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Building a Text Editor for a Digital-First Newsroom

open.nytimes.com

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Re: Building a Text Editor for a Digital-First Newsroom

#161

Post by mattberkowitz »

sharpercoder wrote: post #150
mattberkowitz wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm an engineer on our CMS team and as Albert mentioned we're currently seeking both back-end and front-end team members. We're not opposed to hiring skilled developers that don't have deep experience the specific language or frameworks we use. There's also always the option of joining the back-end and transitioning over time to a more front-end role. If you're interested, I'm happy to answer any questions or connect…

NYT seems remote friendly, but is NYT remote non-US friendly? Front-end/Full-stack engineer from The Netherlands here.

We do have news employees in bureaus around the world but I'm not sure what the the exact policy is for tech employees. I'll see if I can find someone with the answer for you

Re: Building a Text Editor for a Digital-First Newsroom

#162

Post by thomastjeffery »

maccard wrote: post #116
onion2k wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A word of unsolicited advice: Someone who thinks "I am a Python developer" is generally less useful to a team than someone who thinks "I am a developer who is good at Python."

Not all languages are created equal. While yes a developer with years of experience in python may have lots of transferable skills to other languages, my team arent going to hire someone for a mid level/senior position without a good knowledge of c++

> Not all languages are created equal

No language is inherently "better" than another. They are each useful for specific cases, and understanding more languages means understanding their contextual strengths and weaknesses.

Re: Building a Text Editor for a Digital-First Newsroom

#163

Post by thomastjeffery »

WizardOfNomaha wrote: post #107
onion2k wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A word of unsolicited advice: Someone who thinks "I am a Python developer" is generally less useful to a team than someone who thinks "I am a developer who is good at Python."

In most hiring settings this isn't true though. Language-specific skills actually do matter, for all but entry-level positions at massive tech companies. It's not like my 3 years of experience in Ruby is immediately translatable to Java/Python/whatever. Could I get up to speed in those languages in due time? Sure. But if you were on a hiring committee, hiring for a team that works mostly with Java (or whatever) would…

That is true.

What parent was trying to explain is that an individual is not defined by a specific subset of his/her experience.

Just as fluency in Spanish does not make me Hispanic, experience in python does not make me a "python developer". That title puts focus in the wrong place.

Re: Building a Text Editor for a Digital-First Newsroom

#164

Post by mgkimsal »

youpassbutter wrote: post #157
andrei_says_ wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who has worked on the integration of off the shelf CMS and as well as built in house ones, I question this statement. There’s a lot of value in building tools that fit the domain and workflow perfectly well. It’s expensive in the short term but in the long term saves a lot of time and money.

Sure. But it doesn't take a "team" to build up a CMS. This is why media "tech teams" are viewed as a joke in the tech industry.

WTF?

It takes a 'team' to provide any sort of professional level of support for an organization of their size. If the one-person "CMS/tech wizard" decides to stop working, or die, or get sick, or take an extra 4 hours to be with their family, the entirety of the NYT operations should just say "oh well, we'll just wait around for a while until we find our next one person to be our tech saviour"?

Re: Building a Text Editor for a Digital-First Newsroom

#165

Post by thomastjeffery »

crdoconnor wrote: post #136
onion2k wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Language-specific skills actually do matter, for all but entry-level positions at massive tech companies. Absolutely, which is why I didn't stop at "I am a developer". That "who is good at Python" bit is definitely important. However , seeing yourself as a "Python developer" rather than "a developer who is good at Python" makes it look like you see every problem as something you'll solve using Python. That's bad. Tha…

>However, seeing yourself as a "Python developer" rather than "a developer who is good at Python" makes it look like you see every problem as something you'll solve using Python. That's bad. If a company didn't hire me because they idiotically interpreted "I am a python developer" to mean "I would try to build a rendering engine in python" then I'd say that's probably a bullet dodged. I'd interpret it as "I don't bui…

Being able to interpret around your words does not make your words inherently better.

You aren't honestly trying to sift out clueless prospective employers out by their ability to parse a title, are you?

The advice here is to put focus on ability to write software, and experience using python as a tool to do so, rather than implying that your ability is limited to python.

Re: Building a Text Editor for a Digital-First Newsroom

#166

Post by thomastjeffery »

nwmcsween wrote: post #156
TeMPOraL wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vim ain't sufficiently complicated (that can arguably be seen as a good thing). That's why it's been mostly reimplemented in Emacs.

Vim has vimscript (ugh) with a lua and python gaining popularity so emacs sort of got it right IMO anyways.

Neovim's main goal seems to be replacing vimscript with lua in a backwards-compatible way.

Re: Building a Text Editor for a Digital-First Newsroom

#167

Post by gh02t »

scottmf wrote: post #113
gh02t wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A desire to stay relevant. Print publishers often get criticized for being behind the curve, but a few like NYT and BBC have invested heavily in the technology of their business. Not sure how much it's paid off, but my impression is they aren't struggling as much as some. I hope they manage to find the right combination to stay around, I loathe the dystopian future where Buzzfeed and Breitbart are the only news outle…

Buzzfeed isn’t comparable to Breitbart at all. Buzzfeed does real journalism these days.

Their news coverage is pretty strongly slanted to the left. Just because I tend to agree with them doesn't mean I think they are really that much better than Breitbart in terms of providing objective reporting.

In any event, what I meant was that I don't want a future where we only have sources of "news" that serve to reinforce our pre-existing beliefs, with everybody siloed into their own particular little bubbles.

Re: Building a Text Editor for a Digital-First Newsroom

#168

Post by gh02t »

coob wrote: post #148
gh02t wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A desire to stay relevant. Print publishers often get criticized for being behind the curve, but a few like NYT and BBC have invested heavily in the technology of their business. Not sure how much it's paid off, but my impression is they aren't struggling as much as some. I hope they manage to find the right combination to stay around, I loathe the dystopian future where Buzzfeed and Breitbart are the only news outle…

The BBC publish magazines but I wouldn't describe them as a print publisher. They're a broadcaster.

True, I was thinking news in general.

Re: Building a Text Editor for a Digital-First Newsroom

#170

Post by andrei_says_ »

youpassbutter wrote: post #157
andrei_says_ wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who has worked on the integration of off the shelf CMS and as well as built in house ones, I question this statement. There’s a lot of value in building tools that fit the domain and workflow perfectly well. It’s expensive in the short term but in the long term saves a lot of time and money.

Sure. But it doesn't take a "team" to build up a CMS. This is why media "tech teams" are viewed as a joke in the tech industry.

It is not constructive for me to engage with this level of cinicism.
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