Hacker News: tjpick

New comment by tjpick in "Some young adults disconnecting with 'dumbphones'"

tjpick — Tue, 25 Mar 2014 02:27:18 +0000

Navigation is pretty handy, but the thing I really love about a smartphone is having a decent portable camera always with me. To quickly take a snap to share with family (mms, email or social media), when you otherwise would have missed that is pretty cool.

New comment by tjpick in "Why Puppet, Chef, Ansible aren't good enough"

tjpick — Tue, 11 Mar 2014 20:28:13 +0000

it's probably safer to just remember to use mv instead, because there's a very high chance that you'll do the wrong thing on a terminal that doesn't have that alias available.

New comment by tjpick in "Inside DuckDuckGo, Google's Tiniest, Fiercest Competitor"

tjpick — Fri, 21 Feb 2014 00:36:15 +0000

why don't you set your default search engine to wikipedia?

New comment by tjpick in "Developing Good Software is Damn Hard"

tjpick — Thu, 30 Jan 2014 00:23:06 +0000

realistically, at 27 one is a long way away from senior.

New comment by tjpick in "Using your computer as little as possible?"

tjpick — Sun, 26 Jan 2014 19:33:37 +0000

> how do you prevent yourself from wasting hours on Facebook/Twitter/HackerNews/YouTube

Have kids.

New comment by tjpick in "You are not a software engineer (2011)"

tjpick — Sun, 10 Nov 2013 23:04:59 +0000

Well, the classical engineering domains are all pretty different anyway (electrical, structural, civil, etc). I remember my grandfather saying he thought it was ludicrous that they were all covered by a single qualification.

Building software with an engineering approach is a real thing. Not everyone subscribes to it, but doesn't mean it isn't a real thing.

For the record, I do a lot of gardening too, and building software has fuck all to do with that.

I also don't get how everyone who argues against software-as-engineering talk like buildings and bridges never fall over. They do.

New comment by tjpick in "See Your Folks"

tjpick — Thu, 17 Oct 2013 01:34:14 +0000

> When you're pissing your diapers in an old people's home, what good is your retirement money?

As I've understood, the point is to blow all your retirement money between the age of 65(standard retirement age), and as you so eloquently put it, the age when you are pissing yourself in an old folks home. With a little luck, you've got about 30 years there.

New comment by tjpick in "US spy device 'tested on NZ public'"

tjpick — Mon, 27 May 2013 00:20:53 +0000

> Stuff.co.nz (Fairfax Media) is a more credible news source IMO.

If you are interested in the most credible celebrity gossip news source, that is. Stuff is terrible.

New comment by tjpick in "How to screw up your life by getting promoted"

tjpick — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 02:44:59 +0000

> Building something interesting requires a surplus of time and money. Salaried jobs provide neither.

Standard negatory bullshit. You should be able to achieve building something interesting, using someone elses time and money. If you can't, maybe you've got an attitude problem, not a job problem.

Autofocus time management system

tjpick — Thu, 03 Jan 2013 22:29:43 +0000

Article URL: http://markforster.squarespace.com/blog/2009/1/6/autofocus-system-instructions.html?printerFriendly=true

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5005127

Points: 6

# Comments: 2

New comment by tjpick in "Code Interview Reading List"

tjpick — Thu, 03 Jan 2013 09:09:46 +0000

Original source FOR the "orders of magnitude" claim seem to usually point back to Fred Brooks Mythical Man Month (5-10x) or Robert Glass (Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering) 28x. I don't think either of these multipliers are accurately expressed as "orders of magnitude", regardless of them being supported by evidence.

There is some discussion of the topic in "Making Software: What Really Works, and Why We Believe It."

New comment by tjpick in "On Being a Junior Developer"

tjpick — Wed, 21 Nov 2012 04:27:10 +0000

No.

They are part of the curriculum in a good SE degree. There is a SWEBOK. http://www.computer.org/portal/web/swebok

New comment by tjpick in "Automatic Updates Are The Future"

tjpick — Sun, 04 Nov 2012 23:58:12 +0000

> who have every interest in making the higher cost phones more attractive by not updating the Android version on lower cost phones

You'd be better to attribute that to them being under-resourced to deliver software updates to all models of phones immediately. They focus on shipping to the high end phones first -- those customers have paid more for that support. Some low end devices just never get to the top of the priority list.

If you want upgrades, buy the best phone you can. If you are buying low end, you have to realise that it's essentially locked to the version that it ships with.

That's my take on it anyway. I don't have any inside information.

New comment by tjpick in "Ask HN: What is your homepage?"

tjpick — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 23:52:27 +0000

about:blank

New comment by tjpick in "Disney to Acquire Lucasfilm Ltd."

tjpick — Tue, 30 Oct 2012 21:45:38 +0000

and then he jumped in his flying suit and flew around the city beating people up under his own sense of vigilante justice, all powered by the rubics cube sized nuclear reactor he has instead of a heart...

But you're worried about the influence of the talk of patent has on your kids?

New comment by tjpick in "Ask HN: Startup with minimal programming knowledge"

tjpick — Mon, 29 Oct 2012 00:05:03 +0000

Do scrum. You have the vision and the budget. You are the product owner.

Hire a scrum master and a team. Pay them handsomely and treat them kindly.

New comment by tjpick in "Nokia’s Visionary Wants to Out-Design Apple"

tjpick — Wed, 05 Sep 2012 22:09:40 +0000

I got the N9 here in New Zealand a couple of months ago. It is absolutely brilliant.

By absolutely brilliant, I mean $200 cheaper than the Lumia 800 (which I also got for my wife); A mile better than the crappy samsung gio I previously had; beautiful hardware design; very hand front facing camera and auto adjusts screen brightness to ambient light; very good account management/integration.

The thing that lets it down is app availability.

New comment by tjpick in "Ask HN: How do you choose technical books?"

tjpick — Thu, 16 Aug 2012 01:41:56 +0000

Jolt award winners, and Martin Fowler's signature series

New comment by tjpick in "Ask HN: In terms of employability python or ruby?"

tjpick — Wed, 30 May 2012 04:36:55 +0000

Kiwi?

[edit: read your profile. Actually Aus]

was going to comment that neither python nor ruby are that great if you are looking for jobs in NZ. There are more options with php, and if you are good at what you do it won't be that hard to destroy the other candidates. Java and .net will give you a lot more, better paying options.

New comment by tjpick in "Eliminating Web Development Waste"

tjpick — Tue, 29 May 2012 04:55:27 +0000

In some situations, giving developers direct access to remote [production] servers is unacceptable. (Areas like healthcare, banking.)

Not everything in life is about developer efficiency.