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Jackypot's comments

Jackypot | 5 years ago | on: How Video Works

Perhaps someone here can answer a question I've had for a while: if you stream a video which is actually a static image (think a song on YouTube, the 'video' is just the album cover) is there any way to optimise that? Or must the server stream that same image constantly as though it was a regular video?

Jackypot | 5 years ago | on: Cockney Rhyming Slang History

There is 'Sherman' for an American which is Sherman Tank -> Yank. So that can only be WW2 onwards. And 'Ruby' for curry (Ruby Murray) is from the fifties. Those are the most recent I can think of.

Jackypot | 5 years ago | on: My friend starts her job today, after learning to program in prison

I do wonder why people are so motivated to help the perpetrators of violent crimes. You could take that same energy and help the victims instead. I doubt whoever suffered whatever violence it was that merited 13 years has forgotten the whole thing by now. I doubt they're stoked to see their attacker off to start a cushy new job. You don't get 13 years for something trivial.* If after that time you find it to get a job, well, you kinda have to wear that.

*for non-violent stuff, like drugs, obviously you can. I'm referring to this specific example, which is described as violent. Non-violence shouldn't impact your future in the same way.

Jackypot | 5 years ago | on: Modeling a Wealth Tax

Jobs also disappear when Amazon competes with other companies and wins which doesn't always leave heaps of choice in the labour market.

Jackypot | 5 years ago | on: One-third of American renters expected to miss their August payment

I don't doubt that it will happen regardless, but what is the point of evicting people if no-one is waiting to rent the property? If the bottom falls out of the economy and regular people can't rent then landlords are screwed aren't they? Rent-seeking is the section of the economy which has to change, I think.

Jackypot | 6 years ago

Very succinct summary of why that's a wild and untenable idea.

Jackypot | 7 years ago | on: Ask HN: Go to sources on SaaS development

> Don't deal with event-driven architecture when you're at MVP stage

Interested in why you'd recommend that? Event-driven architecture decouples everything up front and the benefits are immediate. In this scenario the introduction of billing is en excellent example. User does something they should be billed for? Raise an event. Listen to it to bill them. Next iteration needs to email the user or update some history? Listen to the event. And so on. All the ephemeral saas infrastructure stuff just hangs off of the domain. And writing the code that way really isn't much more onerous than otherwise so I wouldn't discourage it for an MVP.

Jackypot | 7 years ago | on: Ask HN: Getting a Cs Degree After 15 Years in the Industry?

A colleague of mine read and thoroughly recommended 'The Imposter's Handbook' for devs in this situation - it's a CS overview for developers without CS degrees. Data structures, Big O etc.

I don't think going to university after 15 years of industry experience will reap any benefits. Something like this could just plug the gaps in your knowledge for less than a hundred dollars and a fraction of the time.

https://bigmachine.io/products/the-imposters-handbook/

Jackypot | 7 years ago | on: Ask HN: Where am I going wrong?

The whole 'sell before you build' theme is plastered all over this thread, as I expected. I think this originates from the whole lean/MVP school of thought but is sold in threads like these as though you can just create a 'coming soon' page with email sign up, wait for 1000 emails and then write your first line of code. In reality it is about building only what's necessary for a minimum viable product then ship and only add features which are demanded of you (i.e. adding value not speculating and building stuff no-one cares about). This does require some work/thought/assumptions up-front. It's not as easy as people make it out to be!

Jackypot | 7 years ago | on: Ask HN: Working with developers who can't code

Just programmers that can't program. Guys with years of experience tucked under their belt who struggle with simple things. I have pair programmed before with a guy to whom it wasn't obvious when to use a foreach loop, and who didn't parse test failure output for hints as to what went wrong. Everything was just a mystery. We'd make a change, test would fail and tell us exactly why (lo and behold, it was the thing we had just changed) and he was unable to find the thing which was broken. It was painful to have to state the obvious (what ought to be obvious to a professional developer) all day long.

Jackypot | 7 years ago | on: Ask HN: What do you wish you'd know before a job interview?

I would say knowing how formally/otherwise to dress. You've either got the chops or you don't, you can feel out the people you're speaking to during the interview to gauge how whether you can crack a joke or not. But turning up either woefully under or over dressed just throws you off your stroke at the first hurdle. I always explicitly ask what is expected of me ahead of an interview (with the bonus effect that it they want me to dress up for work, I know not even to bother with the interview!).

Jackypot | 7 years ago | on: Ask HN: Who is still using Oracle?

I interviewed for a company which made auditing software for government departments. I asked why they chose Oracle and they explained that governments get a hefty discount, so it was actually more cost-effective than the alternatives (e.g. enterprise SQL Server). So the motivation can actually be the opposite!
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