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atomashpolskiy | 4 years ago | on: Who Uses To-Do Lists?

Great question! Todo lists are next to useless for me. For important stuff that I have to do and must not forget about, I set up alarm clock (without description, as such stuff is in the back of my mind anyway). The rest is kept in text files, notebooks, napkins, etc., which I re-visit periodically or remember about spontaneously.

atomashpolskiy | 4 years ago | on: No code reviews by default

The problem is not with code reviews but with how adversarial they have become. Instead of making the best attempt to comprehend and embrace the author's style and intention and finding compelling arguments for the question "why this code is probably fine and should be merged as-is?" people nit on all kinds of stuff, mostly highly subjective. Along the way they don't actually catch that many problems or bugs but instead new problems and bugs are introduced while implementing their nits. All surrounded by a lot of noise that has to be dealt with in an already stressful multitasking environment. I agree with other posters in this thread that most people can't code review for crap and have very perverted idea about code review aims and goals. Code reviews as they are practiced now only serve to destroy trust, velocity and team morale. As someone noted elsewhere in this thread, if it's me (directly or indirectly) who's going to be held accountable for a deficiency in my code, whether it has been reviewed or not, why do I have to adjust my code to someone's arbitrary criticism? Common sense tells me that not requiring to have my code reviewed at all times and, by doing so, stressing my personal responsibility for the things I do, would actually increase my sense of ownership and keep me on my toes, more likely leading to better coded/tested changes, wouldn't it? I.e. it is not about blindly trusting all code that I produce but rather trusting in my ability to judge and make final decisions: to request code reviews or not, to address comments or not, to do my job as I see fit or not.

atomashpolskiy | 4 years ago | on: Is Britain becoming more meritocratic than America?

It's like one of the most wide-known facts about Warren Buffet is that he likes fast food and coke and even bought himself a diner. Or that Bill Gates drinks (or drank at some point) at least one can of coke a day. So cute, so down to earth! See, they're just like us!

atomashpolskiy | 4 years ago | on: A Bit Overcomplicated

Yeah, not everybody has to work with networks or cryptography, but I would've imagined that people at least read libraries that they use (to figure out what's going on under the hood) and inspect/debug low-level stuff from time to time.

atomashpolskiy | 4 years ago | on: NYC to mandate proof of vaccination for many indoor settings

One more example: itch in one's throat and nasty suffocating cough that does not stop for an hour. Surprisingly, this might be caused by reflux (without the accompanying stomachache).

I imagine it would be pretty easy for someone not used to dealing with gastritis on a regular basis to attribute such a symptom to "COVID".

atomashpolskiy | 4 years ago | on: My take on the study from MIT that predicts “societal collapse”

Absolutely, most problems are caused by either of:

- stupidity

-fear

-greed

The problem is figuring out which instances of these are induced by society and civilization and which are inherent to human behavior in general. While we can try to address the former, the latter probably can't be fixed without significantly changing our definition/perception of what humans are.

atomashpolskiy | 4 years ago | on: Ask HN: 90s programmers, what did you expect the future of tech to look like?

Not a 90s programmer, but I think one of the greater fallacies of the optimistic 90s and early naughts was a belief that technology in general and Internet (cyberspace) in particular will be able to remedy many of humanity's woes. It turned out that, at the end of the day, even very sophisticated technology is infinitely inferior to quite simple and very well understood economic forces and political will.

atomashpolskiy | 4 years ago | on: Ask HN: 90s programmers, what did you expect the future of tech to look like?

This sounds too simplistic (idealistic?). Maybe computers at their core are indeed pure, neutral information, but internet is definitely more than just that. It also amplifies all kinds of adverse mass psychology effects, rewards herd behavior, enables propaganda wars, provides means to monitor and control population at unprecedented scale, etc. I'm not saying that you're completely wrong, but I think you might be willing to see only the brighter side of it.

atomashpolskiy | 4 years ago | on: Ask HN: Projects for learning a language?

Yeah, it seems like 90% of Rust jobs that are realistically accessible for someone with my background (different servers for the most part) are in crypto space, which I dislike, and there are very few of them as well. Java gives me better and more numerous options to choose from, and recently I even landed a Scala position in a very interesting domain. So it's about variety and job safety after all.

I also would not want to program in Rust for 100% of the time. It's a great tool to have for certain mission-critical types/parts of software where the cost of a mistake is high, but it also can be very frustrating to work with, at least until you become proficient with the idiomatic ways to structure programs and code in Rust. And even then I would not pick it for R&D type of work for instance, where you have to experiment and refactor a lot. Borrow checker is something you have to keep in mind at all times, and as I said already it can be extremely frustrating when you simultaneously have to think about design, execution logic and performance. Doubly so when the parts you're working on are not going to be concurrent in any foreseeable future.

OTOH, I can see how coding something well-defined and to the spec can be rewarding and less expensive in the long run with Rust.

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