In the annals of innefectual, misdirected, passive-aggressive online nerdrage this system of anonymous, groupthink-driven schadenfreude really takes the cake.
Of course, here I am shaking my fist on Hacker News so who am I to criticize?
Firstly, ranting online and confronting the problem directly are not actually mutually exclusive. Secondly, in the real world sometimes a problem just isn't worth addressing; no matter how hard you try, sales/marketing/your manager/the CEO/the users just won't understand, so just work around it and let off steam online instead.
The level of helplessness in those rants suggest they are.
In the real world you are THE responsive professional, and you tell people that the important thing is going to be wrong, politely but repeatedly, and they actually listen to you. And when you repeat it in simple words long enough, they eventually would understand.
That's how it works.
Or at least you land on better terms so you don't have to make a deal with your conscience.
How they know if it won't work if they didn't try? They just sigh and go on spending their time doing busywork, spending corporate money or failing projects.
In the real world, some battles are not worth fighting. Telling people that your way is correct, over and over again, doesn't necessarily mean that they'll learn, and even if you're right it doesn't necessarily win you any friends (even among people who agree with you). Sometimes you have to pick your battles and work around the incompetence, laziness, and sheer malice of others, and then vent a little to your friends, or to the internet at large if you have none.
In fact, it can bite you in the ass when it comes review time - people review you as an obstruction to getting things done. Note, this isn't always true; when it is, it's a good sign that you shouldn't be working for the company. But in some geographic areas, even IT/Dev positions are hard to come by.
I have a friend who runs into these kinds of problems all the time. Complains incessently about them, how he hates IT/networking and wants to get out of it. Every story he tells reminds me how grateful I am to work at an amazing company. His excuse for not finding an amazing company? He doesn't want to move away from where he lives.
"His excuse for not finding an amazing company?"
I think the main reason for not finding an amazing company is the same as one which prevents him from standing up thus making his life (and, in fact, lives of everyone around) better.
I guess the same people who work at nice jobs where they make a difference would continue to make so elsewhere and this in fact is what let them where they're now.
Some aren't (some questions are purely subjective even if you have a strong opinion; other are annoying but not very important); but some are. If you agree to some idiotic measure it's in fact you who would be blamed for consequences (together with your colleagues who might have nothing to do with it at all): overspending, missing deadlines and underwhelming result.
Hi everyone. I built this over the course of the last week as an exercise in learning Django.
I noticed my friends and I tended to share lots of stories about our work-related development woe on IRC and thought it would be good to create a place to share the stories!
I'm more surprised that people actually expect us to have this in the back of our minds at all times. There's a reason they didn't go replacing all stairs with ramps.
Architects spend a lot of time worrying about accessibility requirements. Accessibility, fire safety, and car parking are the major factors that shape buildings.
Definitely a fact, but I wasn't suggesting that it isn't. Everyone knows there are clear and obvious benefits to having a site that is accessible to everyone as opposed to only the majority.
What I mean by the stair/ramps remark is that stairs weren't suddenly removed from the architect's toolkit when the wheelchair was invented. Since ramps are clearly not used in all instances they are not always appropriate or desirable.
The same goes with web design, which is as much art as is architecture. Not all sites are going to select between a limited range of colors to cater to a relative few if those colors happen to clash horribly with their intended design.
But if you've only space for stairs or ramps, then you'd have to use a ramp, which everyone can use, rather than stairs, which most but not all people can use. Similarly, if you can only have one colour scheme, you ought to be picking one which everyone can read, not just most people. It's not as if it inconveniences non-colour-blind people.
It's not always the case that you would choose a ramp over stairs given the choice of only one or the other. For example, there aren't many two-story homes that have a ramp leading to the second story. (Not to say they don't exist, just that they are a glaring exception.) That's what I mean by not always appropriate or desirable.
I feel I might be getting astray here. I simply think it's odd to impose on--what is as much an art form as it is a medium for communication--the restriction of only being able to use a certain color scheme. I'd be bummed out.
Luckily you don't have to sacrifice any aesthectics. SparkFun does a good job of making their stock status icons accessible by employing a combination of color and shape to help color-blind people recognize the status easier.
I'm sure colourblind people would be even more "bummed out" that your design was unusable. Since, as you go on to mentioned, you don't have to sacrifice aesthetics for the sake of accessibility, I don't see why accessible design would be a problem.
While I take your point that ramps in particular aren't always appropriate, that doesn't mean that accessible design in general isn't.
I've toured an older apartment building (3-4 stories, 1920s, quarter city block) that had a ramp instead of stairs + elevator. It worked surprisingly well.
Ramps aren't actually accessible to everyone - especially for older folks, short steps and flat sections are easier to navigate than a continuous gradient.
Not quite. Your rate limiting seems to be cookie based, which makes it easy for someone to circumvent just by replaying their initial request (or by deleting the cookie you set).
Of course, here I am shaking my fist on Hacker News so who am I to criticize?