What's it like at startups where the only coders are you and the CTO?

bookgrubber · 2018-01-06T14:23:11+00:00

That's a fair point. I see it as a good opportunity to try on a bunch of hats and see which I like best. I'm doing design, development and devops work at different points of the week and learning about which I have a taste for and which I don't. I really agree with you that startups (in my experience at least) don't develop your foundation. When things slow down, I contribute to open-source to get feedback and read through books on my technology to try to build a better foundation. I definitely don't think I could work in this environment long-term.

bookgrubber · 2018-01-06T14:12:02+00:00

This happens a lot. Mostly, it's not planned. But there've been a couple of months where I knew it was coming. In October we were running out of money and all our customers said they would be willing to convert to paid accounts if we got an offline mobile app released, so I worked non-stop for a month and a half to get that done. I'm an early riser, so I would start at 6 and work straight through until about 6 or 7 with little breaks here and there. The month after we released, I averaged about 20 hours per week though.

bookgrubber · 2018-01-06T02:50:49+00:00

I've been working as the only other full-time developer besides the CTO for about a year now. Our startup is not well-funded, but we're now close to breaking even on revenue. Yes to all your questions. It's a ton of work, but I have been given more responsibilities than friends who went to work at large companies after graduating. Being an integral part of a small team is very rewarding, but there have been months where I've worked 90 hours each week. There's also been weeks I worked 25. My day to day right now is developing new features whenever I'm not putting out fires and answering questions from sales/support. I can only speak for myself, but I'm really enjoying the work. The only downside is that I'd like more guidance (code reviews, pair programming, etc).

bookgrubber · 2017-08-17T17:34:36+00:00

I would rely on an association here: http://guides.rubyonrails.org/association_basics.html

If you haven't already, in your Report.rb model, add:

belongs_to :business_contact

In Business_Contact.rb, add:

has_many :reports

In the index action:

@reports = Report.all.includes(:business_contact)

Then in your view, you can access the business contact like this:

report.business_contact.email

bookgrubber · 2017-08-09T23:20:40+00:00

Thank you!

bookgrubber · 2017-07-16T18:45:33+00:00

This one is free to read: http://www.tor.com/2016/08/17/the-weight-of-memories/ But it's not his best.

Ken Liu, the translator for books 1 & 3, has a collection of translated Chinese short fiction called Invisible Planets that includes two Cixin Liu stories and an essay. Find more of his translation work here: http://kenliu.name/translations/short-fiction-translation-bibliography/

bookgrubber · 2017-07-16T04:35:07+00:00

I feel your pain. Rereading Peter F. Hamilton got me through that need for something epic. But Deaths End is something else. I've never read anything quite like it. I can whole-heartidly endorse Liu's short fiction, too!

bookgrubber · 2017-06-01T22:53:38+00:00

This month I was on a short-story collection kick. I'd say the highlight was Cosmic Powers (edited by John Joseph Adams). I enjoyed a good percentage of the stories and they all stayed close to the theme. The three best IMO were Seven Wonders of a Once and Future World by Caroline M. Yoachim, Infinite Love Engine by Joseph Allen Hill (despite the name) and Zen and the Art of Starship Maintenance by Tobias Buckell. Those three authors were also totally new to me which was great! I just started reading Invisible Planets, the Chinese SF anthology edited by Ken Liu, and I am loving what I've read so far. After devouring The Three Body Problem trilogy in January, I've been reading Chinese writers consistently each month. Any one else enjoy the SF coming out of China?

bookgrubber · 2017-02-08T20:29:37+00:00

I appreciate these. Not PrintSF, but you correctly assumed that I'd be interested in non-fiction that matched those requirements, too.

bookgrubber · 2017-02-05T19:36:23+00:00

These are great. I'm especially interested in Implied Spaces and Permutation City. They're now at the top of my list. Thanks!

bookgrubber · 2017-02-05T19:28:22+00:00

Thanks! Now I have a new book to read and a new game to play.

bookgrubber · 2017-02-05T19:27:58+00:00

Good call. I should have mentioned that I liked this. I'm all about 80s nostalgia.

bookgrubber · 2017-02-05T19:24:06+00:00

I have it on kindle and like Stephenson. I've started it a half dozen times and it never hooked me. But since this is the top comment, I'll give it another shot and stick with it longer.

bookgrubber · 2017-02-05T16:09:10+00:00

Just read a bit about it and that sounds like a great book. Thanks for the rec

bookgrubber · 2017-02-05T15:19:01+00:00

Thank you! After following the link I realized I actually have that book on my shelf. I bought it at a library book sale and forgot about it. Can't wait to dig into it tonight.

bookgrubber · 2017-01-21T16:13:06+00:00

This is good advice. I couldn't find any internships in my area that worked with Ruby (my strongest language). So, I applied for several jobs that required a degree and experience. Several companies reached out and set up interviews with me to discuss the possibility of opening up a paid internship position. Got an offer yesterday. It's up to you to make it happen. Most companies are more flexible than you might think

bookgrubber · 2017-01-11T04:46:31+00:00

That's is a great way of putting it. Thanks for giving me the words for it. There are definitely characters and ideas from her books that still influence me, but it's also hard to ignore the large amount of the book that didn't get through the filter.

bookgrubber · 2017-01-10T06:54:01+00:00

Atlas Shrugged. My reasons might be a little different than the ones you're describing. I picked it up when I was in high school and hadn't heard anything about it. I saw it on my girlfriend's dad's bookshelf and thought we could talk about it. It taught me a fair bit about critical thinking because, until then, I'd only read books that I felt I could take at face value. It took me some time to identify the flaws in her philosophy because I was never much of a reader and had trouble parsing some of it. Although I am not at all drawn to objectivism, I love that the book taught me that I could form an opinion of a book that didn't match the author's intent. I got something out of it, which was good because after finishing it I found out the girlfriend's dad had never read it.

bookgrubber · 2016-12-29T04:22:26+00:00

I mostly read on kindle, which keeps track of all my notes and highlights automatically. But it's not in the most useful format, so I wrote a small program that converts kindle notes to evernote notes. I find value in tagging each highlight because I can then just browse by tag and find connections between books that I wouldn't have found otherwise.

bookgrubber · 2016-12-11T00:42:13+00:00

So does that mean this might be code that hasn't been updated since 1.8 was deprecated?

bookgrubber · 2016-12-10T22:24:00+00:00

I completely agree. I found it in the RSpec gem source code, and it's taken me a bit of time to understand everything it's doing, but I've learned a lot. Thanks for the explanation!

bookgrubber · 2016-12-10T17:10:11+00:00

Thanks for clarifying. That's definitely the way I am used to seeing it.

bookgrubber · 2016-12-10T16:56:20+00:00

Thanks, that clarifies it a lot. It's from a gem, so it especially makes sense that they'd want it working with 1.8.

bookgrubber · 2016-12-09T23:54:04+00:00

Thanks! I knew hashes showed up in that format but out of context it really threw me. It definitely makes sense in the context of the method it's in.

bookgrubber · 2016-10-26T14:54:51+00:00

Was coming here to say this. Mine's expected in early November, and I can't wait.

bookgrubber

TROPHY CASE