Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit | philmcc's comments login

I think you're appreciating (what I also appreciate) that the chomp, ghost bite sound, and death sounds are all in the same tempo/bpm, so that when things happen it's in "rhythm"

If you look closely, the chomping visual doesn't -actually- match up with the chomp sound, it's closer to if there was a track of chomping at a certain chomps per minute that gets toggled on/off if pacman is chomping. Same with everything else-is, so you mute/unmute sounds when the event happens, rather than trigger a sound play.

Or so it sounds and seems to my ears and eyes.


Fair point... and maybe more a 'marketing' lesson than a 'persistence' one. None of the previous posts are particularly appealing to me.


Oh. He said "Developer API", not the "Developer API Docs."

I believe he meant all of the countless bots and apps and "remindme" etc 3rd party functionality that developers have added on to twitter.

At some point I'd be un-surprised to see all of those removed, and replaced as internal for-pay functionality, given the way things are going.


Confession: I use it constantly. The thought of having to look up how to do absolutely everything makes me wince.

I am -genuinely- open to suggestions on how to get over that I just can’t currently justify making everything harder “for a short while” when that short while feels like it could be weeks or months to catch up to fluency.


Instead of elems = $(selector, context), use elems = […context.querySelectorAll(selector)]

Instead of $.get(), use await fetch()

Instead of .on(eventtype, handler), use elem.addEventListener(eventtype, handler)

Instead of .animate(), use CSS animations


Oh. One other thing. I tend to go backwards. UX first. Then API. Then whatever fuels it.

If I go the other way around I -inevitably- forget some stuff that is crucial for the front end implementation, whereas it’s hard to forget how it supposed to work for the user.


That's funny because I always start at the database level and work up. If I start in the frontend it ends up getting rewritten too often.


That's SUPER interesting. We should form like Voltron. But also I wonder if that's a meaningful 'heuristic' to use both in analysing ones own performance but also in coaching others.


Not sure if you care about validation. If not skip to 2.

1. Anybody want it?

First I pitch the rough idea to a few paying customers. If they are lukewarm on it I set it aside.

If they are warm on it I set it aside.

If they say they want it I set it aside.

When some time goes by and they check in and say “whatever happened with (feature) I consider it validated.”

2. Be bad at it

Give myself permission to make the absolute worst version of it.

That frequently involves writing a one page max description of it, and then asking myself “okay how much of this could I cut before it was literally doing nothing.” But if I’m feeling bored I just start coding.

This version has no error checking. No tests. No capacity for large requests. No logging. Nothing. It just prays beyond all reason that the user doesn’t do anything silly that breaks it.

3.beta test the MEV

I just made it up. It’s not a real acronym. most execrable version. It fits because it does feel like something I excreted. I hate it. I’m embarrassed. My impostor syndrome is no longer a syndrome it is just accurate identification and classification.

I give it to those users who were interested.

I watch them on hot jar.

4. Tea leaves

This is the hard part. If they are enthused great. But if not You kinda have to sense whether or not their dissatisfaction is because it’s an MEP.

If you’ve done it right, however, and found something they super want they will actually struggle through it to get that thing done. Sometimes the MEP isn’t far off from an MVP. Sometimes their satisfaction is enough to convince you not to do the rest of the stuff you thought was necessary in your on paper Valhalla take.

5. Users of Software

I often forget that your average software user does not have our relationship with software. They don’t see the amazing version in your head so the crap version feels like magic.

You’d be surprised how hard people will work with a subpar system with the hope that it’ll work out for them, both from optimism but also from a lack of viable alternatives.

Or maybe you’re not that surprised because you’ve voted in America zing I went political at the end.


Do you ever code something for yourself, or are there always customers involved?


Oh sure, all the time. But that's always a bit wild-west, since I'm more or less doing it for fun, then my approach is always "Well what do I want to do, emotionally" so it's hard to advise on fun projects. It'd be like "What's fun for you to do?"

I guess if I had any kind of advice for that kind of thing it might be this: I've realised that even in my fun projects, there's a 10% crappy annoying tedious thing that -very- frequently stops me from finishing the fun projects.

A potentially bit good of advice would be to do that thing first, use all the "new fresh code base" enthusiasm to BURN through the code you're gonna hate so that it's just fun from then on.


If you're referring to a product feature the dev wants versus a feature the customer wants, I don't think there will ever be a case when the former takes priority


Jason Cohen is one of my favorite people speaking in this space.

Here’s a great, actionable, talk he did at the equally informative Rob Walling’s conference.

https://youtu.be/otbnC2zE2rw

(I have followed this advice, and it has brought me a level of success and comfort I didn’t know I could have, as an admittedly run of the mill developer)


Wow - that is some very high quality information about bootstrapping. And I co-founded a profitable SaaS!

Caveat: when someone talented explains things, there is a lot of “it’s obvious” (to them) and they can easily explain why it is obvious, and it all sounds convincingly obvious (successful founders often are very convincing - correlation). However the details of how he learnt his opinions and the details really really are not obvious unless you have the right talents, or perhaps if you can develop the right skills (where it is only rarely obvious how to learn them well).

Aside: I loath the term micro-SaaS - especially when applied to a business with “$1,000,000 ARR” - but even the spelling is crappy. What does micro imply? Jason mentions at the start he prefers the word “self-funded” which I really like (presumably the title of the video uses “bootstrapped” because that’s more common?).


I'm somewhat surprised that the PR team here managed to avoid using the word "Russia" a single time.

I'm curious what the general consensus is as to why they would do that? I doubt it's an accident but I guess I can't rule it out.


At this point, they probably didn't think it was necessary to repeat what everyone outside russia knows?

They made it explicit in their statement about halting commerce in Russia:

https://twitter.com/EpicNewsroom/status/1500236775448588295?...


There are civilians from Ukraine (that belong to the other side of the conflict) that have been living in war conditions for the last 8 years. The aid agencies Epic chose are unbiased, and help civilians from both sides of the conflict. Hats of to Epic.


1. May be to avoid Russia = Putin scenario. As in they are not against Russians, but Putin.

2. Epic Games = ~45% Tencent. Which means there may be some small PR limitations to consider.


I’ve helped a half dozen people with this. One trick is to just keep a notepad by your bed and first, first, first thing try to write down what you remember from your dreams.

My suspicion is eventually the brain says “oh you care about this? Okay cool I’ll hold on to them for longer.”

Give it a couple of weeks you might be surprised.


Thanks for the tip, I'll give this a try.


The number of people complaining about “woke culture” are statistically disproportionately members of groups that are not traditionally insulted in media.

Furthermore, this “take” requires a level of historical naïveté that borders on pure narcissism. A lot of social “fixing” looks like an “over correction” in the short term, but in the long term that’s just how things get dealt with.

As a loose metaphor, If you put your hand on a stove you don’t lift it a millimeter off the heat source, right? That would “fix” it.

Surprising no one, I couldn’t find a single essay from this concerned citizen about the death of George Floyd, or anyone else for that matter.

But he found plenty of outrage and cultural commentary for the temporary death of the commercial viability of his outdated sense of humor.

That IS funny, actually.


It's not "overcorrection", it's pressure to not wrongthink. The method is the problem.

Why is he obligated to write something about George Floyd? This touches on compelled speech.


He’s not obligated to at all.


You required him to do so before being able to express himself.


> I couldn’t find a single essay from this concerned citizen about

So basically: you are in front of a phenomenon of corrupt police and its relative systemic acceptance, all of which is rooted in mental pauperty, and your idea of «fixing» is to restrict artistic expression?

And would be a duty of any creator to write articles about any occurrence or phenomenon!?

«outdated»!? Masterpieces and milestones get «outdated» in which sense? Do you mean "then rejected by some society" for some reason outside inherent quality? Arbitrary filters of cultural contribution, according their special state and needs?


I reread my post several times and couldn’t find the section where I suggested that the solution is to “restrict artistic expression” so I stopped reading your post beyond that as it was surely a response to someone else.


So what are the examples you propose instancing that «over correction»?


He is a comedian talking about comedy. He makes some good points you might agree with or not, but I cannot understand why it matters how many essays he has written about George Floyd's death. If that is the new low bar to talk about something, the hand is already kilometers away of the stove. It's cold in there.


By your own rhetoric, your sense of humor will become outdated too one day and you’ll just have to live with it because progress.


Yes! And it's worth getting comfortable with change and learning from it, instead of being weird and reactionary about it.


I find it funny (pun intended) that you consider this learning, when on a basic level it's the opposite of that.

If anything can be deemed offensive (and it will be, because there are people who profit from scolding others), and nothing is ever forgotten in the internet age, the eventuality of your mentality is no one being allowed to communicate about anything at all.

What's worth doing is making fun of you, ironically. Because making fun of people like you is, historically, how flawed ideologies are cast aside.


Are you confusing "making fun of" with "offensive", or "punching down"? These are not the same things.


Try to describe the difference to a woke mob, then


> Try to describe the difference to a woke mob, then

Exactly.


I'm not confusing anything, it's you who has a basic misunderstanding of how this all works.

You don't get to determine the rules and context of communication for other people, you only get to determine them for yourself. I don't mean rules and context in a modern political and/or cultural sense, I mean them in a basic interpretive sense.

The text is in the eye of the beholder. Not in the eye of the mob who didn't read the text.


>are statistically disproportionately members of groups that are not traditionally insulted in media.

are you sure? In regards to HN, are there no negative stereotypes of nerds, geeks, computer programmers out there? How about those with autism, or ADHD - I mean I find myself insulted quite a lot in life, never mind in just the media.


Do you have any evidence that the majority of autistics are complaining about "woke" culture? As an autistic it's my understanding that if anything we tend to be overrepresented in "social justice" causes online because we tend towards systems thinking and systemic critique tends towards leftism and liberalism whereas conservatives usually emphasize "personal responsibility" and individualism.

There are many cases of people using autism as a justification for reactionary behavior but the people I see most loudly attacking them for it are other autistics.

Shows like The Big Bang Theory which undeniably make fun of autistic traits usually also carry a lot of other messaging progressives find distasteful (e.g. in this case, misogyny framed as "charming" and "dorky" because the characters are portrayed as unthreatening or downright impotent). Nerd culture especially of the late 90s and early 00s is also rife with sexism, racism and ableism while especially nowadays also undeniably having extremely progressive spaces within its subculture (e.g. TTRPGs in particular are a space for experimenting with identity and gender expression which can make them especially appealing to queer people).

The negative treatment of nerds, geeks and programmers in popular media (which has btw massively declined since the 1980s and especially within the dot com era) in my experience also doesn't come from "woke progressives" but rather neatly follows anti-feminist ideas of masculinity, ridiculing these groups for failing to satisfy gendered expectations. "Woke" critique usually focusses on the sexist, racist and generally bigoted attitudes often still present in wide parts of those cultures but even more so in gaming (which is so widely acknowledged even within gaming culture that "heated gamer moment" has become a popular phrase to refer to someone openly spouting bigotry).


>>are statistically disproportionately members of groups that are not traditionally insulted in media.

>Do you have any evidence that the majority of autistics are complaining about "woke" culture?

You're right that is probably the weakest part of my response, since I don't have any particular evidence.

On the other hand the disproportionate members of groups seemed specifically in reference to people on HN who are likely to be in the group of nerds, geeks, programmers group. So if those groups are among the ones on HN complaining about wokeness, then I guess it doesn't really matter that the parts of the media they are getting insulted in are parts getting attacked as non-woke.

The original argument was that groups (on HN) complaining about wokeness are comprised of people not insulted by media. I suppose there are people on HN who find wokeness distasteful even if they are among groups that might be helped by it in some contexts.


That's not true. Jewish-, Italian-, German-, Irish-Americans have any number of bad characters and slurs applied to them in Hollywood movies (many of the "intellectual dark web" are Jews!).

"Zucker" is also a Jewish name, so his ancestors will have experienced a fair share of racism.


Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: