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Field notes192
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Don't Call Yourself a Programmer
Original EnglishI worked at a startup for 2 1/2 years, quit, went to grad school in math, did a postdoc, and am now a professor.
GitLab acquires Gitter, will open-source the code
Original EnglishJobs getting stuck might not seem like a big deal, but when every dev on the team needs to manually check every 5 minutes to …
Dear open-source maintainers, a letter from GitLab
Original EnglishThe opportunity cost on the front side is often worth it but the long term benefit on the back side is you aren't dependent on …
Dear Startups: stop asking me math puzzles to figure out if I can code
Original EnglishFor example, I took over an iPhone app dev team and it was taking them 4 months to produce an app.
PhantomJS: Stepping down as maintainer
Original Englishthe whole reason to have a closed source system when you're still on the hook and charging out $500 per hour to clients. …
Start small with models: three commit-message candidates
One user feeds a git diff into a script for three commit-message suggestions, then makes the final choice.
Let AI suggest options while a person checks accuracy.
How to Improve a Legacy Codebase
Original Englishbecause the business case of 'potentially reducing the likelihood of bugs in the future' and 'a story 3 months from now might take 3 days …
Running costs for running a web app
Original EnglishOther than that, I don't use Heroku, but not wanted to manage a db is pretty reasonable and the cost offset is likely there.
Signs that a startup is focused on stuff that doesn’t matter
Original Englishwe run cheap!, total business costs (inc rent, internet and phone) run around £450 a month for both businesses (the dev shop and business partners …