You can get a small cluster from Digital Ocean pretty cheaply. It's more than $5 (I forget the exact price) but they'll provide a free master node and then you just pay for one additional kubelet (and you can add more as you need them). I have used it for one hobby project and have been pretty happy with it.
Same with Linode, the management machines are not massive scale HA control planes like you get with the expensive hosts (It seems like Linode may run a single 2GB droplet), but for most of my clusters I don't need it.
The benefit of the tiny tasks model is that you don't build stuff people don't care about. Features/bugs exist in a survival of the fittest world and the lowest priority ones never get built/fixed. This was one of the big problems with "hero in the back office coding for months and emerging with a product".
The tiny tasks model also lets you ship updates to the end user much faster and also ensures the product is never in a half-broken state. It's also more robust when you don't have a team of all-star programmers.
I agree that building big projects on your own (or with a tiny team of motivated folks and no mandated meetings) is way more fun and sometimes far more productive. But that's why I think it's important to incorporate things like hackathons and prototype phases into the engineering department. Each software development model has its strengths and should be used when appropriate.
I think you're missing the point here. The point isn't coding in isolation is good, nor that we shouldn't break our work down into smaller tasks, it's that the developer should be given the responsibility and freedom to decide what those tasks are for their work, not dictated from above.
If I'm responsible for project A, I should be able to make 85% of the decisions for that project. Too often, recently, development organizations make every decision from above, then break that up into miniscule tasks that require no thought from developers.
Hackathons, IMO, are just gimmicks to gloss over a deficient product management group or software architecture. If your organization can't be convinced of the need to spend time on something outside of a gimmicky "hackathon", then something needs fixed.
I don't think hackathons are always a gimmick, but then again I was probably too loose with my word choice. I mostly meant a period of sustained cooperation with a small group where most of the time is spent together, all meetings are canceled, and you don't try to split up work into bite sized pieces with any formality (like a story/jira ticket).
I agree that organizations that don't trust their engineers with any design or implementation decisions are wasting their talent and probably creating a lot of bored and burned out engineers. If an engineer wants to use a fancy new piece of tech and they can justify it, let them do it.
Currently my manager gives me tasks like "so and so needs something, you should talk to them." That eventually becomes a bunch of tiny tasks, but I don't receive the work pre-chewed.
I agree that there needs to be a balance. I disagree that hackathons are the solution.
Hackathons are usually what management comes up with when they think about this problem. However, I guarantee you that this conversation regularly happens among your developers at Friday happy hours:
- So how's that project Z going?
- You know, same old. Looks easy in theory, and every little task is a slog. I spent this whole week fighting the Blorgifier again.
- Wait, that abomination is still in our codebase? That was a hack we came up with at 3am during one of those death marches last year when we needed to ship something for the Initech demo.
- Yeah, you know what they say. Nothing more permanent than a temporary bandaid. I wish I could have a week of my time back.
- Yeah... cheers!
There will always be very important seeming bugs that have a great definition and visible customer impact. Unfortunately, obscure poorly-defined tasks like "rewrite the Blorgifier" immediately trigger a response of "that's just developers wanting to have fun" in managers. And they end up adding a tax on every single one of those important fixes until eventually the whole thing collapses under its own weight.
How to solve this? Ask the developers what's important to fix? Nah, they don't know how to plan a project and don't understand the customer.
Does this mean that developer pet projects need to get 100% time allocation? No. But in most companies their time is undersized by a factor of 1000 or more.
I won't reconstruct the reply I wrote to someone else but I agree hackathons are not a silver bullet (and I probably misused the term). Solving the tech debt problem is a whole other can of worms.
The ebird app is handy. You can use it to get a crowdsourced rarity estimate on an unidentified bird when you're in the field - handy when you're trying to decide between two species (the more common one is a safer bet).
From the article: "“Low-income people tend to own cars that are in disrepair and ride motorcycles adding to the noise of a ‘lights out at 8 p.m. community,’” Marylyn Rinaldi, a neighboring condominium owner, wrote in 2011 in a letter to the City Council that was later cited in a lawsuit over the project." Nimbyism at its finest.
It may be, but there is a behavioral difference in different economic environments —though even within lower income communities many people who are forced to live there “put up with” these quality of life issues because they don’t have the ability to afford to live in communities that observe these standards. Not all that different from people complaining about the loudness of living next to college student rentals on Friday’s and weekends.
Truth be told I had a loud muffler back when I could barely afford my share of a three way apt rental. Nowadays I would find it hard to tolerate the noise I caused back then. But that was a diff neighborhood and it was accepted.
Declaring that low-income people won't obey noise ordinances is extremely classist in my view. Yes, tell residents before they move in that the area has strict noise ordinances, and then hand out tickets for violators. But don't block affordable housing simply because it "might happen".
I'd like to agree -and in principle I do, just not in practice. In my case, I didn't have a loud muffler because I liked it. It was rusted through and I could not afford the repair. It had to wait. Ordinance or not didn't influence my choice. That's different from the guy who opens the throttle on his wannabe Harley as he accelerates from every stop sign on the street at 10 and 11PM... He does it just because... he's an...
Still, you must concede that the parade of "rusty muffler" arguments are a silly compared to a legitimate housing crisis. Not everything our neighbors/family/friends do makes us happy. And hey, they might have a rusty muffler, but maybe they're less snobbish and more friendly. So while it's totally reasonable to be worried about traffic and school crowding, I feel people should at least try a bit harder to shrug their shoulders about the little things and give it a chance.
I can see a system where you build where land is affordable, you bring transit there and you have buckets of units. Units for families, units for college kids, units for singles and you stratify the units so that like people end up with like people. Those who like quiet get quiet neighbors, those who like noise get noisy neighbors. Mix climbers with climbers and losers with other losers. You don't need groups that drag down others dragging down people who have a chance and you want climbers helping others.
This won't work in the US for various reasons, but it may work in other places where they can move people accordingly.
People disapprove of everything that involves "segregation" of different sub-cultures, even when that segregation is mutually beneficial. The American ideal is a spatially-uniform melting pot.
I’m not so sure people in Eastern Europe or parts of Africa and Asia would have an issue with this kind of stratification, but you may be right, it might go against cultural norms.
Just a thought, but several of my motorbike-owning friends tell me the noise generated from the bike reminds those in larger vehicles of their presence.
It's more the sneering, condescending tone of the comment that I thought was jaw-dropping. Sure, noise ordinances are reasonable. But labeling poor people as loud - and thus undesirable - is not okay. I can't believe I even had to explain this to be honest.
what percent of "low-income people" own motorcycles? what would the occupants of 10 apartments have to do such that a small city would no longer be said to be able to have "quiet nights" that could not be enforced against by any method other than excluding the apartments completely?
ooh, I'm gonna go with "a lot". Because motorcycles are a lot cheaper to buy, own, and maintain that cars. And a lot of them don't even require licenses in the US (49cc and smaller, if I'm not mistaken).
motorcycle owners are wealthier on average (this is really easy to google). I don't see really any motorcycles or scooters at all in poor neighborhoods. They generally have beater cars or no vehicle at all.
A cheap used car provides a lot more utility than an equivalently priced used motorcycle so that's what most people tend to buy if they can only have one vehicle.
Cars do have more utility than motorcycles, but where I live (college town in American midwest) there are many poor people who drive small, cheap motorcycles. Speculation on why:
<50cc scooters are subject to different -- usually lower -- registration, insurance, inspection, and licensing requirements than cars.
State-minimum insurance for my cheap (KBB ~$1000) used (+200K miles) car would be about $700/year. Similarly minimal insurance for a 2010 Honda Ruckus would be $100/year. (I just checked Geico.)
Small motorcycles consume a lot less gasoline than cars, especially old, cheap ones being driven in-city.
Spare parts for scooters can be purchased and shipped cheaply, and assembled in a minimum of space with cheap hand tools.
Scooters don't require a full parking space to store. They can be stashed against signs, at bike racks, next to doors, in tiny alleys, or any other free spot. Living with other people? You don't need to worry about blocking the driveway, or being blocked yourself. Work downtown? You can get away without buying a pass at a parking garage.
The number of places in the US where the situation you mentioned is reasonable and public transit is not also good enough to go car-less is very small. Carrying groceries on a moped is doable but a pain. Commuting on one in the winter isn't exactly fun either. Carrying kids on a scooter is a great way to meet every cop in every place you drive through. I wish mopeds were more practical but there's a bunch of little reasons that add up to them not working as well as a cheap car.... which is why pretty much nobody around me except a bunch of single people under the age of about 25 rides them.
Everything you have said is generally true. My point is that there are scooters driven where I live, that most of them are driven by low-income people who are in the presumably-uncomfortable position of a scooter being their best option, and that noise regulations would be an indirect regressive tax against them.
