I built a working version of the Christmas lights from Stranger Things (that Joyce used to talk to Will in the upside down) for a friend's Halloween party. It used an arduino board, a string of addressable LEDs, and a little web interface that guests could use to send messages to the lights.
It was so much fun to build and a hit at the party. I wish I had the opportunity to build more things like it :)
I disagree. Every time something is hyped that extends the time it can be called a fad*. React gets hyped up freshly again with every announcement from Vercel**.
* well maybe a collection of fads rather than a fad in itself
** I say this lovingly, it's similar to the magic of Steve Jobs and Apple. That said Vercel wouldn't interest me that much at this point if it was React-only. But the DX works for many different sorts of projects.
I think you're right. Anecdotally I, as well as most of my friends that still game, have become increasingly conscious of avoiding "help" when playing a new game. I'd never played a FromSoft game and beating Elden Ring with zero spoilers or advice was just about the greatest gaming experience I've ever had.
I suspect it's partially an age thing. Now that we're older and becoming nostalgic for the wonder that games held for us as children this is a great way to capture some of that magic again.
As mentioned elsewhere, gaming guides aren't a new thing, but for a certain segment of the population they were pretty uncommon for a large chunk of our childhood. So, instead, knowledge was shared around the lunch table or at recess.
It's maybe not quite as exciting in my 30's as it was back then, but it's a hell of a lot more fun to discover things with my friends than it is to watch a 20 minute video about optimal strategy.
Wifi light bulbs aren't fancy new gadgets. The Phillips Hue, for example, first hit the market nearly a decade ago. I'm sure there has been much development of the concept since and $10 is, for most people, very affordable. Especially the HN crowd.
I can't speak to their efficacy personally, can you? Do you know for a fact that they are error prone? All makes and models? Or did you shallowly dismiss the other person's suggestion?
While he was snarky, expressing disdain for technology solutions to every day life problems on a website called... hacker news... is sort of counter-culture here. I get that you have some strong traditionalist views based on this and your other recent commenting, but it's also important to know your audience and that some of those views aren't going to be well received here.
I'm still in my first "real" job, almost 6 years later, and while it's not quite as lax as what you describe your comment made me realize that the slow pace is probably a big factor in my own lack of motivation to look for something else. It's awful easy to get comfy.
My first web job was building websites for a rinky-dink SEO company. My boss had zero qualms churning out trash content while trying to game the system. How can Google fight an infinite sea of these operations? I'm not sure who's to blame at this point.
Like many HN users, I assume, my method for finding useful info online has always been to find a forum. You can't monetize a forum post without it being ignored or discouraged by the community so until that changes forums will always provide the most consistently helpful content on the net.
Obviously these companies are making enough money off the segment of the population that does not behave this way to make it worth their while. My question is how big is this segment and will it slowly dissolve as older generations pass and more grow up with the internet? Or will there always be enough people susceptible to this spam that the internet will never get better?
I completed Lambda's part-time web program about a year ago and while I did come out with more knowledge than when I entered, I do not think it was worth the time or the money I have invested.
I was not the target Lambda student in that I already had web dev knowledge but wanted to delve deeper and felt like I was spinning my wheels on my own. The accountability created by the program is what I was after.
The curriculum was adequate and, with one exception, the instructors were engaging and knowledgeable. While we did have some limited interaction with the instructors themselves, digging in to individual problems was the job of the team lead (a student further ahead in the program who went through an application process) and this is where things got grim.
TLs changed frequently and their quality was all over the place. Some followed the meeting protocol, some let their group run the meetings, others missed meetings regularly. Multiple times my TLs were unable to help much because the curriculum had changed and we were learning something they hadn't been taught. At best, they made sure we all understood the lecture by being thorough during our 1 on 1 meetings. At worst, they were a hindrance.
The final for the web dev curriculum is what they call "labs" and the TL for your labs group has expanded responsibilities. In theory, having gone through labs already, they are supposed to be kind of like lead devs - offering architecture suggestions, helping with deployment snags, shepherding us through merge conflicts, etc.
My labs TL was, more than anything, an obstacle. Mostly they forwarded our questions to the section lead and they weren't a particularly efficient go-between, so after a few weeks of deflecting our follow-ups we started messaging with the SL directly and were receiving timely responses. Our TLs only contributions to our project were the initial heroku projects and an unfinished code climate integration.
In the end, having projects and due dates was helpful for me but in no way do I feel it was worth the cost of tuition.
Another Lambda alum here mentioned feeling like student wellbeing took a back seat to marketing and PR and nothing encapsulates this more perfectly than the photo at the top of their homepage of a student who dropped out after repeating one of the early sections once or twice. Who cares what became of them as long as it looks good on the website!
