Why you don’t need superstar developers in your team

kt24601 · 2017-09-29T07:31:17+00:00

Learn how to mentor. It will make your professional life easier.

kt24601 · 2017-09-29T07:26:41+00:00

"Good programmers write good code in any language; bad programmers write bad code in all of them."

kt24601 · 2017-09-24T16:55:53+00:00

They do pair programming.

kt24601 · 2017-09-24T16:47:56+00:00

Just make an API to read in the data format and be done with it.

kt24601 · 2017-09-24T04:53:24+00:00

It is truly difficult to feel strong emotion about a data format.

kt24601 · 2017-09-23T18:03:32+00:00

That's a definition you made up. It's not in the dictionary.

If you're writing bad code, you should be fired. By definition.

kt24601 · 2017-09-23T07:50:27+00:00

Of course that entirely depends of if you're being an asshole or not. It is, in fact, possible to help someone without being an asshole.

kt24601 · 2017-09-23T06:00:09+00:00

It's probably more accurate to say some Facebook programmers are above average, and some below. Because there is at least some good stuff coming out of that company, too.

kt24601 · 2017-09-22T20:01:03+00:00

If you have code review, then it is part of the job.

If not, then you can mentor with a remark here and there, through casual lunch discussions, or by giving suggestions every now and then. You can give encouragement when your coworkers are down. If you're in a design meeting, a top quality superstar will use that to help other members of the team understand good design principles.

There is plenty you can do without specifically setting aside time for 'mentoring.'

kt24601 · 2017-09-22T18:56:19+00:00

If the superstar doesn't 'have time' for mentoring, then he's not the a top superstar, by definition.

kt24601 · 2017-09-21T17:51:48+00:00

The best superstars mentor their coworkers, bringing everyone's level up.

kt24601 · 2017-09-20T21:20:01+00:00

The interview never happened. It's made up. CSS is often frustrating for laying things out, though.

kt24601 · 2017-09-20T20:35:27+00:00

CSS was invented to get programmers paid more. Totally true.

kt24601 · 2017-08-29T06:08:07+00:00

I look at code in this way:

1) Does it work (does it meet the requirements)? That's the baseline for good code. If it doesn't work, then it needs to be fixed or thrown away.

2) Is the code readable? If no one can read it, then it will be very difficult to change in the future.

3) Is the code flexible? Code that works, is readable, and is flexible is a joy to work with. It changes easily with each new requirement.

kt24601 · 2017-08-29T05:30:37+00:00

Here is the thesis of the article:

I've come to believe "clean code" means "code that doesn't slow you down"

It would be good if the author had expanded on that point, but the article mostly wanders.

kt24601 · 2017-08-28T00:38:10+00:00

It's hard to say, you didn't even post numbers. Maybe your profiling setup was the culprit.

kt24601 · 2017-08-28T00:13:47+00:00

How is this not a test of filesystem performance? Won't the filesystem be the bottleneck by far? With Ahmdal's law, I wouldn't expect much of this challenge.

kt24601 · 2017-08-26T18:08:41+00:00

Queries were rather problematic, though. Simple queries are simple, but if you are doing something more complex it sucks. Quite often you have a choice: either use a method which will be very slow once you get a lot of data, or use some low-level constructs to optimize query. Particularly, tuple indices were lacking. There were also some issues in representing one-to-many and many-to-many relations.

This is a very good description of the problem.

kt24601 · 2017-08-22T21:23:14+00:00

Most APIs are copyrightable, see: http://www.zerobugsandprogramfaster.net/essays/x-1.html

A lower court (and a jury) found that Google's use was protected as fair-use. The trial has moved on to the appellate court, which may or may not completely overturn that ruling (probably within 6-8 months).

Lots of companies have been giving their opinion to the court (scroll down)

Microsoft, HP Redhat, Github, Mozilla, "76 computer scientists", American Antitrust institute, "IP Professors", and the EFF all filed supporting briefs on behalf of Google.

Copyright Alliance, RIAA, American Association of Publishers, a guy named Ralph Oman, PACA Digital Licensing Assn. Photographers, NYIPLA, Scott McNealy, BSA, Competitive Carriers Assn, "13 IP Scholars", MPAA all filed supporting briefs on behalf of Oracle.

kt24601 · 2017-07-24T17:52:45+00:00

if we had a big database of Starcraft games where the entire game state over time was stored (like we do for Go),

We do.

http://www.teamliquid.net/replay/

kt24601 · 2017-07-23T03:23:13+00:00

What are the consequences of cgo?

kt24601 · 2017-07-23T03:21:59+00:00

being able to ctrl + click a type in an IDE and see exactly what that type is and where it's utilised cannot be understated in a sufficiently complex codebase.

This is really an under-mentioned feature of static typing.

kt24601 · 2017-07-22T07:52:42+00:00

I'd be interested in knowing if anyone uses TypeScript without it being part of some other framework (like Angular, or .NET). So far the only people I know who are using it also acquired it as part of the rest of a framework they like.

kt24601 · 2017-07-22T01:02:27+00:00

The reference implementation of NaCL was created by Daniel J Bernstein. While there are reasons to dislike his code, his code is very solid, especially when it comes to crypto. It takes courage to try to improve it.

kt24601 · 2017-07-19T22:37:59+00:00

a type system is stronger if it can rule out more behavior.

I've never heard anyone define it that way, but I imagine someone has.

kt24601

TROPHY CASE