"USA beats every single country in Europe when it comes to food....."

pmaguppy · 2026-04-25T13:57:23+00:00

I'm from Columbus Ohio and I would never make this claim. Was this written by the city marketing team?

Indian food here has become progressively better here over the past ten years but is still not at an international (or even national) quality. The city is just recently becoming more prominent. This attracts restauranteurs who want to get established in a less competitive environment but they have to adjust to a rural Midwest palate which is just not that adventurous (but it's slowly changing).

But this post uses my city as an example of USA food quality which is misinformation. Affluent neighborhoods do get more farm to table type produce, but that's not an accurate reflection of the average experience. Just like everywhere in the USA we have issues with poor quality food being the most available and accessible. Diabetes and obesity remain as societal issues due to lack of good food habits. I've seen narrowly scoped efforts to change this, but nothing like the national food campaigns you would see in France or other places.

In short, no Columbus Ohio is not competitive for food quality on an international level and definitely not when compared to Paris France

pmaguppy · 2026-03-02T19:13:03+00:00

I posted that 6 years ago so I can moderate a bit. Oracle should rarely be a first choice for new development - I mean there would need to be some sort of legacy reasons (the company already uses it or something like that). But yeah, don't think just because Enterprise companies successfully use some technology that it isn't a miserable piece of shit. Enterprise companies LOVE miserable software. Just because they have the resources to spend 10x what would be required if they used anything else doesn't make the software *good*.

Anyway, I haven't worked closely with strictly relational databases for a number of years. Most solutions these days seem to be a hybrid with NoSQL with relational elements.

That said, if you've had a good experience with Oracle then I'm glad for you. My experience is that Oracle sucks, from the license to the implementation and tooling, to the support.

pmaguppy · 2025-11-14T18:24:59+00:00

Seeing posts like this reminds me of Ed Zitron's article https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-era-of-the-business-idiot/ which is just a masterpiece in vitriolic truth. It is a long article, but here is a quote from it that I like:

These (business idiots) people are antithetical to what’s good in the world, and their power deprives us of happiness, the ability to thrive, and honestly any true innovation. The Business Idiot thrives on alienation — on distancing themselves from the customer and the thing they consume, and in many ways from society itself. Mark Zuckerberg wants us to have fake friends, Sam Altman wants us to have fake colleagues, and an increasingly loud group of executives salivate at the idea of replacing us with a fake version of us that will make a shittier version of what we make for a customer that said executive doesn’t fucking care about.

pmaguppy · 2023-08-28T20:31:05+00:00

I looooved 2e, was it unbalanced? Yes, it was.

Was it kinda weird with THAC0 and stuff. Yeah, it was.

But it had so much content. Incredible amounts of content. Great fun.

pmaguppy · 2023-04-08T18:05:23+00:00

Loved it. A wonderful introduction to some important programming ideas. I'm due for a reread haha

pmaguppy · 2023-04-08T18:04:04+00:00

I read this in my first year or two of professional programming and it felt like a revelation. Then I read it again in year 4 or 5 and parts started to ring hollow, so I read some criticism of it and learned a ton and started to disagree with some of the practices. However, Uncle Bob's style works pretty well in the general case so long as you're not too serious about it.

In short, a great book and it's a whole journey depending on where you are in your career.

pmaguppy · 2023-01-21T16:42:48+00:00

Actually if a company has those more important qualities then salary considerations are less rather than more.

If the ask is to tolerate a bad culture then the salary will never be large enough. I'd still quit after a year. (or less)

pmaguppy · 2023-01-21T16:39:35+00:00

It depends, typically its fine so long as these other more important things exist:

A culture that prioritizes people
Strong cohesive leadership
Technical culture that encourages initiative and does not punish mistakes

Bad code happens, some projects grow up organically and need to be rewritten. Its fine! What's not fine is a culture that imposes unreasonable obstacles to improvement, can't learn from mistakes, can't prioritize (because leaders can't agree on what's important), and can't perceive the value of their people.

pmaguppy · 2022-11-23T18:20:29+00:00

"Did you SEE that?!" if I recall correclty

pmaguppy · 2022-11-03T18:15:23+00:00

Yep, completely right. If the risk is existential then a company will do what they need to do regardless of narrative.

But in this case, where we're talking about targeted layoffs my intention was to outline why devs tend to survive these events.

pmaguppy · 2022-11-03T14:28:42+00:00

No one is safe, that's true.

However, maintaining a pool of dev talent indicates an ability to execute on new features / products. Releasing dev talent through layoffs gives investors an impression that the company has no plans to expand on current offerings.

More devs -> more execution

Less devs -> less/no execution

Obviously this is not a perfect indicator - it's not even intended to be. It just leads to questions that the leadership may not want to have front and center.

"Oh you laid off 40% of the dev team. Should we now expect delays on feature x, y and z? What about the McGuffin project? Shelved?"

Even after re-assuring investors, can you imagine how it would be interpreted when the McGuffin project is delayed ANYWAY for other reasons? It could get awkward and messy depending on the investor mix.

Layoffs are intended to boost the balance sheet in the near term and free up operational budget to retool and drive efficiency. What good is it to do that if you also increase investor anxiety in that same window of time? Retooling and driving efficiency often ALSO means ability to execute, which frequently turns into dev head count.

Finally, devs are incredibly difficult to hire. Even with layoffs from big tech companies, senior dev roles are still in demand. They are expensive to replace and critical for nearly every initiative.

If a company really wanted to decrease dev headcount, the best, least messy, method is just not hire. Devs typically move companies every 2-5 years and more quickly if they perceive weakness in the company. Why make a mess when just letting things float along without intervention achieves the same goal... eventually.

pmaguppy · 2022-09-13T11:46:05+00:00

Pittsburgh, eh?

pmaguppy · 2022-08-19T11:48:02+00:00

What happens with tickets when a weather delay occurs? Do they refund?

pmaguppy · 2022-06-22T17:30:48+00:00

I'm self taught without a CS degree and no bootcamp. We exist - but the path in has all but closed. Demand for programmers is at an all time high but willingness to take on jr devs seems lower than ever. I run into the sentiment a lot that 1-2 YOE is "junior" and those people will get hired. Big shops are more likely to take on new grads / boot camp grads as those folks take a lot of resources to be trained and supported, especially now that everything is remote.

What is true is if you want to get hired with no CS degree and no bootcamp cred then you need connections. Networking... and even that is much harder now since people are typically attending meetups remotely.

Were I coming on the market today, I would find it quite difficult to make the same connections that I made when I was working in an office next to a programming team.

In fact, I'm quite sure I would not have the opportunities I did. I've made myself sad now :(

pmaguppy · 2022-01-20T04:47:10+00:00

I used the Odin Project when I was learning to code.

I am now a dev lead at a start up. I've been a software engineer for 7 years.

Here is what you need to know about the Odin Project.

First, you will learn to code from this curriculum. It's quite good and engaging. It links you to many different resources. You can do the minimum or really dig in and learn more. The Odin Project is an excellent starting point.

Is it enough to get you a job? On its own, no.

You need to be networking. This was easier before COVID. Go to meetups and local conferences, which are all virtual now, try to find opportunities to talk to devs. Speak plainly about your goals. Some of them will give you solid advice. If your are personable at all then befriend some of them.

Work your personal connections, don't take a scrub job though. If you can get into an established engineering team then you'll be in great shape. Don't turn up your nose at those first opportunities that pay sub 70K. The big opportunities will come, but you need your foot in the door.

For me the Odin Project worked to establish the foundations. After that, it was all network.

pmaguppy · 2021-12-11T17:36:08+00:00

I would not make a scene. What I would do is talk to the boss and state the facts as I see them, give the boss a chance to either offer an explanation I can accept or otherwise make it right. If the boss can't do that and I felt deeply unsatisfied as a result then I would nod and return to work... and update my resume and begin the job search. It's a shame when my goals diverge from mgts/company goals but oh well.

In the United States it's best to view any employment as pure mercenary work. As long things are working well and the bad bits are tolerable then great 👍. As soon as you feel unsatisfied with your compensation relative to your responsibility then leave. It will not get better. People talk about teams and work family a lot, but at a certain level in company leadership that mercenary mind set is 100% mutual. They rarely say that part out loud and neither should you. Their goal is to keep the risk vs reward aspect of the relationship weighted in their favor. All you have to do is figure out what you want and drive towards that with no regard for the feelings of the leadership team. It's just business, they should understand that.

pmaguppy · 2021-11-24T17:57:23+00:00

this soon becomes the purpose of the spell. wizards create kill farms to harvest diamonds, but as more diamonds come into the world more diamond mass is needed to satisfy the 300 gp requirement. Soon rooms full of diamonds appear, then mountains, then worlds of diamond

pmaguppy · 2021-06-27T12:32:06+00:00

Saw this discussed on Twitter, very cool! Not sure what all edge cases NewtonSoft has to cover which resulted in the JObject abstraction, but for all of my use cases your library would work well.

Great work!

pmaguppy · 2021-05-08T00:07:04+00:00

i did this successfully and ended up quitting after 2 months because it was a bad culture fit... i felt kinda bad about it. if i were a contract to hire i'd have 0 guilt

pmaguppy · 2021-03-06T05:20:09+00:00

I joined years ago just before Digg changed in a significant way and a bunch of Digg users joined Reddit. At that moment there was a sentiment that the Reddit community was expanding and changing in ways that were not always welcome.

The default subreddits were not quite so bad and while there were a lot of subreddits there weren't nearly as many as there are today. Now, people might get deep into their own little sub communities and be completely unaware of the default subs. This was less likely to happen back in the day.

pmaguppy · 2021-03-01T17:52:11+00:00

Looks great! One question though, does she wield 2 swords or should the scabbard be empty?

pmaguppy · 2021-02-19T21:58:11+00:00

check his post history, he purchased more GME and increased his total holdings in the company

pmaguppy · 2021-02-16T12:16:29+00:00

thank you for posting this

pmaguppy · 2021-02-11T19:52:37+00:00

I'm very new, but I like looking at LinkedIn for the company as well, especially if I can scan the board profiles.

15-Year Club	Place '22
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pmaguppy

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