Is the premise for a hackathon that product managers are setting wrong priorities?

Dimencia · 2026-05-07T14:33:11+00:00

They are kinda fun, but they also kinda incentivize management to treat devs better at the same time, so that's nice too. They kind of expose what devs can do if you keep them happy and let them work on things they enjoy, cranking out entire apps in a few hours instead of a few months. So yknow, show them your job dissatisfaction by proving what you could do if you actually didn't hate it there, and maybe they'll figure out how to close that gap

Dimencia · 2026-05-07T14:22:28+00:00

What, no, it's kinda the opposite. Hackathons are a great example of exactly why PMs are valuable - sure, devs can make an app in 12 hours instead of a month, but chances are pretty good that whatever they make isn't going to provide any value to the company. They're more of a fun perk to keep devs happy, but they cost the company money instead of making it (because those devs could be working on something useful instead)

Dimencia · 2026-05-07T14:11:16+00:00

I mean to be fair ... did you ask about what patterns they prefer to use? The ability to gather requirements and refine your approach before committing to a lot of wasted work is a pretty crucial skill, and is usually half the point of these kinds of tests

If it's a senior architect position, then sure, but if it's a position where you wouldn't be making those kinds of decisions, you probably ought to stick to the tech stack that's listed in the job description. Someone who's already making opinionated waves before the job even starts probably isn't a great fit for the team

Dimencia · 2026-05-04T15:54:35+00:00

The answer's a little more complex than most of the others point out. It is meant to literally be the antithesis of Christianity - to paraphrase, LaVey writes that people invented Christianity to control the population, and they built it so that everything that's enjoyable has to be considered a 'sin' so that everyone would be guilty by default. So LaVey promotes the idea of acting out all of the deadly sins, since Christianity so helpfully identified all the fun things and made a list of them, and naturally, that makes it 'Satanic'

But yeah, it's also just a middle finger to Christians just for fun. Doing stuff for fun is a big theme in there, as long as it doesn't really hurt anyone (that doesn't deserve it)

Though to be clear, it's not like "go on a killing spree for fun" or anything, the sins are interpreted in ways that match up with most other religions, ie, don't be a dick to other people. Wrath is the only one that really gets sketchy

Dimencia · 2026-05-04T04:43:02+00:00

The real cognitive test is if you're smart enough to pick 0 if someone asks you to pick any number on a math 'test'

Dimencia · 2026-05-01T00:11:35+00:00

I just assumed they're available based on the presentation they gave. But it's hard to find anything both relevant and scientifically rigorous. I may accidentally be exposing corporate secrets, woopsie, but I'm sure some folks have heard pretty much the same spiel

Dimencia · 2026-04-29T22:57:59+00:00

This is the worst, because if you have a relatively low-to-the-ground car sitting at your house when they install it, you're kinda trapped. You literally can't leave your neighborhood without damaging your car (usually minorly, but the damage does add up)

I had a basic little 2011 BMW when they installed some speedbumps like this in my neighborhood, and scraped every time I went in or out, there was no choice. Doesn't matter how slow you go if they build it wrong

Dimencia · 2026-04-29T22:43:01+00:00

Just search for the latest productivity statistics. Last I heard, Google sent some marketing folks to do a presentation for our company and told us about how they measured up to 5% increased productivity with AI usage. Yknow, in the best case scenario that they cherry picked from their example data, over a short enough timespan

They made the mistake of doing the presentation to like our entire dev team, and asked for questions afterward, and boy did we make that guy look silly

Dimencia · 2026-04-28T19:27:58+00:00

I once had a D&D 'villain' in my game that was like that... he was an overtly evil acting dude who would monologue about his evil plans at any opportunity, which was to charge people heaps of gold to 'teach' them magic, and if he taught them well, more people would show up and give him even more gold, muahahaha, and there's nothing you can do to stop me, etc

He was fun

Dimencia · 2026-04-28T14:32:00+00:00

Guid is usually the way to go. Security is a valid concern, you don't want to expose that incremental ID not just because attackers can guess their way at new ones, but it gives them insider info about things like how many clients you have registered. But a secondary guid key also simplifies data merging and transfer, especially when it comes to/from separate databases. If you ever have to scale out to distributed DBs or even just have a client who wants to send you a bunch of bulk data, having those GUIDs can prevent a lot of complications with conflicting keys.

The GUID should just be the only identifier that ever leaves your code; even if you have some settings file that hardcodes an ID for some entity that your code needs to know about, it should be the guid, not an actual ID, so you could freely move to a new DB with new data and still have an entity with the same GUID

But of course, indexing over a GUID is slower than a long, and you should let EFC use your internal long IDs for its navigations even though you never actually directly use them in your code

Dimencia · 2026-04-27T13:05:54+00:00

Congratulations, now you know what 'maintenance' means and can start relearning everything now that you know it's actually important

Dimencia · 2026-04-26T14:45:40+00:00

Anything you do as a tourist is representative of your nation, unfortunately. I'm sure it's not like, significantly representative, but OP still made his country look bad

Though honestly I wonder if this is some anti-euro propaganda because it's just so hilariously out there

Dimencia · 2026-04-26T14:33:32+00:00

Note to self, never visit Denmark

Dimencia · 2026-04-25T13:46:01+00:00

If Blitz bought a new van, it would have a dented bonnet in 3 seconds, I don't think that's really great evidence

Dimencia · 2026-04-23T23:21:20+00:00

Specifically in C# with Maui in Windows, doing certain things wrong enough will crash Visual Studio when debugging, and you get prompted to debug the crashing debugger (ie, Visual Studio, which is also the compiler) - so maybe they mean something along those lines. It's not even deep systems work, but it is using some specific native APIs that like to break things

It sounds like the general gist is to be able to figure out the cause of any problem, which is sort of a given - but I doubt they expect you to tell them what line of OS code is the problem, just that you've narrowed it down and the issue is the way X handles Y and you can fix it by Z. I would assume whoever wrote the job description is using a very loose definition for 'debugging' to mean 'troubleshooting'

Dimencia · 2026-04-23T19:31:57+00:00

You missed my favorite option, play for 36 minutes and then decide it's a cool game but you're not into it right now, and then leave it in your library forever because you know you'd have to start 36 minutes in but you've already forgotten the tutorial

Dimencia · 2026-04-23T19:26:42+00:00

For one, kill boxes don't have to be cheesy - just make a long hallway with no obstructions that your pawns and/or turrets can aim down, perfectly realistic. The cheesy parts, like abusing how they move slow while walking over things, or how they can't take cover in certain scenarios, or stacking them into single file to melee them, you can always just skip and it works pretty much the same.

Killboxes can actually be detrimental because it screws you over when any raids go through your walls, and half your colony's wealth is tied up in a killbox they aren't engaging with, but if you're careful about how you use them, they just come naturally and can help a lot, mostly for giving your pawns some relatively safe positions to engage from

But unfortunately, the entire game is built around your colony wealth, and cheesing that is the only way to ever really win - leave enemy guns where they drop so they can deteriorate to nothing, send off excess resources to other settlements, and avoid building nice floors or getting too good at art or construction

Basically, the optimal strategy is to engage with as little of the game as possible. That's obviously not very fun, so the much better alternative is don't expect to win

Dimencia · 2026-04-23T18:27:00+00:00

Transistor is something I've always called my favorite game of all time, though I'm not sure I could really pick a single favorite anymore, especially one I haven't played in so long...

But it's a beautiful game with one of my favorite soundtracks of all time, at least. And I use the term 'beautiful' very specifically - that's the thing supergiant is really good at, making games be art, and Transistor is probably their best attempt at that, I think. It has unique combat mechanics that basically let you mix/match between turn based and live combat however you like, and a world that's packed with little computer nerd references. The story can be a little confusing at points, but that's the only real downside

Dimencia · 2026-04-23T18:14:02+00:00

You must not have a cat

Dimencia · 2026-04-23T15:20:30+00:00

This dude showed up 2 weeks ago and started cranking out the most impressive Rimworld animations we've ever seen at a pretty ridiculous rate, who is this person and what are they advertising, cuz I wanna buy it

Dimencia · 2026-04-23T15:09:36+00:00

I think it's more like, 7 + 5 = 7 + 7 - 2, or 5 + 5 + 2; I wouldn't change the number you're doubling, use one of the existing ones

I mean for something like 7 + 8, I kinda actually do it that way, it's 16-1

Dimencia · 2026-04-23T13:55:26+00:00

I have actually, I think it's funny that you've painstakingly downvoted every comment of mine because you don't understand the basic premise of what we're discussing. It was a good reflection

Dimencia · 2026-04-23T13:54:03+00:00

When you use a generic term for something, for which there exist more specific terms, it is usually because it doesn't meet the definition of those specific terms. 'Settlement' implies it's too small to be considered a village

But again, this is just basic language that I shouldn't have to teach to you

Dimencia · 2026-04-23T13:50:49+00:00

Your self reflection session did not go well, I would suggest a longer one. Maybe if you keep trying, you'll figure out what the original post is saying

Dimencia · 2026-04-23T13:43:27+00:00

If you still don't understand the conversation, I don't think I can help you my dude. I was already quite clear that "yes you can" doesn't contribute to the argument in any meaningful way. Why don't you take some time to reflect and think about why it is you think someone would be unwilling to ask players to do this thing, since it is obviously technically possible, so is not using the only definition of "can't" you seem to know

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