jlees

7 ms·

1.
by jlees 10y ago
I really enjoyed playing it too. One of the more fun things was seeing the scoreboard and competing against engineer friends of mine... it's fun to see that there is a better solution, and also fun to see that yours is more efficient.
2.
by jlees 10y ago
I studied computer science at university, but didn't take a programming job straight away - one of the reasons was that I feared being bored (slow death by cubicle). After dipping into grad school, dropping out, starting a company (whe
3.
by jlees 10y ago
I ran into a similar problem a while back (using Heroku) --- after a brief foray into the world of spam filtering, it turned out to be caused by our domain being identified by SpamAssassin (IIRC) as a spam signal. We changed the wording of
4.
by jlees 10y ago
Agree, I think the tone of this piece is really interesting. It's sadness, laced with evangelism; a hope that the new acquirers will recognise what makes Virgin great, and absorb those qualities rather than replace them. But mostly sad
5.
by jlees 10y ago
Oh, I can believe that. But the way said performance is measured -- both types -- is extremely varied. I'd summarize my viewpoint as "whiteboard interviews tell you something about how the candidate thinks and communicates, which
6.
by jlees 10y ago
It depends how you evaluate the exercise -- for example, don't mark the candidate on correct code and syntax, but reasoning ability, communication, and problem solving. Whiteboard code interviews also have the flaw that the type of p
7.
by jlees 10y ago
Riot Games - Los Angeles, CA / St. Louis, MO - Onsite - Full-Time - Software Engineer We make the game League of Legends, which by various metrics is the most played PC game in the world. That means we have some really fun problems tha
8.
by jlees 10y ago
Just because you are smart enough to compete in an Olympiad doesn't mean you can function practically on a software engineering team. Whiteboard coding helps the interviewer see how you think and function as well as "can you solve
9.
by jlees 10y ago
When I was resume screening at Google, we cared about school in terms of interpreting GPA, since 4.0 isn't equal everywhere -- and we got a LOT of resumes. Once the person got to interview stage, the school was irrelevant beyond the na
10.
by jlees 11y ago
Probably via this mention: https://twitter.com/imdsm/status/708286213975908352
11.
by jlees 11y ago
Startups (depending on the size) are both wonderful and terrible places for a new bootcamp grad. There is a lot to learn, and learn quickly, which is something any bootcamp grad has had to master -- but there is often a dearth of mentoring
12.
by jlees 11y ago
Amazon now offers Elasticsearch as a service; it was a great help for us quickly setting up ELK to test.
13.
by jlees 11y ago
I was hesitant to join a game company for pretty much all these reasons, but there are some exceptions out there. I'm working on some interesting reusable platform-level technology that wouldn't be out of place at somewhere like G
14.
by jlees 11y ago
I didn't know I would enjoy lifting until I tried Crossfit. Now, Crossfit has many good points and just as many detractors - as with anything, the quality of the gym/instruction can vary a lot. But the main thing it did for me was
15.
by jlees 11y ago
I did the same for my classes last year - beginner/intermediate Python, SQL, web development at a part-time night school for adults. Wrote a long detailed tutorial and let the students self-pace, with a bit of an intro at the start of
16.
by jlees 11y ago
As she's a she, check out Hackbright Academy. Disclaimer: I used to teach there.
17.
by jlees 11y ago
Hmm, I think you may find different responses based on experience level with something like ML in particular. I'm a product focused engineer (former PM) with a master's degree and an unfinished PhD in machine learning. I've a
18.
by jlees 11y ago
Implementing a Go player using neural networks and reinforcement learning is really fun and taught me a lot about how said techniques work. I only covered the (much easier) 9x9 board, but would recommend it as an exercise to those interest
19.
by jlees 11y ago
I think with a certain definition of training the argument works, but it's not clear if this is actually the definition they had in mind. If you have the choice between hiring two people for an engineering position, one of whom can wri
20.
by jlees 11y ago
"The best choice" is a woolly phrase. Best for whom? Stopping all development to totally rewrite the core game engine is best from a technical perspective, but that's not necessarily the optimal solution for player enjoyment
21.
by jlees 11y ago
This doesn't feel like particularly new research - my PhD supervisor did work in the area of argumentative zoning nearly 10 years ago: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~sht25/Project_Index/Citraz_Index.ht... I initial
22.
by jlees 11y ago
To address the point of "game developers don't know backends, and backend developers don't know how to build for games"... I want to think aloud about the question "how do you hire engineers who can work on the back
23.
by jlees 11y ago
This is cool, and interesting in a couple of ways. The declarations are preliminary, meaning (I presume) that students may change their minds; according to some studies (e.g. [1]), women tend to transfer out of CS at a higher rate than men.
24.
by jlees 11y ago
I'm not sure it's made life easier for him yet. He walked 3.5 metres, but how frustrating would it be to lose the use of your legs and then be tantalized by something sort-of-like walking again, but within very controlled situatio
25.
by jlees 11y ago
This reminded me of the Biosphere 2 experiment, which I saw a fascinating talk on. I think it was basically the same as this TED talk: https://www.ted.com/talks/jane_poynter_life_in_biosphere_2 Eight scientists lived i
26.
by jlees 11y ago
I think outside of the day-to-day (you need to know Python, here's how to get Vagrant running, this is how you submit a code review) there can also be a gap in cultural onboarding. For example, someone moving from a large tech company
27.
by jlees 11y ago
I think there's also a spot for board games as a social outlet that requires less commitment than D&D and is more accessible than videogaming; several years ago I used to get together with friends and bring videogame consoles, more
28.
by jlees 11y ago
Although you can end up with fun situations like the C compiler backdoor: http://scienceblogs.com/goodmath/2007/04/15/strange-loops-de...
29.
by jlees 11y ago
This is also a pretty accessible quick intro to complexity and data structures, nicely done. Definitely the sort of thing I would include as further reading in a beginner course -- some beginners love to understand "why" and this
30.
by jlees 11y ago
I think another part of it was the effort required to try out new titles; I got very attached to the Dizzy series because I had to save up my pocket money and actually go to the computer shop to buy the tape. And that shop certainly didn&#x

More ›