AskHN Digest

1. Ask HN: How to attract perm Snr Engs when the contract market is so lucrative?

Top comment by HumblyTossed

I know this doesn't directly answer your question, but here is why the company I work for currently is able to keep me.

1. Interesting work [0]. My day to day is not a slog. I find it challenging and stimulating.

2. I get to the freedom to make decisions. My manager tells me, "I know you have this, so just do it." If I fail (we all do occasionally. Some things just don't work), they don't let the bus hit me. We figure out a solution and then we present that together.

3. A good team. I highly respect every single member of my team. We all know each others strengths, weaknesses and areas of interest. I'm never embarrassed to ask any of them for help and I'm often asked for help/advice/opinion.

4. I have the freedom to learn about projects other teams are working on so I can understand how those projects might affect the project I work on. I can also go work on those teams for a while if I choose to. Those teams are made up of good people who don't mind sharing information.

5. Raises that matter. Not some 1 or 2 pct insult. There's no excuse for that. None.

Does the company have warts. Yup. But the above makes those warts tolerable.

[0] I'll take interesting work over tech stack any day. I don't give a rat's ass about language wars. Pick something suitable and let's get to making something great.

2. Ask HN: Mobile phone addiction help?

Top comment by namelosw

I don't have problems with phones but I have problems with computers - I was usually ended up with HN and YouTube when I tried to learning/writing/programming for side projects.

Then I recall I read from somewhere that Donald Knuth prefers pen and paper to computer. I tried it and it did work for me. I just turn off the computer and use pen and paper/book/printed stuff most of the time. When I have to use the computer I leave the network cable unplugged and finish it quick; When I have to use the internet, I write down what I going to do and do it then turn off the computer; I only check HN or YouTube on meal breaks or before sleep.

I found programming with pen and paper is surprisingly effective, and arguably makes the system better designed. Reading printed code and take notes in diagrams like half a century ago make me understand better (I don't actually print everything, just collect those parts I find important to an editor then print). Turn-on computer on demand feels like going back to the lab from the dorm when the idea struck. All are slower but make steady progress, and it's enjoyable. Much better than time wasted in vain.

As in hindsight, I don't think I'm addicted because I don't have withdrawal symptoms - I don't get uncomfortable when I'm not using a computer or the Internet. It's just those websites are good at grasping my attention. If that's your case, just turn it off or lock your phone away and only get it when you need your online bank. But if you do have withdrawal symptoms, you probably need to ask professionals to address them.

3. Ask HN: Is Google Search Dying?

Top comment by OtterGauze

Despite the consensus of Google from people who know about alternatives or ways to avoid it, Google is still the most mainstream and de-facto search engine in atleast the English speaking world, and is the top most visited website in the world.

I wish people would stop saying something is "dying" when they personally dont like it anymore or don't use it as much, you don't speak for the world.

4. Ask HN: How do you generally build a product?

Top comment by nocommandline

1) First start with trying to sketch out (write out) the solution on paper. Writing out your solution forces you to think the problem through. Psychologically, you don't see it as being stressful or as tasking as writing code which means you're more likely to stick with it for some days.

2) Try to work on your idea at least 4 or 5 days of the week, no matter how small the time. You don't have to write code. Sometimes it could be something as small as choosing a color scheme, picking your twitter handle, registering a domain name. You just need to make progress.

3) Acknowledge upfront that this idea might not lead anywhere and might not be commercially viable but the knowledge gained is not lost and you can use that idea in something else. For example, I once worked on a pet project that involved turning SVGs into PNG or GIFs via Javascript. I also worked on another project where I tried to build a blogging platform on Google App Engine (I was trying to learn more about Flask and Google App Engine). Both did not go anywhere. However my latest project - https://nocommandline.com - uses the code/knowledge from those 2 projects. My blog is based on the blogging code and some of the images I use were generated from the other project. In fact I have used that in some other stuff I did for people

5. Ask HN: Why are all the submissions about Bill/Melinda Gates being killed?

Top comment by dang

For the obvious reason: the community is divided on whether it's on topic, so some users keep submitting the stories and other users keep flagging them.

I don't know that there's much here that's intellectually interesting. This is probably one of those moments where HN can distinguish itself by not paying attention to a story.

Regarding priors, the argument "$X1 got attention so why shouldn't $X2" doesn't work on HN, because there's a power-law dropoff in interestingness along any predictable sequence. So if Jeff and MacKenzie got a lot of attention, that's actually a reason why Bill and Melinda wouldn't.

I'm not really sure that was the case to begin with though—these threads look pretty uninteresting: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18868713, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18865291

6. Ask HN: How Long Is Your CI Process?

Top comment by jart

2 minutes and 7 seconds https://github.com/jart/cosmopolitan/runs/2482398460

on travis for a repository that builds 14,479 objects, 67 libraries, and 456 static executables, 284 of which are test executables which are run too. If I want to run all the test binaries on freebsd openbsd netbsd rhel7 rhel5 xnu win7 win10 too, then it takes 15 additional seconds. On a real PC, building and testing everything from scratch takes 34 seconds instead of two minutes.

7. Ask HN: What’s the Next Big Thing?

Top comment by Tangokat

You kinda derailed your own post by writing cryptocurrency. HN hates it so we never have good discussions on it.

Obvious answers:

- Biotech, our ability to handle large amounts of data and compute should enable biotech to make huge strides forward in all sorts of ways. Personalized medicine (pill made for you etc) and so on.

- AR/VR, we've been talking about this for a long time but it seems like Apple will be launching something fairly soon for AR. It could very well kickstart a new boom. VR has been steadily building for about 10 years and will continue to do so. Better headsets means more widespread adoption. Nearing a tipping point now I think.

- Getting 2 billion more people on the internet. Should allow for more niche products.

Outside the box:

- Online reality TV with avatars. An online world where people play different roles and you can choose which viewpoint you want to watch from. Online 24/7 with professionally built narratives happening in real time.

See GTA RP NoPixel streams on Twitch for an early example.

8. Ask HN: How many projects do you work on at a time?

Top comment by chrisbigelow

One.

https://pausbox.com

Whenever I have more than that I can never get anything off the ground.

I've been working pretty hard on this hardware/software project with my co-founder for the past year. The biggest takeaway is that marketing a product can often be harder than building it. You need to push hard to improve your messaging and hit product market fit, I don't know how I could do that with multiple products at once.

9. Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking freelancer? (May 2021)

Top comment by pknerd

SEEKING WORK| Remote

I am a developer having 10+ years of experience. I am a backend developer and mostly work in Python, PHP and Go. So far I have worked on Web apps, scrapers, APIs and systems integrations.

Check my profile at: http://adnansiddiqi.me/Resume2020.pdf

I also blog at: http://blog.adnansiddiqi.me

For contact mail at kadnan AT GMAIL

PS: I am a curious person and looking to work on something interesting and challenging, especially Healthcare and Finance

SO buzz me, even if it is unpaid, I'd go for it if it is interesting and have something worth learning.

Thanks

10. Ask HN: What's your keyboard and what you love and hate about it?

Top comment by bstar77

I still use my IBM Model-M from 1986. I have 2 of these that I got at the Trenton State Computer Festival (NJ) in 1992.

I had no idea what I was buying when I spent $4 for 2 disgustingly dirty keyboards back when I was 15. I've taken good care of both of them for nearly 30 years and they both still look new.

I've tried some more recent high-end mechanical keyboards, but I ended up giving them to my son. I just like the feel of the Model M more and I can type significantly more accurately with it. My Model M has no issues working with a ps/2 to usb adapter, so one is my daily driver and the other I connect to my KVM for my older PCs. I don't have any connection issues or latencies and they are fine for gaming. I do miss some of the media controls, but I mostly resolved that by using an external audio device.

I'm not really a purest with this stuff, I have lots of newer keyboards including current apple hardware, but I go back to this keyboard for my PCs because I really enjoy using it. I'm not against swapping it out, I've just not been compelled to yet.