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snikch | 5 years ago | on: Ask HN: Do you ever go back and admire a piece of code you wrote?

I read this after making my own post that starts the same. This sums up my thinking too so elegantly. There are so many aspects to code and how it gets written that inform the output that each needs to be viewed in the context of that. Was it time critical? Was it part of a legacy migration? Was it a complex problem?

The quality of the code doesn’t have to reflect the quality of the solution and we should celebrate the things we nail.

snikch | 5 years ago | on: Ask HN: Do you ever go back and admire a piece of code you wrote?

Yes! I do! But they’re never the parts I think they’ll be. Sometimes it’s the simplest of things like a nice CRUD api that’s bounded and neat. Sometimes it’s a horribly complex system with well known trade offs and intricate guarantees. I love looking back and thinking “yea I got that right” or seeing an abstraction that’s stood the test of time (my six year old report query definition and data table responses in a reporting system is one concrete example I’m proud of, but I’d rename some fields for sure). I have a few of these that I’m so proud of if I really stop and consider it. On the flip side, the majority of projects teach me something that I wouldn’t do the next time, hence the common “old code sucks” trope. I think it’s important to recognise when something worked as much as when something didn’t. It’s these successes that give me the confidence to try things a little outside the box if I think it’s for the best.

snikch | 6 years ago | on: Jitsi Meet Electron 2.0

I’m loving jitsi, I’ve built a prototype video party app this week focussed on lockdown parties and fixing the things that don’t work for big parties over video chat. We’ve had a couple of parties on it and boy has it performed admirably.

However, there’s a big “but”. The documentation is abysmal. I’m sorry but that’s the cold hard truth. It’s been a nightmare to understand the pieces working while also using their libraries. Incredibly hard to read, and incomplete, docs. I’ve had to refer to the source to try figure things out most of the time. I say this because I think there’s soooo much potential there if it was more accessible. If you’re from jitsi and are keen for some good and critical feedback then hit me up, I’d love to help you out.

snikch | 6 years ago | on: Partying over Internet: Technological Aspects

I've been thinking about this too. In fact I've started hacking on an app to solve this for my group of friends. To me the two primary issues are:

1. Sub groups without losing the context of the full group. I want to focus on a set of people and chat with them while also aware of what other groups are around. I want to be able to bring people into these groups at will. This also adds a gamification aspect where you can adjust groups, i.e. randomly mix, mix people who haven't talked to each other yet etc.

2. Multi monitor. I want to see everyone and real estate is limited on a single screen. I should be able to add multiple windows or computers to my chat and have everyone spread across those windows. Only one window / computer will submit video and audio for me though.

snikch | 6 years ago | on: Jira Cloud for Mac Releases Dark Mode

Wow, what trash. The text rendering makes it barely readable, and dragging a card around lags out and then it follows where your cursor was 5 seconds ago until it catches up.

snikch | 6 years ago | on: With a single wiretap, police collected 9.2M text messages

Yea I came to ask that same question. All I can assume is that’s badly reported and in fact entire cell tower’s messages were being tapped. Which has huge repercussions for privacy. Another thought could be some sort of forwarding service. Regardless these numbers are massive.
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