Not sure if that example helps. You can make any programming language hard to read without some basic formatting. The way I would write the sexpr would be:
(impl
(impl
p
(impl q r))
(impl
(impl p q)
(impl p r)))
It's clear when each section begins and ends and doesn't require complex parsing rules.
Yes, software is full of ambiguities but there are methods we use to handle them. OP emailed an outline wanting feedback, as any team player would do to iron out ambiguities, and received a meaningless reply. I think it's safe to say companies don't want their engineers going into a corner never to be seen again for 2 weeks, which is what this interview process recreates.
OP's proposal was only describing irrelevant stuff (the backend technologies) and was completely silent on on stuff that mattered (demonstrating how actual RFC822 email works, mutt-inspired UI). It was therefore accepted without comments, as there were no "substance" to comment on.
That is often a problem with proposals/design docs in general. In the real job, if proposal is actually required, it would be sent it back with "please add details on UX and how you are going to store email headers". In this case, the proposal was explicitly _not_ required though, so interviewers did not want to ask for more details on the optional document. They checked what was written there, found no problems, and approved it.
I think what has happened is the author has no idea what "email backend" was, so he just decided to ignore that part and build the only backend he knew, web-app backend. And those terms are pretty different. The "email backend" is the service which actually stores and transfers email, in the author's case it was turso + postman.
So from the interviewer's standpoint, author was asking about few details of implementation, like "can I use third-party service for email storage?"; and the response was of course "yes, you can" (because assignment was pretty clear that backend does not need to be advanced or even present, and that it's UI that matters)
I guess the question worked as intended, and filtered out candidate who cannot even read the simple requirements.
(The amount of effort was disproportional though, but I am not sure how to solve this in take-home context without discriminating against people who have busy schedules and/or work slowly)
OP didn't take into account the (great) asymmetry between themselves and the hiring manager, then built an entire lament on that. Dealing with this job req is likely just one of many day-to-day responsibilities the HM has and frankly I'm impressed they responded with three whole sentences. One method we can use to handle such ambiguity is to "make your best judgement" based on your skills, knowledge and experience (things that are tested for in the hiring process, incidentally), because often you may not get the answer you want or expect if any at all.
I remember reading someone's shower thoughts that if the internet was completely safe there would be no need for Cloudflare, so it's in Cloudflare's best interest to keep the internet unsafe. It's an interesting thought even if a bit tinfoil hat-esque.
I could imagine more sophisticated crawlers might be able to detect false information and then avoid those pages, but maybe that's more far fetched than how it comes across in my mind.
I agree that it's good they looked passed typical corporate reasons. I admit it's still strange to see.
At the end of the day, companies like Microsoft are in the business of making money and that's one of the reasons they made C#. If they don't see the profit in using one of their own products (and one that competes with Go) in their future products then why would I use them for mine?
It's like if they used Google Cloud instead of Azure, it'd be very weird.
Normally I don't think anyone would be losing their mind, but this is a Microsoft team creating a widely popular Microsoft product and they use a Google product (Go) instead of using another Microsoft product (C#) that is arguably competing with it. It strikes as odd why a Microsoft team isn't comfortable with/trusting a Microsoft product.
I think it makes sense that some people are taking this in a way that maybe they shouldn't trust in C#'s future either.
yeah, i saw that inference too; but i think it's a silly one - it would be like those same people being upset that new windows core features aren't written in C# (and, we shouldn't forget the other targeting languages)
but i'm also a fan of languages, so my opinion may be screwy ;p
The fact that the Windows team rejected C# actually was a reason to think twice about it (and Office, and ...) . If nothing else it had deep implications for .NET's backwards compatibility story, and it sent the message that people with existing C++ codebases shouldn't view it as a natural next step despite the .NET team originally pushing dialects of C++ and P/Invoke pretty hard.
I would argue that, yes, it is okay to expect your average person not to understand the law. Of course, it would be great if everyone understood everything (laws, in this case) but that's not feasible.
The FDIC being in place means the average consumer does not have to understand nor think about the economics of a bank, for example, that by depositing money into a bank you are a creditor to that bank.
But your FDIC example is perfect. FDIC effectively regulates its member banks. But the end user still needs to know if the app/product they are using is protected by FDIC, which is the point of the CFPB announcement in the article. PayPal, Venmo, CashApp are not banks, are not regulated like banks, and are not member of FDIC (or NCUA).
So far I haven’t seen anyone in this HN thread bring up a valid action a US regulator could legally take that is stronger than this statement.
Many products have been successful not because they bring new features to the market but because they make existing features trivial to use. UX is everything.
It really is. Arguably the most famous example among HN readers was BrandonM’s comment[0] on Dropbox’s launch thread. Was he correct that you can built it trivially using 2007 software? Sure, if you had the correct mix of specialized knowledge of the software and networking. Dropbox was not a novel idea, but that’s now where it value was; the value proposition relied 100% on its UX.
If MSFT and Apple each shipped a Dropbox competitor that was highly integrated, available, and pushed flagship software suits to adopt it as well within a year, would Dropbox had become as large as it did? I would guess not. It would likely be a downgrade from what Dropbox offered (the separate ecosystems staying bifurcated comes to mind), but a zero install solution would be the only thing that could make it easier.
There's no way OpenAI will quit EU and leave it for competitors to take, easy bluff to call. The whole thing makes it seem like the desire for AI-related regulation isn't ethics motivated and is instead only trying to make it harder for competition to start.
Bard isn’t available in the EU or Canada, so there’s one competitor they don’t need to worry about. That doesn’t seem to be a bluff?
Perhaps people will learn to use VPN’s like some US folks did for cryptocurrency exchanges? Or maybe it will be a boost for an open source project that gets a reputation for reliability. (Well, reliable for an AI chatbot, which is not very reliable by most standards.)
For all of Microsoft's flaws, they typically are good at working with regulators and ticking the boxes needed to get into a market like EU. It's unsurprising that Bard isn't there yet, as the whole field has moved at "faster than large corp/government" speeds but I don't imagine MS will stay out of those markets for long.
It's not a bluff. Silicon Valley CEO's hate european policies and are willing to remove their stuff because the Euro's homegrown tech startups are atrocious and everyone knows it.
Google has threatened and left jurisdictions. It's not an easy bluff to call. If the regulation makes it practically impossible to deliver a good product, why wouldn't they leave?
If EU rules are too draconian, neither OpenAI nor their competitors has anything to gain from the EU. The only bluff to call would be if OpenAI were pretending they're too draconian when they're really not. I'll believe that bluff when EU compliant competitors popup who are on par with openAI. Thus far it hasn't happened.
What exactly does "quit EU" mean. They make an app that connects over the internet. Anyone including businesses, are free to use their money how they see fit by paying for a service that runs in a another country.
All the EU can do here is get rid of the business and infrastructure presence of this company in the EU. Getting rid of jobs and tax revenue. They can also do a China and prosecute their own citizens for trying to access things they want on the internet.
There doesn't need to be Any "AI-related regulation." There's nothing specific or magical or new about "AI" that's not covered by current law. What it does look like to me, is the government couldn't press some authoritarian laws, so they slapped "AI" on it to mislead and misdirect their voters.
Nothing backfired, it wasn't a shot or a bluff. It was a statement that if they pass draconian laws, their citizens will have to buy the product online with their visa card without paying VAT.
Funnily enough, the EU guy who is leading this and doubling down, is Romanian. I've had some friends from that country and been there a few times. It's not a place I would think of when I think honest regulatory body, ethics, or bleeding edge technology. It definitely is a place I think of when I imagine a peacock puffing its feathers, a tiny monkey hitting it's chest, and a drunk idiot with low IQ doubling down till the grave.
> Funnily enough, the EU guy who is leading this and doubling down, is Romanian.
What is the relevance of your personal (and poorly informed) opinions about Romanians? It’s a needlessly low blow and it’s tiring to hear the same myths perpetuated by people who have zero context on Romanian culture and life. If you do not associate Romania with honesty, morality, and innovation, then it’s because you have been misinformed.
> Anyone including businesses, are free to use their money how they see fit by paying for a service that runs in a another country.
I don’t think that has ever been true in any legal jurisdiction. Every country has restrictions on trade and payments that can be made when acquiring services domestically or abroad.
What is the relevance of my personal experience based opinion on the thing I am talking about? That's how opinions work. We have experiences, we get information, we give our opinions based on those.
Now what we could do, instead of giving our own opinions, is repeat statistics that anyone could look up in a minute. Since I am a person, not a database, I gave opinion based on experience.
Here's the statistic though for people with smooth brains. Look for Romania - it's towards the bottom there, near Hungary. You know Hungary, the country with the dictator, who supports that other country with the dictator.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/873736/corruption-percep...
>Every country has restrictions on trade and payments
Right. As I literally stated. Every country has the right to prosecute their own citizens in their country. I'm sure that's what the EU voters want - to be prosecuted under the law proposed by this Romanian lawmaker.
There's nothing wrong with every person in Romania. But when a country is known for corruption, perhaps they shouldn't be leading the charge in EU-wide laws.
Let me rephrase that, since you're going to double down and do the "purposefully dense thing." I propose Poland lead EU-wide legislation on Abortion.
You got a problem with that? What, you got something against Poland?
In EU it's not possible to develop a viable competitor due to overregulation. Where's EU's Google? Where's EU's Starlink? Where's EU's Microsoft? Where's EU's Samsung?
For those, a world without a desktop computer, smartphone, Starlink constellation and internet search is better. The downvoting illustrates that it's a prevailing viewpoint on HN now, indeed.
"What the honorable member is saying is that he would rather that the poor were poorer, provided that the rich were less rich" - Margaret Thatcher
I had similar thoughts when I was messing with Mac OS 7 and 8 a few months ago. I was astounded at how featureful most software was. Microsoft Word version 5 had every feature I possibly needed and was extremely fast, way faster than modern Word. It makes me wonder what has modern software added to justify making it so slow? Because it’s obviously, at least to me, not new features.
If I could I would be just like Andrew here but my work, and love for playing video games (modern and classic alike) prevents me.
