modzilla

If the long term positives outweigh the long term negatives you should switch – even if you have held your current position less than one year.[1] The difficult part is determining long term positives/negatives and how important they are to you.

Some things to consider:

• Will you learn more/less?

• Will you work with people you enjoy more/less?

• Will you enjoy the work you are doing more/less?

• Will you be respected more/less?

• Will your work-life balance be better/worse?

• Will your location be better/worse?

• Will your compensation package be better/worse?

[1] If you have a better opportunity at another company and your current employer genuinely cares about you they will either improve your position (to convince you to stay) or they will have no hard feelings when you leave (assuming you were respectful, considerate, and upfront about the situation).

I don't know the answer to your question but it should be a required exercise for every web developer to use their website with a screen reader and a blindfold. It would change the way they/we build websites.

I would submit an issue to HN to fix their accessibility – there is no excuse (for HN) not to.

Edit: Sentence subject-ambiguity clarification.

When people say "There is a shortage of great programmers." what they are really saying is, "There is a shortage of programmers who are also great problem solvers." or, "There is a shortage of great problem solvers who want to program."

At least, this is how I have always interpreted it. I have never misunderstood the fungibility of great problem solvers, and based on my experience working at a large high quality tech company they don't misunderstand it either. In reality there actually is a shortage.

Apparently, the last bullet point in this post was either not read by you or not clear enough. I am interested in first hand comparisons in the difficulty various degrees.

I am absolutely certain that certain things I have done are easier or harder than other things I have done. Some tasks clearly require more intelligence than others. For example, folding clothes requires little intelligence compared to getting any degree (based on my measure of intelligence). In a less clear sense degrees are not all the same difficulty and require different levels of intelligence (hence this question and my curiosity).

I am wondering: Given your measures for intelligence/difficulty, share what parts of various degrees were more difficult for you.

Also, share how you are measuring your intelligence/difficulty.

These are the complex topics that I am curious about.

TLDR; I am interested in first hand comparisons of getting different degrees.

My degree level areas of knowledge:

• BS Computer Science (including 6 masters level courses)

• BA Graphic Design Minor – The Minor was officially added the year after I graduated, I met all of the equivalent requirements but do not have an official minor.

In both areas I have have continued to take structured action to improve upon my skills and increase my knowledge.

-----

What was more difficult?

•Overall my computer science courses were more challenging in a mathematically academic sense – especially in the courses where I had the lowest levels of prior knowledge.

The graphic design program I was in was more challenging in the realms of self evaluation and critical feedback. Objective observation/evaluation/criticism were larges components in early GD classes. Evaluating the quality of CS homework is extremely clear – so clear it can usually be evaluated programmatically. This is not the case in a subjective medium like graphic design.

It is clear various tools can be effective or ineffective for companies and individuals – this is a very subjective topic. However, since many tech companies, who have subjectively decided they want to have all of their employees in the same physical location, have a talent shortage problem, it would seem only beneficial to modify our immigration policy to allow more of these highly skilled individuals to work in the US. There outcomes of making such changes are almost exclusively positive.

I guess my question did not emphasize the "non-standard" enough. I have purchased many domain names that fall in the $10~$20/year price range without any problem.

I am most curious about complex domain name purchases and the experiences people have had - things that work and things that have not worked.

To clarify the confusion...

The definition of autonomous I am using here is: "having the freedom to act independently" [1]

And in this context context I mean the car acting independently of the driver.

[1] http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/autonom...

I am looking forward to the day Lyft announces, "Autonomous Lyft."

Apple's Time Machine keeps daily (or more frequent within a given day) snap shots of all of your folders.[1]

Also, in any native OSX app each "save" works like a git commit, you can browse all "versions." [2]

Combined, these native OSX features do exactly what you want.

[1] http://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201250

[2] http://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202255

I am building a web app right now and am looking forward to when I can start using Stripe to capture payments. Stripe's design (in terms of both usability and visual appeal) is excellent for a tech company. The API documentation is amazingly easy to read and understand. Also, I love your blog.

Best of luck to Stripe!

Thanks

Algorithms are not the only thing that make a tech company, but without scheduling, multiparty-route-optimization, or other clever algorithms central to their business, Uber and Lyft are just transportation companies that capitalized on the fact that young people like to call cabs with a button... instead of a phone call.

Interesting. It seems like both threats were real – just not clearly realized in the market until recent years. Android is now a huge operating system written largely in java, and IE as a web browser has more or less been whittled away by chrome, firefox, and others.

I also use Mitro. It is free, has strong crypto, allows sharable secrets, works cross-platform.

I wish there was an API. I would use it for storing integration test accounts.

Not JavaScript – Prototypal inheritance is interesting and powerful. However, overall JavaScript does not afford good programming practices and does not cleanly expose important re-usable programming concepts. Between the good parts of JavaScript, there are nasty surprises.

I think python is a good first language for a few reasons.

1. Overall the syntax is clean, concise, and readable in the sense that the actual code can be close to "sudo" code, or that it is somewhat similar to what what you might encounter in a mathematics class.

2. From Wikipedia:

"Python supports multiple programming paradigms, including object-oriented, imperative and functional programming or procedural styles. It features a dynamic type system and automatic memory management and has a large and comprehensive standard library."

All of those programming paradigms are important to understand and few languages capture all of them as nicely as python. Also, static typing and memory management are important to understand – yet, mostly distracting while learning a first language. Python removes the distraction.

3. Python's strict white space rules will force you maintain a somewhat consistent code style – something that many new programmers are awful at.

This list is not exhaustive, just some thoughts.