Et Cetera | Miscellanea of technology, cognition, and the philosophy of the future.

17 Feb

When You Suddenly Hate Programming

Adapted and expanded from my response on Quora. From the outside, development work is an appealing opportunity. It’s in high demand, it pays well, and it lets you use your brain. Fun, right? Well, for many, yes! It...
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15 Feb

6 Ways to Learn Javascript in a Hurry

Javascript seems to be one of those things that people always want to learn in a hurry. Maybe it’s because most of them are students and students have neither time nor patience, maybe it’s because Javascript lends itself to being...
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30 Aug

Learning Jenkins: Example Projects

Learning Jenkins? Jenkins, a free continuous integration tool, is fantastic for handling large projects, and its abilities within its domain are practically limitless. But this benefit is a hindrance, too — getting started can be befuddling! The fundamentals of...
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7 Oct

An Open Letter to Online Services

Dear [Generic Online Service], I value your existence. Without Dropbox, I wouldn’t have been able to print out that resume last-minute before my interview. Without Grooveshark, my hours spent coding would be much more tedious. Without...
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1 Aug

Tangling with Open-Source

Right now, I’m breathing a sigh of relief. I’m letting many weeks of pent-up frustration slip away. And at the same time, I’m realizing how glad I am to have encountered the uniquely enlightening source of that frustration. I...
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9 Jun

More Little Lessons in Hadoop

Previously, I had posted on some common issues encountered when installing and running Hadoop for the first time. Now, in the joyful experience of attempting a multi-node setup on a simple virtual cluster, many more errors, unexpected consequences, and...
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3 Jun

Lessons in Software Startups: Tackling the Problem

(This is a continuation of a series on software-related startups. You can read the first part here). Scribbled in my notebook — and barely legible — are the words “have quick answers for project.” Though I don’t remember...
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2 Jun

Little Lessons in Hadoop

Hadoop is notoriously under-documented, as I recently discovered. I am using Hadoop in my summer research position, and have launched myself into the wonderful and aggravating world of servers and open-source map-reduce programs. And one of the fun aspects of...
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17 May

Lessons in Software Startups: Initiation

“Don’t sit in the same spot twice.” This, the first line in my notebook. This, the first lesson — suggestion? command? — of our exclusive new class, “Software Ventures.” This, a strange new experience in a university where lectures are...
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14 May

Confirmed: “Computers are Fast” (!)

After reading this post by Julia Evans, which considers CPU speeds somewhat more deeply than its title implies (“Computers are Fast”), a fragment from a recent conversation with one of my computer science professors came to mind. Simply, and somewhat...
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