Hacker News: mangler

New comment by mangler in "You are not Steve Jobs"

mangler — Sat, 20 Apr 2013 22:44:10 +0000

From Isaacson's excellent biography of Jobs, the one thing I gathered is that he had taste (turtlenecks and baggy jeans notwithstanding... ok, haven't seen the yacht either). He bullied a whole company into satisfying his exquisite taste, and the results are still outstanding. I'll take them even at a small price premium.

That does not justify any boss being a jerk, but if you have the taste and the power to bully a lot of people to satisfy that taste, you'll likely produce something tasty.

New comment by mangler in "Why the Fuck?"

mangler — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 02:41:56 +0000

Because millions of others have a much more desperate need for some love and some feeling of self worth. Even a surrogate one. There's no insulin for that...

New comment by mangler in "Petition the Whitehouse to remove Carmen Ortiz from office"

mangler — Sat, 12 Jan 2013 22:02:07 +0000

Of course, I assume nobody wants Ms. Ortiz to spin into deep guilt-driven depression for doing what she believed was right. This kind of emotional blackmail is probably not helping anyone or anything, at least not this soon after the events when emotions are still looming high and, more importantly, nobody actually understands the exact circumstances of a person's... well... personal predicament that lead to certain actions....

New comment by mangler in "NVD3 Erased From Existence"

mangler — Sat, 17 Nov 2012 10:02:25 +0000

Some publicity is bad publicity, Novus Partners....

New comment by mangler in "Non-programming skills every programmer should have"

mangler — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 21:30:01 +0000

> these kinds of post (and we seem to get a lot) usually strike me as "a list of good things about me" or "why everyone should be like me".

Yep... That's why the mysteriously named skill, "spiritual" may actually be quite important and why the OP should work on it a bit more. Beginners' minds don't go around dispensing advice. I think that touches lightly on the "social" as well...

New comment by mangler in "Minnesota Gives Coursera the Boot, Citing a Decades-Old Law"

mangler — Thu, 18 Oct 2012 22:06:44 +0000

Thank you Terminator!!! We knew you'd do a great job!...

New comment by mangler in "Minnesota Gives Coursera the Boot, Citing a Decades-Old Law"

mangler — Thu, 18 Oct 2012 22:04:00 +0000

This is 'backward' until you meet a bunch of doctors who claim to cure cancer using cucumber juice and find that they all have PhDs and MDs from the University of Tantric Study and Life Exploration, Middlesex Town Massahoma. People in trouble DO fall for this bs.

New comment by mangler in "How I Hired Someone On Craigslist And Quadrupled My Productivity"

mangler — Tue, 16 Oct 2012 22:31:21 +0000

... and may be you don't call her a slapper in your blog posts or she may slap you for real. I would. She should...

New comment by mangler in "How Jeff Atwood works"

mangler — Wed, 10 Oct 2012 22:31:46 +0000

"call her"??? Atwood never "calls her"! She calls Atwood! Hey and I don't mean in the Hollywood kind of way - Atwood Da Man!!!

New comment by mangler in "Professional Software Engineer Exam coming in April 2013"

mangler — Sat, 06 Oct 2012 22:11:45 +0000

Yeah, not a big waterfall (or agile, or any other pyramid scheme) fan myself, but this kind of bullshit did get a man on the Moon and then a mixture of them got some kit on Mars, and generally they are doing OK.

Some of them can actually scan you or your friend's internal organs to see if they're alright too - that's not going to be php on a lamp stack. I'm guessing they are probably not moving fast and breaking things either. They may be taking it easy with your friends internal organs, just so they don't get sued by the growing legal community on HN.

There's also all that bizarre software that somehow delivers you to the airport of your choice. I wonder how that happens - do they have their Agile/Waterfall/Kanban/Nonsense boards on their office walls in order to get you there?

New comment by mangler in "Lenovo Computers, Soon To Be Made In America"

mangler — Tue, 02 Oct 2012 21:38:43 +0000

In all fairness, the US corporations probably owe more than a little to Mexico. On purely ethical grounds, I'd rather buy an IBM machine built in Mexico than in the US. It's that little personal satisfaction.... But it DOES make a difference if you're going to use it for the next year or two...

New comment by mangler in "Everything that's wrong with Java in a single class"

mangler — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 21:27:52 +0000

Clojure functions are Java classes. It's not much different from using a Java functional libs. Except that Java will probably be faster as Clojure still doesn't do primitives and stuff (not sure about that one, may be it already does)

You can do all the functional stuff in Java, Clojure is doing exactly that. It will be more verbose, but once you learn the ropes it just looks different, it is not different.

New comment by mangler in "Everything that's wrong with Java in a single class"

mangler — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 21:20:31 +0000

If you spent your life being inconvenienced by the things you made earlier to make your life convenient, you'll go to extraordinary lengths to make other things that seem to make your life convenient given all the inconveniences you've already created for yourself. It does not really compute that this is another inconvenience you're building for yourself that is going to need another convenient AOP driven bean thing that you will write in a few months to get around the nonsense you burdened yourself with in the first place. It also does not help that everyone (well, at least the people with the money) is buying it and forcing it down their developers throats. If they don't want it, there's always a bunch of guys who are cheaper and will take it....

New comment by mangler in "Thanks Mr. Jobs, But it Seems I Can Use a Linux Laptop Now"

mangler — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 06:48:51 +0000

So what's wrong with it is that it feels clunky to you...

New comment by mangler in "Thanks Mr. Jobs, But it Seems I Can Use a Linux Laptop Now"

mangler — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 06:47:29 +0000

This posted by Dell or something?! What's with the over-excitement?

New comment by mangler in "iOS 6 Breaks the App Store"

mangler — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 06:36:04 +0000

> "This notion that we should get down on our knees and pray (or otherwise please) the overlords is just wrong"

Yep. Totally wrong - just don't buy Apple. Kind of simple. It's not like there's no alternatives...

New comment by mangler in "Apple At Its Worst: It's Time to Stop Censoring Apps"

mangler — Wed, 05 Sep 2012 22:11:33 +0000

You can (and should) be removed from private property for not complying with the rules.

Apple makes it very clear: "We view Apps different than books or songs, which we do not curate. If you want to criticize a religion, write a book. If you want to describe sex, write a book or a song, or create a medical app. It can get complicated, but we have decided to not allow certain kinds of content in the App Store."

Go to Walmart and take your clothes off and see what happens. Nobody dragged you into that party and I'm guessing nobody even invited you. You looked at the market and picked what you thought was the best.

Stallman and his "free" Chinese tech are always at hand if you really feel abused.

New comment by mangler in "Thoughts on being a programmer"

mangler — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 22:04:54 +0000

That's why you "Inherit a codebase", as opposed to "Build a codebase". People who maintain and people who build are... well... they're just different people. We do need them both, but, they are different. Which is why we need them both.

New comment by mangler in "The Innumeracy of Intellectuals (2008)"

mangler — Sun, 29 Jul 2012 20:10:55 +0000

Yeah, the next time you go to your local yoga class and the local bleached bimbo starts babbling on about quantum physics (for some reason, a favourite subject), ask them if they can solve a quadratic equation. Guess what, they can't. But that is not a reason to desist! The quantum physics banter lives on...

So, learn from these smart people. Fake it and bask in it!

New comment by mangler in "Java for iPhone"

mangler — Thu, 26 Jul 2012 07:55:38 +0000

Original post. iOS in Java?! Why?! GWT! Why. Just learn ObjC, Javascript, whatever the local language is... It's not that hard really...