Nick Beattie nickbytes

Stevey's Google Platforms Rant

I was at Amazon for about six and a half years, and now I've been at Google for that long. One thing that struck me immediately about the two companies -- an impression that has been reinforced almost daily -- is that Amazon does everything wrong, and Google does everything right. Sure, it's a sweeping generalization, but a surprisingly accurate one. It's pretty crazy. There are probably a hundred or even two hundred different ways you can compare the two companies, and Google is superior in all but three of them, if I recall correctly. I actually did a spreadsheet at one point but Legal wouldn't let me show it to anyone, even though recruiting loved it.

I mean, just to give you a very brief taste: Amazon's recruiting process is fundamentally flawed by having teams hire for themselves, so their hiring bar is incredibly inconsistent across teams, despite various efforts they've made to level it out. And their operations are a mess; they don't real

This article has been given a more permanent home on my blog. Also, since it was first written, the development of the Promises/A+ specification has made the original emphasis on Promises/A seem somewhat outdated.

You're Missing the Point of Promises

Promises are a software abstraction that makes working with asynchronous operations much more pleasant. In the most basic definition, your code will move from continuation-passing style:

getTweetsFor("domenic", function (err, results) {
 // the rest of your code goes here.

Each of these commands will run an ad hoc http static server in your current (or specified) directory, available at http://localhost:8000. Use this power wisely.

Discussion on reddit.

Python 2.x

$ python -m SimpleHTTPServer 8000

Stealing WiFi

/etc/hosts

This will let you access any google owned site. This includes: youtube, google cache, google translate, google search, gmail, google news, etc.

Install the HTTPS Everywhere extension
Add these rules to your /etc/hosts file

	var express = require('express');
	var sys = require('sys');
	var oauth = require('oauth');

	var app = express.createServer();

	var _twitterConsumerKey = "YOURTWITTERCONSUMERKEY";
	var _twitterConsumerSecret = "YOURTWITTERCONSUMERSECRET";

	function consumer() {

	#!/usr/bin/env node

	var argv = require('optimist')
	.usage('Usage: --key=[consumer key] -secret=[consumer secret]')
	.demand(['key', 'secret'])
	.argv
	;

	var OAuth = require('oauth').OAuth;
	var Step = require('step');

	<!--[if mso]>
	<center>
	<table><tr><td width="580">
	<![endif]-->
	<div style="max-width:580px; margin:0 auto;">

	<p>This text will be centered and constrained to 580 pixels even on Outlook which does not support max-width CSS</p>

	</div>
	<!--[if mso]>

	require 'sinatra'
	require 'stripe'

	set :publishable_key, ENV['PUBLISHABLE_KEY']
	set :secret_key, ENV['SECRET_KEY']

	Stripe.api_key = settings.secret_key

	get '/' do
	erb :index

	<!doctype html>
	<html>
	<head>
	{% if meta.redirect %}
	<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0;url={{meta.redirect}}">
	{% endif %}
	</head>
	<body>
	</body>
	</html>

	{
	"name": "my-app",
	"version": "1.0.0",
	"description": "My test app",
	"main": "src/js/index.js",
	"scripts": {
	"jshint:dist": "jshint src/js/*.js",
	"jshint": "npm run jshint:dist",
	"jscs": "jscs src/*.js",
	"browserify": "browserify -s Validating -o ./dist/js/build.js ./lib/index.js",