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erictobia

erictobia on Hacker News

Ask HN: Is Bing running on a non-MS stack?

Posted by erictobia on Thursday June 04, 2009 @12:59PM
from the ask-hn dept.

I'll preface this by saying that I make my living as ASP.NET programmer so I'm not trying to slight MS. I'm just curious.http://toolbar.netcraft.com/site_report?url=http://www.bing.comSample microsoft.com HTTP Response Header:Cache-Control: public Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8Content-Encoding: gzip Expires: Thu, 04 Jun 2009 16:56:47 GMT Last-Modified: Thu, 04 Jun 2009 15:24:31...

( Read More... | 7 comments | 6 points | on HN )

Ask HN: Could stackoverflow.com work for other fields?

Posted by erictobia on Monday March 23, 2009 @01:15PM
from the ask-hn dept.

I tried asking this question on the actual site, but it was closed as "non-programming-related" fairly quickly.http://stackoverflow.com/questions/674232/could-stackoverflow-work-for-other-fields-closedUnfortunately, I'm still curious to hear what people think. Here is my original question:"Pick the specialty: medicine, law, science, finance, cars, home improvement...any field that has...

( Read More... | 27 comments | 26 points | on HN )
Re:Why Management is Not a Profession on Friday March 20, 2009 @09:29AM (#524860)
You make a great point and I do agree to a certain extent. However, there have been some projects I've worked on where having a great manager made all the difference in the world. Having someone that deals with all of the non-technical minutia so that programmers can keep building stuff is really valuable IMHO.

Maybe software could fulfill this role one day, but as you say we're not there yet.

It may be that I'm getting too old and cynical, but when I hear arguments about eliminating the middle-man I can't help but think of a quote from Malcolm Reynolds in the show Firefly:

"About 50% of the human race is middlemen and they don’t take kindly to being eliminated."

Re:Best countries for startups on Thursday September 11, 2008 @12:00PM (#301501)
Any (non U.S.) folks with startups in the countries on this list? Is the article consistent with your experience?
Re:The Programming Elite, Programmers Who Read on Wednesday September 10, 2008 @03:13PM (#300662)
This sets the bar for an elite programmer fairly low IMHO.

Ask HN: Multi-Monitor w/ Laptop?

Posted by erictobia on Tuesday September 09, 2008 @03:15PM
from the ask-hn dept.

I've been running two monitors on my desktop pc for a few years now and I really like it. In fact I'd say it's a requirement for me.My next pc purchase will in all likelihood be a laptop. When I'm at home (or at the office) I'd like to maintain a multi-monitor setup with my 2 LCDs. My first thought was to use a docking station to pull this off.Has anyone had any luck running a laptop in a...

( Read More... | 3 comments | on HN )
Re:Ask YC: Excel Generation (Server Side)? on Monday September 08, 2008 @11:12AM (#298398)
(it only gets difficult if you need to start embedding charts and specifying fonts)

We do need to do some of this

Re:Ask YC: Excel Generation (Server Side)? on Monday September 08, 2008 @11:10AM (#298393)
The latest (licensed) version of Office we have is 2003. As far as we know using Office 2003 for server side Excel generation is not recommended.

Thanks for the link to the Python framework though.

Re:Ask YC: Excel Generation (Server Side)? on Monday September 08, 2008 @11:06AM (#298387)
I haven't had a look at that...looks promising. Right now I'd be looking for something I can use with C#.

Thanks for the suggestion.

Ask YC: Excel Generation (Server Side)?

Posted by erictobia on Monday September 08, 2008 @09:52AM
from the self-post dept.

I was curious to know if anyone could recommend a component for server side excel generation (both xls and xlsx) for an ASP.NET application. We cannot install Office on the server. We've been using this component from codeplex...http://www.codeplex.com/ExcelPackage...and we haven't been thrilled with it. We're open to a commercial solution - we're just not sure what the best option is.Thanks in...

( Read More... | 14 comments | 9 points | on HN )
Re:New functional language - C# on Monday June 23, 2008 @08:39AM (#225059)
You're right - it has been there since at least 2.0. I threw that in there as an example. I apologize for not clarifying that.
Re:New functional language - C# on Monday June 23, 2008 @07:49AM (#225030)
It's actually possible to write slightly less verbose code with C# 3.0. For example:

  //...

  char[] someChars = {'A', 'B', 'C'};

  var moreChars = new [] {'D', 'E', 'F'};

  SomeMethod(new[] { 'G', 'H', 'I' });

  //...
I do, however, agree with your sentiment. The language still has some aspects that are quite verbose when compared with dynamically typed languages. You are also right in pointing out that these new features are irrelevant if programmers are not taking advantage of them.