Zed Shaw

How does a Music Browser differ from an Internet Browser then? Because I can open up my Internet Browser, type "http://zedshaw.com/ and listen to music created by Zed. (ok, I do then have to click the "Music" link but that's the website owners choice). EDIT: Ok, this is a followup to a previous blog post here http://zedshaw.com/blog/2009-12-21.html What he describes there actual sounds kind of cool :)

Unless you perform a proper statistical analysis it's unfair to draw a conclusion from a single run. Furthermore, when I see a second run that's faster than the first one, I immediately wonder if it's the cache being cold for the first run and warm for the second. While I have your attention, https://zedshaw.com/archive/programmers-need-to-learn-statistics-or-i-… is worth reading.

Zed Shaw's position is that Python 3 is not suitable for the intended audience of Learn Python the Hard Way. His rationales (along with his response to criticism) was laid out a recent essay: https://zedshaw.com/2016/11/24/the-end-of-coder-influence/ Anyway, Zed Shaw is, in my opinion, worth paying attention to. This essay seems particularly relevant to the current kertuffle: https://web.archive.org/web/20120821234313/http://learncodethehardway.…

I'm curious, did your contractors host regular demos, sprint retrospectives, etc.? If so, was it clear early on that the results were going to be substandard, or was it a surprise fairly late into the process? I'm not going to debate about whether they were doing "true Agile", but it seems like even without settling upfront costs it would still be possible to control risks by tracking value added vs. cost on a sprint-to-sprint basis. Hopefully it should be evident early on if the project isn't worth it[1]. Of course, this requires that the contractors be able to deliver value incrementally, which might not be possible in all projects. In which case, upfront cost estimates (and more thorough planning) will probably be necessary. [1]In fact, this is exactly why Zed Shaw says he uses Scrum on risky projects(http://zedshaw.com/archive/the-c2i2-hypothesis/)

I think this is my favorite Underhanded C submission ever. One simple ambiguity, applied with breathtaking precision and effectiveness. Puts me in mind of an old essay of Zed's: http://zedshaw.com/archive/the-master-the-expert-the-programmer/

Also the second run probably used stuff that was put in the npm cache during the first run. Not sure how good a test this is. A good read: "Programmers need to learn statistics or I will kill them all" http://zedshaw.com/archive/programmers-need-to-learn-statistics-or-i-w…

> his early writing on why programmers should learn statistics A good read, here's the link for lazy - http://zedshaw.com/archive/programmers-need-to-learn-statistics-or-i-w…

Where is Zed Shaw's follow up article to 'http://zedshaw.com/2014/10/19/the-coming-code-bootcamp-destruction/… ?

I prefer to use Ragel as a DSL for FSMs, it'll generate Go code along with other languages. Adrian Thurston has done a fantastic job with Ragel. Zed Shaw wrote a great essay about state charts in Ragel: http://www.zedshaw.com/essays/ragel_state_charts.html The official docs: http://www.complang.org/ragel/ragel-guide-6.8.pdf

This is a good article on the statistical illiteracy of smart people. Reminds me of this classic Zed Shaw rant. http://zedshaw.com/essays/programmer_stats.html

But wait Zed you certainly come out "looking like an asshole" quite often. You admit it yourself[1]. It seems to have something to do with your strident polarizing style. Just saying... BTW - Love your L?THW books. Thanks [1] http://zedshaw.com/essays/master_and_expert.html

Right or not isn't the point. It's painful to read because it's a grown man that writes like a 10 year old that learned a couple of dirty words. I cringe in embarrassment on his behalf: http://zedshaw.com/#/fuck

Completely agree - very excited to have just sponsored Ambrose's project as Snowplow Analytics. As an industry we need to get much better at acknowledging and supporting the role the technology components "under us" in the stack play in our own products' success; Zed Shaw made this exact point talking about Mongrel in his Why I (A/L)GPL post.[1] So direct sponsorship to developers doing innovative things is great - and Typed Clojure is really innovative, one of the things I'm most excited about at the moment (along with Mesos, Rust and Summingbird). We don't use a lot of Clojure at Snowplow yet - but we use some[2], and we will likely use a lot more with Typed Clojure, because optional typing is such a great fit for ETL work. Keep up the great work Ambrose! [1] http://zedshaw.com/essays/why_i_gpl.html [2] https://github.com/snowplow/snowplow/tree/master/2-collectors/clojure-…

I am not sure if average page load times are a good way of measuring site performance. I wish they published numbers like median, 75th percentile and 95 percentile load times. Please see here for why average is not a good metric. http://zedshaw.com/essays/programmer_stats.html It is especially dangerous for 37signals to do this because a large percentage of web developers look up to them for best practices.

Superfluous question, perhaps. What licence are you releasing it on? I read Zed Shaw's essays (rants?) on GPL a while ago. Given that your tool occupies the Server space (as did his) I recommend a read^H^H^H^H butchers (keeping with the spirit of things) ;-) http://zedshaw.com/essays/why_i_gpl.html

For another perspective on why R is worth learning, check out Zed's essay on it: http://zedshaw.com/essays/programmer_stats.html (note: just ignore the ranty parts and there's brilliance underneath)

Completely agree with you. In "My Favourite Interview Question"[1] The author asks: How would you design a Monopoly game? He goes on to say that with 'basíc' OOP you can model the elements: dice, buildings. But What about the rules? One of his suggestions is to look to the Strategy, Visitor, and Command patterns. But I disagree. I want to model the rules using Prolog! That is what prolog is great at. So can please the next high level language standup? I just want: top of the line OOP (Smalltalk) constraint programming (prolog) functional (haskell) And Design By Contract (Eiffel) And no... I'm not asking for the kitchen sink language [2] Is simply that this concepts aren't exclusive and all of them helps us to better model reality. [1]http://weblog.raganwald.com/2006/06/my-favourite-interview-question.ht… [2]http://zedshaw.com/essays/kitchensink.html

Agriculture, I think, is one of the next big fields for improvements [1]. But it has always been a source of interesting problems and solutions. "[...] One way is to randomize the confounding element so that it’s effect is not influencing the element under investigation. If you have to find out which fertilizer is the best, but the water and soil have different properties over your massive 20 acre field, then you need to randomize where you put what fertilizer. It gets even more complicated since you might randomly put them in a really bad formation, so these super smart people came up with ways around that too. [...]" http://zedshaw.com/essays/programmer_stats.html [1] Think about robotic green houses in cities for instance. If you isolate your system well you might not even need pesticides and you might save tons of water and energy.

Yeah it's a hoot, especially coming from the guy who will kill people not using statistics, which is a great read btw. http://www.zedshaw.com/essays/programmer_stats.html I'm sure it's just an off-the-cuff remark. I've made plenty in my day.

3. Jeremy McAnally ( Mr. Neighborly's Humble Little Ruby Book: http://www.humblelittlerubybook.com/book/ ) ( http://www.jeremymcanally.com/ ) 4. Marijn Haverbeke (Eloquent Javascript: http://eloquentjavascript.net/ ) ( http://marijn.haverbeke.nl/ ) 5. Young Zed Shaw ( http://www.zedshaw.com/ ) ( Older Zed Shaw is just a little bit less out there ) And a few more can be found on Bonus500's Twitter Follow list.

This was a good read: http://www.zedshaw.com/essays/programmer_stats.html He even mentioned just about every topic we covered in my stats/probability class. There's a book list at the end.

Eric Raymond is a good start. I also like Steve Yegge's blog posts. Also Zed Shaw's essays are a good read, this one is my favorite: http://www.zedshaw.com/essays/master_and_expert.html Surely theres a better list, but these are the first names that came to my mind.

About section: http://www.zedshaw.com/ I don't know you well enough to answer the second part of the question.

Zed offers some classic recommendations at the end of his post "Programmers Need To Learn Statistics Or I Will Kill Them All": http://www.zedshaw.com/rants/programmer_stats.html

Quoting the classics: "During their operations they seem to focus entirely on the process, but very little on the quality of the code. Sorry guys, but having a 1:4 code:test ratio is not focusing on code quality. It’s focusing on test quality." http://www.zedshaw.com/rants/rails_is_a_ghetto.html

On a trivia note, as we're on Y News: Zed Shaw (from Rails Is a Getho rant fame - http://zedshaw.com) works at Bear Stearns and they have lots of RoR projects over there.

He's a popular blogger: https://zedshaw.com/

Again, what does "cancel culture" mean? Can you define it in a way which isn't politically biased against left-leaning viewpoints from the get-go? Obama's caution about a "‘circular firing squad’, where you start shooting at your allies because one of them has strayed from purity on the issues" seems little different than "Life of Brian's" caution about doctrinaire differences in opposing the Romans - certainly not some caution about a new sort of cancel culture! And how much might come from Obama wanting to deflect criticism about his support for using US military power - just how many drone strikes did he order? - or handling of the Central American refugee crisis at the southern border? Do you think Chomsky is correct about everything? I don't agree with him about the creator of 'email' either. I certainly disagree with many of his co-signers. Changing "blacklist" or "master" is not worthwhile to debate. The effort is simple, the benefits small (but non-zero), so do it ... and realize that it's a weak-sauce paper-thin covering over much harder and more intractable problems. It's a "recycle your paper cups while companies kill rivers" sort of issue. Concerning 'Philosophy professors', if someone makes a philosophical argument that there are only males and females, and nothing else - clearly contrary to scientific evidence and cultural experience - then why don't they deserve censure the same way they would for making the philosophical argument that the Earth is flat?…

Some interesting context for this comment: "Congrats Dropbox" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16660140 BrandonM: It's funny how often that comment—which I made as a 22-year-old undergrad—resurfaces. Someone even reached out to me 2 weeks ago because they wanted to use it in an article as an example of "the disconnect between the way users and engineers see software"! I like to think that I've gained a lot of perspective over the last 11 years; it's pretty clear to me that point #1 was short-sighted and exhibited a lot of tunnel vision. Looking back, though, I still think that thread was a reasonable exchange. My 2nd and 3rd points were fair, and I conceded much of point 1 to you after your reply (which was very high quality). Obviously, we have the benefit of hindsight now in seeing how well you were able to execute. Kudos on that! Congrats on your success! I wish you nothing but the best going forward! Zed Shaw's take on the matter. https://zedshaw.com/2018/03/25/the-billionaires-vs-brandonm/

I was just listening to an older episode of Indie Hackers today as a matter of fact. Thank you for contributing something valuable to the ecosystem. A lot of similar podcasts/blogs focus on a lot of fluff, but you do/did a great job of directing the conversation, and summarizing long-winded guest comments that may not use the proper business jargon into concise and interesting tidbits. One thing that was always interesting for me as a listener is that I'm actually the opposite of a lot of your audience. I'm a senior marketer who knows the marketing world inside and out, but I'd consider myself an "early" programmer[1]. It is a very different set of challenges. But one thing I noticed was the true lack of basic marketing skills many of your guests had in the beginning of their journeys. Would you say that the "baseline" for that knowledge among engineers has increased over the last couple of years as the "indie hacker" movement you and others like Patrick McKenzie have helped foster has grown in awareness and popularity? Ie., given the propensity for developers to spend a lot of their time researching solutions online, do you find they are starting with more of the basics in place than they did maybe 5-10 years ago? [1] https://zedshaw.com/2015/06/16/early-vs-beginning-coders/