your seniority around, I'll be over here shipping products faster than your team.

New comment by japherwocky in "Failing with MongoDB"

japherwocky — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 23:09:24 +0000

Well here's a fuck you back from a dev: my time is finite and everyone wants a piece of it; If I can save an hour a day by never having to think about my database? If I can shave a week or two of labor off a project?

It's really easy to work with. This is why people keep using it.

New comment by japherwocky in "Failing with MongoDB"

japherwocky — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 23:01:14 +0000

what do you think of redis? I feel the same way about Mongo for the most part, but have been considering switching.

New comment by japherwocky in "Why aren't ◎ܫ◎ and ☺ valid Javascript variable names?"

japherwocky — Sun, 18 Sep 2011 06:36:31 +0000

because unicode is tedious, and wtf needs to use shit like ◎ܫ◎ as a variable name?

New comment by japherwocky in "ORM is an anti-pattern"

japherwocky — Sat, 17 Sep 2011 16:50:43 +0000

I think that right now though, conventional "wisdom" says to use an ORM for every web app.

I like to see people push back on that; let's at least get to a state where we can consider dropping it from a project.

New comment by japherwocky in "Applying to YC as a Single Founder"

japherwocky — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 06:33:59 +0000

To be fair, for every startup you can namedrop who isn't in CA/SF/SV, I think someone can probably name two who are.

New comment by japherwocky in "Ask HN: Advice for a young, self-taught programmer"

japherwocky — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 04:23:30 +0000

I think you're at the phase where you need practice and experience mostly. Either get a job on a team that's cranking out projects, or go freelance and ship a few dozen sites. You'll start to get some insight into the bigger problems around handling clients, cash flow, project management, etc.

I'd also recommend tornadoweb.org - there are some nice demos included using moderately complex javascript in the browser and python on the server. I'm thinking in particular of the chat demo, which was invaluable for me in understanding how ajax apps work.

Really though, you need to just ship a few projects; the frustrations will clear up and you'll be more accurate in estimating how long things should take.

New comment by japherwocky in "Ask HN: Advice for a young, self-taught programmer"

japherwocky — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 04:16:55 +0000

I'm a professional python webapp guy and I like MongoDB better for the same reason. :) You might find tornado nice!

Some advice on turning this into a career: learning CSS and HTML is very useful, but there's (relatively) lots of jobs where you can program services for the backend and work with a frontend guy who's doing the design work and the user interface. Often for this sort of job though, the people hiring will ask you algorithm and data structure questions.

The other path you can take is really studying graphic design for a bit to train your artistic eye - if you can make pretty nice looking websites, and code up the backend to make them do interesting stuff, you're in a great position to go freelance / solo and build an app on the side.

And lastly, a third path: start writing a lot of javascript! It's getting used more and more, and a lot of the front end guys who "know javascript" are kind of shitty programmers, so there's a good pool of those sorts of jobs available.

New comment by japherwocky in "Startups: Just say NO to outsourcing, contracting, and distributed teams"

japherwocky — Fri, 20 May 2011 05:32:32 +0000

I'd downvote if I could. If you have to tap a guy on the shoulder to tell him is code is broken, you're not working with a professional.

Distributed teams are glorious when you weed out the jackasses. And in the meantime, remote guys are comfortable with much lower salary. That seems useful for a startup trying to keep costs down?

New comment by japherwocky in "Reasons To Give The Vim Text Editor A Chance"

japherwocky — Tue, 17 May 2011 17:00:33 +0000

you set a trace point inside baz, investigate with the REPL, and fix your code.

New comment by japherwocky in "Should first employee at YC funded company work for free?"

japherwocky — Mon, 16 May 2011 20:20:58 +0000

hrm. That's an interesting stance, and I don't know!

New comment by japherwocky in "Reasons To Give The Vim Text Editor A Chance"

japherwocky — Mon, 16 May 2011 20:19:14 +0000

wait.. what? are you scanning stdout with your tests?

New comment by japherwocky in "Reasons To Give The Vim Text Editor A Chance"

japherwocky — Mon, 16 May 2011 02:49:41 +0000

Someday, you'll get to work in a language that has a good REPL, and you'll never want to go back to printing. :)

New comment by japherwocky in "Reasons To Give The Vim Text Editor A Chance"

japherwocky — Mon, 16 May 2011 02:47:40 +0000

Well.. apparently people are using "print" still, but fwiw, most professionals I know (including myself) who use vim also use screen, which lets you keep your commandline utils for debugging, etc, a keystroke or two away.

New comment by japherwocky in "Should first employee at YC funded company work for free?"

japherwocky — Mon, 16 May 2011 02:35:52 +0000

In most states, afaik, unpaid interns are not allowed to be working on things that provide income to the company.

New comment by japherwocky in "A data modeling challenge: relational vs document oriented for modeling orders"

japherwocky — Tue, 10 May 2011 20:12:17 +0000

Yes, complex queries require a programmer who understands map/reduce. The degree of confidence corresponds pretty directly with the programmer's competence.

Is writing a function in javascript more or less difficult than writing a complex SQL query? I'd call it a tie at best.

So you have the upfront technical expense of setting up a relational schema which enables you to (maybe) save time later writing analytic queries.

New comment by japherwocky in "Startup Workaway: 20 founders. 10 days. 1 beach house in Costa Rica. Apply now"

japherwocky — Mon, 02 May 2011 18:02:10 +0000

Are they saying that the application fee is $500?

New comment by japherwocky in "Request HN: please add your email to your profile"

japherwocky — Sun, 01 May 2011 03:40:46 +0000

pfft, it's funny, pokes fun at the "reddit is invading" meme, and answers his question by showing _why_ people don't put their email addresses in an easily scrapeable / semi-public forum. In 3 words! Screw you, downvoters!