AskHN Digest

1. Ask HN: I was hit with a patent troll lawsuit, how do I deal with it?

Top comment by Andrew_Russell

I am an IP litigator, and I have dealt with patent trolls repeatedly. I have taken these kinds of cases pro bono in the past for small companies (including through the EFF attorney referral list, https://www.eff.org/pages/legal-assistance), and I know that others have as well.

There are definitely low-cost and pro bono (free) options out there for very small businesses. The EFF attorney referral list is a good place to start.

I'm also happy to talk it through with you if you'd like more specific information - my contact information is here: https://shawkeller.com/attorneys/andrew-e-russell/

2. Ask HN: Feeling guilty for doing the bare minimum at work

Top comment by borski

Read up a bit on ADHD. That 'hyperfocus' that occurs either with deadlines or on a passion project is a symptom, as is the inability to get excited about projects you simply don't want to do - especially given your otherwise positive reviews and your ability to clear your mind and hyperfocus near a deadline, it's something to consider.

I was diagnosed at 33, and it changed my life infinitely for the better. YMMV, and you may not have ADHD, but if you do, it is nothing to feel guilty about - it, in fact, gives you some insanely useful abilities that others simply don't have, as evidenced by the number of comments on this post explaining you have no guilt to feel, and your positive performance reviews.

But being able to understand why we do these things, and being able to understand how to adjust for them (whether through medication or coping mechanisms) is, alone, insanely relieving.

Consider picking up 'Driven to Distraction,' or 'Delivered From Distraction,' or check out these posts by Mark Suster which was what led me to get started on the path:

* https://bothsidesofthetable.com/how-to-know-if-you-have-add-...

* https://bothsidesofthetable.com/why-add-might-actually-benef...

* https://bothsidesofthetable.com/developing-an-action-plan-fo...

3. Ask HN: 90s programmers, what did you expect the future of tech to look like?

Top comment by cmrdporcupine

What many people thought was that the shift to object-oriented development, object oriented RPC systems (CORBA, "JavaBeans", some stuff in J2EE, OLE, etc) and CASE/modeling tools (UML, Rational Rose etc.) would turn the market into more of an automated component oriented system, with a marketplace of ready made components and more reliable systems with a faster time to market etc. Lots and lots of books sold about OO patterns, methodologies, etc.

IMHO that didn't happen, the integration morass remained, and I'd consider much of that model a failure in retrospect.

On the infrastructure front, I seem to remember a lot of talk about Frame Relay (EDIT: actually I was thinking of ATM, thanks for correction below). And fiber installs all over the place, lots of money in getting fiber into downtown areas, etc. Also I don't think people really predicted the possibility of the dominance of the "cloud" as it is now, really. I mean, hosting services were I'm sure a growth market but "serious" companies were seen as wanting to have their own DCs, and I don't recall major talk or trend away from that until the mid 2000s ("SaaS" etc. became the buzzword around then, too).

Also JavaScript as a serious presentation layer system wasn't much talked about until the 2000s.

4. Ask HN: Notion is withholding my company data, what can I do?

Top comment by hn_throwaway_99

I'm not a Notion customer, but frankly with a response like this I would never, ever be one.

It's one thing to make a new feature request and have the response be "sorry, we'll get to it when we get to it." It's quite another to have a bug in an advertised, previously working feature, with no workaround, and say "sorry, our engineers have a big backlog."

Imagine if a bank said "sorry, we know the withdrawal feature to get your money is broken, but our engineers have a big backlog." Unbelievable!

5. Ask HN: What Are You Learning?

Top comment by simonswords82

I've been a private pilot for about 5 years and a couple of weeks ago I was out in crappy weather. I knew the weather would be awful and had the foresight to bring my instructor friend with me.

We ended up in cloud, I handed over control to my instructor and spent the next 10 minutes wondering what I would have done if he wasn't with me (hint: not good).

So I slept on it, text my instructor a couple of days later and told him I want to be able to do what he did. He told me I need an Instrument Rating (Restricted) rating, which allows me to fly in and above cloud.

So that's my learning for the next 10 weeks or so. I've got to take one written exam, one flying exam, and then I'm cleared for flying cloudy days.

6. Ask HN: Words of encouragement for someone lost in life?

Top comment by barrysaunders

You are 23. You are not a failure. You have a passion, and a talent, and dedication. You have simply identified an area of your life that you'd like to improve. You might feel like life has passed you by, it has not. 23 is incredibly young, and many people are going through the same things you are. People go through the same ebbs and flows all through their lives. It is natural.

Tinder isn't great, get rid of it for now. Instead, focus on getting out of the house (to the extent you are able during Covid) and doing things that will allow you to meet people. Join a hiking group, take up a sport, join a book club. You will meet people naturally, without the pressure to 'match'.

7. Ask HN: How to learn proper systems programming?

Top comment by eric4smith

Years ago I modified the Postgresql source code (8.xx).

It's something I was terrified of doing.

But once I got in there and started poking around, I realized it was just ordinary plain-vanilla C code. Not C++. Just C code.

With my local copy, I started to hack pg_dump to do something special that we wanted at the time. Even after 30 years of coding, I'm not that especially good of a programmer. But I ended up getting our own special version of pg_dump that did what we wanted at the time and it went into production dumping hundreds of gigs of data every day!

But what I'm not, is afraid. I'm not afraid to try anything.

And that's what it takes to do deep, systems level programming.

Don't be afraid.

Those bits are just bits. And it's just code... and most of it was not written by wizards. Just ordinary people like you and me. Don't be afraid man.

Clone the repo and setup a workable build environment and start tinkering and compiling and running to see what happens.

You would be totally shocked to find out what you can actually achieve.

Those books will only go so far.

8. Ask HN: Do software engineers have leverage?

Top comment by justbored123

> Do software engineers really have leverage?

Yes, massive, but because of the unique mentality and system of values of engineers/nerds in general we are focused on solving technical problems and learning new things while the rest (management, RRHH, sales, etc) are focused on status and getting a bigger piece of the pie for themselves, so we get f*cked over by them very easily.

>How could we increase our leverage?

1- The single most powerful tool we have is fully sharing salaries and compensation. That drives prices up (and other benefits such as vacation time or equity).

2- Forming common fronts like low skilled workers do in unions or other associations that set minimal working conditions that avoid races to the bottom and exploitation (60hs work-weeks for example). In my third world country companies do this themselves and group in something called a "technological pole" that is just a gathering to cap salaries and avoid competing among themselves. So, they later threaten you that if you quit you would be black listed. (This resulted on a massive migration of engineers to other countries and to freelancing on the internet, they were short-sighted and not very smart :D ).

3- Tribalism. Start to see the rest of the other roles like they see you (management, RRHH, sales, etc). Other tribes competing for the same pie and act accordingly. Stop going along with the "you should improve your soft skills to make our job easier" and flip the tables and start to demand that they become better at a technical level to make your job easier instead. We are in high demand, they are not, simple. Make them work harder and learn to speak to us and adapt to us instead of the other way around.

9. Ask HN: Anyone built a business with no-code tools?

Top comment by sbacic

I think that the whole discussion around low-code is missing a pretty fundamental issue: most programming libraries suck.

If I need, say, authentication, why do I need to install a library and then read a bunch of documentation on how to use it? Why can't I simply plug it in (just like low-code!) and have it automatically work?

I think there is a lot of room to improve developer tooling and that the effort spent there would produce much greater rewards than developing a higher level abstraction, such as a pluggable authentication widget aimed at non-programmers.

10. Ask HN: I don't feel like working at all, what to do?

Top comment by tomp

> In college I started getting inferiority complex.

> I never feel secured or that they have my back

3 good things: (1) your biggest problem is yourself (which means it’s in your control, possible to change), (2) you’re at least partially aware of that, and (3) you’re obviously good enough to get hired at FAANG so probably not actually “below average”.

Of course, changing your mindset is hard… the first step is knowing it’s possible. The second step is, trying out all the well-known techniques (meditation, equanimity, gratitude, working out, abundance mentality, …) and seeing what works.