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tmsam's comments

tmsam | 8 years ago | on: The Source Code for NYC's Forensic DNA Statistical Analysis Tool

Nested ternaries, ungodly amounts of repetition, ZERO tests, hardcoded sensitive info... this code wouldn't pass code review anywhere. I don't care when it was written, any day it is used to send people to jail it should be the best possible code humans can write. And it is so far from that.

tmsam | 8 years ago | on: Why Should I Start a Startup?

But... start ups still pay engineers salaries that dwarf teachers, retail, and many other industries. Should people in those industries not have kids? Are they being irresponsible by not making 6 figures?

tmsam | 9 years ago | on: How My 10-Year-Old Learned JavaScript

As a former teacher, who ran a programming club at a middle school and taught an advanced 8th-grade math class included programming, I have some perspective on this. I would say, be wary of "fundamentals" and "doing things the right way." Teaching a 10 yo something optional needs to be fun, or else it won't happen.

The author of this article nails it: there's nothing quite as motivating as adding "Poop" to the title of a real web page. Also, you can Inspect Element and get what is effectively an IDE. Is JavaScript the best language? No, it's inconsistent and confusing. But, so is English, and a lot of people learn English first - because it is practical to do so.

Another option that can be useful are Google Sheets. If they are a certain type of kid, they might like logging all of their toys in a spreadsheet and finding the total of the toys and making charts. Of course, most kids will find this boring... but you can also use Google Scripts to do something like scrape a subreddit and store it in Drive [1], which could be fun.

However, why not start with Scratch, or Snap! [2]? They are powerful enough (especially Snap!, I think you can define new data types in it...) and so much less intimidating.

[1] http://ctrlq.org/code/19600-reddit-scraper-script [2] http://snap.berkeley.edu/

tmsam | 9 years ago | on: Ask HN: What problem in your industry is a potential startup?

A family member is a lawyer in the Worker's Comp, SS, and Family Law space. THE software for lawyers in this space is called A1 Law. It solves a lot of real problems lawyers in that space have (form letter generation, calendar integration, case management)... but it's so slow to use new technologies. They advertise PalmOS integration. My family member has to have their own server in a closet running the server version of this so his team can use it! He has no idea how to manage a server, it's absurd that he has to.

Everyone I know in law is dissatisfied with every part of their tech stack. If someone could come up with an integrated SaaS solution, and be SUPER careful about compliance... they would be printing money.

tmsam | 9 years ago | on: Ask HN: Have you ever thought of leaving programming for something else?

For contrast, I went the other direction. I taught middle and high school math, then got an MS in math (really enjoyed TAing) and started programming. I really appreciate the intellectual stimulation; I love the fast pace with which ideas evolve in the community. But I miss being that teacher who helped someone "get" math.

One of the coolest experiences I've had: one of my students managed to end up in my class for 6th, 7th and 8th grade math... Then 7 years later I hired her as an intern! She totally crushed the internship. Meaningful relationships with students like that, where they still check in occasionally and give me updates on how they are doing and tell me how I changed the way they see things... that is something I miss a lot.

tmsam | 9 years ago | on: AWS Lambda Is Not Ready for Prime Time

Has anyone used hook.io as an alternative? I have only built toy projects with it, nothing substantial, so I can't speak to important things like error handling, but so far I really like it and find it substantially easier to use than Lambda.

tmsam | 10 years ago | on: The Deep Roots of JavaScript Fatigue

The "fundamental building blocks are too flawed" argument is so strange to me. Too flawed for what? To become, by far, the most popular platform in history for running applications? Because it's already done that.

This is a case of the evidence not fitting the theory well, so people complain about the evidence. If the browser/DOM/HTML/JS ecosystem "technically" is terrible, but in practice dominates the competition, then there is something about it that is better. This is not a fallacy, but a simple supply and demand argument.

tmsam | 10 years ago | on: Let’s ban elementary homework

Elementary education is mandatory, but the curriculum is only mandated for public schools. The rules vary from state to state, but here they are for California:

1. File an annual private school affidavit. 2. Maintain an attendance register. 3. Instruction must be in English. 4. Instructors must be capable of teaching. 5. Provide instruction in the courses commonly taught in the public schools (e.g., language arts, math, science, social studies, health, and driver training). 6. Maintain immunization records or personal beliefs exemption. 7. Maintain a list of courses of study. 8. Maintain a list of instructors with their addresses and qualifications.

This is MINIMALLY enforced. If the parent has a teaching credential, the rules are even more lax "The child must be taught for at least three hours a day, between 8:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m., for 175 days each school year in the several branches of study required to be taught by the public schools and in the English language."[1]

On a related side notes, private schools also do not have to follow the curriculum set for public schools. There are even some public schools that are exempted from parts of the mandatory curriculum (charters).

1. http://www.hslda.org/hs101/CA.aspx

tmsam | 10 years ago | on: Is Organic More Nutritious? New Study Adds to the Evidence

Did you read the whole article? I was composing a similar comment in my head, but then got to "switching from conventional milk to organic milk would increase omega-3 intake by only very small margins... protein levels were lower in organic crops such as wheat... from a health perspective, what you eat matters more than whether you choose organic or conventional."

I agree that any science-for-the-public reporting tends to do a bad job of conveying the inherent uncertainty in current research, but I feel like this was not terrible.

tmsam | 10 years ago | on: Life is a braid in spacetime

As a trained, but non-practicing, physicist, I would like you to elaborate about your first paragraph. I am used to using units where c=1, I think that is what you are referencing: a "meter" of time is the time it takes light to go a meter (which is to say, a very small amount of time) and so a second is 3x10^8 m. I don't see how this changes the pattern we would make in spacetime. If we assume no one ever moves (a nice physics-y approximation), but the particles that make them up do, so I don't see why we wouldn't look like the middle pattern while alive. Then after death, the disintegration is exaggerated, but again, it seems more-or-less right to me. What am I missing?
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