Building codes themselves are driven by industry and manufacturers. This has been a huge driver for the increase in size of house, compare a 1960s era bathroom against modern code and you will find the increase in minimum sizes dramatic.

> 2. Tests: "With increasing complexity your codebase will become much harder to maintain and control — tests will do it for you." Good intentions here but be careful. Tests can cause people not wanting to refactor/fix because now they have to fix the structure of the tests. Refactor means more than changing the implementation of functions.

Isn't the entire point of tests that you can refactor the code under test without changing the tests themselves? Otherwise how do you ensure that you have not introduced bugs in the code by doing your refactor because you've changed the thing that tested the code in the first place.

A refactor of the tests should be done independently of the code under test.

I agree and I think this is why OP said to be careful -- there are so many engineers out there who do not separate the ideas of code and functionality. When these people write unit tests, they are essentially just checking that the unit behaves exactly as it currently does (white-box style), instead of checking that the unit behaves as desired (black-box style). Every subsequent change to the codebase requires a corresponding change to the tests, even if the external behavior of the unit remains the same.

Yes, ideally. Usually though you have to make changes because something is not working as it should or you found a better way. If you never change the interface the code often times rots. Most of the time we don’t make the correct design decisions from the start. We learn from previous understanding and that might require to do things over.

Public employees are paid via taxes, so yes they do 'fund' public pensions.

Poster you're replying to said 'new HQ' indicating their comment was about the place Amazon is shopping to build, not their current Seattle HQ.

Right, but it sounded as if they were implying the old HQ was in Silicon Valley. I'm sure that wasn't the intention, just clarifying for the possibility of readers who may misinterpret.

Have you tried just closing his door for him?

I did math, graduated at the dotcom bust where all the jobs were actuarial (not my interest). Went back to school for EE, and I've found there are more jobs, more interesting jobs, and better pay writing software than being an EE.

I think this is extremely common. Problem is that CS101 coding interviews are common now, and EEs are just not prepared to speak that language.

That's not true at all. I've rarely been turned down after an interview.

This is what bothered me about the whole Net Neutrality debate -- you had to be 100% in the camp of the Democratic party or you were wrong completely. Here we see why there are shades of grey for party affiliation.

I've always wondered who the magical developers are that did the greenfield development of every project I've been on-boarded to. I never seem to get ahead of the maintenance grind to the point of being one of those creating the mess instead of wading through the mess.

One way to get ahead of it is to try pitching proposals to problems your organization can't afford to ignore.

Yeah me too. But looking through the doco i keep seeing the names of people on all the green field work are the same.

I think those people live the work life equivalent of hitting all green lights.

Or you delete Cortana and completely break all of that bullshit. Though it has made it so a Windows 10 update will no longer apply, which is a frustrating side effect but one I am willing to live with.

If you have the cash to be able to buy the house outright why would you default in the first place? Otherwise, after a default (which likely includes bankruptcy) you will be unable to get credit.

Because the house is worth less than the loan... you don’t have to go bankrupt to default on non-recourse home loans as far as I know.