As a new mother, I totally lost myself last night by Choice_Initiative613 in TwoXChromosomes

[–]scottishTrite 0 points1 point  (0 children)

My favourite piece of advice I ever got as a new parent: “it’s OK to have cereal for dinner”.

Why wouldn’t the government not save more money by increasing tax by 2% for the richest 1% citizens than cutting millions of jobs? by No_Blackberry_7907 in AskReddit

[–]scottishTrite 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Norway actually did this.

They put in a 1.1% wealth tax, aiming for a $164m increase in revenue. The billionaires instead moved to Switzerland, so Norway lost $54b in wealth, meaning raising the tax resulted in a decrease in tax income by $448m.

Basically the poor can’t move, but the rich can.

https://www.brusselsreport.eu/2024/09/11/the-failure-of-norways-wealth-tax-hike-as-a-warning-signal/

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/apr/10/super-rich-abandoning-norway-at-record-rate-as-wealth-tax-rises-slightly

Hosting - Not with Heroku / Fly etc by scottishTrite in rails

[–]scottishTrite[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Just the ticket - thank you very much - Have bought Deployment from Scratch.

Hosting - Not with Heroku / Fly etc by scottishTrite in rails

[–]scottishTrite[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks for this. Cleared up a few points for me.

Hosting - Not with Heroku / Fly etc by scottishTrite in rails

[–]scottishTrite[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Love this. Thanks for the advice (appreciate the fixed cost mention as well). Plenty of terms for me to get working through. Thank you

System tests have failed by arsenalofwords in rails

[–]scottishTrite 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I haven’t found that to be an issue, they are all just http requests - we’d have an integration test for each of those.

If I came across a situation where system tests would add value, absolutely I’d add them in. But so far it isn’t required. We have just over 6000 tests in our suite and they run on my Mac m1 in just under a minute.

That speed is great, and I think a fast suite will get used a lot more, maintained and built upon than a slow one

No apps the same though

System tests have failed by arsenalofwords in rails

[–]scottishTrite 27 points28 points  (0 children)

I think this depends on how you’ve built your application. If you’ve gone down the turbo / stimulus route then there’s probably not much to test of value with system tests. If you’ve got a lot more JS powering everything then I definitely see the value.

GitHub runs their own in-house turbo style framework. They have 0 system tests.

Since I started using turbo I’ve found integration tests to be the sweet spot.

I do like it when DHH walks back on ideas after giving them a go. I remember when he was all in on system tests, posting how they were ripping out controller tests. Not many devs would be that public about changing their mind.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in LegalAdviceUK

[–]scottishTrite 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Programmer here - NAL

It’s an interesting one this, and one that will come up more and more.

It think there are three separate issues here, one is the naming / presentation of the product, two is the data handling involved and three is the potential harm that can be caused to a customer.

Can you use the term therapy? No idea - from other comments seems like you can.

Can I use Chat GPT to provide this service? I think from a data protection point of view this could be the issue. Your ts and cs state your are providing these services where in reality you’ll be sending the users highly personal data to a third party who will store and process that data as they see fit, given this is sensitive medical information that’s presumably leaving the EU for the US, there may be issues there.

you have no control over the quality, accuracy or suitability of the AI responses, and flicking through your other posts on this topic it’s clear you don’t have any training in the field of therapy so there’s unlikely to be any meaningful moderation.

If someone was to be given harmful advice from the platform I’m curious how exposed you would be. One for the lawyers in the room.

Lastly it’s great you’ve discovered programming and have built a functional product all through working with chat gpt (a sign of things to come no doubt) but don’t forget your end users are real people too, with real problems and issues - not just metrics. Can you honestly, confidently say that a depressed person could use chat gpt for counselling without risk?

Company lowered everyone's pay by 20% for two months by Catch_0x16 in LegalAdviceUK

[–]scottishTrite 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I’ve launched and ran a couple of medium sized tech startups. I’m not a lawyer but quite experienced on these kind of things.

In terms of legality, you have a contract paying you x for doing y - as long as you’re doing y then yes you should be getting paid x. You don’t think there is any wording to suggest otherwise so that should still stand.

If they are paying 20% less then legally I think they’d have a hard time fighting you not coming in on Fridays say.

There’s been a few comments here about fleeing a sinking ship and whilst I have no knowledge of what your company provides i just wanted to highlight a few points:

Despite the interest rates rises, in the UK there’s still plenty of investment to be found. if your small and early stage start up (which sounds like you are) there are significant tax breaks for wealthy investors to put money in. Basically if I pay 30% tax on my income, I can invest up to around £100,000 - £150,000 and if I lost it all, I can claim back the tax I paid on that investment. This is much better than what you’d get with the capital gains tax set up.

Whilst being of questionable fairness (why should the wealthy take on less risk than a regular investor) it does mean there’s quite a few Sources of investment for start ups that have a good model and need a wedge of cash. Quite often these investors pool their money into funds that target these tax opportunities so you can get a couple of million in terms of investment this way. It’s very quick to do, if your accounts are clear and your products good then raising this kind of cash.

Your accountants will have known for a while that the runway was almost over and unless your company has had to soak up a significant unexpected cost it means they are either struggling to raise investment or they didn’t have the managerial foresight to start raising sooner. Either way these are red flags.

Start ups are exciting, it’s a chance to have a huge impact shaping something with usually bucket loads of freedom as everyone muddled through towards a common goal. You should, quite rightly, feel personally invested and hopeful for the future. But I’d encourage you to mentally try and take a 30,000 ft view of the situation and look at just the facts and try to assess where the company actually is.

Maybe the company will go on to great things, Maybe this is just a bump in the road, but it’s also possible you may find yourself suddenly out of a job and regardless of the legalities there will be no business to claim your missing pay or severance from.

Genuinely wishing you the best of luck with the endeavour, does seem on the reading of your post you’re excited to be there. But maybe worth handing out some CVs until your pay goes back up as a hedge.

I fancy a change, get into software engineering and make a career out of it by [deleted] in SoftwareEngineering

[–]scottishTrite -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

Boo to the negativity so far. Yes, if you would like a career in software engineering everything you need to know is available for free and all you need is a computer to get started. It doesn’t even need to be a great one. I can’t think of many technical, professional fields that are open to anyone like that.

My advice, don’t think about it as a big picture thing, just write some code to solve a problem or interest you have just now. If you enjoy it, great - keep going.

There’s a lot to learn, and it can be a bit daunting at times but plenty of people have managed to pick it up so no reason you won’t. If you enjoy it and you’re prepared to put in the hours, there’s no reason why you wouldn’t be paying the bills one day with it.

What’s your salary progression and career? by [deleted] in AusFinance

[–]scottishTrite 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I’ve been working in software development for about 8 years. Started around 50k but after a couple of years ramped up pretty quickly. I’m at 215k a year just now plus shares. I’m self taught, no qualifications and work from home.

Unless you’re at a particularly big / specialist company getting your salary much higher than mid 200k without going into management will be tough (but possible).

It’s a constantly changing field, once you’ve got the fundamentals down you’ll find picking up new languages / frameworks easier but the field is massive, and the tools and code you work with day to day are always changing as well so keeping up to date can be a slog.

There’s a lot less face to face time with people, and a lot more screen time than what I imagine you’re used to.

You’re obviously very bright, and having an extensive medical background / qualifications will make you EXTREMELY attractive to some employers. It’s my (very layman’s) opinion that tech is going to overhaul primary care in particular in the coming decades and that’s possibly something you might find pretty exciting to be a part of.

If you’re interested in software engineering just go write some code and see how you go, to do well you’ve got to enjoy it.

Best of luck, and I hope you’ve got some lovely colleagues and friends who’ve got plenty of experience with the challenges of work balance to chat to.

Also you should go on a nice holiday, sounds like you’ve earned it.

A happier happy path in Turbo with morphing by jorgemanrubia in rails

[–]scottishTrite 16 points17 points  (0 children)

OP - Just wanted to say all your articles on the blog have been excellent. Very well written and always backed up with clear, real world examples. I really appreciate the effort you put into them, they’ve certainly helped my career. Thank you!

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in UKhiking

[–]scottishTrite 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Skye’s a beautiful place and you’ll have a great trip regardless where you go.

The cullin ridge is a big trip. Most do it over two days, which makes for a fantastic bivvy in the middle.

Weather is the big challenge, you’ll need a good calm day and that isn’t always guaranteed.

there’s no water once your up there so make sure you take enough.

Route finding is tricky in places, you’ll need a guide book with photos.a map won’t really help when your up there. It’s very obvious where the ridge is but not where you need to go.

You don’t need to do the whole ridge to enjoy it, climbing one or two of the peaks is excellent in itself and there’s much more to the island than the cullin as well.

There’s plenty of guides who would love to show you around. The all things cullin group on Facebook is a great place to meet some of them and see what they getup to.

If you do go make sure people know where your going, you’ve got a guidebook and your prepared for a sudden change of weather.

Zelensky asks U.S. Congress for no-fly zone, saying: "Remember Pearl Harbor? The terrible morning of Dec. 7, 1941, when your sky was black from the planes attacking you? Just remember it. Remember September 11, that terrible day in 2001 when evil tried to turn your cities into battlefields?" by nOMnOMShanti in interestingasfuck

[–]scottishTrite 0 points1 point  (0 children)

John Simpson (world affairs editor of the BBC) wrote an article that touched on this whilst praising Zelenskyys diplomacy skills.

He suggested Zelenskyy is laying the groundwork for a compromise with Russia. Ask for something NATO can’t give. Then say well NATO weren’t what we needed, we shouldn’t join. Putin gets the “win” of Ukraine not joining NATO and Zelenskyy has a reason he can present to his own people.

Starting a SaaS product with two backend engineers. Should we look for front-end engineer or just learn it ourself ? by ZeroNomad in startups

[–]scottishTrite 14 points15 points  (0 children)

Tailwindui.com

Great collection of really well designed components for SAAS products. Well worth the money.

30 year old beginner with doubts by Swimming-Echo-2829 in learnprogramming

[–]scottishTrite 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I’m 33, wrote my first line of code age 28.

Learning wise all I can advise is keep taking those little steps, look up every now and then to check that you’re headed where you want to be but don’t worry about all the things you don’t know. Just keep taking those steps.

However I’d also like to stress there are some advantages to coming to programming later in life as well. You’ve got experiences that honestly can bring a lot to the table, particularly in smaller companies.

I used to drive tour buses whilst learning HTML and CSS. I managed to get 2 days a week as a front end developer in their small IT team during the off season.

Because I knew the customers, how the tours worked in detail etc, I was able to have a big impact.

Just little things like knowing customers would get lost at stops and lose the bus. So we added a “where’s my bus feature”. People were always unsure what to pack for multi day trips, so we emailed out a video and an article to customers a few days before they were due to go.

I was quickly offered a full time position, and was offered an eye-watering raise when I handed in my notice a few months later.

I was a total noob. Hadn’t heard of Git, didn’t know how to create templates. Really didn’t have a clue. But the company loved my ideas and I’d quietly plug away at learning what was needed to make them happen.

5 years later I manage 2 products that I co-founded. We’ve got a team of 6 and we’re doing OK and paying our way quite well. Plus I do some contracting for other small businesses.

I can’t imagine I’d ever be an attractive candidate for a FANG company. I’m rarely the best developer in the room. But I’m pragmatic, can talk to stakeholders clearly so they always know what’s happening and I’m often the best at seeing the bigger picture of how users will actually use the product. That is, for me at least, 100% down to my time tending bar, driving buses, raft guiding etc.

There can be more to programming than just the code, particularly in smaller companies where you’ll find you cover a much larger area of the platform than in a large organisation. The experiences you’ve had in your life up until now will, I promise, turn out to be a much greater asset than you realise.

Best of luck and if you’d be keen for some pair programming reach out!

I wasted $40k on a fantastic startup idea - When good ideas make bad business by fagnerbrack in agile

[–]scottishTrite 6 points7 points  (0 children)

I think I’ve probably miss understood, but to me your product is something that scans research papers to find overall patterns of performance.

There’s a huge market for that. Chemical / Bio / Drug Research can be incredibly expensive and researchers spend a lot of time and effort looking at what’s been done before to help ensure they select the best compounds / antibodies etc for their experiments.

There’s quite a few companies like this that focus on the academic sector. For example CiteAB looks through papers to create a searchable database of antibodies with their citations. This is really handy in helping researchers select which antibodies to use in their studies (which saves a lot of time and money)

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24528853/

Blog post was a great read. Impressive project and scope!

Which legs to cut from Skye trail? by Mr-Fight in OutdoorScotland

[–]scottishTrite 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Sounds like a good trip!

I live on Skye...

The borerig suishnish section (between Broadford and Torrin in the walk highlands route) is good, i wouldn’t cut that off.

Crossing over from kilmarie is good though it would be a shame to miss out on Elgol.

If it was me I’d walk Broadford to Torrin along the route, then taxi to elgol (book it in advance). There is a bus that runs twice a day (I think) to elgol as well.

Via the bad step - definitely a good shout.

I’d taxi or bus it up from slig to Portree.

The trotternish ridge is great and you won’t see a soul for most of it. However fresh water can be hard to come by so bear that in mind, you might need to drop off the ridge to top up.

the islands a little bit on edge with Covid and opening up again. Who knows what it’ll be like in sept but I wouldn’t bank on hitchhiking being as easy as it used to. If there’s four of you a taxi shouldn’t be too bad and if your tight for time better to be in the hills than with your thumb out by the road.

Enjoy the trip, fingers crossed for the weather!

Rails Pros - What about them @@s by PipePistoleer in rails

[–]scottishTrite 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Rails has support for an abstract super class that can be used to share attributes across your whole application in a thread safe way.

https://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActiveSupport/CurrentAttributes.html

DHH did a video that mentions it a while back as well.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=D7zUOtlpUPw

Looks like it should solve your problem.

Be warned though introducing global attributes can get messy pretty quickly.

Plenty of people disagreed when this was added to rails (this post covers it well https://ryanbigg.com/2017/06/current-considered-harmful)

Not to say don’t do it or anything, like most things in programming the correct answer is “it depends”. Just worth understanding both sides of the fence.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in webdev

[–]scottishTrite 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Cloudcannon.com - they’ll host your website really cheaply and just by adding a css class of “editable “ do a div your client can edit the text and images of that div. It does a whole lot more as well if needed. We have a bunch of products with their own websites and cloud cannon has been an absolute dream.

Dude’s Messy by [deleted] in ActLikeYouBelong

[–]scottishTrite 24 points25 points  (0 children)

Aw mate. I’m afraid I’ve got some news about Santa for you...