This is going to be brief. First, because I don’t have anything deep and meaningful to say about habit, reward, and personal improvement this month. And second, because I was on call and up all weekend with a neverending stream of devops emergencies that had to be addressed, and I desperately need the sleep. [As […]
The three numbers in the universe that matter most are zero, one, and many. Think about life – tweak the fundamental physical constants a little, and you can imagine a universe in which it never happened. Never could have happened. Or maybe it’s so astonishingly unlikely, such a bizarrely, unimaginably low probability – the equivalent […]
I was running late. I needed to get to work and was on my way out the door when I suddenly remembered that I’d forgotten to make lunch. Not a big deal – I usually just slap a PB&J together – but I was already late, bundled up and mentally on my way. It was going to be […]
In a recent post I talked about some gotcha-type questions / Java quirks, but there’s a more fundamental gap that I see all the time – primarily in coders who have never been forced to program in C/C++ at some point. There are some basic pieces of knowledge, some tricks of the trade that everyone […]
For the past year or so, I’ve been asking an interview question which seems like it should be straightforward, but has turned out to be deceptively hard. The reason I like it is that it requires a candidate to convert a very common, well-defined, well-understood task from paper into code. There’s no trick, no gotcha, no […]
Interviewers are a diverse lot. Some care about this, others about that, each has her own set of biases, and short of being perfect, there’s really no way to please everyone. The worst is when you’re doing well, then get hung up on an obscure language feature that the interviewer decides is make-or-break. This says more […]
When I initially proposed my monetizing failure challenge, I first sat down and tried to figure out how bad it could get (worst case, I figured I’d be on the hook for $1400). I then had to convince my wife that I wasn’t being an idiot (no easy task, given the historical record). I had no idea […]
Meter maids Being able to find a parking space Investment bankers The mutual funds in my 401K being well-managed “Bad” hackers attacking organizations I like “Good” hackers attacking organizations I hate (also, the rule of law) Dieting and exercise The feeling of being in shape Taxes Services Materialism Consumer electronics Being interrupted Getting answers immediately Writing Writing […]
Every company optimizes for something. Sometimes this is an external measure – price, quality, security, customer service, etc. Sometimes it’s internal – hiring, project/risk/change management, and so on. Of course every company wants to do everything perfectly, but when you look at how they make decisions, there’s usually a central organizing theory. At TripAdvisor, the […]
I spent a couple of hours on Sunday putting together some IKEA furniture – a table, some chairs, a couple of cabinets with toy bins. My five year old son unexpectedly took an interest, my wife and two year old got in on the action, and a tedious process turned into a full family adventure. […]
Dan Dreams of Coding 