Hacker News: spiralhead

New comment by spiralhead in "Ask HN: As a programmer, how do you know if you're a good one or not?"

spiralhead — Tue, 27 Nov 2018 00:36:10 +0000

This is a very complicated thing to answer concisely, but I'll take a stab at it from a product development perspective.

You know you're a good programmer if the things you build "just work." It should be near impossible to find flaws in your solutions. This is actually rare. Most developers I've worked with will declare something "done" well before all of the flaws have been worked out.

Show HN: WebOutLoud – Reads Websites Out Loud in Chrome

spiralhead — Tue, 21 Apr 2015 14:40:46 +0000

Article URL: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/weboutloud/akmlgdbkdgmgjoobidmmkknmlblhjomj?hl=en

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9414321

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

Show HN: Shiny Objects for Babies – Interactivity and Classical Music

spiralhead — Wed, 18 Feb 2015 18:14:14 +0000

Article URL: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/shiny-objects-for-babies/id963541488?ls=1&mt=8

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9070004

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by spiralhead in "What startup buzzwords make you automatically cringe?"

spiralhead — Mon, 09 Jun 2014 19:24:29 +0000

Jedi, Rock Star

New comment by spiralhead in "How I Learned to Appreciate Job Hoppers"

spiralhead — Fri, 30 May 2014 19:41:47 +0000

Great article. I've struggled with this for my entire career. I get bored after finishing a major project and am left with miscellaneous tasks. But I've found consulting gigs to be elusive and companies seem reluctant to hire contractors. Even startups. So I risk being labeled a job hopper...

New comment by spiralhead in "Ask HN: What did you do (or wish you did) when you got out of highschool?"

spiralhead — Fri, 30 May 2014 19:19:10 +0000

Unless you're working for yourself on your own product it's hard to find something you're 100% passionate about. But the funny thing about that is working for yourself is one of the hardest things you can ever strive to do. It is even harder when you get married and have kids because your free time evaporates to zero. Now is the time to go for independence if you can do it

New comment by spiralhead in "Ask HN: What did you do (or wish you did) when you got out of highschool?"

spiralhead — Fri, 30 May 2014 06:27:01 +0000

If you want to break into the tech industry, the best thing you can do right now is just start building stuff. Think of a mobile app or a web app that has a simple purpose that you think would be useful, then use the internet to teach yourself how to build it. If you can pull that off then you have a very good shot at a career as a developer. If you can't then you probably either don't have the drive or the aptitude, in which case you'll be spending a few more years figuring out what you want to do.

New comment by spiralhead in "Scott Forstall leaves Apple"

spiralhead — Tue, 30 Oct 2012 04:47:02 +0000

The new podcast app makes certain workflows impossible--like downloading a single podcast before taking a walk. Now it just says "preparing to download" indefinitely. By the time it shows up on my device, that window of free time to listen to a podcast is gone. Complete and utter crap.

New comment by spiralhead in "Source: Apple Aggressively Recruiting Ex-Google Maps Staff To Build Out iOS Maps"

spiralhead — Sun, 23 Sep 2012 22:03:43 +0000

I think they left out a zero

Ask HN: Org Chart for a Software Startup?

spiralhead — Tue, 10 Jul 2012 23:12:58 +0000

My boss has asked me to come up with an org chart for our organization. What are your recommendations for a _simple_ org chart for a small software-as-a-service company who's looking for investors?

I realize this is kind of open-ended. I'd be glad to provide more info...

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4226770

Points: 1

# Comments: 1

New comment by spiralhead in " This Will Be The Year Adobe’s 2 Million Flash Developers Come To The iPhone "

spiralhead — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 05:02:11 +0000

"...while Flash apps won’t run on the iPhone, any Flash app can easily be converted into an iPhone app."

The title is misleading...

New comment by spiralhead in "Ask HN: Weekend update -- What weekend projects are you upto?"

spiralhead — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 01:04:04 +0000

Working on a web crawler that tracks the associations between websites online. Currently working on the front-end which will, at first, simply list websites ordered by how many other websites link to them which is not incredibly interesting in and of itself but my rough plan is to implement some sort of crowd-sourced categorization system to demarcate the data in such a way that people will find useful.

New comment by spiralhead in "Are we "software engineers", "software developers", "programmers", or other?"

spiralhead — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 02:07:43 +0000

I usually go with programmer/web developer. It doesn't roll off the tongue as easy as hacker but the latter term has negative connotations among the majority of humans.

New comment by spiralhead in "Ask HN: Weekend update -- What weekend projects are you up to?"

spiralhead — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 20:44:33 +0000

I like the minimal UI and the tree view is interesting. I would be interested in learning more about the background of this project but there's no "about" link anywhere.

New comment by spiralhead in "Ask HN: review my app - a minimalist's to-do organizer"

spiralhead — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 20:15:48 +0000

Agreed about the need to sync to the web. If I was to undertake a project like this I would probably do it as a web app (to start) using the bleeding edge HTML 5 local storage stuff so you could use it offline. An inability to sync is a deal breaker for me and (probably) the majority of users on HN.

But overall nice presentation!

New comment by spiralhead in "Ask HN: What do you think is the next Technology worth mastering ?"

spiralhead — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 16:43:59 +0000

Scala! ... specifically using Actors for concurrency problems has been a bit of a revelation for me ... and the functional parts if you're not already familiar with FP

... and for practical reasons ... Scala is one of the only academic-ish languages you can actually use in the real world

New comment by spiralhead in "Eric Schmidt: "If you have something [to hide], maybe you shouldn't be doing it""

spiralhead — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 16:03:14 +0000

Are you expecting Google to defy the US government? He is merely stating a fact:

"...we are all subject in the United States to the Patriot Act..."

How many of you are actually concerned you'll receive a subpoena from the feds to reveal you porn viewing habits?

New comment by spiralhead in "Doug Crockford Talk on JavaScript"

spiralhead — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 01:22:59 +0000

Fair enough. I just fail to see the distinction between "semicolon insertion" and optional semicolons. Sounds to me like semicolon insertion is just a stupid way to implement an interpreter where semicolons are optional -- something that can be changed without affecting client code

New comment by spiralhead in "Doug Crockford Talk on JavaScript"

spiralhead — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 22:36:51 +0000

You speak as if your words are law but really it is just your opinion. Modern languages are still being designed this way. For example semicolons are optional in Scala.

New comment by spiralhead in "Doug Crockford Talk on JavaScript"

spiralhead — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 16:47:53 +0000

I disagree. I consider an interpreter that can figure things out on your behalf to be a more intelligent interpreter. It requires me to type less. The "hard to find bugs" pointed out in the article are a (acceptable imo) trade-off for a terser syntax.