mamoswined's comments

mamoswined | 8 years ago | on: Ask HN: Best tech for a web site 2018? (PHP, Rails, Django, Node, Go, etc.)?

Has anyone tried Grav? Some ex-Drupal people use it.

mamoswined | 8 years ago | on: Ask HN: Best tech for a web site 2018? (PHP, Rails, Django, Node, Go, etc.)?

There is also Meteor, which is almost like a RoR for Node.js. I've used it for work and I personally find it a bit bloated though. For my own projects I mainly use static sites like GatsbyJS and Jekyll, but these are just for plain old websites and not that appropriate if you have users.

mamoswined | 8 years ago | on: Vitamin D and cancer prevention

Took me forever to find (I now digitize and save my records but didn't then) but it was 30 ng/ml. Sounds like that is actually not deficient by most standards. My doctor was a little woo at the time. I started taking 1800 iu.

I do have extremely pale skin, but I yeah, a lot of it ends up covered in the winter.

mamoswined | 8 years ago | on: Brilliant Jerks in Engineering

I once had a 100% Alice team (all women too!) and it was awesome until we were forced to work with contractors who were 0% Alice. We offended them, turned out their boss was friends with some higher up at our company, and we got pretty much screwed.

mamoswined | 8 years ago | on: Vitamin D and cancer prevention

I think it's OK, there are plenty of opportunities, but I would not do it if I were young. I would do Silicon Valley, get a "big tech" or startup name on my resume and work on cutting edge projects, and then move to Chicago.

The major advantage here is cost of living is so much lower than the valley. Housing is cheap, which leaves a lot of room for money to use to eat out, nightlife, plays, music, etc.

mamoswined | 8 years ago | on: Brilliant Jerks in Engineering

Yeah I'll always be an Alice at heart. And around people I trust. But as you said, it's no longer an Alice world. I was involved in Drupal and they kicked out their own Alice, chx, who was a major contributor.

mamoswined | 8 years ago | on: Brilliant Jerks in Engineering

I agree. I kinda of have a love-hate thing with HTWFAIP. I find it incredibly irritating but also useful? I'm a 3rd gen software engineer and my grandpa and dad were always known for being extremely mean. So I learned a lot bad behaviors from them and other engineers. I think the workplace now is getting less tolerant of that kind of thing though.

mamoswined | 8 years ago | on: Brilliant Jerks in Engineering

I also started teaching coding around the time I read it, mostly to kids, so that has made me more motivated to be nicer. I don't want to be the jerk responsible for some little kid hating to code...

mamoswined | 8 years ago | on: Brilliant Jerks in Engineering

I think so, I have set up some reminders on my computer to remind me to review certain parts of the book I have trouble with. Like not getting into pointless arguments :)

mamoswined | 8 years ago | on: The GitHub Threat

Also another thing is when Github changed its licensing model it really hurt those of us working on small budgets like at non-profits or in education. https://venturebeat.com/2016/05/11/github-changes-pricing-un... For example, I worked at a public university where we had student workers. I could convince our dean to pay per repo but once it was per user we had to migrate off Github because we couldn't afford it. Migrating off took up a lot of my time.

mamoswined | 8 years ago | on: The GitHub Threat

I agree with this, also another issue with Github's dominance is silly recruiters now think a github profile is the best way to evaluate candidates. Sucks for those of us who use self-hosted revision control, Gitlab, or Bitbucket at work.

mamoswined | 8 years ago | on: Brilliant Jerks in Engineering

I was so Alice for much of my career. I know this is going to sound totally cliche because this book get's recommended everywhere, but How to Win Friends and Influence People really did help me.

mamoswined | 8 years ago | on: Vitamin D and cancer prevention

I was shocked when I got my vitamin D levels analyzed a couple of years ago. Yeah I work inside most of the time, like most programmers, but I also walk to work and easily get 10000 steps a day, so I thought I'd be OK. Nope, guess it wasn't enough especially since I'm in Chicago. My levels were in the deficient range. I now take supplements daily.

mamoswined | 8 years ago | on: DNAinfo and Gothamist Are Shutting Down

OK looks like they may put the archives back up https://twitter.com/andylocal/status/926226031081672709 the fact this is so ham-handed might mean the regular IT employees weren't part of it? I can't remember if we even had anything more than contractors for IT stuff at Ist (I worked there), I do know the CMS was a very out of date copy of Movable Type.

mamoswined | 8 years ago | on: DNAinfo and Gothamist Are Shutting Down

Ex Ist employee here. It's strange because why not keep it up and collect ad revenue? I've written for a fair number of publications that are now defunct and almost all still have their websites up because of ad revenue.

mamoswined | 8 years ago | on: DNAinfo and Gothamist Are Shutting Down

I was an editor at Chicagoist for over a year and am also a web developer. I am assisting some fellow employees with getting their stuff downloaded, luckily a lot of it is safe on Wayback Machine. You'd be surprised how many didn't know about that. Newer stuff is harder, I and others are urging them to get it off Google Cache before it's refreshed.

That said, it's still a pain, for example I have to update multiple websites that link to the site and some of my websites are easier to update than others. It will be easy on some of my newer sites but I have an old Drupal blog that now has a lot of broken links and I'm not excited to update it since I no longer really do Drupal.

mamoswined | 10 years ago | on: Study: Students who take notes by hand outperform students who type

For a short time I took notes using my phone and the reaction to that was interesting to me. People just assumed I was texting and not paying attention. With a laptop in the US you can be browsing Facebook and at least look to other people like you are taking notes.

mamoswined | 10 years ago | on: Why Do Some Poor Kids Thrive?

That was me. I came into programming via tech support rather than computer science. I liked playing games. I lacked the home environment or support to really do very well in high school, but once I was on my own, having that tech support job helped me a lot and I was eventually able to learn a lot more IT skills.

For me and the other people I've known or mentored from similar backgrounds, I things that get people away from abusive and dysfunctional homes can make a big difference. I think I personally would have dropped out of college early on if I hadn't been able to work tech support in the summer and therefore not go home. Wonks always go on and on about what a difference parents can make, but it goes both ways.

mamoswined | 10 years ago | on: Being a Female Developer

I think one of the reasons sexism in tech gets so much press is paradoxically because developers/project managers/etc. are in such high demand. You can quit and write a Medium post about how awful your job was and still be able to get work. You have a ton of power in this way.

In real estate, journalism, PR, etc. it's so tight knit and competitive that speaking out can destroy your career. I merely quit a journalism job because of an awful EIC and didn't say anything publicly against him, but he was eventually fired and blamed me (though a lot of people had complained to HR about him and it wasn't just about sexism). I really doubt I could even freelance for many local publications because of it because they are all run by his friends and it's not that hard to find another writer.

mamoswined | 10 years ago | on: Being a Female Developer

Honestly having been a "female developer" for 10+ years my main thought on the subject of being that is it's just a job. And it's a job that's really not for everyone. I've tried to sell a lot of people I've worked with in other fields on it, both men and women, and there are a lot of things that keep people away from it. And most of them are not related to gender.

I also have learned to have a healthy suspicion of companies that seem too obsessed with the "women in tech" thing. I usually find they seem to just be doing it because out of causes you could pick in tech, it has little downside for the company and even serves as a recruiting tool.