Disqus - Latest Comments for aaronwhite

Re: What Have I Not Asked That I Should Be Asking?

aaronwhite — Wed, 29 Apr 2015 09:30:39 -0000

I just shared this in an email thread, and agree w/ all points made above:

"Best reason I’ve kept using [this question]: every company is operating a unique play, it’s tough to be an “instant expert” on everything; I’ve greatly enjoyed people saying “I’m surprised you didn’t ask about unique-important-factor-X or ostensibly-scary-metric-Y” - partly, I’m showing I’m not a know it all, and that + the learning helps accelerate match making."

Re: The Venture Narrative

aaronwhite — Thu, 06 Nov 2014 08:00:01 -0000

Love that stat! Great article

Re: The Venture Narrative

aaronwhite — Wed, 05 Nov 2014 12:00:12 -0000

Sean, absolutely agreed - you can rearrange this, blow it apart, let the listener fill in the gaps, etc. Certainly the masters of story telling can inspire passion with far less than the skeleton above - they've had practice creating drama. Or perhaps if you're Jack Dorsey raising for Square, you can skip most of this and just say "let's go." This is intended as a "crawl before you walk" resource.

Pitching is a form of dance, but isn't a rigid martial-art kata - hopefully I've oriented people to the rough ballpark, rather than a notion of "now do this". That said, I think masters of improvisation are either born that way (un-actionable to readers) or build on the well-trod tropes and riff from there.

Re: Heartbleed and the Fragile Physics of Software

aaronwhite — Thu, 17 Apr 2014 14:15:18 -0000

Excellent point on the Bystander effect ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wik... ) - possibly a very real threat to OSS :) I would agree that compensating people for contributing *ought* to motivate more eyeballs and contributions (and is orthogonal to the question of open or not) I think we'll see a shift towards this in the next decade.

Re: Joining Venrock to do VC in Boston - Aaron White

aaronwhite — Thu, 27 Jun 2013 18:15:50 -0000

Good god, I have to fix these blog colors...

Re: Big Changes - Aaron White

aaronwhite — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 15:00:14 -0000

Thanks Rob, and obviously likewise!

Re: Why Scala? Our Take at Boundless

aaronwhite — Wed, 04 Jul 2012 13:18:54 -0000

If you look at what languages were fashionable/popular with startups over the last ten years, you'll find these trends. It isn't to imply any particular relationship between languages, just capturing what was considered 'vogue'

Re: Why Scala? Our Take at Boundless

aaronwhite — Tue, 03 Jul 2012 09:52:45 -0000

Glad you enjoyed it! We can't wait to share more

Re: Why Scala? Our Take at Boundless

aaronwhite — Tue, 03 Jul 2012 09:52:44 -0000

There's no actual paradox, but that's a colloquial term for the effect choosing a progressive/new language has on the quality of engineering candidates.

Re: http://restrictionisexpression.com/post/26144987502

aaronwhite — Fri, 29 Jun 2012 15:42:35 -0000

Kenneth, that is EXACTLY the plan. Details to come but your idea is the right one

Re: Minimalist

aaronwhite — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 11:24:34 -0000

Very cool!

Re: Nested Selectors: The Inception Rule - Beginner

aaronwhite — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 16:41:28 -0000

This is a great article, but I'd like to defend deep nesting. The way to think about SASS is NOT to think about CSS at all, much like C++ writers don't worry often about Assembly.

File size is not a problem: GZIP is built to deflate redundant data. Selector performance isn't an issue, until it's an issue. I'd assert that very few deep-nesting folks have run into obvious problems w/ it yet.

The real benefit to SASS, the one that should be leveraged above any CSS consideration, is how effective/productive does it make your team? There are definitely 'code-smells' w/ SASS that should be avoided, and I think this article is great to help avoid them, but no need to get too defensive at SASS criticisms. Who cares what the CSS looks like if it's fast on the wire and rendered efficiently? The whole point of abstraction is to free us from lower-level concerns until they actually become a concern :)

UPDATE:

With respect to maintainability, SASS importing/mixins has more to do w/ that than deep-nesting per-se. At my company, we practice deep nesting and refactor frequently, and it hasn't been an issue at all because each piece / SASS partial is designed to be modular no matter where it is imported/referenced.

Re: http://restrictionisexpression.com/post/15551483353

aaronwhite — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 17:03:40 -0000

Yup, thats basically what I'd want but for browser quirks, working on it? :)

Re: http://restrictionisexpression.com/post/15551483353

aaronwhite — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 09:46:15 -0000

It would be huge. Tons of work, the whole company is 1 giant catalogue of corner cases, but this is one of those "good" tough problems :)

Re: http://restrictionisexpression.com/post/13921641575

aaronwhite — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 23:42:26 -0000

Great call, thank you!

Re: http://restrictionisexpression.com/post/13921641575

aaronwhite — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 12:01:31 -0000

I think our ability to indulge our (now misaligned) natural behaviors is a problem, we're able to serve our darker impulses faster than we can develop willpower. Would love to hear how we can create a more in-control society. What are our options?

Re: http://restrictionisexpression.com/post/13921641575

aaronwhite — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 11:59:13 -0000

Awesome. Adding to the queue. Meditation is something I've been meaning to look into. I deal w/ my escapist habits by generally simplifying my environment. I own very little, etc. I AM finding it hard to simplify my digital life, since it's effectively 'infinite' and because I'm a coder, somewhere I have to play everyday

Re: http://restrictionisexpression.com/post/13921641575

aaronwhite — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 11:53:42 -0000

Excellent. New strategy: write blog posts to source amazing book recommendations :) Thanks Jsloss! Will read into

Re: http://restrictionisexpression.com/post/13921641575

aaronwhite — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 11:51:32 -0000

Thankfully, I think accessibility of information (google, twitter) helps mitigate that, but its terrifying. We are tuned to take information at face value far more than (now) should

Re: http://restrictionisexpression.com/post/13921641575

aaronwhite — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 11:49:18 -0000

Oooh, great quote, and thanks for the book recommendation, Amazoning it now.

Re: http://restrictionisexpression.com/post/13921641575

aaronwhite — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 11:48:09 -0000

I do! This blog is Ollllldddd. Doing an update soon, link included. thanks for the nudge :)

Re: http://restrictionisexpression.com/post/13921641575

aaronwhite — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 11:47:04 -0000

I think robots will be able to handle that, but consider this: if we do get to that level of advancement, we can have robotic bodies our now virtual consciousness can inhabit when we need to maintain infrastructure. But since we can 'copy/paste' our minds, it won't be a drudgery, it'll just be a background thread while you continue some higher pursuit.

Re: http://restrictionisexpression.com/post/13921641575

aaronwhite — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 11:43:45 -0000

Awesome! Thanks for the suggestion, Gareth, will try to add to my Kindle queue

Re: http://restrictionisexpression.com/post/13921641575

aaronwhite — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 11:43:11 -0000

Because I can write an interesting post in one sitting before coffee, publish it for the entertainment of 10s of thousands of others, and then fix the grammar afterwards. Why should anyone get caught up in encoding problems when computers will ultimately just fix that for us anyway? ;-)

Re: http://restrictionisexpression.com/post/13921641575

aaronwhite — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 11:41:04 -0000

Actually, I'm pro-videogames even if the tone of my post is generally dark.
It's not that "canary in the coal mine" means "this is wrong" so much as "this is demonstrating how powerful these experiences are"
Video games got me into programming (my profession) and solidified many a friendship, real & virtual. And I've invested too many hours in Skyrim already ;-)
But computers WILL kill us, in the corporeal sense, 'post-humans' will emerge though. And I do believe entertainment will be the primary driver towards that.