Boeing switched to Agile development for T-X program - <AUTHOR> https://aviationweek.com/defense/inside-boeing-s-secret-formula-win-t-x <comment><AUTHOR> Interesting that agile was a key component in what allowed Boeing to underbid all their competitors on the T-X advanced trainer program and still produce a profitable aircraft:

"Another factor was adopting an agile approach to software development. Instead of building up large blocks of software over several months or even years, the functions are broken down into smaller increments that are integrated at the system level every two months.

"This had us basically releasing software every eight weeks," Niewald said. "By doing this in such a disciplined manner at a frequency it allowed us to reduce our software [lines of code] by 50% [compared to a traditional aircraft development program]."

The approach allowed Boeing to build and fly two aircraft within three years of the program launch in 2013. When this journalist referred to the two T-X aircraft built so far as "prototypes," implying they don't represent the production standard, a Boeing spokesperson stepped in to point out that they are not considered prototypes internally"</comment>


BP buys 'oil spill' sponsored links for search engines - <AUTHOR> http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2010/06/bp-turns-to-google-ads-to-save.html http://zitstif.no-ip.org/ <comment><USER2> _Well ain't that great pr..._

I believe that BP's pr department consists of old pr people past their prime - people who're still living in a world where there's only a couple of information sources (TV, Newspapers) and they're putting those strategies into use in the modern world...

And the end result?

Endless blog posts about how BP has done an awful job of clearing that mess up</comment>


Ask HN: What stack do you use to track realtime events at scale? - <AUTHOR>

We're about to embark on building our own realtime web events platform to track events on 20 large properties (~100k+ events/s). If you've done similar projects, what stack have you used? We're thinking of some combination of Logstash (piping logs in), Kinesis (organizing stream), and Storm (processing and aggregation), but need ideas :). <comment><USER2> We use RabbitMQ and Storm. Rabbit is great but for our use case would just as easily use SQS or pretty much any other event bus.

Storm is ok. It's not very DI friendly and the documentation is not the best. It only supports pull when for our use cases push would always be preferable.

Twitter announced a replacement for Storm called Heron but no word on if/when it will be released. It's supposed to be much faster.

Storm is nice in that it enforces patterns for message passing (spouts/bolts). So the code ends up being pretty clean and easy to understand.

We use a small library on top of Storm to add Spring support.</comment>


OpenAPI Generator 4.0.0-beta3 has been released - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/OpenAPITools/openapi-generator/releases/tag/v4.0.0-beta3 <comment><USER2> Really cool project, @wing328hk. Congrats on the new release.</comment>


How to send a text message to the 1970s - <AUTHOR> http://www.domsmith.co.uk/blog/2015/04/05/sms-and-email-over-rtty/

<comment><USER2> Incidentally, I just finished watching the series 'Steins;Gate', where the characters' discovered ability to send text messages to the past becomes a focal plot point of the show. Needless to say, I didn't understand what the title here was talking about.

edit: Oh right, another significant plot point is the Large Hadron Collider, also featured on the front page right now.

<comment><USER3> The anime also features crossing worldlines (their version of parallel worlds). I've forgotten how the "mad scientist" crossed worldlines.

Also, features sending of memories/knowledge into the past - their first step into time travel.</comment></comment>


A SQL injection tool for effortlessly saving time on escaping quote marks - <AUTHOR> https://www.sqltexttochar.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> From the website: "This is a tool first I made for myself and then made public to craft sql injection commands without any problems of unescaped quote marks. Just type your text and it will be converted to a concat'ed expression adjusted to your db engine."

Since I know your privacy concerns I didn't put google analytics, google fonts or ads. Just a few lines of javascript to convert the strings.

I hope it will make your life easier.</comment>


How to Have Healthy Relationships as a Developer - <AUTHOR> http://smo.nu/how-to-have-healthy-relationships-as-a-developer/ <comment><USER2> Personally, I don't think that having healthy relationships as a developer is much different than having healthy relationships as anyone else. As with any other technical job, it can be hard to explain exactly what your job is, but a bit of humor and an ELI5-style explanation goes a long way.

One thing specific to programmers is the ability to whip up a little program to help people. Someone spends an hour every day retyping lower-case data in uppercase? Take ten seconds and write them a program. Someone complains how they always forget to shut down their computer and waste electricity? Write them a widget to shut it down at 1am each night.

When I take a bit of time to write programs for people I care about, people are usually very grateful and vastly overestimate the difficulty of whatever I just did. As always, relevant xkcd: [https://xkcd.com/1425/](https://xkcd.com/1425/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Author here, I agree to an extent. As I said in the "Spend Time With Them" section, a lot of developers also program as their hobby. In fact, you pretty much _have to_ program in your free time in order to keep up with all the new paradigms and frameworks.

Jobs that have been around a lot longer, like construction or accounting, allow you to just leave your work when you go home.

In that way I think developers face a unique challenge. We all know how prevalent burn out is in the industry, it's tough making sure relationships don't burn out as well.

Thanks for the feedback!

<comment> xkcd-sucks >In fact, you pretty much have to program in your free time in order to keep up with all the new paradigms and frameworks

Lol no. If I'm coding it's not free time, and if I'm coding to learn it's professional development, not recreation. "Coding is a lifestyle" is such a scam.

<comment><USER3> User name xkcd-sucks. Not a fan of coding for fun.

Hackathons? Have you ever just wanted to write a web scraper in a new language to see how it is different from your usual? Never coded a small video game?

Why are you a programmer then?

<comment><USER4> Do you ever find yourself interacting with a carpenter and asking him why he doesn't build additions to his house, or his friend's homes in his free time?

What about an accountant? Ever quiz them or deride them for not going out of their way to balance budgets and crunch numbers for family & friends?

Why is programming this anomaly to people where there's a necessity for you to want to spend your personal hours doing what you do for 40 hours a week (or more for many) professionally? If you don't make your life entirely centered around your career you're obviously not a _real_ programmer despite many people having lives outside their career still being extremely talented and successful.

I think it's a lie we tell ourselves and perpetuate. People who sold their lives to programming expect to surround themselves with others who've done the same. You end up on the hiring side of an interview and you want the candidates to have a portfolio of personal projects to show off because that's what shows _dedication_. I get along best with the coworkers I have that have a wide variety of interests because they're not a bore to talk to and get a beer with. Jobs in the middle of nowhere are far more tolerable with those who you can stand to be cramped in a room with for two weeks rather than the guy who can only relate with RocketLeague anecdotes.

<comment><USER5> First of all, a lot of carpenters _do_ in fact work on side projects in their free time. My dad certainly does.

We need to recognize that programming is a creative craft and the norm for those _is_ to do it as a hobby.

Most musicians, including "professional" ones, play for fun as well. As do dancers, poets, writers, artists, etc.

Do you think most academics leave "work," go home and never think about their research again?

I have no problem with people who somehow decided to program despite not enjoying it enough to do it in their free time. But they shouldn't attack those of us who do for daring to spend our free time in a pleasurable way. And they should accept that there's a simple reality that those of us who enjoy it are going to spend more time at it and thus level up more quickly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> >Our brains automatically group similar memories together in order to save space. As developers, years can feel like weeks if we don't actively pursue different experiences.

This hit me hard. Feels like the years have just slipped on by since I graduated university.

Not particularly sure how to stop it though...maybe a few more years and I can just take a few months off and travel or something?

<comment><USER7> Try going analogue, find a hobby that doesn't involve a computer (music, cooking, hiking etc.). I find if I do even a small amount of a few different activities in a day, it feels a lot more _full_. A day spent coding, then going home to cook dinner and read a book always feel better than a day spent coding, then going home to browse the internet or even work on a coding side project (if I get around to those, they're restricted to the weekend).

<comment><USER8> > Try going analogue, find a hobby that doesn't involve a computer (music, > cooking, hiking etc.)

I would suggest to find a hobby that involves other people.

<comment><USER4> I would too. But that doesn't mean you can't take up a hobby that is done alone but shared with a club. I got into car work and joined my local auto club. We do meets, drives, and grab beers every once in a while and share experiences or things we've done. EDIT: Not to mention the social point of "I fucked up, who knows what they're doing and wants to share a case and fix this mess"

I've been hired by a few friends-of-friends to build automation and although the coding and electrical is done at my little workstation there's a local maker group that I like to share my works with.

I always recommend picking up a hobby that has tangible products. Gaming and Reading are all mind exercises. Doing something with your hands helps work the body and when you've worked at something for long enough its much more visual for how you've honed your craft. Its a different type of reward than coding is. I don't know if I can describe the feeling it gives but it's different somehow, and it's a good feeling to look down upon a physical creation with pride.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> What's it like to date / be married to another programmer? I've always wondered if this would help or hinder the relationship.

<comment><USER10> I would love to see this as an Ask HN.

<comment><USER11> By experience, the answer is quite easy: when both have the same occupation it gets boring very fast. It's much more enriching having the opportunity to learn about a different field than coming home and continue to listen about the same.

Rationally I would never pick somebody from the same field as me.

<comment><USER12> _> when both have the same occupation it gets boring very fast. _

It gets boring even when your occupations are so alien to each other, that there's little you can share beyond bog-standard office gossip.

<comment><USER13> Eh, we just don't talk about it.

My fiance works in a t-shirt printing shop and I work as a developer. I enjoy hearing about his work, he enjoys hearing about mine but we know neither of us could do what the other does.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I don't think this problem is unique to programmers. Everyone who works a lot can get into this situation. If you spend 60h a week doing anything, whether you code, or manage people, or lay pipes or sell houses or cut hair, you'll be so absorbed in your work that you can't imagine other people will understand all the intricacies of what you do; and frankly, in the time that's left of the week, one might just be too exhausted to spend quality time with friends and family...

</comment><comment><USER15> LPT though: have friends at work but don't flirt with them.

I had a really good friend at work for a while but it always had this flirty undercurrent. We both had SOs, but enjoyed the "office wife/husband" thing (my real wife actually knew about it and was not jealous). Anyway, the flirtationship thing makes you as vulnerable to criticism as an actual relationship, so the occasional sarcastic tirade or bad mood day really hurts. Long story short, we're not only no-longer-friends (this happen, I've worked at the same place for so long some friendships are cyclical); we can't talk to each other or work in the same open plan office. It's a small wonder no one's been fired. Ultimately the drama/good feeling ratio doesn't work out.

<comment><USER16> >LPT though: have friends at work but don't flirt with them.

I'm a software engineer, and a hetero male. Why would I want to flirt with other men?

I frequently wish I had gone into another career (probably medical) so I could try out this flirting with coworkers thing I keep hearing about.

<comment><USER15> Welp, a corollary of what I said is that it's better to flirt with people outside of work.

<comment><USER16> That'd be nice if I had some way of meeting people outside of work, besides dating apps.

Are you one of those people who really thinks a grocery store is a place to meet women?

<comment><USER15> Well, I don't think a grocery store is _not_ a place to meet women, but you could try night clubs.

<comment><USER16> Yeah, I've tried that: a bunch of drunks and really, really loud and bad music. It isn't very much fun.

<comment><USER15> Let me try again: try night clubs that play music you like; that helps _a lot_ in winnowing the playing field and showing women of the type you'd enjoy dating.

But hey, we're talking flirting, right? Finding fuck-friends is probably easier with dating apps; and maybe one of those even converts into a sweetheart. Flirting is really fun though.

<comment><USER16> Music I like? I've never heard of a night club that plays 80s thrash metal, 70s hard rock, etc. It's always some horrible dance or pop music, or country. I also don't drink (except maybe a half-glass of wine on rare occasion with a nice meal at home), so I really don't see how the nightclub scene is any better at finding someone I'd enjoy dating than a dating app, in fact at least with the dating app I have a chance to find women who aren't alcoholics who listen to shitty music.

So instead, I've been trying (during better weather than current conditions) hiking groups on Meetup.com, since I do like hiking a lot, and would like to find a woman who also enjoys hiking. That hasn't gone all that well; it seems most of the people in these groups are retirement aged. I do see age- appropriate women out hiking, but they're usually with a husband/boyfriend, not in one of these groups. AFAICT, the single women in the age range I'm interested in (30-45) in this area (DC) are not into hiking at all, but they are into getting drunk from what I've seen of them downtown. And from what I've seen on dating apps and OKCupid, the ones who aren't downtown socialites are mostly Trump voters who spend their weekends at the gun range.

<comment><USER16> BTW, I also like various classical and especially baroque music. I've never heard of a nightclub that plays Vivaldi or Telemann.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > Talk About Your Work

I strongly disagree with this one, although I'm not sure if my reasoning is broadly or only personally applicable. The last thing I want to do at the end of a long day of work is recap what I did. Even in the best-case scenario of a day full of victories, it's just exhausting to try to relive all of them with the added burden of explaining the decade-plus knowledge base you'd need to understand why Problem X was so hard to solve. I'm much happier with a base of other interests to talk about after work with a non-programmer instead.

<comment><USER18> I understand your frustration but I disagree. You should try explaining your work to a non-programmer. It's a challenge to 'dumb it down' and you only succeed if you truly understand your work. Sometimes the non-programmer is successful in suggesting a very possible solution which turns out to be a fun conversation.

<comment><USER19> Like Feynman said in this video [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMFPe- DwULM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMFPe-DwULM), when trying to explain how magnate works to the reporter.

I think it's hard for someone else to actually understand the problem when you two are not in the same knowledge framework. Cause then she/he will be perpetually asking the why and how question and being not satisfied.

edited.

<comment><USER20> Nevertheless Feynman made many successful lectures to the public and undergraduate students and was able to explain things as complex as quantum electrodynamics in layman terms. Recently I tried explaining how Akka clusters work and what partitions are to a completely non-technical colleague. Not only was I able to explain the parts I understand well in a way that she understood, I also quickly found out there are parts that I don't understand at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Overall really simple changes to improve our daily life.

This had me laughing: (No, changing your Vim colorscheme doesn't count as a "different experience.")

<comment><USER22> Ha, I broke off half way though thinking "oooh I should change my vim colorscheme!" Hehe

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> When I look back, good times with family and friends brings happiness. :) When I look back at the bad program written, feel like 'Did I write this so studpidly?' brings sadness. :(

</comment><comment><USER24> > Relationships are a key part of being happy

Is this really true for everyone? I sacrificed my relationship because I prioritize my projects and I've never been happier. I can't imagine getting into another since it would mean compromises I'm not willing to make.

<comment><USER25> Probably an implied "good" modifier in there.

Good relationships are a key part of being happy.

Bad relationships...not so much

<comment><USER26> I would disagree that this is the case for everyone. I think a small number of people are happier without relationships.

<comment><USER25> Fair enough. What do you define a relationship as? I understood it as "any repeated interaction with a person on a meaningful level"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> That's a good tip to discuss the work with family when working at home on weekends especially, as they have no idea of the problems a developer faces when working remotely on weekends.

</comment><comment><USER28> I don't think I really get how to have relationships. It seems a lot of developers fail bad at relationships.

I see beauty in math and algorithms. I'm sick of people, who just see such things only in dollar terms.

However, I think there is a greater cultural attack on technological professionals. I feel like we are devalued as some sort of machine that cranks out code. Many play into this as well. I don't think it is healthy.

<comment><USER29> > I'm sick of people, who just see such things only in dollar terms.

This statement is more accurate if you remove the comma. What you wrote makes a blanket claim about all people (which is highly unlikely to be true for even a majority). Without the comma, it's a useful heuristic for what kinds of people you should avoid so that you can have a more fulfilling circle of friends.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This could be relevant: [https://www.buzzworthy.com/research-shows-can- empathetic-ana...](https://www.buzzworthy.com/research-shows-can-empathetic- analytical-time/)

</comment><comment><USER30> I read articles like this and always find it fascinating that none of them suggest simply stop doing what you do for work (or at least limit to a certain extent) and enjoy other things in life. You want to have a healthy life? Get away from the monitor and get outside. It's that simple no matter what you do.

</comment><comment><USER31> This pretty much applies to any technical field. Good advice.

</comment><comment> Jean-Philipe > Call your grandma, friend, dad, girlfriend, anyone

A bit offtopic, but the author seems to assume you are a straight coder guy. This was probably not his intention though. Why not replace "girlfriend" by something more neutral, like "your better half"? Being inclusive doesn't cost much, really.

<comment><USER32> I think everybody got the point. The dude was writting blog about keeping healthy social life, not sexuality. If we keep splitting it to atoms, it would be pretty distracting experience for writter of any blog post. Being a little bit inclusive doesn't cost much, but it could cost a lot if you go by your logic for every other thing...

<comment><USER33> Is there a book or a list of ways to brush an issue under the carpet? This is one of them, one of the most pernicious.

The language we use, __especially __the language we use casually, defines how we appear. To those outside the predominantly straight white male clique of programming, repeated exposure to these casual assumptions of stereotype pile up and create a sense that those not fitting the stereotype are unwelcome. Imagine if, every single day you had to drive around the same pothole in the road into coming traffic: eventually, you 'd find a different route.

<comment><USER34> Can we just not do this? Twisting every innocuous throwaway statement into some covert form of oppression gets really tedious after a while.

"Come and see the violence inherent in the system. Help, help, I'm being repressed!"

<comment><USER35> You're right. The point is that it's not a covert form of oppression, it's de facto.

There _is_ a straight, white male clique-iness to the programming world. Most blog posts assume the reader is a straight, white male. These are turn offs to some people, whether conscious or not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I sometimes wonder how much my life would be different if I never got into this. Programming is such a big part of my life now. I frequently consider how much of my brain power goes to programming; and I have to say it's about 20%. If there were five of me, one of them would basically be a computer.

I wonder what that fifth of my brain would have been thinking about for the past 10 years, if not programming. Maybe it would have been dancing, or painting, or soccer. Instead of context switching into thinking like a computer, it'd be how to move my body around or how to meld colors together. I feel like that would lead to a much more fulfilling life.

I used to program for fun in middle school. It was probably halfway through high school when I stopped programming for fun. It was always that little nagging voice in the back of my head: Play it safe. Programming is an in- demand field! You're good at it! Look at all of that awesome shit you made.

At this point, the only "hobby" I have is programming. I don't even know what else I like anymore.

<comment><USER37> _At this point, the only "hobby" I have is programming. I don't even know what else I like anymore._

Well, that's on you, but the good news is that you can change that as soon as you want. Why not start today?

<comment><USER36> I've been trying for the past 6 months, but I keep coming back to programming. Old habits die hard.

<comment><USER38> Keep trying new hobbies until one of them sticks! There will come a point where you find a hobby that will fulfill you in ways that programming can not.

For me that is writing poetry and making music for myself, which I randomly stumbled upon after having had so many other hobbies in the past besides programming</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Markdown is the new Word 5.1 - <AUTHOR> http://forkbombr.net/markdown-new-word51/ <comment><USER2> I a not disagreeing with the article and I would like to add: using Latex provides the same plain text advantages and after some learning curve you can do just about anything with it.

<comment><USER3> LaTeX is great when you need it (i.e. to write mathematics, draw clever diagrams, or need a Turing-complete programming language in your markup language), but when you don't, it's unnecessarily cumbersome, and Markdown is a lot better. Both have a settled spot in my toolbox, but it's not the same spot.

If you use Pandoc to generate e.g. HTML documents from your Markdown files, it's also worth remembering that TeX math mode is available in that. For example, [1] is an article on my website written in Markdown, but manages to include a decent amount of mathematics (replace .html with .txt for the source file).

[1] [http://extralogical.net/articles/arithmetic-godel- system-t.h...](http://extralogical.net/articles/arithmetic-godel- system-t.html)

<comment><USER4> Sugared LaTeX would be great. Has anyone done this?

<comment><USER5> Well, Markdown to LaTeX is possible in pandoc. Otherwise, you could just write in org-mode (which supports many of the features of MultiMarkDown, if not all) and export it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> tl;dr

Article is advocating the use of plain text in the form of Markdown & a solid text editor for distraction-free writing.

</comment><comment><USER7> This is precisely why us Emacs users have been advocating org-mode for years. It can make generating tables, creating outlines, headers, emphasis, etc. all automatic and easy, (Most editors don't have support for markdown that makes this automatic.)

Best of all, org-mode syntax is just ASCII like Markdown and your grandmother could open it in notepad and understand perfectly what you're trying to convey.

Article about Org-mode that shows some common use-cases:

<http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/9116></comment>


҉(epiws tidder) !drieW - <AUTHOR>

If you paste that last character and type, everything goes backwards! <comment><USER2> I've managed to get Eclipse to write backwards before and could never figure out why... this might explain it :p

</comment><comment><USER3> Doesn't work in Firefox 3; it's still pretty cool.

From the comments on Reddit, there are many unicode characters that have the RTL control character. <http://www.microsoft.com/middleeast/msdn/Control.aspx>

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm glad I'm not the only one who doesn't understand Unicode and doesn't understand how to code in such a way that I avoid discriminating against people who happened to not be born in a country where a language with a Latin alphabet is used.

</comment><comment><USER5> ҉( cool

</comment><comment><USER6> it's probably from a bidirectional or right-to-left character set. some languages go from right-to-left, but (incredibly) some can go in both directions, depending on the context.

</comment><comment><USER7> A google search on this give over 250K results!

</comment><comment><USER8> news.yc doesn't work with unicode..

<comment><USER9> Neither does Ruby on Rails.

<comment><USER10> Define 'works'. If you mean it's not perfect, then I agree. But it's still VERY possible to build websites in Rails that support unicode all the way down.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Jekyllhub - Blogging. For Developers. - <AUTHOR> https://jekyllhub.com

<comment><USER2> Putting the idea of paid static blogging with git aside, I'd like to notice something about the pricing model: Flickr costs $20 per year, they provide advanced well-designed idiot-proof tools to manage and edit your unlimited hell a lot of bandwidth consuming pile of photos as well as a lot of exposure if someone needs it. Jekyllhub costs of running are a tiny little fraction of that, not to say much more closer to zero, yet it costs $50, and from what I understand the only additional value it provides over self-hosting jekyll (which is self-hosting a few html files) it's an online wysiwig. Not to mention all selling points (git, markdown, etc..) target a tech-savvy crowd probably with their own servers. I'm confused. While I can support the shift towards paid services, this offer doesn't convince me at all.

</comment><comment><USER3> Looks really neat, however I wouldn't pay for it having free alternatives.

</comment><comment><USER4> This is honestly a great idea. I just don't know how much of the audience would pay when github, for example, is free. The Developer 'ethos' seems to be more focused on doing it yourself. Still, Cool</comment>