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fretlessjazz's comments

fretlessjazz | 16 years ago | on: Making ActiveResource 34x faster: QActiveResource

As somebody who has dealt with ActiveResource in a production environment, thank-you!

My company noticed an absolutely whopping performance boost when we dropped XML in favor of JSON for a transport format, fwiw. Ruby has quite possibly the slowest XML parsing libraries on the block (even when you wrap libxml), and we avoid parsing XML at all costs now.

fretlessjazz | 16 years ago | on: Zed Shaw is Writing A Book Teaching Beginner Python

"If a programmer tells you to use vim or emacs tell them no. These editors are for when you are a better programmer. All you need right now is an editor that lets you put text into a file."

Ha! When I started to program, everyone told me the opposite. After weeks of head scratching and spending more time learning editors than coding, I secretly switched to Pico. But man could I use the hell out of Pico.

fretlessjazz | 16 years ago | on: Never hire job hoppers. Never. They make terrible employees.

While the metrics behind his assertions are short-sighted, specifically ( years in workforce / number of jobs ) = job-hopping likelyhood, I think he left out the most absolutely critical reason why I and other hiring managers look at the duration of employ at previous establishments.

I've reviewed hundreds of resumes, hired great people, and hired some not great people. Sometimes they leave because of you and your company, sometimes they don't. In my experience, a history of short employment can mean one of two things:

1. This candidate is extremely talented, independent, and a self-starter. Hire these people. Now. 2. This candidate leaves before he or she is truly accountable for the code they write.

2 is very dangerous. You don't want to hire an engineer who will write a subscription billing platform and quit the week after launch. It's often tough to determine the difference between 1 and 2, and it takes many pointed questions to figure it out.

fretlessjazz | 16 years ago | on: Mark Cuban: Why You Should Never Listen to Your Customers

It's silly to boil this down to a black and white issue, because it's not. "Listening to your customers" is not equal to relinquishing creative control of your product's direction. It means that you, as a company, address the day-to-day pain points that your users experience while using your software. That's it.

fretlessjazz | 16 years ago | on: No more iPad Stories

Seriously, I never knew there were this many technology evangelists. It's practically raining commentary.

fretlessjazz | 16 years ago | on: The Apple Tablet Is Here, And It's Called the iPad

The target demographic for this device may not be current iPhone, iPod or MacBook users. Consider the many people that want MacBooks but can't afford them. The iPad + keyboard dock is a lower-cost alternative, especially with iWork applications for $10 a pop.

I see this product as doing nothing but growing Apple's customer base.

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