Viewing profile — raganwald

Paul Graham wrote an essay called "Things You Can't Say." He should update it so I'll know what things I can't say on Hacker News, like "Let's discuss this idea like reasonable peo…

I took this entirely as a conversation between developer and "stakeholder," be that client, employer, whomever, but not the end-user. I've built many such forms, and all of them ha…

You may disagree, but it's not ridiculous. It's perfectly reasonable. In fact, by calling it ridiculous, you're sending a very strong signal that people who ask questions about whe…

So does this mean you don't write any software that doesn't save lives? That you don't come onto Hacker News and make comments? For whatever reason you find yourself doing a task. …

Your entire comment seems to be based on the premise that either companies have a strong insider/outsider culture or they are soulless places to work. When in reality, there are ma…

Of course, correlation does not equal causation . If there is something about their "culture" that is off-putting to women, you can't "fix" it by changing the hiring practices. You…

I do not speak for GitHub, but anonymous sources inform me that the feature only works with prose formats that have a built-in renderer. So basically, if you can preview the file, …

I don't know if this is true for CoffeeScript, but sometimes an unfamiliar syntax enables something new and very useful. You won't experience that unless you embrace something very…

Even if he happened to be right about his contention, this isn't the point at all. The question here is, "Should a programming service be offered in a language other than English?"…

They are mistaking the indicator for the thing indicated. This is one of the most important (and neglected) insights in business. People often optimize for the indicator at the exp…

I agree, let's flip this around and think like customers. We go out to choose a vendor for some important service. Vendors A and B have roughly equal parity on features and service…

I also don't think being in over your head or having architectural issues is a crime - it's the default state for startups, especially ones trying to keep up with big growth. While…

A lot of the dynamics you're describing here on Hacker News also apply to Hacker News. It's the same problem: Surface quality content and don't allow the items on the front page to…

Raganwald! Downvote or don't downvote! Why are you trying to shame akeri_!? Point, set and match.

Donate or don't donate, that's your call. But why are you complaining about him asking for a donation? Why try to "shame" him? What is he doing to harm you?

Or leave him hanged with his pockets stuffed with money as an old-testament warning. What the supreme being in "Time Bandits" described as "doing something extroverted and vengeful…

Mastering "engineering" in a language and maximizing your interview "performance" are loosely coupled at best. Also, leave the affiliate links in. Those who care to remove them kno…

Exaggerated in one way, possibly under-reporting in another. What if athlete sexual activity follows a power law? A very small number of athletes might have hundreds of hookups dur…

Exactly. But it doesn't degeneralize to "Everything is so different that rules of thumb are not useful guidelines," but rather that within a particular "genre" or "world," there ar…

Something important is almost never mentioned in all the literature about programming and software development, and as a result we sometimes misunderstand each other. You're a soft…

> Am I missing something? Yes. If you went to high school, you may recall a certain type of person: They'd pick someone else, anyone else, and make fun of them for no reason other …

The original word for that is "verisimilitude." I may be alone in this, but I consider "truthiness" to be something that you want to be true even though it's obviously not true. Fr…