Hacker News: methods21

New comment by methods21 in "Casey Muratori: I can always tell a good programmer in an interview"

methods21 — Fri, 24 Oct 2025 17:35:38 +0000

Been doing this strategy for over 20 years.

New comment by methods21 in "Writing a good design document"

methods21 — Fri, 08 Aug 2025 21:14:03 +0000

As a hiring manager / lead for technical positions, this is fine, and often proposed by the 'resume experts'. Where I get incensed is these statements where the original design/architecture that this individual was responsible for was the problem, and they are just bringing something back to baseline where it should have started. I see this ALL THE TIME. And this is with grace towards changing requirements etc. And not just on resumes, I see this on internal corp. accomplishments, and typically the higher the level the more the savings and more the unnecessary waste was to start. For example, CFO once claimed like $20mm in savings because he decommed a financial module that they bought and NEVER used and NEVER needed - this guy crushed is bonus this year.

New comment by methods21 in "Figma files for proposed IPO"

methods21 — Mon, 07 Jul 2025 00:03:36 +0000

Lets see how far from the $20billion offer they IPO at.

New comment by methods21 in "Progressive JSON"

methods21 — Fri, 06 Jun 2025 23:58:23 +0000

Bring back XML or a better format than both, or at least a DTD for JSON.

New comment by methods21 in "How to live on $432 a month in America"

methods21 — Tue, 27 May 2025 21:18:24 +0000

Never a fan of these 'click bait' headlines, and surprised it made it this high in hacker news. We get the 'premise', Mr. Money Mustache has been preaching similar for years, but these numbers are just not realistic. You need money to buy the house, maintain it, clothes, healthcare, NY is going to jack your taxes up, etc. and more, as all the folks have mentioned here.

Can some folks live more frugally, for sure, but this is unrealistic.

New comment by methods21 in "Ground control to Major Trial"

methods21 — Tue, 20 May 2025 18:12:59 +0000

Dealing with this right now as a consultant. Also a 'semi-govt' company, with much more in annual revenue than in this article, running a highly critical production workload, and is having problems with a ESOL version Open Source software - that they are scared to touch/upgrade, and that is available in a fully up-to-date version, for purchase, with support etc., and indirectly asking us to support it, by essentially pawning off any and all changes related to said SW to me. Well, I recommended the upgrade path (to a current/supported and paid version) and I stopped making any changes to that component. They are still hemming an hawing, its unbelievable.

New comment by methods21 in "Capitol Trades: Tracking Stock Market Transactions of Politicians"

methods21 — Fri, 11 Apr 2025 22:04:19 +0000

I haven't seen this guy in a while... tbh, at one point it almost felt like he was a shill for something.

Anyway check out the symbol: NANC

New comment by methods21 in "The Story Behind “100 Go Mistakes and How to Avoid Them”"

methods21 — Fri, 11 Apr 2025 22:00:58 +0000

"Yet I think Tim’s single review was possibly as valuable as all the others combined".... and yet you don't even tell us anything about his review.... disappointing esp. considering the screenshots/level of details on other input.

On a different note, def. feel you pain regarding the copyeditor.

New comment by methods21 in "The best programmers I know"

methods21 — Fri, 11 Apr 2025 21:37:10 +0000

I see 'this guy' who wants or does build his own ORM, in every company I've worked with.

New comment by methods21 in "I won't connect my dishwasher to your cloud"

methods21 — Mon, 31 Mar 2025 17:31:22 +0000

Reminds me of the BMW Heated Seats SaaS option.

What's even worse is the planned obsolescence, its such a huge waste of resources. I had a GE DW and fridge from the 1950s until 1995 and they still worked, albeit were a funky lime greenish color. And that DW washed the dishes better than the new replacement. Currently dealing with a 2 year old LG fridge that is dead.

New comment by methods21 in "The Startup CTO's Handbook"

methods21 — Tue, 18 Mar 2025 00:09:11 +0000

I tend to disagree a tad with what you have said below, I've lost count how many interviews I've done at this point, one challenge is on the intake side and how many darn applicants there are or can be and that its typically the recruiting team interacting with them at this point.

The question in your example, is fine to include, but you need a non, yes or no or scale question to weed out unqualified candidates. For me, this is a very succinct question with a definitive answer. You'll be surprised at how many people will answer 'extremely comfortable' with Javascript yet not know what === means, so I'll ask something along the lines of 'what is the strictly equal operator in Javascript"... while any javascript programmer will know this, you'll be surprised that this type of Q alone knocks out 50% of the applicant pool, most of whom probably selected 'extremely comfortable' btw, and save my org. a TON of time.

"For example, for a role that requires experience in JavaScript, it's not unreasonable to confirm that experience in the questionnaire with a question like, Rate your comfort level working with JavaScript on a scale from not comfortable to extremely comfortable."

New comment by methods21 in "Johnny.Decimal – A system to organise your life"

methods21 — Wed, 26 Feb 2025 14:21:44 +0000

Yes - This.

New comment by methods21 in "Five years of React Native at Shopify"

methods21 — Thu, 16 Jan 2025 21:50:04 +0000

What would be amazing is if Swift and/or Kotlin could just be the 'native' language across both platforms and work at native speeds on both platforms.

New comment by methods21 in "Daisy, an AI granny wasting scammers' time"

methods21 — Tue, 19 Nov 2024 19:29:56 +0000

As long this doesn't put Kitboga out of business.

New comment by methods21 in "Notepad++ is 21 years old"

methods21 — Wed, 06 Nov 2024 17:02:49 +0000

Have to give PROPS to the author(s) here... been using Notepad++ since I can remember, which is probably 21 years. Probably one of, if not the first app I download on a new Win box! Congrats!

New comment by methods21 in "Accountability sinks"

methods21 — Mon, 21 Oct 2024 19:02:24 +0000

This hit home and very recent experiences. Was even in my little notebook of ideas to write about.... seems its already been done. Nice job... and you can almost paint all corps. with this brush, esp. decisions made by upper management that is incentivized on financial metrics that can be gamed....

New comment by methods21 in "How to succeed in MrBeast production (Leaked PDF)"

methods21 — Mon, 16 Sep 2024 16:37:33 +0000

Reads like a "How to PM" and "Extreme Ownership" rolled into 1 doc.

The one area that I'm wondering a bit on is the statement that you need to be working on multiple 'videos' aka projects at 1 time and if your not then your a FAILURE... so whose priority list is "prio" when, lets say, you are working on 5-10 projects? And they all have prios/emergencies etc.... Interesting expectation setting here. And concludes with a rather harsh statement too with the "failed as a MrBeast employee that day"...

For reference: Work on multiple videos EVERYDAY Please do not come in and only work on one video during a workday. That’s how you fall behind on future videos and create a nasty cycle that i’m trying to stop. If you drop everything and go all in on a video for 3 days then that’s 3 days your other videos will fall behind and eventually you’ll have to drop other videos to focus on those videos and it will snowball into you can’t do anything but focus on what’s right in front of you because you murdered any lead time you had. If you ever only work on one video during a day, you failed as a MrBeast employee that day

New comment by methods21 in "Windows NT vs. Unix: A design comparison"

methods21 — Wed, 11 Sep 2024 15:27:52 +0000

At the time, NT being able to run on multiple architectures (e.g Alpha), was rather impressive esp. at the time. Believe this was based from a lot of the knowledge of the former DEC team working on NT. Reading the comments here, esp. about drivers, it makes me now think how much engineering went towards this and perhaps the limitations around the driver architecture, that could have been put towards a stronger driver design AND hot add of certain SW, as I probably lost a year of my life waiting on NT reboots.

New comment by methods21 in "Bill Gates tries to install Movie Maker"

methods21 — Thu, 05 Sep 2024 17:28:27 +0000

He knew exactly what he was saying - he didn't want to "OWN" the problem nor the solution....he was abdicating is sole responsibility for the mess... and rightfully so as its a cross organizational issues (based on the thread). This is a great example of what folks should expect when hiring/working at a large corp. So much time and effort is spent in this EXACT manner. Its amazing that anything does get done, in some respect. Its also why I found the startup experience amazing because there's no time/place for this, but if they succeed, then all end up in this type of environment / scenario.

AND, I can vouch for the pain and suffering that "Marketing" can place on tech teams and end product fails.... heck MS , to this day, cloud "EXPERTS" can not explain their pricing model, or just chose not to.

New comment by methods21 in "You are not dumb, you just lack the prerequisites"

methods21 — Wed, 28 Aug 2024 01:14:38 +0000

The fact that the push primary school students through to higher and higher levels of math, when they 'fail', is a sacrilege to the student and a stain on the education system. I see so many capable students that don't have the prerequisites for the current math level, and are now just completely lost with NO chance of finding the path in the current system. And completely demoralized and disenfranchised.... all for what? To meet some BS metrics? This really needs to change.