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Issue #300 - December 8, 2024
If you are looking for work, check out this month's Who is hiring? and Who wants to be hired? threads.
Here are the top threads of the week, happy reading!
1. Ask HN: How can I grow as an engineer without good seniors to learn from?
Top comment by iepathos
I was in a similar position for the first half of my career.
1) Start contributing heavily to a popular open source project you're familiar with and use. Try to make your PRs as high quality as possible. You'll get free code reviews from some of the best engineers in the world doing this. That'll be a million times better than ChatGPT code reviews and you'll be able to learn a ton from it while also getting your code into production at thousands to millions of companies in the world that depend on the open source project/s you choose to contribute to.
2) Fill holes in your knowledge base. If you feel weak in a particular area like networking or DSA then study and practice with it until you no longer feel weak in that area. If you were on my team I would try to assign tasks to you to help you naturally build out knowledge and confidence in your weak areas but without someone to do that for you, you'll need to try to figure out your own weaknesses.
3) Always try to do your best when working professionally. This is all any of us can ever do and if you actively practice it then it'll become a habit that will guide you toward success in any environment.
2. Ask HN: Who needs help this holidays?
Top comment by toomuchtodo
Update: Response has been overwhelming, requests for food, medical costs, and other life critical needs are being prioritized. Thank you for your patience and understanding.
3. Ask HN: Tools or frameworks to build music theory games
Top comment by ssttoo
Ah, I know the feeling. I also had a teacher who built his own things with very limited coding skills. Then I started making quick flashcard-style exercises and he was a lot of help testing and helping refine these. So now I have this site with various tools I built over the years: https://www.onlinemusictools.com/
Libs that helped:
- https://github.com/saebekassebil/teoria for scales, chords etc
- https://github.com/0xfe/vexflow for notation
- https://github.com/goldfire/howler.js for playing piano samples. I used to DIY (because I love DIY), not even using WebAudio but recently tried howler and it's abstracting a few things I don't need to worry about
- https://github.com/omnibrain/svguitar/ draw guitar fretboard. I recently did my first guitar-specific exercise and this was good. I even filed a feature request and the dev did it
I'd be happy to help you and your prof if you need anything, lmk
4. Ask HN: Why did no one save the Living Computers museum in Seattle?
Top comment by jonjacky
Details of what happened here: http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/5672
via HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41288051
There were several more HN threads - just search for 'Living Computer Museum'
The answer to your question is, the people who made fortunes in this industry -- some of them in Seattle -- are not interested in the history of their industry, even when they made some of it.
It's a telling contrast to the wonderful Museum of Flight, also in Seattle.
5. Ask HN: I don't want to code anymore. What else can I do?
Top comment by wnolens
What is often hidden in these kinds of posts is a relationship with money that's not fully understood. There's thousands upon thousands of different jobs out there, but your post implies that there's none outside of tech. I'm assuming this is because of the lifestyle it afforded you which you are used to, addiction to cash flow, dependents to support, or perhaps an identity fused with high earnings.
Do a thorough think of how much money you really need. And convince yourself that a dollar more isn't worth any amount of extra effort.
For most people it took a 3-5 years in school or lower level jobs to get good enough to crack into the fruits a high earning software engineering career. If you were young when this happened, you didn't even notice those years go by. Now you're older, but the same rules apply. They just feel different and usually unmotivating. You may need to spend a few years at the bottom again to make some progress down a different skill tree.
When you're winning for so long, it's hard to imagine eating shit for years just to make bread again elsewhere. Harness some excitement around that and commit fully, or realize that you have a pretty great life and find a way to stay cozy in tech (like divorcing your identity from your job).
edit: also if you've only been in big tech, then get out. it's so much more fun elsewhere.
6. Ask HN: How to Resurrect a Site from Archive.org?
Top comment by duskwuff
> I recently bought the expired domain of a niche interest site because the previous owner was determined to let it die and did not want to put any effort in it anymore. Is there a way I can "revive" it from archive.org in a more or less automated fashion?
Buying a domain name does not award you ownership of the content it previously hosted. If you have not come to some agreement with the previous owner, you should not proceed.
7. Ask HN: Recommend me some silent movies
Top comment by mindcrime
I'm not a big silent movie guy, but I'll add to the chorus of people recommending Metropolis. It's pretty interesting.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolis_(1927_film)
8. Ask HN: Payment processing for micro SaaS outside USA?
Top comment by bootstrpppin
It sounds like you’re describing a Merchant of Record (MoR). This is where customers pay a third-party service, which then handles payments, compliance, and then pays you.
Check out gumroad, lemon squeezy and maybe Paypal.
9. Ask HN: Did Google/Alphabet ever try to build a Starlink?
Top comment by bryanlarsen
Yes, they essentially did. Project Loon used balloons rather than satellites, but is otherwise surprisingly similar to Starlink, technically.
And as far as I've heard, a lot of Project Loon personnel ended up at SpaceX.
Also, the synergy may be a good part of the reason why Google was a large early investor in SpaceX.
https://x.company/projects/loon/
10. Ask HN: What companies have a good work life balance?
Top comment by bodiekane
Controversial stance, but... almost any big company, as long as you don't care too much about promotions or the social hierarchy of your coworkers.
Get a $150k job as a senior software engineer, show up to meetings, do good-enough work and be polite and friendly to your coworkers and you'll basically be fine.
At performance review time you'll get the low-performer raise of 3% instead of the high-performer raise of 4%, but your hourly wage comes out ahead. Maybe you'll be a little more likely to get laid off in lean times, but those are sufficiently arbitrary that you could work nights and weekends and still get laid off.
Plenty of people have lived happy, well-rounded lives putting their energy into their families, hobbies and self-fulfillment while coasting through their career as a lower-than-average-performer in a series of 1-4 year stints at different companies.