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The other 95%
Paul Grahm has decided to take up the old torch of more H1B immigration because “there are not enough great programmers”. In the second paragraph he says that people who disagree with him are “anti-immigration” people who don’t understand the difference between good and great programmers. I’m all for completely open immigration; let people who want…
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Business Models
I saw this tweet today “New startup concept: 1. Make something of value2. Charge money for it3. Spend less than you make I call it “business”. Thoughts?” — https://twitter.com/awilkinson/status/517393404888875008 I’ve been confused for a long time about why this isn’t how modern startups are run. This is the exact model I had in my…
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Why Here?
This winter in NYC was particularly long. I am SOOO happy that it’s finally summer. But season of polar vortex after polar vortex combined to make me really quite depressed, and I started wondering… why are we here? Specifically I mean, why are we coding physically in NYC? It’s crazy expensive, the weather in the…
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Phone Screens
The most recent trend in interviewing developer candidates is the normal phone screen, but with a live window in which you can type and the interviewer can see what you’ve typed. Something as simple as Skype with a chat window open, or a more complex website like collabedit which gives nice syntax highlighting and auto-indentation,…
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Perka recruiting
Every now and then I receive emails from various recruiters trying to find technology people for their company. I was surprised when I came to New York that there were head hunters, and that they were looking for tech people. I had heard of executive head hunters, but as far as I can tell there’s…
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Africa has better tech than NYC
One of the most surprising things to me when moving to NYC was how often I would NEED CASH. It seems, anecdotally, that most restaurants and bars in the village are CASH ONLY (also most cabs prefer you pay in cash, and can be real dicks if you try to pay with a card even…
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Must See Tech Talks
I was super happy when this link was passed around the office and I had, in fact seen the majority of these talks. They are almost exactly the same list I would have created so definitely check it out http://brikis98.blogspot.com/2014/05/must-see-tech-talks-for-every-programmer.html The Fun ones are particularly hilarious! I would include any talk by Jeff Hawkins on…
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Announcing MockingJay
MOCKINGJAY A crazy simple python web server and javascript chat client that enables group chat over the LAN via a browser. Intended for use when security policies or politics or whatever get in the way of using IRC or Hipchat and such. Also intended to only be used on a Local Area Network (LAN) due…
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STEM Shortage
tl;dr There’s no shortage of engineers in this country. All my life I have heard about the incredible shortage of engineers in the United States. There’s just far too much demand for engineering talent, and our schools are simply not producing anywhere near the number of graduates we need to fill these positions. Heck, I…
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Extroverted Developer #20
This week Ben and I just chit chat about some goings on around NYC in technology. I kinda talk a lot this episode. Show Notes iPhone 5 Maker Fair was this weekend 3D Printing Micro controllers !!!! (obviously my favorite topic) Arduino DIY: An iPhone controlled A/C Raspberry Pi (only place I’ve found that has…