thelittlenag

20 ชั่วโมงที่ผ่านมาdiscuss

I really hate lighting in modern offices. If there was one thing that folks actively worked to improve I would choose lighting. Having lights with a broader spectrum would go a long way in reducing eye strain and general fatigue, while likely allowing the lights to actually be brighter. Unfortunately I don't see this changing anytime soon.

thelittlenag

10 วันที่ผ่านมาdiscuss

Bummer the link is broken. I read via UnfitFootprint's link.

This feels both like a good write-up, but an argument for why you often need to reach for multiple solutions when creating distributed system. Sure a fallback can have issues, but in the example given (website -> cache -> db) I can't help but feel that a circuit breaker pattern should also have been in play to catch other types of failures.

Distributed systems are dynamic systems and rarely will one type of solution or pattern cover the entire space of possible failures.

thelittlenag

เดือนที่แล้วdiscuss

The only place where the work I did was performative was government contracting. Not technically waste, but certainly useless.

thelittlenag

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Precisely! And this is true not just for managers but also higher-level ICs. Its ok for Senior and below to be team focused, but moving to the next level means broadening scope and that means talking with people, regularly!, outside your immediate team.

thelittlenag

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    Location: Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States
    Remote: Yes (10+ years working remote) (or hybrid/on-site in Minneapolis or St Paul)
    Willing to relocate: No
    Technologies: Scala, Java, Typescript (Effect TS), Python, C/C++, PostgreSQL, AWS, HLS, Real-time ABR
    Resume: https://drive.google.com/file/d/19O9A3zMulkPWb61Ng9FsSZbCPHZms_Qy/view?usp=sharing
    Email: [email protected]

thelittlenag

2 เดือนที่ผ่านมาdiscuss

And if you are that kind of person, why would you want to be an FDE? (Not rhetorical, btw, I'm literally interviewing for an FDE role tomorrow.)

thelittlenag

2 เดือนที่ผ่านมาdiscuss

Same. I worked on an in-house product many years ago now where lineage and provenance were the entire point. Really cool to see this!

thelittlenag

3 เดือนที่ผ่านมาdiscuss

I used to work for the company that owned and operated GovDeals. That was a really interesting experience. I remember one of their many companies host the listing for and processed the sale of an oil refinery (or something similar) just like something random on ebay, except this sale was many 10's of millions of dollars.

thelittlenag

4 เดือนที่ผ่านมาdiscuss

I don't really like this article. There isn't anything particularly noteworthy to noticing that some computations have outcomes that allow some form of recovery, and other outcomes do not.

But there are some obvious follow up questions that I do think need better answers:

Why is recovery made so hard in so many languages?

Error recovery really feels like an afterthought. Sometimes that's acceptable, what with "scripting" languages, but the poor ergonomics and design of recovery systems is just a baffling omission. We deserve better options for this type of control flow.

Also, why do so many languages make it so hard to enumerate the possible outcomes of a computation?

Java tried to ensure every method would have in its signature how it could either succeed or fail. That went so poorly we simply put everything under RuntimeException and gave up. Yet resilient production grade software still needs to know how things can fail, and which failures indicate a recoverable situation vs a process crash+restart.

Languages seem to want to treat all failures as categorically similar, yet they clearly are not. Recovery/retry, logging, and accumulation all appear in the code paths production code needs to express when errors occur.

Following programming language development the only major advancements I've noticed myself have been the push to put more of the outcomes into the values of a computation and then further use a type system to constrain those values. That has helped with the enumeration aspect, leaving exceptions to mainly just crash a system.

The other advancement has been in Algebraic Effects. I feel like this is the first real advancement I've observed. Yet this feature is decried as too academic and/or complex. Yes, error handling is complex and writing crappy software is easy.

Maybe AI will help us get past the crabs at the bottom of the bucket called error handling.

thelittlenag

7 เดือนที่ผ่านมาdiscuss

My father is a data point in this. He was a farmer all his life and ultimately it was Parkinson's that did him in. While we took some precautions, I have no doubt that the herbicides we used should have been handled more carefully.

thelittlenag

9 เดือนที่ผ่านมาdiscuss

I've really liked interviews where I either present a personal project I've worked on, or get to interview someone about their own personal projects. It's just more fun.

Their major complaint of the project approach is not getting signal on adaptability to new codebases. That has never been a first concern at any company I've worked at, and frankly if engineers are touching a new codebase every month then I'm getting a bit worried.

thelittlenag

9 เดือนที่ผ่านมาdiscuss

I've now done probably close to 100 system design interviews. One of the main things I've looked for in candidates is their ability to identify, communicate, and discuss trade-offs. The next thing on my checklist is their ability to move forward, pick an option, and defend that option. Really nimble candidates will pivot, recognizing when to change approaches because requirements have changed.

The goal here is to see if the candidate understands the domain (generic distributed systems) well enough on their own. For more senior roles I look to make sure they can then communicate that understanding to a team, and then drive consensus around some approach.

thelittlenag

10 เดือนที่ผ่านมาdiscuss

I'm old enough to recall when boost first came out, and when it matured into a very nice library. What's happened in the last 15 years that boost is no longer something I would want to reach for?

thelittlenag

ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

Send me a resume at [email protected].

thelittlenag

ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

Disney | Senior Software Engineer | Onsite | Full-time | San Francisco, Santa Monica, Seattle, New York

Disney (Video Player Engineering) is seeking a Senior Software Engineer to help us deliver excellent streaming experiences for Hulu, Disney+ and ESPN+ as a developer of our client player. Our team is responsible for playback across several devices including gaming consoles, mobile devices and set top boxes. You will have the opportunity to lead in the design and implementation of our cross-platform C/C++ and Rust player that runs Disney+ and Hulu on these devices.

We’re looking for an experienced C/C++ or Rust engineer who has video player and cross platform development experience. You should have a passion for coding and debugging hard problems, and an eagerness to help us deliver seamless video to our subscribers. Being a Senior member, you will get to own large features, lead the technical direction of our work, and mentor and provide technical expertise to other engineers. You will work closely with other technical teams in the application layer and backend video services to deliver features.

https://www.disneycareers.com/en/job/seattle/sr-software-eng...

Feel free to DM me for more details.

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