Three Rules for Developers - <AUTHOR> Ever since I was young, I am now an older man, I have experienced repeat detrimental and common behavioral patterns among programmers and at tech companies in general. Here I would like to outline my observations, in the form of three simple points, in hopes that it might help some developers and tech companies improve their work evironment:
1) You don't need to validate yourself by diminishing others. If you are criticizing operational code then you are doing this. If you are gossiping about others then you are doing this.
2) Clinging to a particular style of coding, a particular methodology, or worse a particular technology/tool doesn't make you a good programmer. The value of what you create is what makes you a good programmer. Keep your mind on getting work done. At the end of the day take pride in what you have done.
3) When doing performance evaluations of developers remember that the nature of our work makes it very hard to do fair evaluations. If you are not consciously trying your best to judge fairly then you are probably not judging fairly at all. This goes for judging peers and subordinates alike.
I'd like to believe that if these things are taken to heart then development environments can be fun again. For the past 15 years I've noticed that development environments have gone from fun and creative environments to competitive and toxic environments full of bias and different forms of pride, chauvinism, and prejudice. I hope we get back to our fun-loving, collaborative roots. <comment><USER2> I agree with all of your points.

I also think software development has changed from being creative and fun to being competitive and up-tight.

But isn't that just a function of time? 15 years ago software development, in many places, was "something "those strange guys down at IT" did. There wasn't any higher level manager anywhere that even knew what to expect semi a development team. They didn't even understand what it was, except that it was probably important to have. Today, software is the business itself. Everywhere. Even banks proclaim, in their strategies, that they are going to be "IT first".

Software taking a more central role. Software being better understood. More people going into software related jobs.

<comment><AUTHOR> 15 years ago was 2004, meaning there were Linux distributions, Java, Python, all that stuff already existed. I was eagerly awaiting Gears of War not Doom 2, for example. Yea, sometimes I forget that 15 years ago was in fact already 2004.</comment></comment>


WePay(YC08) partners with Google to scale payments infrastructure - <AUTHOR> http://blog.wepay.com/security-meet-scalability-wepay-moves-to-the-cloud/

<comment><USER2> scottefein12, why Google and not AWS? It would be great to know what where the factors considered when deciding.

<comment><AUTHOR> Google's Public Cloud is built on the same 'Planet Scale' infrastructure that their private cloud is set upon. That makes it almost impossible to imagine the scale potential on a global infrastructure that we now have access to.

GCP also has their own dark fiber network links globally connecting their infrastructure. So if you go between regions you never leave their encrypted data links, never travel over the 'dirty internet'. GCP's API has come a long way and is now incredibly easy to use. Major partners are now supporting their infrastructure on the Google Cloud Platform just like AWS.

AWS would have worked for us, but we've tried both and decided to go in favor of GCE.</comment></comment>


He wanted to destroy democracy, now he wants to sell web services (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2017/2/21/14671978/alt-right-mencius-moldbug-urbit-curtis-yarvin-tlon <comment><AUTHOR> Urbit recently made the front page [prev_hn]. Because the founder's political philosophies are reflected in the foundational building blocks of the product [feudal_design], I found the context behind them relevant.

[prev_hn]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21672481](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21672481)

[feudal_design]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21673198](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21673198)

</comment><comment><USER2> Oef, such a long article and still no real explanation of wth Urbit really is. I was curious and so went to the website, it looks interesting but still so freaking hard to find a tldr version of wth it is.

My best would be "a webapp acting as an OS with comms taking place inside it for improved privacy / data control"

</comment><comment><USER3> is this a hit piece? an half-finished article about both the tech and its author? it feels so 2017

<comment><AUTHOR> Is this a hit comment? The piece is certainly critical. It's certainly from 2017. Why makes you think it's incorrect?

<comment><USER3> > Is this a hit comment?

very much so. The article begins with a conclusion and then justifies it with mostly ad hominems, making it look incorrect

<comment><AUTHOR> The entire point of the article is an ad hominem argument, but ad hominem arguments aren't categorically false. The article argues that his politics influenced the design of the system for the worse, making his politics relevant to his software. Specifically, the article reveals that the initial design of the name system was explicitly modeled on "lockean homesteading theory".

<comment><USER3> so , a hit piece. cool.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Scientists Inject Human Brain Cells Into Mice, Make Them Smarter - <AUTHOR> http://singularityhub.com/2013/03/28/scientists-inject-human-brain-cells-into-mice-make-them-smarter/ <comment><USER2> Typical of Singularity Hub, this is a link-baity treatment of a story that has already been widely reported. The underlying research study

[http://www.cell.com/cell-stem- cell/abstract/S1934-5909(13)00...](http://www.cell.com/cell-stem- cell/abstract/S1934-5909\(13\)00007-6)

is interesting, and worth replicating with varied experimental conditions, and indeed it may be important for clearing up what glia cells do in the human brain. But in terms of treatments on human beings, this looks a lot more radical and a lot more likely to be expensive and subject to regulation than simply engaging in deliberate practice and finding a good coach.

</comment><comment><USER3> Do we really want smarter rodents?

(Then again, think if we could secretly outsource loads of PHP SQL-CRUD projects to them..)

<comment><USER4> This is a good question. HGTG-scenarios aside, what if they become sentient? Do they deserve the same moral weight humans have now?

<comment><USER5> Aren't they sentient? They are able to perceive and feel things.

<comment><USER6> People often mix the words sentience and sapience to mean the same thing. Mice clearly can perceive and feel things but they do not show the intelligence _we_ call sapience.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What are we doing tonight, Brain?

The same thing we do every night, Pinky...

...Try and take over the world!

<comment><USER8> "Try to ..."

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Reminded me of this: <http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2881>

</comment><comment><USER10> oh and by the way, one of the mice is called Algernon

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flowers_for_Algernon#Short_stor...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flowers_for_Algernon#Short_story)

<comment><USER11> Just finished that book last night. It was a good read, but deeply unsettling for some strange reason. His intelligence decline at the end makes the reader feel like retardation is a very near threat to all of us. It's one of those threats that seems worse than death, too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Perhaps the injected mice had less appetite from side effects of the human brain cells, therefore not crazy about the idea of getting hurt for food. Mice are already smart. They can steal and transport cat food in their mouths and stash it for later out of sight. That's not the actions of a stupid mouse.

<comment><USER13> None of the tests they used were food-related.

If you're curious, pages 13 to 17 of the supplementary data (from "Auditory fear conditioning" onwards) describe the methods they used to test learning and memory: [http://download.cell.com/cell-stem- cell/mmcs/journals/1934-5...](http://download.cell.com/cell-stem- cell/mmcs/journals/1934-5909/PIIS1934590913000076.mmc1.pdf)

<comment><USER12> Thanks, and good to know it's more than dangling carrots and lost appetite. Although I wonder if injected brains is an effective treatment for mouse depression?

"...all mice were housed in individual cages for 2 months in a single room prior to testing."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Six hours and no reference to the Rats of NIMH?! :)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mrs._Frisby_and_the_Rats_of_NIM...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mrs._Frisby_and_the_Rats_of_NIMH)

<comment><USER15> Beat me by 34 minutes :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Just a few more years of research and Brecht's wonderful allegory might finally become reality: <http://pamolson.org/ArtSharksMen.htm>

</comment><comment><USER17> I know how this movie ends...

with the whole colony trying to get to the lee of the stone.

</comment><comment><USER18> This title could be nicely used as a mirror for personal prejudice. If you manage to see through the lazy dust of anthropocentrism, you'll read it as full of horror and pain.

<comment><USER13> Every species favours its own - humans are not special in that regard.

<comment><USER19> Only humans perform experiments on other species that we would regard as torture if they were done to us. We argue that it's for the greater good, of course, but the ease and speed with which we rush to accept that is suspicious; in other areas of life we would regard such arguments as obvious self-serving spin. It's not hard to imagine that future generations will look back on many of these experiments with the same moral horror that we have toward some of the past.

I had this feeling when watching the Capuchin monkey fairness experiment in Frans de Waal's TED talk. From an ordinary point of view, it's cute and charming. You laugh along with the audience; the monkeys are funny. You go away with a heartwarming feeling that you've learned something about primate (and thus human) nature. But if the veil drops and you look at it more immediately, the video can also seem horrific. At least it struck me that way. That and other things have got me wondering whether there's something wrong with a science that excludes empathy as a component of knowledge.

<comment><USER20> I seem to recall, bottlenose dolphins have been known to attack and kill spinner dolphins for "fun" (i.e. they don't eat the dolphin afterwards). Cats play with mice before finally killing them. That's, in my mind, as close to an "experiment" as you get in nature. Don't assume humans are the worst animals out there: while we have our horrible streaks, if we gave our mental capacity over to other animals (say, chimpanzees), the world would be no prettier. At least we've mostly eliminated the murder of our rivals' children so that we can impregnate the mother, unlike our closest genetic relative.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Could they inject human brain cells into dogs, instead of mice? I just feel a dog who knows English would be more lovely than a mouse who knows the same language...

</comment><comment><USER22> "...and human's are the smartest of all thinkers"

:|

</comment><comment><USER23> Christine O'Donnell, 2010 Tea Party candidate for the senate in Delaware, totally saw this coming.

</comment><comment><USER24> Sign me up for a shot of Einstein astrocytes.

</comment><comment><USER25> I for one welcome our new mouse overlords.

</comment><comment><USER26> I bet they named the mouse Algernon.

</comment><comment><USER27> Playing with fire.

</comment><comment><USER28> These experiments are cruel. Who has the right to experiment on these animals? Who gave these "scientists" permission to inflict suffering on these mice? Accountability and compassion are lacking here.

When will we as a race start challenging the morality of animal experimentation and vivisection? There needs to be protections afforded to animals. This cruelty needs to stop.

<comment><USER29> Turn the question on its head. Why is it right to prolong human and animal suffering to minimize the suffering of a few lab animals?

These experiments are _incredibly_ important for science and healthcare.

<comment><USER28> Am I to believe you? Even if these experiments do have importance, are they more important than being humane and ethical?

We're so damn advanced as a race, yet we can't come up with more humane alternatives?

We have record unemployment and pharmaceutical companies that are making billions in profits, why can't we experiment on humans who give consent and are fairly compensated? It's more humane to animals and people.

<comment><USER30> Because these experiments kill stuff.

The humans are more valuable, and I'm sorry that you'd rather see them die than a few rodents.

<comment><USER28> And I'm sorry you lack insight and empathy towards both animals and people who could use the income to have a better life.

<comment><USER31> The problem is you (as a scientist) don't know that an experimental subject will have a better life, or a life at all, and you don't have enough data about the risks to fairly compensate a person for taking those risks on. You're just making the cost of collecting data much more expensive while shifting the risk (of suffering, disability, death) from animals bred for the purpose to poor people.

<comment><USER32> While the topic was about animal suffering, you are talking about suffering in human subjects. As far as I know(and that is not much), human studies are done after animal studies. This means the drug is most likely not toxic to animals and by extension humans.

<comment><USER31> You didn't read the thread. He's suggesting doing human studies _instead of_ animal studies.

<comment><USER32> Without animal studies, you are exposing human subjects to potentialy toxic drugs.

<comment><USER30> That's what _we_ said.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Module Linker for Firefox released - <AUTHOR> https://addons.mozilla.org/addon/module-linker/ <comment><AUTHOR> Module Linker is a browser extension that adds direct links to the module file or page on import/require/use/etc. declarations on source code files you're browsing on GitHub.

There are screenshots and gif screencasts, along with a list of languages and file types supported, at [https://fiatjaf.alhur.es/module- linker/](https://fiatjaf.alhur.es/module-linker/)</comment>


The Robustness Principle Reconsidered (2011) - <AUTHOR> https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=1999945 <comment><USER2> HTML shows the downsides to the robustness principle. Any lenience in interpreting the spec will lead to a de-facto standard which in turn will make it harder to create new implementations: It is not enough to follow the spec, you also have to reverse-engineer existing implementations.

Only solution is to leave no room for undefined behavior in the spec.

</comment><comment><USER3> In fact, you may be surprised to learn that there are not only two, but actually _three_ universal certainties: Death, taxes, and the sendmail guy wishing for stricter protocols.

</comment><comment><USER4> This policy has been a security disaster. Besides the obvious problems with undefined behaviors, it has made evolving protocols to fix problems often impossible.</comment>


The Deadline – notes about the Tom DeMarco book - <AUTHOR> http://www.2uo.de/the-deadline/ <comment><USER2> > It's a software project management book disguised as a novel.

That sounds horribly Randian.

Something about the tone of absolute certainty and the cringe-worthy attempts at humor of Peopleware already rubbed me the wrong way, and I absolutely loathe novels that put convincing the reader of some greater thruth over literary quality (or just entertainment). I'm pretty sure I'm going to hate this novel, even if I probably agree with 90% of the underlying ideas.

</comment><comment><USER3> This book was a great read, but I mostly agree with the critics in this article.</comment>


Another Side of MeToo: Male Managers Fearful of Mentoring Women - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/27/world/europe/metoo-backlash-gender-equality-davos-men.html <comment><USER2> This isn't new - the "Billy Graham rule" has been around since around 1948. My parents taught it to me. It's received some recent news as Mike Pence adopted it. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Graham_rule](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Graham_rule)

The question is whether you think that the self-protection from scandal is worth the systemic discrimination the rule requires you to do.

<comment><USER3> This would be systematic discrimination, not systemic.

<comment><USER2> If an entire denomination has historically male clergy and believes in following the Billy Graham rule, is it not systemic, too?

(But yeah, if it's just me by myself in an otherwise-equitable industry, yes. I'm not convinced I'm in an otherwise-equitable industry though.)

<comment><USER3> You are talking about a type of discrimination that you explicitly say "you" (i.e. one) choose to do, not about the nature of the evangelical clergy. Unless the "you" in your statement is only supposed to be a stand-in for the evangelical clergy reading your comment... Which I took it to not be.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > to identify men who make women uncomfortable

This is a very revealing trick: start with sexual harassment, but segue into a focus on workplace discomfort. It shouldn't be a manager's problem that their professional communication makes team members uncomfortable. Workplace social discomfort is universal, and it should not be a barometer for MeToo.

<comment><USER2> > _It shouldn 't be a manager's problem that their professional communication > makes team members uncomfortable._

I would think it's quite the opposite - the purpose of a manager is to make their teams effective and keep up morale so they can be productive. If a manager's approach to "professional communication" makes their team members uncomfortable, that's a sign they're a bad manager, just like if my approach to "professional sysadminning" makes my teammates uncomfortable and fearful, I'm a bad sysadmin. Communicating well and productively and in a way that doesn't make people uncomfortable is a skill. Like any other skill, it's learnable to some extent and there's innate aptitude to some extent and if you don't have the skill you're not qualified for the job.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The problem is really complex. As a manager sometimes needing to give bad feedback, or assinging unpleasant tasks to females direct reports, it is always stressful for me. There is a chance that even without malice, the female subordinate interpret that I am being unfair or punishing her. So I just avoid it, I don't know how to approach hierarchy that sometimes generate uncomfortable situations with a metoo era. The solution is not what the article suggests, I have daughters and I want a better world for them, but this is not about educating managers.

</comment><comment><USER6> Someone should tell these guys about the Rock Test:

[https://medium.com/@annevictoriaclark/the-rock-test-a- hack-f...](https://medium.com/@annevictoriaclark/the-rock-test-a-hack-for-men- who-dont-want-to-be-accused-of-sexual-harassment-73c45e0b49af)

It's not rocket science (it's the Rock science!)

<comment><USER7> Article misses the point. It's not the fear of being denounced for being inappropriate. It's the fear of being denounced even when you behave appropriately.

<comment><USER6> Which is about as probable as being struck by lightning, being the victim of a terrorist attack or being bitten by a shark.

All these things belong in the Jeopardy category "remote risks that loom large in popular culture for no good reason".

<comment><USER8> An American getting struck by lightning might be on the order of a one-in-a- million annual risk, but it's still a really bad thing if it happens TO YOU, so it's sensible we minimize our risk by choosing not to go out on golf courses during thunderstorms or choosing to install lightning rods on church towers. (The low mathematical risk already prices in the fact that we take such measures - the risk level would be much higher if we didn't!)

Getting falsely accused of sexual impropriety may be a low risk (whatever the base rate might be), but it's still really bad if it happens TO YOU so it's sensible that we minimize our personal risk with relatively low-cost policies such as the Pence Rule. (Once again, the low risk already prices in the fact that some take some such measures - the risk would be much higher if they didn't.)

Terrorist attack basically doesn't ever happen (statistically speaking) while our attempts to prevent it via mechanisms like the TSA are absurdly costly to the point of sheer idiocy, but cheaper simpler policies like "don't swim where there have been recent shark sightings", "don't carry metal golf clubs around in a thunderstorm" and "don't put yourself at undue risk of false gossip or malicious attack" seem basically sensible and proportionate to the risk being addressed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Isn't that the way it's always worked? A friend who works at a university told me how male professors always leave the door open when they are talking with female students in their offices. They can easily ruin your life... just like that.

<comment><USER10> The professors ruining the students' life through traumatic actions done to the students, right? I'm sure that's what you meant.

<comment><USER9> What's the traumatic action here? A female student not being able to force a professor to change a grade under the threat of being called a rapist?

<comment><USER10> Rape and sexual assault come to mind, since that's what happens far more often than blackmail for petty ends. Plenty of studies have shown how bunk your claim is. It is a sexist conspiracy theory.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Python 2.7.10 released - <AUTHOR> https://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-announce-list/2015-May/010755.html

<comment><USER2> For those looking for more details about what has changed, the changelog is here:

[https://hg.python.org/cpython/raw- file/v2.7.10/Misc/NEWS](https://hg.python.org/cpython/raw- file/v2.7.10/Misc/NEWS)

(Unfortunately, there doesn't appear to be a short summary of the most important changes/bugfixes, like there have been for some of the earlier releases.)

<comment><USER3> This late in Python 2.7's life the changes being made are mostly fixes for esoteric bugs. One exception is the SSL module, which gets special treatment due to its importance for security. It has gained a new feature in this release (ALPN, necessary for supporting HTTP/2), and RC4 has been removed from the default cipher list.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is anyone still using Python 2 for new projects?

I'm curious to hear reasons for this, given that Python 3 provides so much good stuff, and pretty much all the important libraries and environments now support Python 3.

<comment><USER5> I am (and I believe most scientific users are too). I know that personally I have no incentive to switch; Python 2.7 has all the features I need.

That will change with Python 3.5 and the matrix multiplication operator @.

Is there any other reason for me to consider Python 3?

<comment><USER4> Well, I'd say switch just because all mainline development is now happening on the Python 3. I'm not too familiar with the development roadmap and which "features" might be useful for different audiences (e.g. the unicode overhaul and the asyncio stuff that landed in 3.4 are probably the biggest wins for the stuff I do) but I think just that reason alone is enough.

But I do think the biggest leap in adoption will be once Python 3 will be the default on most OSs, and we're definitely getting there. After we pass that, Python 2 will be the outlier, and Python 3 the norm.</comment></comment></comment>