Humans of Computer Systems: afk

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 Continuing with the Humans of Computer Systems series...

If you enjoy reading this series and like to read more, consider taking 10 minutes and submitting a response. All questions are optional. You can skip most, and tell a lot more on some questions you choose.


Programming

How did you learn to program?

self taught, bit more formally than usual


Tell us about the most interesting/significant piece of code you wrote.

A search engine


Who did you learn most from about computer systems?

open source codebases, wikipedia, specifications, man pages. so really the foss community in general.


What do you believe are the most important skills to be successful in your field?

successful as in billionaire? marketing.
successful as in stable job? javascript and css nowadays, unfortunately.
successful as in well known but not a billionaire? blogging.
successful as in peaceful? ignorance.


What quality or ability do you value most in a computer systems person?

communication


Personal

What comes to you easy that others find hard? What are your superpowers?

good api design


What was a blessing in disguise for you? What seemed like a failure at the time but led to something better later for you?

getting into devops


What do you feel most grateful for?

foss community


What does your perfect day look like?

away from computers


What made you most happy in the last year?

quitting


Work

What was your biggest mess up? What was the aftermath?

have dropped my share of databases from production. backups have always saved the day so not much of an aftermath really.


What do you like most about your job/profession?

fairly accessible to a lot of people


What do you dislike most about your job/profession?

overly accessible to way too many people


What would be the single change that would improve your work environment most?

keyboard embedded in my pant pockets


Technical

What do you think are the hardest questions in your field?

this one. seriously where do I even start? how arp works in 802.11?


What are you most disappointed about the state-of-the-art in your field?

compilation is dog slow, all kernels suck, static analysis is in its infancy still and browsers have created a new level of sucking


What are the topics that you wish received more attention? What do you think is a promising future direction in your field?

hci


What is your favorite computer systems paper? Why?

discovery of lisp, affine typing. nothing modern.


What are the most interesting blogs/twitter accounts you follow?

tedunangst, null program 

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