bballant

7 ms·

1.
by bballant 15y ago
I can only speak from my American experience, working as a software engineer for ~12 years in NYC. I am 33 years old--I never feel too old for this. My non-tech co-workers and engineering peers respect me very much. I love them back. We do
2.
by bballant 15y ago
My main point is that the JVM manages memory better than ruby. Its dead easy to benchmark it yourself by writing a pair of tiny programs. As I said, the JVM will use up all the memory it can. You can probably tweak davmail's runtime flags t
3.
by bballant 15y ago
I've heard good things about Play, but we've chosen to go with Spring MVC because we didn't need the full stack -- we have a lot of existing Java ORM-ish code and a bunch of existing JSP functionality which we wanted to re-use. JSP is actu
4.
by bballant 15y ago
On my team such remarks cost a dollar. The JVM generally does very well in terms of memory use compared to many languages. It's easy to test: write an a small program in both languages that creates boatloads of objects and then watch the me
5.
by bballant 15y ago
I've worked in ruby, python, java, and most recently, scala -- on both small and large projects. Tangled hairballs and hidden runtime exceptions can happen anywhere. I've just seen less of it with Java. I think this is partly because the co
6.
by bballant 15y ago
I also thought that was a weird comment. But In my experience a big team benefits from a compiled, statically typed language like Java (better yet, Scala). Perhaps that's what the author meant.
7.
by bballant 15y ago
To use your analogy, I don't think Brad is saying to wear shorts outside during a blizzard. He's saying that if it's a sunny day, you shouldn't wear earmuffs just cause it's unseasonably warm and may or may not snow tomorrow ;-). edit: Perp
8.
by bballant 15y ago
Well maybe it was my mistake to generalize (and say "much"). And by develop, I meant develop, test, support, and maintain over a wide range of phones and capabilities. These issues may be more or less pronounced based on what the app does a
9.
by bballant 15y ago
Mr. Wilson's numbers leave out some key realities about Android as it stands as a smartphone platform. First of all, Android is much harder to develop for than the iPhone. This is because the Android ecosystem is so dispersed. There are m
10.
by bballant 16y ago
I agree. Cable news is horrendous. On the other hand, the photos of the tsunami devestation published by the Boston Globe alone tell a story that is deeper and richer than anything else I've seen or read on the matter.
11.
by bballant 16y ago
It makes sense that the post on women founders wouldn't be similarly flagged if the difference is related to comfort level. Comfort comes from trust and exposure, among other things, and I'd say that most white men have more relationships w
12.
by bballant 16y ago
You're right, a lot of things take years of experience to learn, which is why solving a difficult problem is not the only way I evaluate a candidate. I definitely look at their previous experiences. But someone who is so specialized that t
13.
by bballant 16y ago
I've recently been on the other side, trying to interview and hire people. It's difficult. My primary concerns are: Is the candidate going to be competent and capable of solving difficult problems and contributing to the team? Are they go
14.
by bballant 16y ago
It depends on what you do, but if you're a freelancer, finding your own clients, managing your own projects, and paying for your own social security and benefits, then 100/hr is fair for a good programmer in NYC. It is comparable to 100K f
15.
by bballant 16y ago
i would prefer to always use Linux, but my company gives all the engineers Macs, so that's what I now use. I miss Linux deeply, but maintaining two dev environments, not to mention context switching wrt key commands, drove me to the brink.
16.
by bballant 16y ago
Re: good vs. bad clients -- I commented on part 1, basically saying that being friendly helps me find work, but it also means my clients are friendly/casual which can lead to time wastage. It's like the opposite of the super-type-a microma
17.
by bballant 16y ago
Thanks for the tips. Perhaps I could raise my rates, but I think I lose money more by a) not properly estimating timelines and b) becoming idle while waiting for client feedback/help/etc. As I said, I'm only 6 mo. into it, so I'm still le
18.
by bballant 16y ago
I've only been freelancing for 6 mo. but I have about 10 years of experience as a software developer in the same market. Right now I'm totally saturated with work and it's come entirely through contacts -- I haven't talked to one recruiter
19.
by bballant 16y ago
Another quick comment about doctors and pay (because I had this conversation the other day w/ a young doctor). Doctors are incentivized to prescribe costly tests. They get paid more w/ every test/procedure, and tests also serve to cover t
20.
by bballant 16y ago
For point # 3, it's actually even worse than that. These days, the best doctors also do a fellowship after residency. It's slightly less ridiculous than a residency, but it's another 2-4 years of being underpaid tacked on to the previous
21.
by bballant 16y ago
"I turned these and other activities into necessary and weekly scheduled tasks.." I hope you scheduled some time to be spontaneous.
22.
by bballant 16y ago
Ironically, many NYC public schools have Snapple machines (I think the city has a deal w/ the company) with all sorts of sweet beverage enticements. The older students often go to MacDonalds, which seem to thrive in poor neighborhoods near
23.
by bballant 16y ago
It is probably out of scope for the article, or maybe too much on the opinion side, but the Flash developer experience is pretty horrendous. There are too many ways to mix UI created code, time-line/movie clip stuff, and actual ActionScript
24.
by bballant 16y ago
The Way of Zen is great. The paradoxes of Zen are fun if you're a programmer-type.
25.
by bballant 16y ago
There are a lot of good suggestions here. Reading religion and philosophy definitely helps. A good way to get into that is to find a writer you like (can be anyone) then find out who their influences were. I've enjoyed reading Joseph Camp
26.
by bballant 16y ago
I know where Singapore is, I dun need to look it up... Singapore is in a great spot for a port--lots of easy-to-travel water to the east and to the west and big trading partners in all directions. But, besides Hong Kong and maybe Keelong
27.
by bballant 16y ago
Only 2 of the top 10 countries on this list are autocratic. In both Singapore and Hong Kong, most of the economic freedoms are for colonialists and not for the local Chinese. Hong Kong has some of the greatest economic disparity of any ci
28.
by bballant 16y ago
In Singapore you get caned for smoking weed and gum chewing is illegal. Sounds like a friggin blast! Besides, it's not a counter-example. In order for it to be a counter example, you would have to prove that Singapore would be "chaos" if i
29.
by bballant 16y ago
"The party in china does not kill people. You say it does, but there are no reports saying that." You are saying there are no reports of the Chinese Government killing people, so therefore, obviously, they do not kill people. If they did,
30.
by bballant 16y ago
I'm with you. The article takes a tiny piece of the much larger financial reform regulation package which has been a bipartisan effort with Republican Richard Shelby very much involved, amplifies it through some hypothetical number crunchi

More ›