Sure hope Zed finishes http://learnpythonthehardway.com/ Such a great primer for pre-programmers.
Would love to see him do something similar for c as well.
Zed Shaw has Left Dropbox
81–90 of 99 posts
Re: Zed Shaw has Left Dropbox
#82And that's the problem with Rockstar Programmers. They know they are rockstars, they know that they can get funding for their own product at a moments notice, they know that they can always go on a speaking tour. You need them, but they don't need you, and they know it. So they walk in and want to do what they want to do, they have no intention of doing the shitty stuff. But work in a company has a lot of shitty stuf…
"slugging away at code"?
You make it sound like you can only be "important" if you are not programming anymore. I say: go to hell.
I have never seen a manager winning a Nobel Prize - scientist are respected in our world, except in our field. Go figure.
I, for one, like to work for people who are smarter than I am. I believe many good programmers (here refered to as rockstars) feel the same. Therefore, they will not want to work for you and you can stop worrying about them.
Re: Zed Shaw has Left Dropbox
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hello Zed. I find myself doing some sysadmin work, not by plan, but it happens that way. Something needs to be working right now, it is easiest to just do it, etc. Also, scaling and deployment issues come up, and best to just deal with stuff. The question is what fraction of time is spent on sysadmin vs. development. BTW, I look forward to checking out mongrel2, and I think using the AGPL + optional commercial licens…
Another comment on AGPL: I both wish that the AGPL became a often-used license and that when required commercial options would be affordable. Obviously developers control the licensing and costs of their creations, but as a for instance, if I could not use AGPL on a customer project: I would be happy to pay about $25 for a VPS license or perhaps $100 for a single server license for good bits of infrastructure softwar…
That's a very good comment, and thanks. I mostly went with the AGPL to hedge my bets. It's much easier to reduce a license's restrictions than to increase them later, and I'd like to go with whatever the market wants at the time.
The interesting thing is, other people have had the same sentiment about the AGPL. It seems they actually prefer it plus some small commercial license option. I hadn't really thought people would like the AGPL for servers, but it seems that's what people are liking.
At this point I have no idea which direction it'll go, but I'll make a decision once it's more stable and actually runs stuff.
Re: Zed Shaw has Left Dropbox
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oh I know Education departments are mostly crap. Thanks to Constructivism and the influence of stupid communist dogma from Paulo Freire.
You don't understand — those are the good parts The rest is far, far worse. Say what you like about the tenets of Constructivism, Zed, at least it's an ethos. I'm surprised that you'd have beef with it — you don't even like Papert's Constructionism? As easily misinterpreted and misapplied as liberation pedagogy can be, at least it gives the non-subject-matter-experts something to apply themselves at, something they c…
I'm a scientist mostly, so I prefer Direct Instruction from Siegfried Engelmann and Wesley C. Becker and learned quite a bit about how to teach effectively from them. What's interesting is DI is the only method with solid evidence backing its success. Lots of it. The others are mostly just bullshit rhetoric.
Re: Zed Shaw has Left Dropbox
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
Right now, find a company doing something bad ass with HTTP and then make Mongrel2 blow their socks off. Then repeat it again and again until I've got something. Either that, or getting a Ph.D. in Education.
What's your sales pitch for mongrel2 against things like Unicorn & Passenger. The new features of mongrel2 seem awesome (particularly multiple protocols over the same socket) and given the success of mongrel, I think we all have high hopes for mongrel2. But I'm curious what your thoughts are on what the "killer apps" are for mongrel2 that make it the superior solution to the alternatives.
Depends on who I'm talking to.
Operations guy: Mongrel2 is a ops wet dream. Totally automatable and you can use it to easily carve your infrastructure up as needed to scale and deal with all the random crap programmers throw at you.
Programmers: Mongrel2 is future proof and gives you want you need with low friction. Wanna do sockets? Got it. Use any language? Got it. Change up the request flow to work around a bug? Got it. Drop Scala for Rails? Got it.
Or something like that.
Re: Zed Shaw has Left Dropbox
#86And that's the problem with Rockstar Programmers. They know they are rockstars, they know that they can get funding for their own product at a moments notice, they know that they can always go on a speaking tour. You need them, but they don't need you, and they know it. So they walk in and want to do what they want to do, they have no intention of doing the shitty stuff. But work in a company has a lot of shitty stuf…
Rockstar programmers are not the problem, inexperienced, insecure middle-managers who feel threatened by the fact that they have no idea what the rockstar programmers are talking about half the time are.
Why don't you see your argument through to its most logical conclusion and say "only hire people who depend on you for their worker's visa?"
Re: Zed Shaw has Left Dropbox
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
"I'm gonna go make my own interview room. With blackjack. And hookers."
You know what, forget the blackjack.
Very amusing, but can we leave the reddit banter at reddit please? I like Futurama as much as the next geek, but this isn't what I come to HN for.
Re: Zed Shaw has Left Dropbox
#88And that's the problem with Rockstar Programmers. They know they are rockstars, they know that they can get funding for their own product at a moments notice, they know that they can always go on a speaking tour. You need them, but they don't need you, and they know it. So they walk in and want to do what they want to do, they have no intention of doing the shitty stuff. But work in a company has a lot of shitty stuf…
You are talking bollocks, "rockstars" programmers changed the way that you are living now! You should hire people that are good on what they do, that are passionated and not that they go to work just to buy food!
Re: Zed Shaw has Left Dropbox
#89And that's the problem with Rockstar Programmers. They know they are rockstars, they know that they can get funding for their own product at a moments notice, they know that they can always go on a speaking tour. You need them, but they don't need you, and they know it. So they walk in and want to do what they want to do, they have no intention of doing the shitty stuff. But work in a company has a lot of shitty stuf…
First off, you don't know me, so don't presume to know how I am to work with, or what kind of employee I am. In fact, what you wrote here is borderline slander, as you're basically telling people to not hire me. You and everyone else needs to quit that shit because I don't do it to you, and it does have a major impact on my life. Second, who the hell are you to say I shouldn't have a life outside of your company? Thi…
Let me put it this way: You're a talented singer, songwriter, guitarist, and producer. The company needs a person who plays bass. They could hire you as a bassist, but that's not where you belong. You're a rockstar. You belong in the front.
What I'm saying is not slander, it's the opposite. YOU are putting yourself in the wrong spot, because you should not be playing bass when you have all these other talents. You should form your own band and create your own vision.
Imagine you are casting a band and you put Carlos Santana as the guitarrist of Britney Spears. Sure, he's an excellent guitar player, but that's now where he belongs. He should not play guitar in Britneys band and dabble in experimental rock music, he should be focusing on his own thing.
That's what I mean - many companies simply need a cog. They need some small piece that will keep the machine turning smoothly. They need a pawn - and though you could stick a queen in there to do the job of the pawn, it's not where it belongs.
And when someone says the queen should not be used as a pawn, the queen should not be arguing that it should be a pawn.
Re: Zed Shaw has Left Dropbox
#90And that's the problem with Rockstar Programmers. They know they are rockstars, they know that they can get funding for their own product at a moments notice, they know that they can always go on a speaking tour. You need them, but they don't need you, and they know it. So they walk in and want to do what they want to do, they have no intention of doing the shitty stuff. But work in a company has a lot of shitty stuf…
LOL @ 'rockstar programmers'
Kid you need to get out of the house more.