Hacker News: kotojo

New comment by kotojo in "Ask HN: Share your AI prompt that stumps every model"

kotojo — Fri, 25 Apr 2025 12:56:49 +0000

They said they ask a question analogous to asking about founding Tesla, not that actual question. They are just using that as an example to not state the actual question they ask.

New comment by kotojo in "FreeBSD: How Can We Make It More Attractive to New Users?"

kotojo — Sat, 12 Oct 2024 14:06:48 +0000

I don't think I've ever powered a computer down completely outside of troubleshooting issues or restarting for updates since the 90s.

New comment by kotojo in "Let's write a video game from scratch like it's 1987"

kotojo — Fri, 21 Jun 2024 18:49:03 +0000

This is awesome. I listen to a video game history podcast with the founder of the video game history foundation, https://gamehistory.org/ , and the one thing he constantly brings up is to send him any and every person in the game industry with fun stories, weird bits and bobs of prototypes, and anything in between. If you've got the time I know that dude would love to pick your brain!

New comment by kotojo in "Why teachers in South Korea are scared of their pupils, and their parents"

kotojo — Sat, 28 Oct 2023 15:47:39 +0000

From a bit of a ways into the article

"Ahn says she would like to see penalties for parents who make unfounded accusations against teachers or practical measures put in place so that mandated changes can be adopted in classrooms, such as removing a disruptive student elsewhere to allow teaching to continue."

So, it seems like they don't even have the power to make a student leave their classroom without fear of retaliation at the moment.

Ask HN: How do you figure out your career goals?

kotojo — Wed, 28 Jul 2021 16:23:59 +0000

My company is about to wrap up our mid year review/promotion cycle, and I put in for promotion to senior engineer. I feel I've been doing good work with a big impact for the company and our customers, so believe there is a good chance I've gotten this promotion. So far in my career these types of promotions have been straight forward. I went from junior to mid, and then through various companies intermediate number schemes for their levels. The main thing though, is the work has pretty much been consistently the same, but just slightly larger each time. I believe this is really the last time in my career a promotion will be as straight forward as "Here's more money, and just slightly larger scope of issues we trust you with".

Now I've been thinking what comes after that? In the mainstream there seems to be two main paths. Either go towards the management track, or go towards the architect/staff engineer track. Both of them are drastically different jobs from one another with multitudes of pros/cons. A third, and less traveled option, seems to be to attempt to strike out on your own. The only one I can still have an idea from my current situation of what it would be like though is the architect track. It grows into managing larger, higher risk projects, but still is deeply technical in nature. The other two are so far off from what I actively do though it seems impossible to know that's what I wanted without jumping in and asking questions later.

That's the short summary of where my current crossroads are and advice on that would be great, but I think it would also be enlightening to hear how people handle their career goals in a more holistic sense. Do you have 10 year plans? 6 month plans? No plans? How do you tackle unknowns like above?

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27985652

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by kotojo in "Eight Years at Roblox"

kotojo — Fri, 20 Nov 2020 14:56:22 +0000

Tangent: 4?! My son is 2 and a half and we have just gotten to the point where he will even pay attention to a tv for more than 10 minutes (and only for peppa pig of all things).

I'm really thought it was further away than that for any sort of gaming or real computer use, but I have no gauge from growing up in a house without anything but a tv till I was almost in middle school.

New comment by kotojo in "Angular 11"

kotojo — Thu, 12 Nov 2020 17:33:08 +0000

I'm not sure if the popularity increase is angular getting more popular, or front end development getting more popular.

Vue has a similar track over the last year https://www.npmjs.com/package/vue

React is gaining even more quickly https://www.npmjs.com/package/react

Ask HN: How to Take Good Notes?

kotojo — Wed, 11 Nov 2020 14:08:57 +0000

Having never gone to college and coasting my way through high school I never really learned good study habits, but I'm trying to change that now. I'm currently reading Design Data Intensive Applications and forcing myself to take notes. I have noticed that it helps me retain information much better than just reading, but I feel like I'm extremely inefficient. I am almost rewriting the whole book sentence by sentence as I got through the chapters.

How do you figure out what's "important"? How do you take notes on those important things in a concise manner?

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25058499

Points: 1

# Comments: 1

New comment by kotojo in "Are you an anarchist? The answer may surprise you (2000)"

kotojo — Sat, 05 Sep 2020 15:19:03 +0000

And for a counter observation I saw lines out of nail/hair salons and bars in Atlanta the day Kemp dropped shelter in place at the beginning of May. I'd say I see 1 in 8 people wearing a mask anywhere that doesn't explicitly require it, and then people mostly wearing them improperly otherwise.

Ask HN: How did you become an efficent architect?

kotojo — Mon, 03 Aug 2020 15:26:13 +0000

I'm currently a software developer with around 5 years of experience, but have never had a major hand in architecting new systems. All my prior experience has been just working within existing systems. My current position is giving me the opportunity to have a larger hand in architecture, but I feel a bit overwhelmed trying to understand how to create systems just from general product design documents.

How did you learn to build this skill. Do you have an concrete resources to ready/study for building this skill faster than just the normal try/fail/repeat loop?

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24038886

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

New comment by kotojo in "Why is CSS the way it is?"

kotojo — Thu, 23 Jul 2020 18:27:11 +0000

I haven't read this, but I know quite a few people who recommend this book by John Duckett http://www.htmlandcssbook.com/

These are resources I used to learn grid and flexbox. http://cssgridgarden.com/ http://flexboxfroggy.com/

The site I inevitably have open looking some how to do something with css https://css-tricks.com/

Covid, Bird Scooters, Layoffs, and Relationships

kotojo — Wed, 08 Apr 2020 14:59:42 +0000

Article URL: https://medium.com/@jennylihoward/covid-bird-scooters-layoffs-and-relationships-cc151428ee67

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22813520

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

Ask HN: What do you do with downtime at work?

kotojo — Mon, 02 Mar 2020 18:31:17 +0000

I’m just in a transition period between two different projects at work and the new one is still in a discovery phase, so I am finding myself with a significant amount of free time for a week or so.

What are your go to activities to make the most of this time?

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22467233

Points: 29

# Comments: 11

Ask HN: Best compsci resources for someone without a degree

kotojo — Fri, 14 Feb 2020 18:05:33 +0000

I have been writing software professionally for four years, but entered through non-traditional means. I've picked up bits and pieces over time, but never had any sort of formal education and want to try to rectify that. Most things I see people talk about though are sources like the gatech omscs program. That requires some sort of bachelors degree and structured time (wife/house/baby) that I don't have.

Does anyone have recommendations for places I can learn these things as a non college graduate with no required learning schedule?

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22328636

Points: 1

# Comments: 1

New comment by kotojo in "Apps I pay for as a bootstrapped business"

kotojo — Tue, 11 Feb 2020 17:42:25 +0000

I personally love this trend. It's one of the first sites I've been on in a while that I didn't have to bump up everything to a readable size.

New comment by kotojo in "Ask HN: How Sound Is the “Teach Yourself CS” Learning Resource?"

kotojo — Mon, 10 Feb 2020 17:54:34 +0000

Is there something similar to this for someone without a bachelors degree?

New comment by kotojo in "Coronavirus Forces World’s Largest Work-from-Home Experiment"

kotojo — Mon, 03 Feb 2020 15:24:39 +0000

Every company I've worked at will not allow me to leave my laptop at the office. They all claim it's something about the office not being safe from theft in some way or another. My bet is it's just a lot easier to get people to be constantly connected if they have their work laptop with them at all times.

New comment by kotojo in "Ask HN: I have $1000 growth fund that expires on Feb. 2nd. What do I buy?"

kotojo — Wed, 15 Jan 2020 18:42:38 +0000

Not a ban on annual subscriptions, but I need to show proof of completion of a course to get the reimbursement for it. So if I bought pluralsight now I'd have to make sure I complete a course by Feb 2nd and show proof completion to get them to approve it to take out of the 2019 budget. If I submit proof on Feb 3rd they'll take it out of the 2020 budget.

New comment by kotojo in "Ask HN: I have $1000 growth fund that expires on Feb. 2nd. What do I buy?"

kotojo — Wed, 15 Jan 2020 14:27:24 +0000

They have to happen by that Feb 2nd deadline. After Feb 2nd I get the 2020 budget that I can use to go to conferences with though!

New comment by kotojo in "Ask HN: I have $1000 growth fund that expires on Feb. 2nd. What do I buy?"

kotojo — Wed, 15 Jan 2020 14:08:47 +0000

Yeah, this is a bit more strict than I'm use to with a growth fund. Like I said, I couldn't buy a book on elixir since it doesn't relate to the day to day, but I could buy things about professional growth or things like "How to Win Friends and Influence People" or programming books that aren't explicitly about a language we use, but tangentially related to the day to day (Swift/Kotlin book to help with mobile, even though we use React Native)