Another vote for a thinkpad. I have the t410 with core i5 540m, dedicated nvidia nvs3100, 9 cell battery and 128 gb ssd. Everything works. Suspend, resume, wireless, 5-7 hrs working with virtual machines. The build seems to be pretty good but the MBP seems sturdier to me. People seem to rate the thinkpad as having superior build quality but I feel that the screen and parts of e chassis have flex (no flex on the mbp).
I recently switched from a Mac and I definitely miss it at times but there is enough in the thinkpad/ubuntu combo to hold me over for now (openbox, good tiling managers, source code that is open to scrutiny etc).
The most important use case that I've found for multiple monitors is for debugging (code on one screen, app on the other). This makes debugging much much faster. Also, having one monitor dedicated to server stats/logs etc is useful.
I'm in a very similar situation to yours: A startup using java, quite profitable, outside funding, bad code, stubborn CTO, database used as dumping ground for everything: logs/stats/messages etc (this is very wrong when you're working at the kind of scale that we're at).
(Hey...! Are you the new guy that sits by the water cooler?! I hope thats not my code you were talking about!)
Here's what I did:
- I ended up getting into a small argument with the CTO. He now knows that I'm smart enough and treats me with respect. I stood my ground but also offered solutions to improve and also accepted some of theirs.
- After working for a few months, I've realized that even though there are bad parts, some parts are actually good. New/other devs are improving the codebase.
- I file bugs with regularity- I didn't do this at the start but just picked it up. This way things that I come across go into a bug tracking system and can be handled eventually.
- Now that I'm involved in more parts of the code, I can refactor small bits as I come across them with my daily tasks/projects.
- There are other things that I'm collecting in a document which I'll converse with the PM etc about. Most importantly all these will be things that I can do and will not blame the CTO. For e.g. setting up a wiki, documenting the setup process for a new dev (win/unix both), common errors, people on the team, machine ips, purpose for each machine etc.
You have to realize that the world isn't ideal. Because of whatever reasons (bad coders, managers, deadlines etc) projects end up in a crappy state all the time. Make small changes to help and improve that, and you'll be worth 100x more to the company rather than if you just whine about it and blame someone else.
Note that this isn't about accepting crap policies just so you can have an income- this is about realizing that a lot of this stuff is common and being able to improve it. Also realize that you dont know everything in your first week. Your views will certainly change in the coming months.
Finally, the company is profitable. A lot of companies get that way by making compromises in the short term (one of those might be bad code quality). This is a situation that can be improved upon. Bad code and a profitable company is a better combination than elegant code and a bankrupt company.
I'm interested in understanding why this is being upvoted so aggressively, if someone who upvoted this could share their thoughts. (This really is a serious query- i don't see anything in the content that warrants an upvote).
I'm guessing people are buying into the standard anti-powerpoint rant. I don't see much value in it either. I don't particularly care whether speaker X wants to give their slides away or not. But the concept is, as usual, generating a fair amount of me-too-ism.
I work at a startup that uses Java. When it started, the CTO knew java so thats what they picked. Now, the company has grown to around 10 people with over a million users. They're monetizing pretty well and are well on their way to being very successful.
As (almost) always, performance issues are with the db. And, as always, you should think about the data structure that you're using.
Being invited is a strong sign that you/your idea have merit. But instead of having to deal with funding/investors/other crap, you get to work on your idea, in a "remote area of Greece", be your own boss and grow the company how you want. I can very easily see this idea being modestly successful and giving you a lot of freedom to work on other ideas.
Thanks, I think that would be ideal. Still, I think YC would facilitate this in that you don't really need to put as much effort into networking (they do it for you), so I can work on my idea in Greece while still getting introduced to interesting people.
I've also used 'Early Edition' which fetches your RSS feed into a newspaper like view. Again, its a really nice option for reading RSS feeds. Now I just pick up my iPad and flip through the first few pages of news rather than always trying to bring the Unread count to 0 on Google Reader.
Seconded. Flipboard is directly responsible for me spending ~$20/month less on magazines. There's a local (motorcycle) magazine which I've bought every (2 weekly) issue for ~12 years, which I haven't bought a single copy of since I installed Flipboard. All the "I've got 10 or 15 minutes spare in a cafe lingering over a coffee or two" reading needs are better met by Flipboard (for me) than AMCN Two Wheels and New Scientist and various other magazines I'd occasionally buy to fill in time.
I don't think it's "the future of print media", but I think it's certainly indicative of one direction the future of print media might lie...
The real magic? Learn your body/mind's rhythm. Sometimes you'll do productive work for hours. Sometimes you'll need frequent breaks.
Intrinsic (type of work, work environment, deadline, depth) and extrinsic factors (such as food, relationships, etc) will affect this rhythm and you'll have to be smart enough to realize when to respect your body's wishes and when to ignore them (feeling bored may have to do with not getting enough sleep, or maybe you just feel like procrastinating. Learn to figure out which).
I personally see django vs flask (or other microframework) as this:
- Use a framework that has adequate components that are well integrated and quick to get off the ground, but where you might hit snags with the bundled components later and have to monkey patch them to continue working within the framework.
- Use a micro-framework where you can choose to glue in excellent components (SQLAlchemy, for one) at the cost of the time spent writing glue code.
I personally really like django. Even though it is considered monolithic, I agree with a lot of design decisions and a lot of the components are "just the right amount" extensible. Most of the third party apps that I use work well.
That being said, I'm using flask now and enjoying it :) I hit a snag pretty early with django's ORM [1] and couldn't figure out a way around it other than raw SQL. SQLAlchemy's flexibility won out in the end. I chose flask over other micro-frameworks because of its documentation, extensions, design decisions, mailing list seemed active etc.
Now that I have switched from django, I'm really enjoying the flexibility of picking up 3rd party modules (or flask extensions) and using them instead of having the decisions made for me. It is very marginally more work than django.
[1] Query multiple tables (books, cds {subchildren of products}) for products that were updated in the last month.
Using an abstract base table (products), django's ORM required multiple trips to the DB. Using a concrete base table meant that getting any single product would require a join. SQLAlchemy handles this scenario with unions.
People with nothing to lose. A good friend, who was a psychiatric nurse, taught me never argue or fight with a person with nothing to lose. There are more than a few in the wold, unfortunately.
More common is anonymous people on the net who threaten to do so. My point is a bot is predictable, but humans are emotional and irrational. Further, you can't always tell the difference between the snakes and the monsters in an anonymous environment (notice I'm not anonymous). Thus, I'd be more willing to argue with a bot.
I recently switched from a Mac and I definitely miss it at times but there is enough in the thinkpad/ubuntu combo to hold me over for now (openbox, good tiling managers, source code that is open to scrutiny etc).