eldelshell's comments

eldelshell | 4 years ago | on: I wasted $40k on a fantastic startup idea (2020)

This is why I don't like health related business models. In a similar scenario, who's stopping Susan from sueing over a "bad" outcome from the platform recommendation. When people's health is on the line, shit can get ugly really fast.

eldelshell | 4 years ago | on: Server-sent events, WebSockets, and HTTP

My experience with SSE so far (take this as recommendations if you wish)

You need to implement a server-side heartbeat feature.

You need to handle the close event from EventSource and be able to reconnect.

Tabs can be problematic. When you subscribe, you use a URL with a nominal ID to identify the client. For example, on a chat app, you would use /api/sse/userA/subscribe

Problem is, if userA starts opening tabs, each tab creates a new subscription for userA so you need to randomize each connection (userA-UUID).

If you don't use a nominal id, the server won't know to which subscriber to send the data and you don't want to broadcast all your chats.

I've used the Broadcast channel API in conjunction with SSE to have only one tab handle the SSE connection, and broadcast incoming SSEs to the other tabs which also reduces the number of connections to the server to one.

On the server it's also a PITA because not all instances/pods have the subscribers list. The way I've found to solve this is with clustering the instances with Hazelcast or Redis or a MQ.

But once you figure out all this, SSE works quite well.

eldelshell | 4 years ago | on: Leetcode has taught me that I'm a bad engineer

IMO, LC (and similar) aren't a bad choice for the interview process. The problem comes when it's used as a silver bullet solution. Most seniors that'll show up to an interview are probably working and simply don't have the time or will to grind LC.

Also, SWE is a highly movable profession, where being more than 5 years on the same place is unusual. So every ~5 years you have to polish your CV, grind LC and basically restart learning all computer science concepts you haven't used in those ~5 years, without feeling burnout or dismay.

eldelshell | 4 years ago | on: Leetcode has taught me that I'm a bad engineer

Funny thing is that A players can go downhill not because of their engineers, but because of their management. How many companies have we seen in tech go under because of bad engineering vs bad management?

eldelshell | 4 years ago | on: Web3/Crypto: Why Bother?

End of day you have to deal with physics. All those bits have to be stored somewhere. Have we really reached the point where the Facebook database can be stored in a distributed system across personal devices? Hell no! As a matter of fact, being centralized, FB can store that amount of data more efficiently than any Blockchain can even dream about.

eldelshell | 4 years ago | on: As an investor, why is crypto so hard to value?

There are this things called "Exchanges" in every airport in the world.

With the US dollar, Euro and some others, the world is your casino (following the comparison) and you can trade all of them. Same with gold and silver (although this are a bit harder to trade).

Hell, try to pay a taxi in Djibouti, Sao Paolo or Islamabad with a BTC or USD and see which they'll accept and which will get you kicked out.

eldelshell | 4 years ago | on: “Open source” is broken

Log4J is far from being the standard. As a matter of fact, JBoss, Quarkus, etc, aren't affected by this because they don't use log4j.

eldelshell | 4 years ago | on: Ask HN: A US programmer makes 3 times that of a EU programmer. Why?

Just saying, check what a private health insurance costs in the US vs the UK. Even if the NHS is not the best, it's a big market force which makes it very hard for private insurances to fuck you up in the ass like in the US. At least in my country, having my 4 pax family in a premium private insurance costs me close to 400€/m.

eldelshell | 4 years ago | on: Ask HN: A US programmer makes 3 times that of a EU programmer. Why?

Some companies have a rule that if the extension of the business travel is longer than X you get business class. So if your French colleague came from France and then you went somewhere else together, they could've included a whole business pack for the same price as a tourist class.

Not sure this is the case but FYI.

eldelshell | 4 years ago | on: Ask HN: A US programmer makes 3 times that of a EU programmer. Why?

The main difference is that, at least in my country, my salary represents a part of what my company pays for my employment. AFAIR if I earn X my company is paying X*1.5 that goes into taxes, social security, etc. While in the US the salary is mostly given to the employee and they have to pay for all of the above. In your example, that company in NL could be paying something closer to 80k-90k which depending on the exchange rate is close to US$100.000

OTOH, we all know how some salaries are crazy high in high COL areas like SF, which I'm sure don't represent the whole of the US. I work with devs in Florida and NC that don't get pass the 6 figures.

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