Hacker News: w4tson

New comment by w4tson in "Improving breast reconstruction surgery with a web-based survey"

w4tson — Tue, 24 Nov 2020 06:33:56 +0000

Load times for me are super slow also. I managed to get half way through. Will my partial survey still help?

New comment by w4tson in "I Ripped Out a £6k Lighting System"

w4tson — Sun, 15 Nov 2020 23:08:13 +0000

Out of interest, what light switches did you choose?

New comment by w4tson in "Ask HN: How to Learn Rust"

w4tson — Sun, 20 Sep 2020 20:47:17 +0000

This is great advice. This is how I learned. When you’ve completed a puzzle (and not before!) check out how others solved it here https://github.com/Bogdanp/awesome-advent-of-code

I highly recommend burntsushi’s solutions. They were closer to what I was aiming for: readable & maintainable idiomatic rust.

New comment by w4tson in "The UK's “Chief Digital Officer” job has been open for over a year"

w4tson — Fri, 11 Sep 2020 20:24:30 +0000

Perfect!

New comment by w4tson in "Ask HN: Impressively Responsive Modern Software?"

w4tson — Wed, 26 Aug 2020 04:45:13 +0000

Yes! You can keep your Atoms and VS codes. Sublime is sooo fast. It never lets me down for opening huge files.

New comment by w4tson in "Ask HN: How to do cross platform GUI?"

w4tson — Sun, 23 Aug 2020 20:52:30 +0000

IntelliJ is written in swing. It’s about the most complex piece of desktop software you’re ever going to use.

It’s objectively orders of magnitude more complex than a messaging app. Heck, it used to have messaging built in at one point I remember!

Also, I’ve done a bit of Qt and while I don’t have an example (I’m sure someone else could supply one- finance back/front office?) it’s predominantly used with C++ which scales to millions of likes of code.

New comment by w4tson in "Ask HN: What software do you use for business 1:1 chat (NOT group/channel chat)?"

w4tson — Thu, 13 Aug 2020 19:33:35 +0000

+1 for jitsi

New comment by w4tson in "Crash and Burn: The Amiga ST Story"

w4tson — Fri, 31 Jul 2020 05:40:58 +0000

Yeah I grew up with A500. I loved that machine. It came with a paper BASIC reference manual. It was years before I worked out what it’s purpose was. Once I did though, I was hooked,

I tried AMOS basic, though this was a little difficult because of patchy intel. No YouTube tutorials to learn from. Only books from the library or AmigaFormat magazines. Blitz basic was easier and I had some better tutorials. I progressed to writing my own games.

When I finally moved to PC I picked up rudimentary C++ to write a game, I managed but but it was difficult. Then pascal at school. Java at university. Now it’s my day job. JavaScript was learned on the job.

On the side I’ve learned groovy, scala, kotlin, go, rust.

I’ve now been a software dev for 16 years professionally and have started a consultancy this year.

All pretty much thanks to the Amiga. That machine was an Xmas present, I almost got a Nintendo instead. I sometimes wonder how different my life would have been!

New comment by w4tson in "A Visual Guide to React Mental Models: UseState, UseEffect and Lifecycles"

w4tson — Fri, 29 May 2020 21:30:38 +0000

I really like your style of explaining. Your diagrams are ace too. I like how they’re not too polished, they’re focused on conveying your message. You have a real talent for explaining stuff

New comment by w4tson in "Tools for Better Thinking"

w4tson — Thu, 28 May 2020 19:59:08 +0000

New comment by w4tson in "Ask HN: What are you learning?"

w4tson — Mon, 06 Apr 2020 04:54:20 +0000

It’s been both great and terrible to be cooked up in a small flat with my wife and child. I’m always happy to see comments like this. I wonder if there’s a community for the M(o|u|a)ms/Dads of HN

Any tips for communications with partners?

New comment by w4tson in "Tell HN: My first day of Advent of Code ended with some sourness"

w4tson — Wed, 04 Dec 2019 19:22:49 +0000

Not a Rust expert. Here are my solutions

https://github.com/w4tson/advent-of-code-2019/blob/master/da...

New comment by w4tson in "Ask HN: Best books you've read in 2019?"

w4tson — Wed, 13 Nov 2019 06:17:46 +0000

I’ve “read” 19 books this year (thanks Audible)

These were my faves:

“Wolf hall” by Hilary Mantell

“The Selfish Gene” by Richard Dawkins

“Never Split the difference” by Chris Voss

“How to talk so kids will listen” by Joanna Faber & Julie King

New comment by w4tson in "Ask HN: Read any good books lately?"

w4tson — Tue, 17 Sep 2019 20:10:06 +0000

I listened to the Selfish Gene on Audible recently and was blown away by it.

All through school I never had much of an interest in biology or genetics. I think if I’d read this earlier it may have changed my mind.

Planning on reading the Blind Watchmaker at some point.

Spurred on by reading the former I thought I’d listen to A Brief History of Time. Wow that is a whole different kettle of fish. I had to stop because I realized it wasn’t the right format (Audiobook), for me at least.

New comment by w4tson in "What Netflix’s ‘Great Hack’ Gets Wrong About Cambridge Analytica"

w4tson — Mon, 26 Aug 2019 20:50:45 +0000

Or as they say in Yorkshire: all fur coat and no knickers

New comment by w4tson in "Ask HN: The most useful Mac keyboard shortcuts?"

w4tson — Thu, 08 Aug 2019 04:43:51 +0000

Me too! It’s a great tip

New comment by w4tson in "Ask HN: What major trend in tech were you wrong about?"

w4tson — Sun, 21 Jul 2019 20:45:31 +0000

React. I thought it was another flash in the pan library from Facebook. Likely to be never heard of again in 6 months.

In my defense I’ve seen a lot UI Framework/libraries come and quickly disappear. But yeah it’s still going strong 6 years later. Which is about 100 years in JavaScript time

New comment by w4tson in "Ask HN: Recommend one book I need to read this summer?"

w4tson — Thu, 04 Jul 2019 21:25:25 +0000

Non Violent Communication

I found it as a recommendation on HN sometime ago and I would recommend it to software people especially as we can be an argumentative bunch.

It helped me with relationships at home and at work

New comment by w4tson in "Ask HN: Recommend one book I need to read this summer?"

w4tson — Thu, 04 Jul 2019 21:08:25 +0000

Plus one. I’m reading this now. I have little interest in biology/zoology but already I’m gripped by it. I can’t believe how old it is, yet still feels fresh

New comment by w4tson in "How Developers Stop Learning: Rise of the Expert Beginner"

w4tson — Sat, 23 Mar 2019 06:11:31 +0000

Java is obsolete in the same way Apple is obsolete because it sold a few less iPhones.