I spun this out into a separate post because the previous post was already just too absurdly long. Anyway, I wanted to post copies of the three puzzles I worked the most on for Hunt, both to save them for posterity and to give readers some idea of what Mystery Hunt puzzles are like. The […]
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How to teach programming: shy, practical people edition
Retrospectively, if any kid were going to grow up to be a coder, it probably should’ve been me. Genetically speaking, my dad had been working on computers since high school in the 1970s, semi-breaking into the school on the weekends to hack on the PLATO project and throw LAN parties with his fellow teenage geek […]
Going from web pages to web apps with Python (aka, Django for Designers)
Last week at PyCon 2013, with the assistance of Asheesh Laroia and several other helpful TAs, I delivered an introductory Django tutorial wherein one builds a simple bookmarking application. Instead of the official Django tutorial, I used a different curriculum based on the tutorial I wrote for my IOLab students in fall 2011 (itself based […]
Latest reading
Over the last couple weeks, I’ve been reading a startup essay series on the train to and from work. It’s Blake Masters’ notes from a startup class Peter Thiel taught at Stanford last year converted to essay form. It’s been interesting–not quite the mythmaking or buzzword dump that most talk about startups devolves into. It’s […]
What Game of Thrones can teach us about PRISM, Verizon, and the NSA
“The storms come and go, the waves crash overhead, the big fish eat the little fish, and I keep on paddling.”— Varys, Game of Thrones In the TV show Game of Thrones, there is a character, Varys, who is the royal spymaster in Westeros. (There’s also a second person on the royal Small Council with […]
Joblint: How do Hacker News’ job postings fare?
A few days ago, I found Rowan Manning’s joblint pack via Twitter. Joblint is a linter (code style guide implementation and bug finder) for job advertisements. It looks for keywords that indicate sexist, abusive, or bland content, unrealistic expectations, or outdated technology requirements and prints a report indicating possible problems with the ad. It has […]
Hackathons and Minimum Viable Prototypes
There’s been some prominent blog posts recently questioning the usefulness of hackathon events. Some focus on the cultural issues associated with many hackathons–that by default they appeal to a very homogenous subset of tech workers (aka young white male coders who enjoy subsisting on beer and pizza). This can be mitigated by thoughtful event organizers–advertising […]
If you’re a tech worker in California, make sure you’re not getting screwed
For my first software engineering job out of grad school, I was offered a salary of $80,000 a year. Said job was full-time, non-hourly, and located in San Francisco. I negotiated, because negotiation is Something You’re Supposed to Do, and got a bump up to $82K. Not bad, for 20 minutes of extremely uncomfortable phone […]
Technical recruiting is broken.
Three weeks ago, I went to a UC Berkeley career fair and dropped off a copy of my resume with a certain startup. I’d put a lot of effort into selling myself with this particular resume, and trying to stand out from the crowd (most of the attendees were undergraduate CS majors–most probably with better […]
On helping [iPhone owners] change the world
Last weekend, I participated in Hack for Change, a 24-hour codeathon sponsored by Change.org and Code for America where developers and designers were challenged to create apps for the public good. As my first hackathon, it was a tremendous experience in a number of ways, and some really cool applications came out of the process. […]