Interview with Andy Hunt, Coauthor of the Pragmatic Programmer

developerdanny | karma 6 | avg karma 0.24 · 2017-04-13 21:04:21+00:00

Well, that was disappointing.

sotojuan | karma 6218 | avg karma 3.49 · 2017-04-13 16:21:27

They made the interview feel longer by making the font so thin it takes you twice as long to read.

bodiam | karma 106 | avg karma 0.82 · 2017-04-13 18:33:29

Thanks for the feedback. How can we improve it for next time?

GoodbyeEarl | karma 138 | avg karma 2.51 · 2017-04-14 05:48:24+00:00

Hey, I'm not an UX specialist but

  .entry p {
    margin-bottom: 1em;
    font-weight: 400;
    line-height: 25px;
    font-size: 16px;
  }

did the trick for me. I found it more pleasing to the eyes. BTW, nice interview! ;)

bodiam | karma 106 | avg karma 0.82 · 2017-04-15 07:48:46

Thanks, that's most appreciated! I'll have a look to see what it does!

bodiam | karma 106 | avg karma 0.82 · 2017-04-15 12:56:18+00:00

Added it! It indeed looks better. Not 100% sure about the line height, but thanks for this!

GoodbyeEarl | karma 138 | avg karma 2.51 · 2017-04-19 15:07:09

NP. Glad I could help. :)

tobltobs | karma 3587 | avg karma 2.92 · 2017-04-13 21:44:09+00:00

Not too much interesting stuff in this interview apart of this:

    I hate languages that introduce accidental complexity
    such as JavaScript—what a nightmare of pitfalls for 
    newbies and even seasoned developers.

bodiam | karma 106 | avg karma 0.82 · 2017-04-13 18:33:10

To make the next one better, what kind of questions would you like to see?

3am_hackernews | karma 120 | avg karma 2.67 · 2017-04-14 05:11:19+00:00

Not the OP, but something a bit more open ended and allowing interesting answers (IMHO):

- If you had to design a programming language, what would be some of the decisions you would make?

- (Since he lists things such woodworking, fiction writing, etc.) How has programming influenced your life?

- If you had to write another book, what would it be on?

- What do you think about the general state of interviews (programming related positions) in the industry?

--

Other non-question comment:

- UX/Usability/Readability, layout, font selection of you website is really poor. Please make it easier for the readers (e.g. https://blog.ycombinator.com/chris-slowe-interview)

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bodiam | karma 106 | avg karma 0.82 · 2017-04-14 05:33:16+00:00

Hi, thanks for the feedback, much appreciated. Will take your questions into account for the next interview.

Regarding the UX/etc, is is that bad? Any suggestions to improve? I'm not sure if the ycombinator is that much better to be honest, but I might be missing something, and I'm open for improvements!

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virtuexru | karma 96 | avg karma 0.75 · 2017-04-13 17:01:40

Holy cow the font on this page is almost unreadable.

bodiam | karma 106 | avg karma 0.82 · 2017-04-13 18:32:38

Hi, thanks for the feedback. Which browser/os are you using?

jamesdwi | karma -1 | avg karma -1.0 · 2017-04-13 22:26:16+00:00

why no mention of python? seems strange than any modern programmer to leave it out.

AlexeyBrin | karma 9334 | avg karma 9.57 · 2017-04-14 01:46:34+00:00

> why no mention of python? seems strange than any modern programmer to leave it out.

Maybe because Andy Hunt was more into Ruby than into Python. Not every modern programmer uses Python. From practical point of view Ruby and Python are similar scripting languages. Python has an edge only if you need NumPy, SciPy.

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regulation_d | karma 480 | avg karma 2.2 · 2017-04-14 21:34:25+00:00

or anything having to do with NLP

rmason | karma 43950 | avg karma 5.15 · 2017-04-13 22:31:49+00:00

Spoke with him in the early days of his company about an order. Very chill guy and Pragmatic Programmer has had as much effect on me as I work day by day as any book.

I look at the book as a benchmark on how far along you are in the programming journey. I'm fond of saying young coders will agree with 50% of the book and reject the rest. But the more experience they get the more they agree with it.

I've re-read it a few times and still disagree with 2% of it so I guess that is good as it means I still have room to grow;<).

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aecorredor | karma 280 | avg karma 2.92 · 2017-04-13 22:41:09+00:00

Damn, almost all of his next projects involve elixir:

"Writing Elixir and Phoenix code to manipulate MIDI in real time

Expand my Halloween project of multiple Raspberry Pi’s, Arduino, pneumatics, audio and effects to a full-blown Elixir/Phoenix/OTP demonstration.

Revise my book Pragmatic Thinking & Learning

Maybe a top-secret project or two.."

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hew | karma 1 | avg karma 0.02 · 2017-04-14 01:02:09+00:00

Just such a joy to write both syntactically and conceptually.

I wrote C to get through school. I wrote PHP to hack CRUD web apps. I write JS because it's ubiquitous and I'm required to. I write Elixir because I love to do it.

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ams6110 | karma 28057 | avg karma 2.52 · 2017-04-14 01:40:15+00:00

Did you come to Elixr from Ruby or Erlang? Or neither?

I learned a bit of Erlang first, and never really found a taste for Elixir's syntax. Can't say that I've really used it beyond tinkering though.

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digitalzombie | karma None | avg karma None · 2017-04-14 08:15:19+00:00

Elixir's syntax is much easier compare to Erlang's prolog inspired syntax.

I think anybody coming from any C inspired language would take Elixir over Erlang imo. Sure Erlang is a small language but the hump is much higher to get over the syntax than in Elixir.

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hew | karma 1 | avg karma 0.02 · 2017-04-15 01:53:19+00:00

Neither. My background was all C family until I read PragProg and then stumbled over Elixir in a search for another language for edification.

mifreewil | karma 430 | avg karma 1.8 · 2017-04-14 08:56:26+00:00

> Programming is an inspirational activity best learned from reading books written by great authors.

Or by doing and reading others code.

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