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notmyfuture's comments

notmyfuture | 4 years ago | on: Ask HN: I have received a Cease And Desist letter. What to do?

I know this isn't your actual question, but I think you should consider if the tone of your article represents the company you're trying to build. To me it reads as informal (comparison table "yes but weird), jokey (meme at top) & one-sided (can't find one point you lose at). It feels like poking at your competitor, not like an attempt at a neutral comparison. Now they're poking back via lawyers.

Maybe you do need a lawyer in this instance, maybe not, but if you're committed to this style when dealing with competitors you'll likely need a lawyer in the future.

notmyfuture | 4 years ago | on: Netflix will falter

With the increasing balkanization of streaming TV/film services, I wonder if piracy will start making a comeback. When everything (or most things) are under one roof, streaming makes sense - a single bill, one place to find content etc. Wondering which show is on which platform, or having to consider signing up for a subscription to a new service for a single show is not a good user experience, not to mention the single monthly bill ballooning to 3 or more.

notmyfuture | 4 years ago | on: Why is LinkedIn so cringe?

If you you call out any of the rampant self-aggrandizement, exaggeration, humble-brags, or in some case outright lies there's no real upside, and plenty of potential downside.

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

For a small team of capable engineers, working on something that has low consequence for any single change failing plus a strong business motivation to move fast: sure, do without code reviews if you want.

There is no universal "best practise" for building software, there is just whatever works best for your context. Practices can, and should change as your business context does. There are some things that are net beneficial for a team in the majority of situations though, I'd consider code reviews one of these things and make that the default.

notmyfuture | 4 years ago | on: Asking developers to do QA is broken – why anyone should own QA

Yeah - in my experience 6-10 people per team is typical, often with one of them being dedicated QA. Having this, plus a separate central QA team is one way to address the pitfalls of embedded QA I was pointing out - they can cover for time away for team QA, or act as bench capacity.

notmyfuture | 4 years ago | on: Asking developers to do QA is broken – why anyone should own QA

A person doing manual testing, which is a gate to deployment would certainly be hard to make work for deploys as fast as you're targeting. It may still be valuable to have someone separate to the devs testing your product (in production, not as a gate to release) looking for things your automated testing, customer feedback or metrics may have missed. Whether this would be valuable is really context-dependent.

notmyfuture | 4 years ago | on: Asking developers to do QA is broken – why anyone should own QA

I agree, this all makes sense. Although I think the team-embedded QA is generally the right thing, I wouldn't use it blindly in all cases. Some teams I manage only produce HTTP API's, these are ideal candidates for automated testing (incl. end-to-end integrated tests) and the developers are happy to own this without a QA on the team.

notmyfuture | 4 years ago | on: Asking developers to do QA is broken – why anyone should own QA

I've also arrived at this approach and don't think it's that uncommon - IMO the article is presenting a false dichotomy.

There are still gotchas to look out for in the team-embedded QA approach. In typical team sizes, you often end up with only one QA per team - you need to make sure they have cover (everyone needs a break), and they need support in their discipline (do something to share QA knowledge across teams).

notmyfuture | 5 years ago | on: Free Software Is More Reliable (2011)

There is still competition to consider though. If a SaaS product has competitors that are more reliable, or more feature rich, they should win & retain more customers over time.

notmyfuture | 6 years ago | on: Tesla's self driving algorithm's overlay [video]

As a casual observer of self-driving, I feel like this is a really interesting part of the overall problem space. Until such time as a vehicle fleet is 100% autonomous, human piloted & autonomous vehicles need to co-exist. Humans bend & break driving rules by social interactions which autonomous vehicles don't currently participate in.

notmyfuture | 6 years ago | on: Worst Software Metrics

I’m a manager of ~25 developers (who report through a few leads). I also come from a dev background. IMO metrics are dangerous, but can also be useful. Often I find basic code metrics useful as smell tests, but would never use them alone, wouldn’t set them as goals, and wouldn’t use them alone to rank performance in a team.

If someone has a very low number of commits relative to others on their team, I’ll investigate deeper - review a few Pull Requests, check if they’re working on something outside source control etc. sometimes I find problems, other times not.

I’m curious what people think of this approach?

notmyfuture | 6 years ago | on: Photographing Big Waves at Mavericks

This is not specific to Mavericks amongst “big wave” surf spots. Waves break as a function of swell period vs. ocean depth. More powerful (longer period) swell will break in deeper water, so in many places known for big waves, shorter period swell will just go right over and not break until closer to shore.

notmyfuture | 6 years ago | on: I hate living in my tiny house

The first wave of tiny houses seemed to be mostly self-built and people had poured a lot of love & hours into construction. Then they were all over Instagram/Pinterest. This has paved the way for a second wave, where some occupiers aren't quite as enraptured: mass production (or at least not self-built), living this way by more by necessity than choice.

notmyfuture | 6 years ago | on: Canoo wants to sell the world's first subscription-only EV

I can't see anything about this particular vehicle that would make it any more suitable to sell via subscription than any other EV (or indeed ICE). Wouldn't there be a greater chance of success if they focussed on one or the other: being a subscription car service OR an (electric) car maker?
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