I'm a Bad Developer, That's the Only Reasonable Explanation - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@mrannedev/im-a-bad-developer-that-s-the-only-reasonable-explanation-1db7556f9cb3#.ypq85v9ej <comment><USER2> I've had similar self-doubt in the past, I considered myself fast but sloppy.

I changed my opinion after a workshop on different team roles at my previous job. A lot of it was boring workshop fluff, but I loved the core message: that many personality traits aren't purely positive or negative. Perfectionists are nitpickers. Fast developers are sloppy. Experienced ones overthink stuff. Bleeding-edge evangelists ruin long-term stability etc. There are two sides to every coin. We tend to value traits we have (or desire) and judge people based on that, but it really depends on the team and the task.

Need a quick-and-dirty prototype ASAP? Give it to the framework hipster. Planning architecture for a complex long-term project? Ask the boring slow guy with 20 years experience. Build teams with enough variety and try to solve problems through process. Don't scold the fast guy for being sloppy, give him tasks that require speed and solve bugs with better QA and tests.

TL;DR: A damage dealer will beat a healer one on one, but that doesn't mean he's better. You need them both (plus a tank) to run a dungeon successfully.

<comment><USER3> > TL;DR: A damage dealer will beat a healer one on one, but that doesn't mean > he's better. You need them both (plus a tank) to run a dungeon successfully.

I haven't played a single game where this was true. Simply because both the healer and the damage dealer can do damage but only a healer can heal.

<comment><USER4> It's true in EVE. The an army of the most powerful damages dealers in the game would be overwhelmed by an army with a decent composition...

<comment><USER5> The initial message said in one-on-one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Being a developer _always_ means getting stuck on some trivial crap for a full day and going to bed angry. One simply makes up for it by those times when you create fantastic value in thirty minutes. You find the bug right away, or a new feature or deployment just falls into place smoothly. Software development is like solving math problems - it's not a continuously progressing process, no matter how much the agile priests want it to be.

This developer sounds humble. That's the most important quality a developer can have. If one becomes too humble (impostor syndrome) then one needs an environment of more encouragement. That's the job of peers and managers.

There are lots of bad developers. It's not unthinkable that this guy is a bad developer - but it's still the managers problem. Is he trained, mentored and encouraged enough?

<comment><USER7> And here I have thought hubris was one of the most important qualities of a good developer, along with impatience and laziness. Having a belief you can do it right is important to getting it right.

<comment><USER6> The humble bit is what makes sure that once you think you got it right, you actually got it right :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> There are a lot of ways to dice up performance as a developer, and while some are clearly bad, like LOC counts, others are merely different from each other. Is it better to ship a feature faster? All things being equal, sure—but all things are rarely equal. All bugs aren't created equal, nor features, nor design requirements. Nor are the skills needed to handle any or all of those things distributed equally amongst developers.

I was on a team once where my diagnostic skills put me near the top of the stack for being given hard-to-find bugs. What that meant was that sometimes I would ship one commit a week while tracking down several difficult issues. Does that make me a bad developer? A slow developer? Or are those even valuable distinctions in this context?

Rather than trying to be better than everyone (anyone?) else, try to be better than you yourself were last week, or last month, or last year. That's the only consistent variable one has across all the kinds of tasks we are called to perform in this role.

<comment><USER9> >I was on a team once where my diagnostic skills put me near the top of the stack for being given hard-to-find bugs. What that meant was that sometimes I would ship one commit a week while tracking down several difficult issues.

This.

A good management team will recognize these skills in people and assign them appropriate work.

All people are not the same, that's why we have developers and doctors and fireman. All developers are not the same, that's why we have backend, frontend, Java, C++, etc. All backend developers are not the same, and so on, and so on. People are not pluggable assets.

<comment><USER10> _> People are not pluggable assets._

Well, there is a countervailing force in that companies don't want every developer to be a SPOF, giving the company a "bus number" of one no matter _who_ gets run over (the typical definition asks if _any_ single developer is a SPOF, rather than _every_ single developer being an irreplaceable special snowflake).

That said, if you work for a company that leans too far the other way and values process over productivity, hammering every square peg until it can be wedged into any of the round holes (instead of enlarging the round holes to make them square), you may want to consider looking for a new employer.

<comment><USER8> Absolutely agree. That scenario (every dev is a SPOF) actually makes the company's bus factor 1/N, where N=number of devs.

Of course, realistically few devs are so critical to a project that they couldn't be replaced by another strong developer with a month or two to learn the code base, or at least a part of it. Obvious exceptions for deep domain expertise and the like, of course. But I've worked on way too many rescue projects to believe anyone is truly irreplaceable in the normal course of events.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> One way to look at it is that if some company is continuing to pay you to work for them, they must have determined that it was worth it to them. If management is putting pressure on you to produce more, it's because they want, say, a 3x return on their investment instead of a 2x return.

By accepting a job from them, you're obligated to work diligently at a sustainable pace. You aren't obligated to worry about whether you're more productive than your peers.

I posted a link to Beppo the road sweeper's monologue from Momo by Michael Ende in a thread on a time management story a few days ago, but I'll link to it again since it seems relevant: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Q_JYYcBP2Q#t=15m05s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Q_JYYcBP2Q#t=15m05s)

<comment><USER12> If management has capital to spend, they might be spending it on new hires to see which ones work out, and firing low performers such as yourself. The majority of states are at-will states so you could easily get laid off.

<comment><USER11> That is something to consider. There is a difference though between working harder because you're afraid that you'll be replaced by someone faster and cheaper and working harder because you're motivated by feelings of guilt and shame. I don't think either one is particularly healthy, but in the former case you can at least make a rational decision whether the job is worth enough to you to risk burning yourself out.

It's also worth considering that not all developers are easy to replace, for various reasons. A lot of big companies aren't in a position to be choosy as long as their employees are reasonably competent and can do the work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > This isn't an impostor syndrome.

Sure it is. Impostor syndrome is defined as the state of affairs where your emotional assessment of your competence is lower than your actual competence. The definition does not depend on which aspect of the task is being discussed. "I can't write code" (when you can) and "I'm too slow" (when the people who appear faster, are doing it by just sweeping bugs under the carpet) are both impostor syndrome.

I will add that by the sound of things, the reason you have impostor syndrome is because your previous bosses have been bullies, sadists and sociopaths who successfully accomplished their goal of damaging your morale for their own pleasure. This is sadly not a rare state of affairs, but it's not universal either. Never be reluctant to look for another job if your boss is an asshole.

<comment><USER14> Such bold conclusions from 900 words and a single perspective. Isn't it possible that the author is, in fact, not good at the job?

<comment><USER15> People who are bad at their jobs usually fall into two categories:

a) people who lack the insight to realize it, and thus don't work to fix it b) people who realize it but don't care (for various reasons, some valid some not)

If you're agonizing over your job competence and trying to improve but feel you aren't succeeding, then it's vastly more likely that either your job specification is impossible, or you're setting unreasonable personal goals around your job.

<comment><USER14> I'm really bad at basketball. I have to insight to realize this, and I tried to get better. I really cared about getting better. But at the end of the day, I am not athletic. Sure, I can devote time and energy to improving my basketball skills, but I will never achieve anything beyond 'mediocre'.

There's also a chicken and the egg issue here; perhaps the author really does not enjoy coding and thus is not willing to put in the effort to improve?

<comment><USER15> >I'm really bad at basketball. I have to insight to realize this, and I tried to get better. I really cared about getting better. But at the end of the day, I am not athletic. Sure, I can devote time and energy to improving my basketball skills, but I will never achieve anything beyond 'mediocre'.

None of that is in question, but let me ask you this: are you a professional basketballer?

I'm not a professional chef, read into that as you will.

<comment><USER14> No, I am not a professional basketball player. I can't even compete in a neighborhood pickup game. That is the point; I lack the raw material to be a professional athlete. It's very possible to be bad at something AND know that you're bad at AND not be able to reach the proficiency to perform the task at a professional level.

<comment><USER15> But, at the risk of pointing out the bleeding obvious to those who seem to be struggling with reading as well as basketball, it would then not be your job.

<comment><USER14> Okay, let's use another example. I waited tables in high school. I was very bad. I knew I was bad, but I worked hard to improve. Still, even after a few years of experience a random person who had never had a job before could walk in and get better tips than me. My boss wouldn't fire me because I showed up for shifts, but I was generally a very poor waiter. Eventually I got smart and stopped waiting tables, and the world became a better place.

It's very possible to be bad at something AND know that you're bad at it AND not be able to reach the proficiency to perform the task at a professional level.

Also, it's pretty clear that I can read. If you are going to insult me, it's better to insult my comprehension or argumentation. However, I would argue that it's generally better to just not insult other people.

<comment><USER10> _> It's very possible to be bad at something AND know that you're bad at it AND not be able to reach the proficiency to perform the task at a professional level._

You forgot to add _" AND still be employed in that capacity."_

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Having read some of the comments in here I'm surprised to see that no one has mentioned how the co-workers reporting their time are lying and this developer isn't. If you worked on a feature for an hour and stared off into space for another hour you report that the feature took two hours. If you took 30 minutes to write an email you certainly don't report that; you move time around to make it look better.

This behavior is totally normal in this industry and if you get put in a situation like that you have to do the same. No one can concentrate for 40 hours every week on development without getting burned out.

The reality is most people are probably lucky to get 20 hours of productive work done a week.

<comment><USER17> I do some of my best programming while I'm staring out the window or getting coffee or sitting on the toilet.

<comment><USER18> Me too, but it still feels cheating when I bill for that time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> One general piece of advice that stuck with me after reading "Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy" (a cognitive therapy book) is to refrain from thinking in inherent categories about myself. Thinking "I'm a slow developer" is just depressing and sad - there is nothing much you can do about your inherent flaw. By contrast, thinking "I've done this task slowly" puts you in a problem-solving mood. Something like "Wow, I've actually shipped, that's great! Now, it took me a bit more time than I've anticipated. Does it really matter? If it does, what can I do about it?"

Also, a lot of this is just management trying to put pressure on the devs using methods more appropriate for a kindergarten. I vividly remember my former boss telling me "you are going to put down the team and have a bad conscience if you don't finish this feature on time" (an arbitrary deadline caused by a looming performance review). He was a good boss, but I would have more appreciated an honest "look, I'm trying to get you a raise so finishing this feature by this date is in our mutual interest" without any kind of moralizing shit.

</comment><comment><USER20> Perception is everything. You don't need to be good, you need to look good. On a tight schedule, deliver what was asked, and only that, even though you know other things are going to be necessary. When asked to estimate, try your best to give the longest you can get away with. Make it look or sound difficult. At the same time, do the hard work by yourself, figure things out on your own.

When asked to account for your time, use the opportunity to be good at creative writing. Give the most flattering and awesome impression about the time you spent.

Being competent is a pride for yourself only, for all others is whatever they want to see. Always act as if you are making less than you should. Act as, not be. Never stay working late, never work on weekends unless you are the one benefiting.

The value you give yourself will be the value people will give you.

<comment><USER21> Yes. The fact is that for white-collar jobs, very few people _can even tell_ whether or not you're competent. Some of your peers may, but I wouldn't count on it, and they're biased in favor of themselves anyway, so they're not objective resources. If you're lucky, your immediate manager _may_ know how to tell if you're competent or not.

Everyone else only has a very high-level concept of whether they think you've been doing what you're supposed to do. The optics on this must be controlled. You do not want to be one guy in the hierarchy away from getting shitcanned because everyone except your immediate boss thinks you don't finish enough tickets or whatever.

Look better than everyone else. Employment is a popularity contest. To succeed in a career, do your job well enough that you don't get into trouble, and spend the rest of your energy on social and optical development.

I must say, however, that "working overtime" (that is, sitting in your chair and looking fancy until 8pm at least 3 nights per week) is a near-necessity for someone looking to climb the ladder in most organizations. Since people don't know if you're doing a good job or not, the amount of time they see you in the office is a big component of their evaluation. They assume you are working if you are butt-in-chair. You need them to think you're a hard worker. You should never be the first one to leave unless you make sure everyone knows it's a special event for which you cleared PTO approval process, and you should be one of the last to leave at least 3/5 of the nights.

<comment><USER20> Oh I wholeheartedly agree with the last sentence. The best way I found of dealing with that is finding a way of getting in earlier than anyone you care to impress. With some luck they may leave earlier than you so you follow suit. Always give the impression (at least) of being present.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I have worked at many places, many dev jobs. I've worked with people shipping features faster and slower than me. But that's very subjective. Using it as a metric or even pointing it out doesn't make sense to me.

I've been forced by managers to merge or even ship features that are half-way done.

I have to agree with other people advising you to switch to another place.

If you are working in a toxic environment, or you don't agree with or like how they handle the projects, then there are better places for you to be.

Don't be afraid to pursue a better workplace environment if that's what matters to you.

Also, talk to your colleagues. See if they feel or see things the same way. Once you realize you're not the only one in that position you'll feel better about moving on.

Come to thing about it, a long time ago I worked at a place as a development team lead, and I saw management doing similar things to my team members as what you're describing. I confronted the owner about that, but things didn't change. I then advised my colleagues to look for something better and so did I (even though they always treated _me_ great). And I'm happy to say ten years later we are all happy we left, and we all know we don't want to work somewhere like that again.

<comment><USER23> Plus one to talking to your colleagues. At my work, we started peer reviews that are anonymous. You request feedback from a pool of people. Those who give feedback talk on areas of strength and areas that need development. My imposter syndrome declined immensely after seeing some of the strengths listed from my peers with whome I work every day. I could agree with the areas of growth needed and it gave me focus for professional goals.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> For the last 15 years I was always slow, bad, and pessimistic. In fact I was fast, good, and realistic. However in the companies I was working at, the promoted guys were always writing buggy code, and really didn't understand what was going on. They even didn't want to understand that. They were promoted, and not me. Why? Because the speed was what there managers were promoted for. So they wanted to surround themselves with similar stupid-but- fast programmers. This way they all were promoted, got bonuses, and they were one brainless corporation family. I wanted to make some good work, and understand why something works this, or other way.

And one day I gave up. It was hard to hear all the time something like "you are too pessimistic, why you always say that we cannot build the Tardis in a month?", or "You are too slow, you see that guy in the corner? He is ten times faster then the whole team (and he is happy working in an open space). And now the whole team will be fixing the thousands of failing tests (caused by this guy) for the next six months. Because if they will be red, I won't get the yearly bonus.". The latter is real.

So I don't care anymore. My side projects are opposite. So I build them slowly. Very slowly. And I learn all the things around them.

</comment><comment><USER25> There are two ways to look at this: it could be the environment, or he may have a rational reason to come to this conclusion. (Many developers are indeed slower than they could be.)

Now, my major background task for 2016 and 2017 is trying to analyze how to become a better developer with myself as a guinea pig. I'm still putting things together, but "faster in the development environment of choice" is one stumbling block. These are the major issues I've found:

1\. Being fast or slow only has a minor correlation with good code, but there are confounding issues. Good code takes different habits to write than bad code.

2\. People who are fast at coding have an ingrained series of patterns on which they rely. They slow down when they are pulled out of their element, as can be expected. As such, there are meta-skills that contribute to speed, but a large portion of it is having a series of reliable patterns to solve the problem.

It turns out most tasks are the same on the surface. Spend time getting those patterns at heart.

3\. Fast developers have a deeper knowledge of the libraries around them. We underestimate the overhead of research, even with google.

Spend some time exploring the corners of your libraries and frameworks and languages. If you work on the front end, you need to have the ins and outs of the client memorized.

4\. In general, fast developers may not realize it, but they're methodical in how they approach problems. They have an internal checklist. Develop your own internal checklist.

5\. Because they are fast, they have more confidence in developing tools that speed up the general issues that slow every developer down. (setting up environments, test data, and the like.) Laziness, it turns out,b is as much an byproduct as a cause. If you are slow, the ROI on developing tools might indeed be outside the timeframe of efficiency. Work on getting faster, and you will see more opportunities to consolidate your work.

I'm still working out the solutions of how to teach this in a generalizable fashion and how to back this up with research, so don't take these as gospel and I'd be particularly interested in fast programmers who have alternative perspectives.

</comment><comment><USER26> Aside from the judgment on whether the employer was terrible or not for making OP track the time, etc., if everyone tells you're slow, doesn't it occur to you that you may actually be bad?

I finished reading the post but cannot figure out what OP is trying to say. The title doesn't match the content. At first it sounded like it was one of those rant posts exposing the employer for mistreating, but then at one point it sounds like OP understands that he is a bad developer (because everyone tells him he's slow), but then goes on to talk about whether it may be the manager and not him. And then ends with some random conclusion about nothing. It's almost like watching an episode of Seinfeld--it's a post about nothing.

Then again, if a company hired someone who's so obviously bad that everyone thinks he's slow, it's their own fault and must be a bad company. Explains why they make him track time and all that stuff.

<comment><USER27> Well, I'm kind of in the same position: I'm slow.

I do everything by the book, but in the end, everyone else does more.

I did notice that they're cutting corners, but then I tried to do it too, and I was still slower.

So, I'm still asking myself, am I slow or am I a perfectionist? I'd like to think it's the latter, but it may very well be that I'm slow.

My defense in my mind is that even cutting corners I try to do the important things right. It may be a lie I tell to myself.

That's pretty much what I got from this post, self-doubt.

<comment><USER28> How long did you try cutting corners? They could have years of experience cuttings corners, and you only have a few days, so of course they should be faster as they are more experienced at cutting corners than you are.

Try a few simple projects (eg: making flappy bird clone, or a simple HTTP server) as fast as possible and screen record all the time you work on the project. Then review the project and recording for things that slowed you down (eg: going down rabbit holes, or your tool-chain is too complex for the task at hand).

After that, do the project over (or a similar project) and try to beat your previous time. The only thing that should matter is the amount of wall-clock time until the project is minimally useful, eg: time to a browser accepting a static webpage, or the game minimally playable.

If you have trouble parting from the book way, an HTTP server might be the better option as there is the "book way" on how its supposed to be done, and what browsers will not vomit all over. Go for the browser rendering a page or two with no visible errors with dev tools closed rather than passing a comprehensive test suite as in the end the only thing that matters is "did the user notice the missing corners".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Everyone has been put in the position of coming to a dead halt on some aspect of the work that just won't yield. Or at least not for the combination of you, your knowledge, and your resources at that given time. This never goes away. Signs of maturity as a developer involve how you deal with the existence of this phenomenon. E.g. box your time, know when to seek alternatives, and know how to find solutions that exist already, and especially know when to pull in help - and how to find useful help in your network.

The driving overall concern is avoiding points of grinding minimal efficiency for individuals, and in near all cases that can be avoided via some combination of simple strategies, even when you are the only person on your own personal project. Development is such a huge space that no two people will overlap completely in skills and experience on a team, and pulling in other people to alleviate your dead ends is a part of how you learn specifics needed to avoid that dead end in the future. But it is knowing to pull people in or seek another path that is the important part, not the specifics.

Working to an absolute dead end is only useful in the sense that you then understand better the incentive to avoid doing it again if you can.

An alternative view on the same problem space:

[https://www.exratione.com/2016/01/paid-a-great-deal-to-be- te...](https://www.exratione.com/2016/01/paid-a-great-deal-to-be-terrible-at- development-most-of-the-time/)

<comment><USER30> > box your time

What exactly does that mean. I'm not saying this isn't a real thing (I really have no idea), but the only time I've heard the phrase used in person was by people who get ahead by posturing.

When someone uses it sincerely, what do they mean? What does it look like, as opposed to not boxing your time? What specifically does it solve?

<comment><USER31> > _When someone uses it sincerely, what do they mean? What does it look like, > as opposed to not boxing your time? What specifically does it solve?_

A technical analogy would be depth-first search of a solution space, e.g. in a simple chess AI.

If the search has a cut-off depth = deterministically bounded length of search time = time-boxed

If the search does not a cut-off depth = unbounded (potentially infinite) length of search time = not time-boxed

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Most people cut corners. They deliver crap, fast. But when you add the time needed to debug that crap, to refactor it, was it really fast? Of course managers don't track time over the whole life of a feature...

\- So it says in your CV that you are quick at math.

\- Yes. Yes I am.

\- How much is 23 times 14.

\- 7!

\- That's not even close!

\- No. But it was quick!

</comment><comment><USER33> You could change jobs. An employer tracking your activities to the minute sounds like a cancerous work place to begin with.

Bad employers are also a thing, and is much more frequent than most people realize. They usually drown you in tools and processes along the way and without much development experience its hard to tell whether they're bad or you are.

You're going to hear about Agile, TDD, code metrics and whatnot. Its all superficial at best and those promoting them don't usually have quality products on their hands to begin with, or have codebases much larger than actually needed. At least from my experience its that way.

Its best to find an employer who can help you grow instead of fitting you in a box.

<comment><USER9> I think you are lumping things together where they don't belong. Processes and tools have places. As I've posted previously on the topic, some industries have strict quality standards, and the tools and processes are there to find and prevent bugs from making into fielded systems. These process can an do work, but don't always apply to a basic website or CRUD webapp.

<comment><USER33> Oh definitely, I was referring to things like Jira, Scrumm and the likes rather than industry standards.

<comment><USER34> Tools to help with a process, not to define the process.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I've told this story before, so here is the short version.

I replaced $girl in a sysadmin/programming role that would get used by other employees. According to my supervisor, she was always far more productive than me. He'd ask for an estimate of how long something would take and he'd always say, "That's too long. $girl could do it half the time."

Well, because it was my first tech job company, I sort of had impostor syndrome because of him but also thought of a way to test it out. One job we often had would get programmed from scratch several times a year and take about 2 or 3 hours to do. I cludged it into a simple framework where I could just edit the XML after the other employees started to use it. So when he asked me how long it was going to take before people could start using it I said thirty seconds.

"That's too long... $girl could do it 15..., wait, what?"

<comment><USER36> Wow, that had to crack you up laughing:)

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I am also 'a little slow'.

But the other side of that coin is that my code generally works correctly, and rarely (I wish I could say never) needs fixing later. My managers and customers know that my code will work 'as advertised'. My colleagues tell me they enjoy working in code I've written, because it isn't a mess and it feels logical and well organised.

But hey, I'm a little slow. And in ~ 25 years of writing software for pay, only one manager I've worked for has ever had an issue with that.

</comment><comment><USER13> One more thing: always remember that it is not your job to protect your employer from the consequences of their bad decisions. It is their job to give you incentives that align with their own interests. If your employer is putting pressure on you to ship faster at the cost of sweeping a lot of bugs under the carpet, do that. If you think they're making a mistake, say once, calmly, that you think it would be worth spending more time upfront debugging. Once. After that, follow the priorities you are told to follow.

<comment><USER38> It's not necessarily my job, but in many cases, there's still a good chance that I'm going to be the one yelled at, or have to deal with the consequences (having to work late nights to put out the fires caused by those decisions).

<comment><USER13> Okay, but then it's important to understand your problem is not actually a technical one of bugs in the software, it's a political problem of your boss being a sadistic bully willing and able to ruin your life, plus a financial problem that you can't walk away from the job. Framing the problems correctly doesn't make them go away, but it does help focus your mind on things that have a chance of solving them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39>
        Management often assumes that they did their job when they handed in specs.
        And I often assume that there is nothing else for them to do.

I can't say for certain that you're a bad developer, but if your management thinks throwing specs over the wall is "doing their job" they ARE bad at theirs. I'd argue that you fail _your_ part of the job in that case if you DON'T have any questions.

As for the slipping estimates, are you part of the process that generates them? If not, it's back into "your managers are bad at their jobs" territory.

</comment><comment><USER40> Seems like people are misinterpreting what he is saying. He is NOT saying he really thinks he is slow. I think this is a polite and less direct way of saying that constant pressure to increase 'productivity' is counter-productive in terms of outcomes and harmful to employees psychologically.

</comment><comment><USER41> You may or may not be a bad developer. But lines of code has nothing to with being a good developer or providing value or solving problems. If your employer thinks all developers are equal and that they are just cogs in a machine, then that is not going to be a good place to work regardless of how fast you are.

And you shouldn't beat yourself up about bad estimates. Everyone sucks at estimating. (Read "Thinking Fast and Slow") Which makes sense since we are estimating how long it will take us to make something we've never made before. Everything breaks down into day or week or weeks or month or.... You could also take 4 weeks to fully define every requirement and create tests for validation for a task that would have taken you two weeks.

You are a bad developer if you keep making the same mistakes or if you don't spend anytime learning new concepts/languages/processes/etc. You are a bad developer if you approach your job as doing exactly what you're told and not caring or thinking about how your contribution is part of the bigger project.

</comment><comment><USER42> Pay has little to do with throughput. Pay is an arbitrary number that you and your handler select from the ether. This decision is often made well before there is any chance of measuring your productivity. If you think the number was poorly selected, just know it is.

I found time tracking tools to be hugely beneficial. It changed my focus, and forced me more aware of what I was working on. I am, however, a slow developer sometimes. It is just who I am.

I found that often employers look for 'smart' candidates, instead of SMEs. This is their fault. If they were interested in / could afford a subject matter expert (SME) then you wouldn't likely be working there. If you are an SME, then you will likely produce results/prototypes far faster than others. Smart people take time to learn, thats how they got there.

<comment><USER43> SME = Subject Matter Expert (if google is to be believed).

<comment><USER44> Yes. Also defined in author's last paragraph.

<comment><USER45> I saw it, but only because I had started skipping through his post knowing it wouldn't make sense unless he explained SME. Poor communication habit.

<comment><USER42> thanks for noticing! :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Good software requires teams, and teams will always vary in the member's skill levels. Some programmers are better than others -- that's just a fact of life. But even if you are not one of the best coders, that doesn't mean you shouldn't be a coder or that you shouldn't be considered a valuable member of a team, so long as you provide a meaningful contribution. You may get paid less, but that's okay. You shouldn't beat yourself up over it. Do you enjoy the work? Do you at least get stuff done, even if it is not as much as your coworker in the same period of time? Then your okay. And that's okay. You just need to find the right niche. Not every coding job is with a startup or contract firm that needs to pump out the code a mile per minute.

<comment><USER47> I agree! You should always remember that (about) half of the people perform under the average and there is no real way around that. Not everyone can reach the top and that is something I think you need to accept at times.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> I was challenged by my bosses at my last job because they were concerned about overall team productivity (including mine... mainly because I spent some additional time refactoring and creating better testing tools, because those were necessary and coworkers reported them as cool and labor-saving) and they put us in a "bataan death march" mode without a definite ending (...) and I pushed back and said this is bullshit because what these metrics I took say is that we need to be paying down some tech debt, stat.

I ended up leaving. Sometimes, the job is too good for you, and sometimes you are too good for the job.

</comment><comment><USER49> Some people write solid code slowly and some people write sloppy code fast. Of course every variant of those exists too. A good programmer would probably pay as much technical debt as early as possible.

</comment><comment><USER50> I am not sure what this post is about. Just realise, when you are working for somebody else, of course they would like repeatable good performance from you. Some people are able to deliver this better than others. In my experience, thinking through a problem thoroughly and not giving a shit what others think is the most comfortable and most efficient way to work. Not even sure why you would consider working for somebody who stops you from going to the bathroom.

<comment><USER51> Also not sure what the author is trying to say. But sounds like a really bad management is trying to pressure him. He won't be able to work like that for long. Probably better to start looking for another job and without a time tracking.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> >> Bathroom breaks were consider unproductive, talking to co-workers was considered unproductive, and doing any kind of research was pointless unless we could bill a customer.

That is simply bullshit. Don't take anything they say seriously except the broadest interpretation of what the project is.

It sounds like the writer has something north of basic competence. In that case, just do your job mostly your way and don't give a fuck what the others think. If THEY don't think you're worth your price they won't keep paying you. It's really as simple as that. And if you do find yourself out on the street then you can sit back and try to decide how to partition the failure between yourself and the company. If there's any blame you can clearly put on yourself then work on that. Otherwise just assume it's them and move on. The longer you work in the field, the more you can assume you don't suck regardless of what people appear to think.

In other words, actions speak louder than words or even company policy. If they're keeping you it's because you're valuable regardless of what they say.

</comment><comment><USER53> I like to think of solutions and not problems, and costs:

There are too many bugs in the code. Okay. Why? Well we don't have good testing set up. Why? Because time was not allotted for writing test code. Why? Because it was rushed. Conclusion: You either pay the cost up-front or after- the-fact. Either way. However if this is a constant thing then the real problem is: "You have too many features being built for the size of your team, either increase the size of the team, reduce features, or prepare for big problems."

From personal experience I can say me working at "optimal" power, that is optimal sleep, no external life problems, not sick, generally very happy is maybe 30%-40% more productive. That seems like a lot, but if you need 500% the productivity, you ain't gonna get it by making a person feel like junk, not get needed rest (vacation / day off), not letting then handle family issues, etc. I can get a developer working at 100% more productivity, but only for a short amount of time, then they burn out which requires EVEN MORE rest time.

</comment><comment><USER54> Estimations are a game we play. To understand how good you are, you need to figure out what's happening with the business and understand the impact you're having there.

For a small company, this is probably the rate at which you ship features. Good developers ship enough that there's pressure to constantly explain the improvement to sales / marketing.

For a larger company, this is probably a user metric. Are this things you're doing moving the needle on logins, time on site, repeat visits? You should understand what areas of the product are high value, and which are experimental. You should spend your time converting experimental features to high value features. Polish and edge cases.

For a bigco, this is probably scaling metrics, like page load time and uptime. You should have clear targets you're working against and be able to prioritize against that target. Numbers are easy to show results against.

Anybody can be fast against sprint points. You need to understand what the business goal is and play to your strengths against that goal.

</comment><comment><USER55> I suppose if you help someone do something they could not do themselves then you are actually a good developer, something like writing minecraft. It seems like your criteria for being a good developer is more complex, maybe even hopelessly more complex.

Why don't you try charging them 10 cents for each trip through your code? Lawyers do that, and feel like it's okay.

</comment><comment><USER56> Polish the resume and bail out. You're working for Bill Lumbergh. You can't win against that sort of managerial talent.

</comment><comment><USER57> I'd suggest trying to focus more on using tools related to building reports on code coverage and code complexity during your day to day development.

If you lean more towards a test driven approach backed with trackable metrics for code quality, I think you might have more confidence in your day to day development and ultimately be more productive.

<comment><USER58> You do realise even the founder of TDD doesn't back it anymore and code coverage is a very poor metric, your words sound like a senior developer from 2010. If he's a bad developer the best he can do is read up on SOLID principles and read a book like Clean Code with good examples of how to write code.

<comment><USER59> "You do realise even the founder of TDD doesn't back it anymore"

I ask this out of genuine curiosity but do you have a cite for this? Being fairly anti-TDD myself it'd be good to keep this factoid in my pocket.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> loup-vaillant I got the "you're a bit slow" once. Which was funny, because I was very focused and felt very productive at that time —more than ever before. Plus, some of my code allowed a business expert to contribute directly, which made us even faster.

I have since realised it had nothing to do with my actual performance. It was a people thing.

<comment><USER45> Please elaborate on the people thing.

<comment> loup-vaillant During my job interview, I was told we were going to be equals. Like, explicitly. He was older, and came to the project earlier, so I still deferred to him. Nevertheless, I treated him like a peer.

Turned out he wanted to be the _boss_ —that was made official 2 months after my arrival. On my very first week, he started to make disparaging comments under the guise of joke (or were those real jokes?). Those soon occurred daily. Sometimes in front of the client, who (surprise!) eventually lost trust in me.

If this was my only experience, I would have thought it was me. But I have since received enough external validation about my skills (people looking up to me, actual results…) to know better. For some reason, the guy could not stand me, so he got rid of me. Another small detail: he never smiled at me in the morning when we shook hands to say hello. He did smile at everyone else.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> The labels of good/bad developer are not useful - just as we try to optimize the perf of our code, we should be focused on optimizing the things we can. For example, figuring out some answers to questions like "How can I get to this conclusion faster on figuring out bugs like this", or "How can I figure out the optimal architecture for this feature faster?" Putting things in front of us that are in our control and actionable is the best we can do.

One has to break the block of being afraid of failure - we all fail at various tasks. The important part is how we respond to this failures.

</comment><comment><USER61> As the OP of the article, can someone tell me what I did wrong?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13281186](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13281186)

</comment><comment><USER62> In a way, most people should be doing bad work today.. looking 5 years back.

</comment><comment><USER63> "I mean, how could someone spend several hours trying to debug a table that looked one way on Firefox and one way on Chrome?"

Because HTML and it's various implementations/versions are a Byzantine mess.

'Web development' is not so much development ... it's about knowing a myriad of little, innocuous details regarding various platform, api quirks, toolchain bits etc..

The 'development' part of web-dev is usually quite straight forward - you're not doing complex AI etc..

And fyi - development is 90% struggling through things you don't understand, bugs, hiccups etc.. A good chunk of the code you write like English. It's all about working through the pain points, making 'aha' realizations about how you structured something, or about some crazy API quirk. That's the job.</comment>


Running Kubernetes Example on CoreOS, Part 1 - <AUTHOR> https://coreos.com/blog/running-kubernetes-example-on-CoreOS-part-1/ <comment><AUTHOR> wrong dir /opt/kubernetes/bin The right dir it's: /opt/bin like show official references: [https://github.com/kelseyhightower/kubernetes- coreos#quick-s...](https://github.com/kelseyhightower/kubernetes-coreos#quick- start)</comment>


Have We Lost the War on Drugs? - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324374004578217682305605070.html

<comment><USER2> With the repeal of marijuana prohibition in Washington and Colorado, it looks to me like we, the people are finally starting to _win_ the "war on drugs".</comment>


Ask HN: Where do you find leads? - <AUTHOR>

I wonder how you can find leads (buyer/sellers) for a specific product/niche. How can you contact them and get a quick response.
I looked over Digital Point, but it's full of crap (things like $1 for a 500 word article), even SitePoint is crappy (they are charging to post a listening, it's a little better than Digital Point).
Is there a website I'm missing? A website for webmasters/developers/freelancers where they can find quality leads and reasonable prices. How do you do it? <comment><USER2> Can you be more specific as to what you are looking to buy/sell? There are a lot of resources out there, but it really depends on what you are looking for specifically.

The best leads though come from your own marketing efforts. Just avoid spamming to obtain leads. Creating a blog, social media marketing (Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn), and your website are going to be your biggest drivers. Consider reaching out on LinkedIn for quality business leads. Join groups, respond to questions/answers, explore your contacts.

Paying for leads can be a recipe for disaster in my mind and is really just a waste of money. On the other hand, if you are looking to create a direct mail campaign to a specific group (i.e. realtors, doctors, etc...) in a specific region, you may explore sites like InfoUSA.</comment>


CarWoo's (YCS09) Latest Guerilla Marketing Campaign - <AUTHOR> http://carwoo.com/worldseries

<comment><USER2> you'd think a service that offers to help you buy a new car, would use a new car for a promotion instead of a clunker.

if I saw that rolling down the street, I'd think you guys were promoting a site for junk cars(kinda like that $1,000 cars website)

<comment><USER3> We picked the Camaro for a bunch of reasons.

First, it's awesome. Why? Because it just is. The end. The Camaro is one of those iconic American cars... we could just see ourselves driving this thing back in 78 and we figured lots of people know and love the Camaro.

Second, it was more important to us to pull this off than it was to worry about what car we choose. We had a few criteria: under $2000, it had to run and it had to be a bit quirky... like CarWoo! Literally we've been scrambling since the Giants got into the World Series to get this done and we just didn't have time to find the perfect car. We had to make a decision and we felt the 78 Camaro was interesting enough for people to notice. With the pink racking stripe, it's hard to miss.

Last we wanted to make sure this was about raising money for the Susan G. Komen foundation and not about us defacing an expensive car with a bunch of people's signatures. True, we are getting some attention for doing this, but first and foremost raising the money is what this is about. We've already raised several thousand dollars and I encourage all of you to make a small donation. We all know someone who's been affected by breast cancer and it's a great cause. So make a donation. There are two WePay accounts we setup on the site and anything you can donate is appreciated.

By the way, this comment was posted from a U-Haul in the middle of the Mojave Desert on our way to Texas with a 78 Camaro in tow. We're using a Verizon mi- fi and we've been connected the entire way. Only about 18 hours of driving left :) If you want more updates on our progress, follow us on Twitter. @carwoo

<comment><USER2> 67-69 Camaro is an iconic car...the 70-81 models...not so much

i get it why you are doing it, but those "defaced" new cars raise plenty of money too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I understand how CarWoo works, but do people actually click on the "Buy this car" button without having test driven the car yet? I would never buy a car without a test drive. Or am I misunderstanding something...

<comment><USER5> There isn't a "Buy this car" button per say. What we do is allow the consumer to "schedule a pickup" once they are happy with an offer. This allows them to go down and test drive it and is non-binding. It does however, lock in the price they've negotiated online.

<comment><USER4> Ok that explains it. As long as they can go down and do a test drive before finally committing to the purchase, then I think it works brilliantly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Those badger ads on the "Don't click here" at the bottom are hilarious! Reminds me of Fantastic Mr. Fox.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-SK1-iILlY>

</comment><comment><USER7> Love the car, Giants will win in Game 5 in Texas</comment>


How Googlebot views your site - <AUTHOR> http://async.tumblr.com/post/307227703/googlebot <comment><USER2> Somehow, I'd guess that the Googlebot is a _little_ more sophisticated than just curl...

<comment><AUTHOR> The post does not discuss its "sophistication", it merely validates Google Webmaster Tools's built-in labs feature 'fetch as Googlebot,' which the Official Google Webmaster Central fails to mention (curl) in its long post ([http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/11/generic-c...](http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/11/generic- cialis-on-my-website-i-think-my.html) ).

The point besides is that you do not need to have a Google Webmaster Tools account to use this feature.</comment></comment>


The Receptionist Test (The Interview before the Interview) - <AUTHOR> http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/The-Receptionist-Test.aspx

<comment><USER2> Why does it seem like computer jobs require such a higher standard of competence than other jobs? I've been on interviews for both computer and non- computer jobs and most of the time, non-computer job interviews really don't give the employer much to go on. Computer jobs always have questions about algorithms, data structures, and shooting the breeze about some technologies.

Is it that there are lots of people who lie and say they're computer people when they aren't (compared to the rates in other occupations)? Is it because you can't fake computers like you can fake other jobs? Is it because computer people are used to being mistreated and undervalued in a way that is unacceptable for other people? I'm really curious if anyone has thoughts on this.

<comment><AUTHOR> FWIW, my personal experince...

I have interviewed over 2500 programmer applicants, all having passed a "resume screening". I terminated 50% of the interviews before reaching the coding test because I knew by then that it would be a waste of time. Of the other 50%, 90% couldn't pass the simple coding test. I ended up hiring or referring less than 100.

Anyone else have similar experience with these percentages?

<comment><USER3> I rather like Joel Spolsky's observation that when one is hiring one is not selecting from the population of programmers, but rather from the population of programmers _without jobs_. A very different prospect.

<comment><USER4> Not necessarily. Often the best candidates are the ones you have to tempt out of their current position.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I have a lifetime bid for a fraternity (I didn't join, probably won't) as a result of a legitimate receptionist test. I was hanging out waiting for a friend and some senior member started cursing at his laptop. He had apparently lost an essay and I was able to rescue the contents, safely transfer it to disk, help him back it up just in case and give him advice on avoiding the problem in the future. Won me some points.

</comment><comment><USER6> Great idea. I read about this one firm that would occasionally spill drinks on candidates to gage their character.

Also, I'm glad they didn't call this the "administrative assistant test".

<comment><USER7> My cofounder once was interviewing someone. An earthquake struck in the midst of it. The candidate froze, bolted out the door, drove off, and was never heard from again.

My cofounder now says that he wish there were an earthquake for every interview...

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> stories like this piss me off when I'm unemployed.

</comment><comment><USER9> does anyone use floppies anymore?

<comment><USER10> Receptionists do. ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I worked at my college unjamming printers for two years. The interview was pretty relaxed, they just made sure I could use Windows, Mac, and Linux (our school used all three).

</comment><comment><USER12> Looking at the comments seems like I am an exception. But I really appreciate these tests especially if u are hiring at start-ups. One got to be hands on and ready to fix anything and everything.

The biggest test is that of go-getter and not be finicky about the kind of work you do.

</comment><comment><USER13> And I always thought The Office was an exaggeration: [http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/Anything-You-Can-Do-Lyle- Can...](http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/Anything-You-Can-Do-Lyle-Can-Do- Better.aspx)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> "High tech" version of Henry Ford's old test. He wouldn't hire anyone who put salt on his food before tasting it.

<comment><USER14> Or wore a yarmaluke.

Seriously though, Ford's test sounds silly. I'm sure he had some kind of justification for it, but I doubt it really did a good job of screening out who would and wouldn't be a good employee.

<comment><USER15> Dogma vs. Data!

Do you want to hire someone that does things 'because that's what they always do', or because they collected data and acted appropriately?

I'm not saying salt is a good indicator - there are a million other ways you could test it - but I think that's the gist of it.

<comment><USER16> Isn't hiring based on a "salt test," uh, dogma?

<comment><USER15> touche ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I think you could easily ask a few indirect IQ questions to see if the guy is suitable for the job.

<comment><USER18> Sounds like theoretical versus practical. In fact, the point of the story was that many candidates could easily handle all interview questions, IQ-centric or otherwise. This is a practical exam, of sorts. It will prove someone is unworthy of the position (but will not necessarily prove someone _is_ worthy of the position).

It's a weed-out class.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> It is a clever test, albeit a bit deceptive.

<comment><USER20> Am I the only one who is offended (but slightly amused) by this test? I would never work for a place that would play games like this. Are they also going to send undercover employees to talk to you about the company over lunch break as your annual review?

What's wrong with presenting the problem in a straightforward manner and see if the applicant can debug the steps, telling the interviewer what he's trying and why at each step? For starters you'd get way more out of his think flow. For "authenticity" you can add that this was a real problem that Cindy faced the other day and you may ask her questions.

People tend to try what they know first (ie: pounding ctrl-p or ubuntu), and if it happened to be the issue, they were merely lucky and may not be competent at all either.

How hard is it to ask them "What else haven't you tried? What would you have tried next if this didn't fix it? Why did you try those steps in that order?"

<comment><USER21> Perhaps, but this does have the benefit of not making the interviewees feel pressured.</comment></comment></comment>


A $300m Bootstrap Launched by a Teenager - <AUTHOR> http://mixergy.com/bhavin-turakhia-directi/

<comment><USER2> The title of the HN post is a little bit confusing, at least for me. It's a company that was bootstrapped by an 18-year-old in 1997, which is now (13 years later) worth $300m according to its founder. The title here made me think it had been recently bootstrapped by somebody who is still a teenager and that it is now showing $300m in either revenue or profit.

<comment><USER3> When someone says $300 million dollar company, it doesn't mean a company with $300 million dollars of revenue or profit per year. Generally, it means the _valuation_ (based on any number of measures, ie. acquisition price, last traded price x number of shares outstanding, founders pulling a figure out of thin air, etc.) of the company, so revenue can be anywhere from $0 to $300+ million (generally around single-digit multiples), and profit can even be negative.

<comment><USER4> The traditional meaning of an $x billion company is by revenues. Using it to mean valuation is quite new, and limited to startup/Silicon Valley people.

<comment><USER5> I'm pretty sure Wall St. people also talk in terms of valuation.

<comment><USER6> In general, Wall St tends to use this nomenclature (i.e., $X billion dollar company) when referencing _revenues_. For instance, Procter & Gamble is referred to as an "$80 billion dollar company" - which speaks to revenue, not market cap.

This gets murky with private firms, since revenue isn't typically shared, and even more so with startups where so much of the value is based on future, projected earnings.

In general, though, I'd say the nomenclature more commonly refers to revenues and _not_ 'valuation'.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Wait, it's worth $300M according to its owner. How much is it worth according to other people?

<comment><USER8> TechCrunch and the British Telegraph both used the same $300M number.

But I was clear in the post that my research lead me to believe that the number originally came from the founders.

We'll never know for sure until they sell, but the achievement is impressive from everything I saw.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> It'll be nice when we get to a point where we can stop supplementing stuff like this with "by a teenager". Who gives a crap as to how old they are?

</comment><comment><USER10> A million isn't cool. You know what's cool? A billion dollars. I couldn't resist.

<comment><USER10> Really? I got -4 points for this. My point is that $300 million isn't that big of deal when other teenager founders, a la Mark Zuckerburg, have multi-billion dollar corporations.</comment></comment>


Puffin beaks glow under UV light - <AUTHOR> http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/puffin-beaks-flouresce-1.4607386 <comment><USER2> > _They must be able to see [their beaks glowing under UV light] — that 's the > only reason it would exist._

I don't understand why he's so certain about this. Does it never happen under evolution that you get a property that is useless, but is otherwise harmless so it does not evolve away? In this particular case, could the chemical that gives the beaks a certain color just happen to be UV fluorescent, yet the birds can't see it? If we examine millions of features in animals, it seems we should come across some funny or interesting features that are incidental.

<comment><USER3> I wonder if they've done any experiments yet as to whether the birds actually can detect that. It definitely seems possible to do such an experiment.

I do think it's odd that in the article they just say the birds "must" be able to detect it, without any evidence that they actually can.

<comment><USER4> For example you could have three boxes, only one of which has food in it. Paint that box with UV fluorescent material like that which is on their beaks and repeatedly show the bird where the food is and let it eat it. Then stop showing it and let it go to the box on its own. Then start switching around the location of the boxes and show the bird which box has food in it. Then keep switching the location of the boxes but don't show the bird where the food is. Do this in all of the different lighting conditions that the bird would typically come across in nature. See if under any of these conditions the bird can consistently identify which of the boxes has food in it. If it can and if it's not due to smell or sound then it has to be because of what it can see. Ensure that other than the fluorescence there is no other visual distinction that makes the box identifiable. Do this by making new boxes every now and then and replacing the old boxes with those.

<comment><USER4> In order to eliminate the possibility of sound or smell being a factor we could make three new boxes, one of which is fluorescent and the other two not as before but now instead of putting the food in the box we keep it in a separate bag and we reward the bird for going up to the fluorescent box by feeding it from our bag.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Scientist walks in wearing rave gear: "Hey, puffin's beaks fluoresce in UV light".

Second scientist "Wow, how did you find that out?"

First scientist "Err... pure chance"

<comment><USER6> Or a quote from The Life Aquatic: "Never mind how I found out. I'm a scientist."

<comment><USER7> When I saw the lead sentence of the article I pictured puffins wearing sunglasses. "Scientists have even made special sunglasses for puffins..."

SlowBro may be slow, but he's a bro B-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Puffins shed the outer sheath of their beaks after breeding season so I would bet it's a fitness indicator for mate selection.

</comment><comment><USER9> > So one January day, while having a "troubling" time in the lab, he threw off > the lights and shone a UV light on a puffin carcass.

As you do.</comment>


Google's Helping Young Girls, But How Can We Get Women in College To Code? - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/yunitaong/2014/07/01/googles-helping-young-girls-but-how-can-we-get-women-in-college-to-code/

<comment><USER2> This was a non-issue that has suddenly morphed into a critical problem that requires a solution. If the majority of women aren't interested in tech stuff, then why try to "solve" it?

It's like asking, how can we get women interested in fixing cars? The answer is, why bother? Those who are interested, will tinker with cars and take courses and learn how. Those who aren't, won't.

The author of this Forbes article is very young and obviously idealistic; that's fine, but her proposals won't make a hill of beans difference. Touchy- feely community building might draw in a few shy types, but the vast majority are culturally inclined to different interests.

I was just at an Android development conference which, again, was 90% men. They had a luncheon for "women entrepreneurs" which naturally took place in a much smaller room than the main dining hall.

It's all well and good to try to encourage girls into science and technology, and I'm all for that; I wish my office wasn't 90% male. But you can't legislate these kinds of things, or force people to be interested in something they're not. Probably the best thing is to provide superb science and technology instruction in the early years of K-12, and never discourage anyone from pursuing their interests, then let the chips fall where they may.

<comment><USER3> An aside on the women and cars thing: I recently read a story about a car repair shop in France run by women and for women customers, their aim being to prevent women from being ripped off.

Those women found a reason to get into car repair. So I guess the question is: what reason can we give women to get into programming? Don't legislate it of course, but give women a way to find it on their own.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This past year the (now) rising junior class had the highest number of females that we have ever had in the Physics major. We had all of the things mentioned in the article: significant collaboration outside of class, a community of students outside of class who were all friends, and what I thought could have been a "critical" mass of females for them to feel not alone. However the hope for the record number of female physics students deflated with a pffft as I learned that 7/10 of the girls in this class were dropping the major. The majority reason cited: it was too difficult. Perhaps it was, the physics program at my school is known for being rigorous and difficult, however I feel that it is not the right thing to do to fault my department for its difficulty, it is part of our good reputation. In this way, I think it is more important to inspire a passion for physics _before_ coming to college, so comparatively less females drop when the going gets tough.

Perhaps it would be a good idea to add a parallel track for the less competitive students, "easier" classes that don't go into the same depth with the material. I sort of cringe at that option, but some departments I know have done that, and it has raised female participation. It does raise the question of how far one can get while in such a track. Physics is unique in that there is a relatively defined mountain you need to climb in order to be recognized as "educated in physics" (I'm thinking the Griffith's books, Taylor's Classical Mechanics, and the other big ones) and you really need to put in some blood and sweat to get through them. I'd worry that you could not get through any of them to any significant level if you insisted on ease of learning. Definitely not far enough to go to physics grad school, but perhaps far enough to get a finance job somewhere...

Relating this to coding. Perhaps there is too much emphasis on rigor than there needs to be in current curriculum. Not everyone is going to become a computer scientist or chief software architect. Perhaps it would be better to have more project based courses that are open ended in a way for people to just make what they want instead of "rise to a challenge" which admittedly some people just don't have the motivation to do. Just my thoughts.</comment>


Antarctica: Thousands of emperor penguin chicks died in 2016 weather event - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-48041487 <comment><USER2> There's a very good reason why seabirds in general are long-lived. Breeding failures are common. Arctic Terns in Shetland, Scotland basically did not raise any chicks for 10 years due to food shortages, probably due to overfishing for sandeels, their main prey (sorry don't have a reference).

Emperor penguins have an expected lifespan of 20 years, with some birds living as long as 50 years. Breeding starts when the birds are 4-5 years old. Losing one breeding attempt is not that big a deal - despite all the apparent "OMG, think of the penguins". If this event becomes more common as a result of climate change then that is another matter.

<comment><USER3> Obviously the birds aren't considered conscious... But it seems the same could be said about humans. "They have a long time to breed.. eh whatever"...

<comment><USER4> Think about the generation of missing women in China as a result of the single-child policy.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_women_of_China](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_women_of_China)

<comment><USER5> The millions of unwed military-aged Chinese men that could be seen as economically expendable has always made me nervous.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > The catastrophe occurred in 2016 in Antarctica's Weddell Sea.

<comment><USER7> The unfortunate consequence is that there seems to be no sign of further breeding after this point, despite the adult penguins surviving. I think they're insinuating that the catastrophe is on-going.

<comment><USER8> Ongoing but isolated to one colony so it's not a global catastrophe if that's what you think. Climate change may make it though.

<comment><USER7> Losing 5-9% of a species genetic stock is still a massive loss in my eyes, no matter what way you look at it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> As I post this almost all top thread comments are dismissing this article.

Really disappointed in this kind of response to an article about a worrying ecological change which is undisputedly due to climate change.

How is climate change still such a contentious issue?

<comment><USER10> Funny you attribute this to climate change when the article clearly mentioned this incident had nothing to do with climate change. Did you even read it?

> Quite why the sea-ice platform on the edge of the Brunt shelf has failed to > regenerate is unclear. There is no obvious climate signal to point to in > this case; atmospheric and ocean observations in the vicinity of the Brunt > reveal little in the way of change.

<comment><USER11> From the article that you allegedly read:

"But the sensitivity of this colony to shifting sea-ice trends does illustrate, says the team, the impact that future warming in Antarctica could have on emperor penguins in particular."

"Research suggests the species might lose anywhere between 50% and 70% of its global population by the end of this century, if sea-ice is reduced to the extent that computer models envisage."

<comment><USER10> > "But the sensitivity of this colony to shifting sea-ice trends does > illustrate, says the team, the impact that future warming in Antarctica > could have on emperor penguins in particular."

Which is not related to this particular incident. Thanks for proving my point again.

<comment><USER11> You made up the "which is not related to this particular incident" part (which is why you couldn't quote it). They said they couldn't point to an "obvious" cause in this case, which you eagerly mischaracterized as meaning "it has nothing to do with global warming." But that's not what they said. They said they didn't deeply study and understand the cause in this case. But we know with great certainty that sea ice is on a rapid decline due to climate change, just half of what it was in the 80s.[1] Thus the article notes studies that project this event will happen with greater frequency due to climate change, ultimately killing off more than half this species by century's end.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's world penguin day today! (According to some body at least.)

</comment><comment><USER13> Only the BBC's deliberately emotive headline to this story suggests that 'penguin chicks have died'. The facts behind it are that BAS scientists have reported that one colony site has been abandoned and that another nearby has increased in size. The probability is that the abandoned site had become vulnerable to storm damage and the colony moved to a less risky location. No panic, no disaster.

<comment><USER11> _> No panic, no disaster._

"Research suggests the species might lose anywhere between 50% and 70% of its global population by the end of this century, if sea-ice is reduced to the extent that computer models envisage."

<comment><USER14> So I take issue with the GP's assertion that is overly "emotive", the implication being that the BBC is biased about blowing things out of proportion that suits its agenda. The article seems quite factual to me.

But I do take issue with the claim that we "might lose between 50% and 70% of the global population" because of reduced sea ice as overly simplistic extrapolation [1].

As much as birds (like many animals) seem to return to the same place (typically where they themselves were born)--and, on a side note, I would love to know how they do this--they also seem capable of adapting. It seems relatively likely that a good number of them have moved to the nearby colony mentioned just based on numbers.

So even if sea ice does reduce dramatically by the end of the century, it doesn't automatically follow that penguin populations will similarly decline. Stability of ice (April-December) is important but declining sea ice just moves that further south (to a point). Proximity to food sources is also key.

I actually kind of wish we'd just stop with "computer modeling". Part of the reason we have so many climate change deniers (IMHO) is just how bad climate model predictions have been.

[1] [https://xkcd.com/605/](https://xkcd.com/605/)

<comment><USER15> > Part of the reason we have so many climate change deniers (IMHO) is just how > bad climate model predictions have been.

Sources? You seem to have read the number and automatically assumed it's a straight line extrapolation.

As far as I'm aware the climate models have been fine and - corrected, but not majorly disproven; it's the reporting on them that looks at the most extreme extrapolations to whip up hysteria (and so it gets ignored and so the extreme cases become more likely).

<comment><USER16> >As far as I'm aware the climate models have been fine

Sources? because they really really haven't.

<comment><USER15> I mean the first result on google was [https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis- how-well-have-climate-m...](https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-how-well- have-climate-models-projected-global-warming) which seems to cover most of the major players, including the IPCC reports looking pretty consistent within uncertainties.

<comment><USER16> Don't know where it gets these means from. For example. When I look at the IPCC's 4th assessment summary ([https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/ar4_syr_full...](https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/ar4_syr_full_report.pdf))

On page 7, they have a bunch of scenarios based on various GHG emissions. From what I can tell, we're above all of them on the GHG emissions front, and under all of them on the actual temperature changes. Yet this carbon brief site says it matches exactly what has happened, so don't know what they're going off of.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why has Google not integrated Timely into Android? - <AUTHOR> Awhile back, this company called Bitspin wrote a very popular timer called Timely, which allowed synchronization of alarms across multiple Android devices (creation, deletion, start, stop), and is pretty much the most elegant alarm app I've ever seen.
However, due to changes in how Android works, and Android only blessing its own clock app to be able to properly wake sleeping phones, and notifications to appear on lock screens properly (as in, not having to unlock to view the notification contents or interact with the notification), this app quit being useful about two years ago.
Bitspin was bought by Google in 2013. No updates to fix Timely have happened (although a single release was pushed out post-Google).
However, given that Bitspin is now part of Google, a lot of people expected Timely's feature set to become part of Android, and that functionality to be rolled into the stock clock app.
This never happened, yet would make owning multiple Android devices that much more useful. Sadly, I found out about Timely after the app became useless.
So, is that integration ever going to happen, or is there a true successor to Timely out there? <comment><USER2> I'm a happy Timely user who just upgraded from a 4.4 phone to a 6.0 phone. The "solve a puzzle to dismiss alarm" feature is a KILLER (maybe even life- changing?) app for me.

With that said, I don't understand any of your concerns, either. Unless neither of my phones never went to "sleep", I've never had a problem with Timely not awaking a phone from sleep. And I've never had any problems with lock screens.

Perhaps you're using an app, launcher, or non-ASOP ROM (either manufacturer- provided or otherwise) that conflicts with Timely?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm on a Nexus 5 using default launcher and lock screen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I've also been a long time timely user. Mainly as it's got such nice visuals. Not sure what an update could give me, it does everything I want, and it seems finished.

Google buying them did seem odd, but that was more as I couldn't see what they'd want with a simple timer/clock app.

</comment><comment><USER4> Declaring the app "useless" sounds a bit hyperbole to me. I've been happily using Timely since its launch, and don't frankly understand your problems -- the app hasn't lost any features as far as I can see.

<comment><AUTHOR> I have to unlock my phone to stop an alarm, and I also have to unlock to be able to read the notification. Also, an update seems to have limited Timely to only one timer at a time.

None of these limitations are in the stock Clock app.

This issue seems to only affect Android 5 and 6 users, from what I can tell from the reviews of the app.

<comment><USER4> Can't comment on the notification issue as I don't use lock screen notifications. As for the others, I'm on Android 5.1.1 and don't have any of these problems.</comment></comment></comment>


HipChat history eraser bot - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/brianc/hipchat-eraser

<comment><USER2> Interesting. What was the motivation for creating this?</comment>


China Set for Coal Expansion in Threat to Climate Goals - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-11-20/china-set-for-massive-coal-expansion-in-threat-to-climate-goals <comment><USER3> Mapped: The world's largest CO2 importers and exporters

[https://www.carbonbrief.org/mapped-worlds-largest- co2-import...](https://www.carbonbrief.org/mapped-worlds-largest- co2-importers-exporters)

"Despite the large total of CO2 imports and exports, US emissions are only 6% higher and Chinese emissions are 13% lower when CO2 transfers are taken into account."

Energy related carbon dioxide emissions peaked in 2007 in the United States [1]. They didn't _just_ get hidden by imports replacing domestic manufacturing. Even incorporating imports into the national balance, US emissions are down from the peak. This is largely due to efficient combined cycle gas turbines replacing coal plants and -- to a lesser but growing extent -- a larger proportion of renewable electricity in the national electricity mix.

Chinese carbon dioxide emissions have not peaked yet. As of 2017 (referenced above), 87% of Chinese emissions are attributable to domestic consumption. That should moderate hopes that Chinese emission trends could be reversed by CO2 tariffs. It should also moderate anxiety that Chinese emissions are "really" the offshored emissions of Western consumers.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas_emissions_by_th...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas_emissions_by_the_United_States)

<comment><USER4> Carbon tariffs don't have to only be on the carbon content of the goods transferred. You can just punish a country generally for not doing their part if you'll otherwise have a tragedy of the commons type outcome.

I'm relatively hopeful that renewables will simply be cheaper though, in part thanks to China. But we could still use tariffs for global co-operation on other sources of emissions (there was a story recently about China releasing CFCs for example).

<comment><USER5> I think anything like that is going to appear retroactively very hypocritical to any developing nation that finds itself under such carbon tariffs.

A sort of reparation or settlement for western carbon output in the 20th century, which the same impact on the climate only differing in happening earlier, would help developing nations get on board. This arrangement could take the form of investment in a developing nations clean energy infrastructure or compensation in other forms.

Otherwise, developing nations besides China will probably continue buying legacy, retired coal fire equipment from China, which has been happening for some time now.

<comment><USER6> Hypocrisy is orthogonal to effectiveness. If it costs less to switch to renewables than pay the tariffs then they stop burning coal.

But the hypocrisy argument fails anyway because the renewable alternatives that exist today didn't exist a hundred years ago. It's altogether different to choose coal when the science is less well understood and no viable alternatives are known to exist than to do so today when that is not the case.

There is also a difference in scale. There are more than four times as many people in the developing world as there are in the developed world. If they used the same amount per capita then they would release more carbon in 10 years than we did in 40. Even if the First World hadn't burned an ounce of coal, they still wouldn't be able to do what we actually did. But they also don't need to today.

And it would be easier to pass tariffs than convince the population of the First World to send their money overseas. This needs to happen right now, not after people argue about it for another twenty years.

<comment><USER5> Largely, I agree with you. Just pointing out the appearance of hypocrisy could lead to tension in this decisive time where we need to act now, as you say. A mixture of tariffs / investment could be used to get the goal most effectively.

<comment><USER6> Imposing the tariffs would result in the investment you're looking for anyway. Once you make coal uncompetitive on cost, people still need electricity, so they buy renewables. The investors follow the demand.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What's left out is the industrial output of China -- which is probably producing for much of the EU and USA. It takes power to produce cheap phones and plastic knick-knacks for western consumers. The fact that the Chinese economy will adapt to meet these demands is inevitable. What is the coal output per capita, subtracting industrial output dedicated to exports to the US/Eurozone -- this would be a more fair assessment.

<comment><USER8> The standard measurement is CO2 emissions in kg per PPP $ of GDP.

By that measure, China emits about twice what the US does, 0.6 vs 0.3. However China has done about twice as well as the US has in reducing this number, which is why China is on track to meeting their Paris commitments and the US isn't.

<comment><USER9> Maybe China is doing all the energy intensive low margin work. Since its low margin energy must be dirt cheap, and literal dirt is still the cheapest way to generate power.

Not letting China totally off the hook, just suggesting that there is an economic force driving them toward the bottom of the barrel for cheap energy. California gets up to 50% of its power from solar during midday, but it also does a lot of much higher margin work like software, design, skilled manufacturing, etc.

The world CO2 per GDP number is falling, which is a good sign:

[https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/en.atm.co2e.pp.gd](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/en.atm.co2e.pp.gd)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I encourage everyone here to read the underlying report for a more nuanced view: [1].

Apparently, the central government turned over permitting to provincial governments in 2014, leading to a massive surge in permits for coal plants, peaking in 2015 (see Fig. 3). Provincial governments wanted to promote growth above all else, so they went for coal. The central government was apparently alarmed by this, and imposed restrictions in 2016, leading new permits issued per year to drop by 80%. However, the new plants that were approved from 2014-2016 are still in the pipeline, which is why there are still new plants being built. The central government has slowed their construction and has proposed withdrawing a large fraction of the permits (for example, 150 GW of permits were canceled in 2018-19, while 8.5 GW of new construction was approved - see Table 4).

But just as in the West, there's a powerful coal lobby in China, which is pushing for already permitted projects to go ahead, for restrictions on new permits for coal plants to be lifted, and for the overall cap the government has set (1.1 TW) to be increased. Playing into all of this is the general economic slowdown in China, which of course puts pressure on the government to ease restrictions.

Despite all this, the trend in China is for less coal capacity to actually come online each year (Fig. 4). The question is really whether it will fall fast enough (Fig. 5).

1\. [https://endcoal.org/global-coal-plant-tracker/reports/out- of...](https://endcoal.org/global-coal-plant-tracker/reports/out-of-step/)

<comment><USER11> Misinformation abounds in climate change discussions. The issue is as complicated as our environment is. You can't write a headline like "China Set for Coal Expansion in Threat to Climate Goals" without including a whole nation of nuance by implication.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Realistically, there is little incentive for China to cut back on coal usage. In an ideal world China would use the funds directed to Belt and Road to green infrastructure but in terms of its own ambition and growth prospects coal is the only reliable energy source to match the scale of China's ambition.

The global economy needs China to keep on growing. Germany, arguably the most important economy in the world outside of China, India and the US is nearing recessions because of slowing Chinese consumer spending. A recession in the EU spells disaster for the rest of the world.

It's difficult to expect China to curb it's growth for the common good when more advanced economies ignored the science for decades (ie. at least since the 70S) to favor its own growth.

<comment><USER13> >Realistically, there is little incentive for China to cut back on coal usage.

How about the 10's of millions of their citizens being poisoned or dying from pollution related illnesses?

>The global economy needs China to keep on growing.

They run trade imbalances with almost the entire world. The Chinese are not the best consumers.

>Germany, arguably the most important economy in the world outside of China, India and the US is nearing recessions because of slowing Chinese consumer spending.

Huh?

>It's difficult to expect China to curb it's growth for the common good when more advanced economies ignored the science for decades

How is China not a 1st world nation? Or not an advance economy?

<comment><USER14> "How is China not a 1st world nation? Or not an advance economy?"

Their per capita income is 15% of Americans'?

<comment><USER15> That's because 2/3rds of the population are rural poor.

The other 1/3rd live what are essentially first world lifestyles.

<comment><USER12> But we're talking about the county as a whole.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> this post seems to be used for strategic messaging to boost Bloomberg's current campaign:

 _> Michael R. Bloomberg, the founder and majority stakeholder of Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News, has committed $500 million to launch Beyond Carbon, a campaign aimed at closing the remaining coal-powered plants in the U.S. by 2030 and slowing the construction of new gas plants._

this kind of thing makes the reporting feel questionable. A shame because the message is really important.

<comment><USER17> That sounds to me like virtue signalling. Shutting down both coal and gas is wishful thinking. Those gas plants are needed as an energy storage mechanism.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Why would China cut co2 emissions when the largest polluter(per capita) isn't doing anything?

<comment><USER19> They might cut CO2 emissions as a side effect of achieving something that matters to them, like cutting particulate emissions. There's no reason they would cut CO2 emissions for their own sake.

<comment><USER8> They're the biggest consumer of electric cars, biggest consumer of solar panels and the biggest consumer by far of electric buses.

They'll also cut CO2 emissions as a side effect of an attempt to corner the market on green technologies.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I looked into a few websites tracking climate change progress. They seemed to show that China is doing relatively better compared to others, in terms of climate change goals.

Here is the summary that I posted on my blog:

[https://paraditedc.com/2019/11/22/pdc-10-chinas-real- progres...](https://paraditedc.com/2019/11/22/pdc-10-chinas-real-progress-on- climate-change-goals/)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> > The nation has 148 gigawatts (GW) of new coal fired capacity under > construction. That is compared to 150 GW of existing capacity in the > European Union and 105 GW in the works for the rest of the world

<comment><USER21> Germany is also amusingly building new coal: [https://www.reuters.com/article/uniper-coal-plant/unipers- da...](https://www.reuters.com/article/uniper-coal-plant/unipers- datteln-4-coal-plant-allowed-to-enter-service-sources-idUSL8N27F4VC)

China has 43 GW of nuclear built, 11 GW in construction, and another 36 GW planned. I guess it's not a huge figure compared to 148.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Many factors driving this:

Domestically

1\. Perverse incentives in some provinces still reward coal production.

2\. Diminishing incentives for solar and other renewable.

3\. Pivot to interior development of interior regions, bureaucrats are adopting the same building + smoke stack strategies that worked on coastal cities. There's was some internal response - many of the proposed coal plants are being eliminated.

4\. Keep in mind China is still at 60% urbanization rate. A lot of construction related CO2 is basically for modern housing stock - <USER2> referred to as "ghost cities" \- but they get occupied eventually.

5\. Renewable is still central to domestic energy security in response to US security competition. Previously, renewable was a response to air quality complaints, now it has to be balanced with security.

US-SINO trade war

5\. Increased pressure for Chinese energy security - China has access to essentially infinite amount of domestic coal. Now that US seems to be withdrawing from Gulf security because US is energy independent from shale, there's more urgency in China to build up coal security at least short term.

6\. Reliance on construction to maintain growth. Related to 3&4.

7\. Related to #3, economic pressures from trade war might motivate more coal plants to be built. There was also a resurgence in shadow banking after deleveraging campaign was cut short due to trade war.

Globally

8\. Exporting infrastructure capacity means more coal plants along Belt & Road.

I'm of mixed feelings, cheap goal -> development. Eliminating poverty and development is more pressing than climate change. There isn't a climate change strategy that can handle uplifting the developing world into developed status. I think that's like 3/4 of the world. Doesn't mean we shouldn't do everything in the mean time to figure out how to mitigate, but ethically we should be working towards an end goal of X universal consumption baseline. X being much higher than global average now and probably much lower than western levels. If that's beyond global carrying capacity then I guess WW3.

E: typos

</comment><comment><USER23> Just wait til India gets their coal expansion in gear. China is already the largest co2 emitter, India hasn't quite arrived yet. But India has no shortage of coal to prevent joining the party, and 300M+ people still needing basic electric service.

</comment><comment><USER24> Meanwhile the US just shut down its two largest coal plants in the past month, and has shed 50 just since Trump has been in office; but people keep touting China as a "climate leader." Pretending a non-binding Paris Agreement the US backed out of meant anything at all. It was non-binding.

</comment><comment><USER25> Alternative title: Climate Goals a Threat to China Expansion

(also to India and other countries)

And I find this troubling. On what moral authority the west think it is ok to kick the ladder?

<comment><USER26> Because western nations already had their industrial booms and now see how incredibly damaging it was to the planet. Sure it's easy for them to criticize because they already reaped the benefits. But that doesn't mean they should have to stand by watching even more destructive industrial expansion continue.

<comment><USER27> They are not standing by and watching. They are involved in the tragedy. Western nations are dismantling nuclear power on a massive scale. They are blocking the growth of renewables industries in developing nations [0] under the guise of free trade instead of promoting renewables usage in those countries. US has backed off the Paris climate accord saying they should not be subsidizing solar in these countries. They are showing anything but leadership after having damaged the planet for their own benefit all these years.

Climate change is a problem, and we have to deal with it, but the west blaming India and China when the US has the largest emission per capita by a mile and more is not going to get us anywhere.

[0] [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trade-india- wto/india...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trade-india-wto/india- wins-us-solar-case-at-wto-but-impact-disputed-idUSKCN1TS2B0)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Bloomberg has lost my trust as a reliable source of information since the invented story about China Chip hack[1]. Contrary to the article, China is the leading investor in renewable energy[2][3].

[1][https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-10-04/the- big-h...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-10-04/the-big-hack-how- china-used-a-tiny-chip-to-infiltrate-america-s-top-companies)

[2][https://www.forbes.com/sites/dominicdudley/2019/01/11/china-...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/dominicdudley/2019/01/11/china- renewable-energy-superpower/#51dd9cb0745a)

[3][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_China](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_China)

<comment><USER3> There is nothing contrary about this report. Coal and renewables don't annihilate each other like matter and antimatter.

China is simultaneously expanding its use of electricity from coal, renewables, and nuclear plants faster than any other country in the world. This is because China is the world's largest consumer of electricity and is still growing.

<comment><USER28> Well, the share of coal in China's primary energy mix has declined to a new low[1]. Basically, China has been trying to close down small, inefficient coal plants and build renewable power stations. Resuming massive construction of coal plants does comply with what they have been doing.

[1] [https://www.bp.com/content/dam/bp/business- sites/en/global/c...](https://www.bp.com/content/dam/bp/business- sites/en/global/corporate/pdfs/energy-economics/statistical-review/bp-stats- review-2019-china-insights.pdf)

<comment><USER3> Yes, the central government wants to use coal more efficiently and to curb acutely harmful air pollution. China's energy mix is now less coal-heavy than it was 10 years ago. Since China's total energy use is still growing robustly, a declining share for coal does not necessarily mean a declining absolute quantity (tonnage) of coal. According to your own link, "Among the fossil fuels, consumption growth was led by natural gas (+18%) and oil (+5.0%), while _coal use rose (+0.9%), the second consecutive year of growth._ "

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> If one thinks and supports politicians that believe climate change is a threat to human existence you would, logically, wholeheartedly support the following:

1\. Ban all air travel 2\. Ban all consumer goods made in developing nations. (a large contributor to China and India's carbon footprint) 3\. War with countries producing a large carbon foot print if they refuse diplomatic efforts to meaningfully curb emissions. 4\. Eat only plants and insects. 5\. No cars (battery or otherwise). 6\. Culling or otherwise slowing the population.

If one is not willing to adopt all of these (and more unmentioned) as part of their own lifestyle and political views one does not truly believe climate change poses as great a danger as it is made out to be.

In fact, it is proof there is a particular political end in mind and climate change is a convenient excuse for those in power to meet their own political ends.

<comment><USER30> Why not just impose a massive carbon tax and carbon import duties? This would essentially accomplish all of your goals without war (which is a TERRIBLE idea, war is VERY energy intensive and extremely wasteful, never mind the untold suffering placed upon the low-income, poor soldiers and civilizations who will die unnecessarily).

<comment><USER31> Increases in gas taxes were the reason for the Gilets Jaunes protests in France, so raising taxes could lead to war in itself. Also broad scale carbon taxes will likely impact the poor more than the rich.

<comment><USER4> Carbon taxes, even if "flat" (i.e. a set amount per carbon) are "progressive" taxes because the rich spend more on carbon generating stuff.

It is of course easy to tweak them to make them even better, like directing some of the money to subsidize public transport.

<comment><USER31> Citation? I would bet as a percentage of income the rich do not spend as much on carbon generating stuff. Most taxes on consumption are regressive unless they are on luxuries that the poor can't afford.

<comment><USER4> [https://medium.com/@dolanecon/would-a-carbon-tax-really- hurt...](https://medium.com/@dolanecon/would-a-carbon-tax-really-hurt-the- poor-a1b0d7c019cf)

I think the basic intuition is that to make luxury product X involves lots of poor people using carbon. If you only count the direct expenditures then it looks worse for poor people, if you trace each purchase back to its carbon then it affects the people who buy lots of stuff.

<comment><USER32> This link does not support the claim that carbon taxes are progressive.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>