3/24/17, 12:00 PM
Java
3/22/17, 12:00 PM
Java
The eigenvector of "Why we moved from language X to language Y"
I was reading yet another blog post titled “Why our team moved from <language X> to <language Y>” (I forgot which one) and I started wondering if you can generalize it a bit. Is it possible to generate a N * N contingency table of moving from language X to language Y?
From: Erik Bernhardsson
3/15/17, 12:00 AM
Software Development
Why I went into the mortgage industry
I just realized last Thursday that I have spent two full years at Better, incidentally on the same day as we announced a $15M round led by Kleiner Perkins. So it was a good point to reflect a bit and think back – what the F led me to abandon my role managing the machine learning team at Spotify?
From: Erik Bernhardsson
2/17/17, 12:00 AM
Software Development
2/1/17, 12:00 AM
Software Development
seancorfield/boot-new has moved to boot/new
I'm pleased to announce that the "Boot new" task formerly known as seancorfield/boot-new has moved to the Boot organization, as boot-clj/boot-new and that the group/artifact ID is now boot/new.You can use this to easily create a new Boot-based project:
1/19/17, 12:00 AM
Clojure
Functional programming is the libertarianism of software engineering
This is a pretty dumb post, in which I argue that functional programming has a lot of the bad parts of libertarianism and a lot of the good parts: Both ideologies strive to eliminate [the] state.
From: Erik Bernhardsson
1/10/17, 12:00 AM
Software Development
The half-life of code & the ship of Theseus
As a project evolves, does the new code just add on top of the old code? Or does it replace the old code slowly over time? In order to understand this, I built a little thing to analyze Git projects, with help from the formidable GitPython project.
From: Erik Bernhardsson
12/5/16, 12:00 AM
Software Development
Are data sets the new server rooms?
This blog post Data sets are the new server rooms makes the point that a bunch of companies raise a ton of money to go get really proprietary awesome data as a competitive moat. Because once you have the data, you can build a better product, and no one can copy it (at least not very cheaply).
From: Erik Bernhardsson
11/1/16, 12:00 AM
Software Development
Pareto efficency
Pareto efficiency is a useful concept I like to think about. It often comes up when you compare items on multiple dimensions. Say you want to buy a new TV. To simplify it let's assume you only care about two factors: price and quality.
From: Erik Bernhardsson
10/25/16, 12:00 AM
Software Development
How I Made $20,000 in my Sleep
In this article I hope to inspire you to take action now!
From: Dan Vega
10/5/16, 12:26 AM
Java
Tech Elevator Meetup Summary
A summary of the panel I was asked to be on at Tech Elevator.
From: Dan Vega
9/20/16, 12:00 PM
Java
9/8/16, 12:00 AM
Software Development
When machine learning matters
I joined Spotify in 2008 to focus on machine learning and music recommendations. It's easy to forget, but Spotify's key differentiator back then was the low-latency playback. People would say that it felt like they had the music on their own hard drive.
From: Erik Bernhardsson
8/5/16, 12:00 AM
Software Development
Clojure, New Relic, and Slow Application Startup
A couple of years ago, I blogged about instrumenting Clojure for New Relic monitoring and we've generally been pretty happy with New Relic as a service overall.
7/29/16, 12:00 AM
Clojure
Start Your Engine
Today I'm inspired by the latest issue of Eric Normand's Clojure Gazette which talks about why his "Joy of Programming" comes from learning and exploration.
7/18/16, 12:00 AM
Clojure
Subway waiting math
Why does it suck to wait for things? In a previous post I analyzed a NYC subway dataset and found that at some point, quite early, it's worth just giving up. This isn't a proof that the subway doesn't run on time – in fact it might actually proves that the subway runs really well.
From: Erik Bernhardsson
7/9/16, 12:00 AM
Software Development
More Boot
Back in February I talked about boot-new and talked about a "future 1.
6/17/16, 12:00 AM
Clojure
Approximate nearest news
As you may know, one of my (very geeky) interests is Approximate nearest neigbor methods, and I'm the author of a Python package called Annoy. I've also built a benchmark suite called ann-benchmarks to compare different packages.
From: Erik Bernhardsson
6/2/16, 12:00 AM
Software Development
What is your motivation?
I've been trying to learn Clojure. I keep telling people I meet that I really want to learn Clojure, but still every night I can't get myself to spend time with it. It's unclear if I really want to learn Clojure or just want to have learned Clojure?
From: Erik Bernhardsson
5/24/16, 12:00 AM
Software Development
Dollar cost averaging
(I accidentally published an unfinished draft of this post a few days ago – sorry about that). There's a lot of sources preaching the benefits of dollar cost averaging, or the practice of investing a fixed amount of money regularly.
From: Erik Bernhardsson
4/26/16, 12:00 AM
Software Development
Why organizations fail
One of my favorite business hobbies is to reduce some nasty decision down to its absolute core objective, decide the most basic strategy, and then add more and more modifications as you have to confront the complexity of reality (yes I have very lame hobbies thanks I know).
From: Erik Bernhardsson
4/18/16, 12:00 AM
Software Development
NYC subway math
Apparently MTA (the company running the NYC subway) has a real-time API. My fascination for the subway takes autistic proportions and so obviously I had to analyze some of the data. The documentation is somewhat terrible, but here's some relevant code for how to use the API:
From: Erik Bernhardsson
4/4/16, 12:00 AM
Software Development
Exploding offers are bullshit
I do a lot of recruiting and have given maybe 50 offers in my career. Although many companies do, I never put a deadline on any of them. Unfortunately, I've often ended up competing with other companies who do, and I feel really bad that this usually tricks younger developers into signing offers.
From: Erik Bernhardsson
3/16/16, 12:00 AM
Software Development
Meta-blogging
(This is not a very relevant/useful post for regular readers – feel free to skip. I thought I would share it so people can find it on Google.) My blog blew up twice in a week earlier this year when I landed on Hacker News.
From: Erik Bernhardsson
3/12/16, 12:00 AM
Software Development