DevMonkey's comments

DevMonkey | 4 years ago | on: Ask HN: Messed up my education, now 30 and regretting it. What to do?

I use to feel the same way before I started working at a larger Silicon Valley company as a software engineer. I graduated from a state school with a degree in Industrial Print Management and always felt like I was at a disadvantage because I didn't have a CS degree. Most of what I know about software engineering is self taught, I felt very self-conscious about this.

My performance did not match my perception and I was consistently outperforming my peers; getting recognition that I never felt I deserved. It turns out that practical experience is actually more valuable than academic experience. I would rather hire someone who's humble, driven, and ambitious but didn't go to CS school then someone who's none of those things but they have fancy degree.

DevMonkey | 12 years ago | on: How Your Brain Becomes Addicted to Caffeine

I have GERD (hiatal hernia) and I stayed away from Caffeine for years because I was told it would trigger it. They also said to avoid spicy foods and exercise regularly. I started taking Prilosac and exercising regularly about 5 years ago. Now I can pretty much eat what I want (I go through a bottle of Sriracha every 3 months, it goes on everything :D). I think the key to managing GERD is the exercise and medicine. When I don't exercise I have more reflux. If you are not exercising regularly (which means exercising long enough to get super hungry), then you might want to try it to see if it improves your symptoms. Anecdotally, I think the GERD diet is total bullshit, I've tried it (with out meds) and I still experienced enough discomfort to convince me to take medication.

Edit: I forgot to mention I drink coffee every morning.

DevMonkey | 13 years ago | on: My open source API client was taken down by a phony DMCA complaint

The interesting thing is that they say the library used proprietary code. From talking to Contra, they are just using a REST API which is not documented (Undocumented API !== Proprietary). If you publish a publicly accessible API then expect it to be used by everyone and everything.

DevMonkey | 13 years ago | on: Education is Our Generation's Big Problem. Let's Fix it.

Here are a couple of random thoughts:

Maybe we need to start outsourcing our education to China and India. We can send our kids to India for their undergraduate degrees and then they can come back here to get their post-graduate degrees.

Move towards knowledge certification instead of a degree that states you completed your degree. Bar Exam, MCSE, Board Certifications, etc. If you have the drive and capacity to learn without attending college then you should be rewarded only having to take a certification exam.

Once enough schools go belly up people can just start listing those institutions on their resumes. Since the school is close there won't be an easy way to verify. (Just kidding of course)

DevMonkey | 13 years ago | on: Show HN: Proxino -- Monitor and Debug your JavaScript

How do you keep a nefarious script kiddie from filling up your logs with bogus data? My thoughts were this:

1. Set the window.onerror to immediately push errors to an array 2. Load a small unique script that will create a basic sendError function to post the onerror arguments to an endpoint with a unique csrf set. 3. Loop through the arguments that are queued up and send them to the endpoint. 4. Replace the window.onerror with the sendError function.

Your endpoint can be an API that will log the data to either something like Graylog2 or whatever your favorite logging system is. Not 100% bullet proof but better then nothing.

DevMonkey | 14 years ago | on: Douglas Crockford now at PayPal

Wow, I thought he would have stuck around a lot longer. He seemed to really like it there. Friday was my last day at Yahoo, it's unbelievable how many people are leaving.

DevMonkey | 14 years ago | on: Ctrl-P for Vim: Pure Vimscript Command-T

Very Awesome! Commmand-T (vim plugin) has been an essental part of my workflow for years now. I can't live without it. The biggest thorn for setting up a new host is having to procure VIM with Ruby support. Thank you so much for doing this!

DevMonkey | 14 years ago | on: Smoke Screening: Journalist tests TSA

The last time I went through the airport they did the hand wipe thing. I said "You think terrorist are smart enough to wear gloves when working with chemical explosives?" She shrugged and said "All Clear!"
page 1