Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The kind of company I want to be a part of

dvsj.in

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 180 posts

Re: The kind of company I want to be a part of

#51

Post by SirensOfTitan »

While I don’t think proper pluralization is indicative of anything outside of real world time constraints, I am a fan of these kinds of tacit signals.

Last week, my wife and I toured a school for our daughter. The school gave us these pretty notebooks with a blackwing pencil, saying that they “take writing seriously here.” I noticed that the students, however, did not use blackwings but cheap low quality yellow pencils. This signal prompted me to pay closer attention, and I found half a dozen things that affirmed the bad feeling I had about the place.

It’s a simple rule, but in the era where everyone is trying to sell me, I use Bill Hamilton’s Say Mean Do rule from his “Saints and Psychopaths” about finding real spiritual mentors. Broadly: saints say what they mean and do what they say. Unfortunately it’s probably just as hard to find tech companies who are honest as it is to find a true spiritual mentor. B2B SaaS sales cycle is usually just checkbox hunting and CYA.

Re: The kind of company I want to be a part of

#53

Post by BrtByte »

tyleo wrote: post #2

I’d say overreaction. The real world is full of tradeoffs and I’ve seen people try to get minutia like this correct in convoluted contexts which actually broke the core application logic. Given the limited time we can spend on things, supporting proper plurality falls below some of my other UI priorities like proper accessibility settings. I don’t think plurality is bad, just low in the stack rank of things that matt…

Sure, not every edge case deserves top billing, but when the little things stack up, they subtly signal whether anyone cared. It's a vibe thing

Re: The kind of company I want to be a part of

#54

Post by nickelcitymario »

zkmon wrote: post #8

Not for me. Exccessive customer obsession puts me off as customer. Don't try to read too much into me. Don't try to sell too much. Don't try to please me too much. Don't think about me too much. Instead, think about the stuff you are offering. Treat it as if you are building it for yourself, and not for selling. Build it the way your like most. Sound as if you don't care about selling. Be proud of it. Get off of the…

I feel like I'd agree with your comment if it was in reply to an entirely different article.

As in: I agree with your sentiment and ideas. Out of context, you're bang on correct.

But I don't think paying attention to details (like pluralization) is an indication of obsession with the customer, at least not for me. It's about caring about the craft.

When I'm building something for my own use, I care about every aspect of it. I care about the unseen parts. I care about the process. It brings me satisfaction. And when I'm buying something, I like to know that the person who made it cared as much about their craft as I do.

I don't consider than pandering. It's respect: Respect for the craft, for the craftsperson, and for the end recipient/customer.

But maybe I missed something. What was it about the original post that felt like excessive customer obsession? Genuinely curious and open to being mistaken here.

Re: The kind of company I want to be a part of

#55

Post by BrtByte »

zkmon wrote: post #8

Not for me. Exccessive customer obsession puts me off as customer. Don't try to read too much into me. Don't try to sell too much. Don't try to please me too much. Don't think about me too much. Instead, think about the stuff you are offering. Treat it as if you are building it for yourself, and not for selling. Build it the way your like most. Sound as if you don't care about selling. Be proud of it. Get off of the…

Still, I think the original article was less about salesmanship and more about craftsmanship

Re: The kind of company I want to be a part of

#56

Post by nickelcitymario »

abraxas wrote: post #5

Number "two" in Polish (depending on context): dwa, dwoje, dwie, dwóch, dwiema, dwom, dwojga, dwojgu, dwójka, dwójki, dwójkę, dwójką, dwójce, dwójko So that's just my mother tongue. It think your problem is a bit more complex than (s).

Holy moly, and I thought French (my mother tongue) was complicated due to conjugation. I'm fascinated by what possible context could call for this many variations on how you spell/pronounce a number.

Any chance you know of a good article on this? (I could ask ChatGPT, but I'm trying to let go of that crutch.)

Re: The kind of company I want to be a part of

#57

Post by tyleo »

jordanb wrote: post #47
wavemode wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The (s) alternative that the article is arguing against is even worse for i18n, so what's your point?

You'll have to look up the way i18n frameworks work, but no the "(s)" is not worse. It is far better because it's a simple string that the framework can substitute without embedded business logic trying to manipulate the individual characters in a way that only works in one language.

Yeah, I'm with you. I've worked on several i18n frameworks, including ones for AAA game titles at Microsoft.

You can make pluralization work but the "(s)" is going to tend to work better.

And localization isn't just an opportunity for development bugs, localizers get things wrong too. Some non-English speakers mentioned to me that some translations are so bad, it's better to use the English version anyways.

Re: The kind of company I want to be a part of

#58

Post by cjs_ac »

sevensor wrote: post #40
cjs_ac wrote: post #12

For non-technical users, the user interface is the program. To them, there's nothing beneath the shell. My last boss didn't like Macs because his PowerPoint presentations rendered differently on them compared to Windows. There are millions of real people with consequential positions in important organisations who think like this.

Getting your program to render the same on different platforms takes a lot of work the user will never see, and that goes double if you actually want it to behave the same. There are some very deep problems you have to work through, like what behaving the same and rendering the same even mean. Same window decorations? Same menu layout? Same dialog boxes? How are you doing font rendering? How much do you embrace platf…

You're not wrong, but making these sorts of arguments was the start of me being managed out of that company.

Re: The kind of company I want to be a part of

#59

Post by barumrho »

“이/가” is the Korean version of this. It depends on the sound of the word that precedes.

I still remember seeing it when I first started using Windows 95. As a kid, I was amused that it didn’t know which one to use. Really, I didn’t even know that I was making that choice (and couldn’t say what the rule was).

If anyone is interested about it, this page explains https://www.90daykorean.com/i-ga-grammar/

Re: The kind of company I want to be a part of

#60

Post by commandlinefan »

I feel the same way about wasteful software. I've spent most of my career working for people who would rather I sit idle and do nothing at all than "waste" valuable programmer time trying to optimize our software. We have websites that load slowly, downloading gigabytes of unused and useless scripts that nobody has the courage to remove because nobody remembers why it was put there in the first place.
Post reply on HN