Do you ever avoid submitting something on HN so devs won't ruin it? • Hacker News Board

Re: Do you ever avoid submitting something on HN so devs won't ruin it?

#201

Post by corobo » Wed, Dec 08, 2021, 6:11 PM UTC

shadowgovt wrote: post #172

corobo wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clicking the dislike button boosts the video as much as clicking the like button anyway. You're doing everyone a disservice by interacting with bad videos

Interesting. Do you have a source for this? I'd find it really surprising if YT was treating negative signal as positive signal in this specific way.

Unfortunately no. I heard it back in like 2014 or something when I was doing YouTube stuff. I did try to find a decent source but came up blank, too many articles about dislike count being disabled in the way currently and I can't find a decent set of keywords

Maybe it is just a meme I'm spreading inadvertently

Re: Do you ever avoid submitting something on HN so devs won't ruin it?

#202

Post by matheusmoreira » Wed, Dec 08, 2021, 6:14 PM UTC

Hekioi wrote: post #180

matheusmoreira wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're actually right. The goal is to automate all work to the point there is no need for an economy. In a post-scarcity society there is no need to economize. However, it's a mistake to believe the rich and powerful will allow such a society to exist since they'd be powerless in it. They will impose artificial scarcity on it in order to maintain the existence of capitalism and their fortunes. Just look at how copyri…

Apparently the working class is doing there part as well to keep the status quo when I see the reaction of others to my statement.

I don't think this is accidental. There seems to be a deliberate effort to de-politicize the economy and to de-economize politics. The left used to be all about labor rights. Now it's about gender politics.

Re: Do you ever avoid submitting something on HN so devs won't ruin it?

#203

Post by makecheck » Wed, Dec 08, 2021, 6:15 PM UTC

There is a skill not taught in schools that I might describe as “how to conduct code reviews” and it applies in industry as well as HN comments.

A reason to be afraid to submit may be that the number of respondents that don’t know how to review may exceed the number that do, causing the net result to be more destructive than constructive. Which brings me to another skill — how to ignore input that (even if you receive it) does not really matter, or at least not right away or not as much as other things.

If only as a profession we could resist the urge to quibble about things that probably are fine (or at least not pressing) so that there is more time to dig into the heart of a design or implementation. Yes, that’s an interesting algorithm; no, let’s not segue into the choice of back-end on the web site that happens to host the documentation; yes, that will help with maintainability; no, the number of spaces here does not really matter; yes, that is a good recommendation but not under these time constraints; no, I will not rename 125 variables to suit your arbitrary choice instead of my arbitrary choice.

I would also add that “review” is often misinterpreted as “pure criticism” (again, in code or in HN comments) and it can be nice for unsolicited positive feedback to occur too. Things like “I like how this was done”, or “I’ve never seen anything like that, clever” as opposed to an unending wake of negativity that tries to tear apart any given project.

Re: Do you ever avoid submitting something on HN so devs won't ruin it?

#204

Post by JacobThreeThree » Wed, Dec 08, 2021, 6:16 PM UTC

milesvp wrote: post #60

Aardwolf wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Real time error messages are useful, but I don't see how they could make you win 4x time

You perhaps have never worked in a system where compile times are measured in minutes. There is a point where the feedback loop is so long it’s very hard to keep in your head what exactly you were trying to accomplish with the last change. Getting that OODA loop small enough means flow can happen. Flow allows you to do in a very short time what would otherwise have taken you hours. Do not underestimate the time and c…

Without real time errors you can't get in a "flow"?

That's hard to believe.

Re: Do you ever avoid submitting something on HN so devs won't ruin it?

#205

Post by menmob » Wed, Dec 08, 2021, 6:18 PM UTC

If you do legitimately have a workaround for this, I can put you in touch with those grabbing metadata for the return dislike extension. They’d love to see it. (If it’s the averageRating endpoint, then they’re aware, and it’s likely going to be removed anyway.)

Re: Do you ever avoid submitting something on HN so devs won't ruin it?

#206

Post by swagasaurus-rex » Wed, Dec 08, 2021, 6:19 PM UTC

afrodc_ wrote: post #140

monocasa wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Management commonly has a dumb understanding of economics and management. Particularly when they view engineering as a cost center.

To the untrained eye, it definitely is a huge cost center. Devs and smart people get premium dollar for their work, as they should, but for the bean counters, execs and bad managers, it's extremely difficult to simply quantify the work in such a way to see it as a value add. Especially in an executive excel sheet/powerpoint

Nevermind how work and production is the bare minimum price of being a business

Re: Do you ever avoid submitting something on HN so devs won't ruin it?

#207

Post by yourapostasy » Wed, Dec 08, 2021, 6:20 PM UTC

Absolutely, all the time.

Most recent example: I coded an efficient appointment availability data retrieval bot against a government site, even worked around its rudimentary anti-bot measures. Kept it to myself even after I got what I wanted out of the appointment.

Re: Do you ever avoid submitting something on HN so devs won't ruin it?

#208

Post by Jiro » Wed, Dec 08, 2021, 6:20 PM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #66

While the question is a little incoherent (it just sounds like OP is mad about the recent YT change), it kind of brings up the sad state of software development ethics. There's no baseline shared agreement of ethical boundaries in the industry. No Hippocratic Oath for software engineers. For every scam, dark pattern, benchmark cheat, fake progress bar, background bitcoin miner, personal data vacuum, or any otherwise…

I don't want a Hippocratic Oath for software engineers. "That software is used by abortion clinics, so I am morally obliged not to write it."

And even ignoring cases like that, there are too many situations where the programmer needs to be a lawyer, a statistician, an accountant, or otherwise have expertise in too many things outside of his field of knowledge in order to figure out that he's writing something that can harm people. Not everything is as obviously bad as a fake progress bar.

Re: Do you ever avoid submitting something on HN so devs won't ruin it?

#209

Post by dotancohen » Wed, Dec 08, 2021, 6:22 PM UTC

notreallyserio wrote: post #108

willcipriano wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question I have is how did incentives get so misaligned that this person feels that doubling the productivity of all their peers is unlikely to be worth the effort of presenting a tool.

I could see not wanting to support a tool. I've written tools that automate processes in useful ways but the interfaces aren't perfect and you need some base knowledge to understand how they work. I don't want to spend my time improving and supporting those tools. I wrote them to reduce the amount of work I have to do, not add yet another responsibility. I've also made the mistake of sharing my tools only to find cri…

  > I could see not wanting to support a tool.

I had one time written a small tool to reformat a CSV file for one of the office workers. One day she comes to me to make some change to the tool, but I was extraordinarily busy with my real work - and I only came in that day because there was a fire burning that I was best suited to putting out.

So my refusal to drop the emergency that I was fixing (on my day off) in order to modify this tool that had already saved her probably tens of hours of tedium, let to resentment and ultimately to me being fired from the place.

I'm in a much better place now ))

Re: Do you ever avoid submitting something on HN so devs won't ruin it?

#210

Post by charles_f » Wed, Dec 08, 2021, 6:22 PM UTC

Uehreka wrote: post #41

charles_f wrote: post #10

> but apparently money makes people do anything. I don't see the link with your example. How would people profit of finding the number of dislikes on YouTube? Also, sharing this would increase the number of users of the exploit, and its general publicity, making it more likely to be fixed. Nothing to do with having each other's back. And then, considering that you are disclosing a security leak, the "having each othe…

This post is doing a great job at smoking out the narcs.

Sh*, I've been uncovered!