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Is Agile Stifling Introverts? | Currently working in an open plan office and I hate it. The open plan office seeks to solve the problem of knowledge silos where people hole up and wait for people to come to them. Unfortunately, once that knowledge is distributed the constant interruptions leads to an environment where no one can focus and formulate new ideas during the 9-6 time frame. So work starts to seep into personal time which leads to a far larger problem where people become resentful on a regular basis and burnout. Meanwhile, the CTOs and VPs who also sit in the open plan floor can be seen leaving on a regular basis at 6:00 sharp. I have not achieved a state of mental flow in over a year. If a place I'm interviewing at has adopted the open floor plan, it's a deal breaker.I've worked in cubicle farms, private rooms, shared rooms, and clustered team cubicle rooms. Cubicle farms are equally abhorred to open plan. I think the best mixture is shared rooms with private meeting rooms on a reservation basis, preferably with the private rooms along the windows and meeting rooms in the middle of the building. | I refuse to work anywhere there is an open office. Every time I've been forced into that, my productivity drops through the floor and my misery sky rockets.Employers need to understand different people work differently. Want a truly efficient knowledge worker staff? Do try to cookie-cutter their environment. Give people the environment they need to succeed, which for some may be open collaboration and others quiet reserve. When the brain is really the only limiter on productivity, optimize for that. |
Is Agile Stifling Introverts? | I refuse to work anywhere there is an open office. Every time I've been forced into that, my productivity drops through the floor and my misery sky rockets.Employers need to understand different people work differently. Want a truly efficient knowledge worker staff? Do try to cookie-cutter their environment. Give people the environment they need to succeed, which for some may be open collaboration and others quiet reserve. When the brain is really the only limiter on productivity, optimize for that. | I'm an introvert, and I've done a lot of pair programming. I've done a lot of solo programming, too. The InfoQ essay makes a fundamental mistake:Being an introvert isn't the same as needing to work alone.Introverts gain energy from focusing on the "internal world" of thoughts and ideas. Extroverts gain energy from focusing on the "external world" of socializing and interactions.So, as an introvert, I can do just fine as a public speaker, consultant, and yes, pair programmer and Agile team member, because those activities are focused on thoughts and ideas. (I don't do so well at parties or conference ice-breakers, and that's fine.)The other error I see in the InfoQ essay is that it conflates "Agile" with "decision by committee." It's true that Agile teams work in, well, teams, but that's not the same as everybody being involved in every decision. Team members on a high-functioning team know who on the team is best at what, and they automatically delegate everyday decisions to the people most qualified to make those decisions.It does take a while for a team to reach this level of capability, and the early stages of team growth can be uncomfortable and difficult, often with too many meetings, but that doesn't mean that "Agile" == "decision by committee." It just means that smooth-running work takes time and practice. No surprise there. |
Is Agile Stifling Introverts? | I'm an introvert, and I've done a lot of pair programming. I've done a lot of solo programming, too. The InfoQ essay makes a fundamental mistake:Being an introvert isn't the same as needing to work alone.Introverts gain energy from focusing on the "internal world" of thoughts and ideas. Extroverts gain energy from focusing on the "external world" of socializing and interactions.So, as an introvert, I can do just fine as a public speaker, consultant, and yes, pair programmer and Agile team member, because those activities are focused on thoughts and ideas. (I don't do so well at parties or conference ice-breakers, and that's fine.)The other error I see in the InfoQ essay is that it conflates "Agile" with "decision by committee." It's true that Agile teams work in, well, teams, but that's not the same as everybody being involved in every decision. Team members on a high-functioning team know who on the team is best at what, and they automatically delegate everyday decisions to the people most qualified to make those decisions.It does take a while for a team to reach this level of capability, and the early stages of team growth can be uncomfortable and difficult, often with too many meetings, but that doesn't mean that "Agile" == "decision by committee." It just means that smooth-running work takes time and practice. No surprise there. | "Is it time to go back to the cubicles?"Personally, I think cubicles are just about as bad as open-plan offices. I want an office and a door I can close to keep people out when I need quiet. |
Is Agile Stifling Introverts? | "Is it time to go back to the cubicles?"Personally, I think cubicles are just about as bad as open-plan offices. I want an office and a door I can close to keep people out when I need quiet. | I had an internship last summer where the interns were all in an open-air room. It worked pretty well even though I am 95% introvert, because I naturally tend to zone out everything I'm not focused on anyways.I think it's possible to simulate that, even if you aren't naturally oblivious so your surroundings, by putting on a comfy pair of over-the-ear noise cancelling headphones and listening to some ambient music. In addition to providing insulation from audible distractions, it's also a good cue to your co-workers that if they try to attract your attention, they will be interrupting you. If you are distracted easily in your peripheral vision by people walking by, then this won't help you much, but otherwise it's a pretty good approximation of being alone.My point is that as a programmer there are things you can do even in an open-air environment to provide creative isolation, without losing the benefits of having easy access to the people around you when you want to talk. |
With Sinofsky Gone, Start Menu Could Return to Windows 8 | Speculation piled on top of more speculation, Hacker News indeed...FTA:
"Currently Microsoft isn't commenting on the subject, but an article published by USA Today points to the possibility."From the USA Today "article":"The canning of Steven Sinofsky 15 days after the launch of Windows 8 could signal the start of Microsoft dealing with lukewarm reception to its latest operating system." | My prediction has always been that the start menu is gone in Win8 to force people into Metro-mode and bootstrap the tablet app ecosystem. Once the tablet ecosystem is well populated then there's no need to force users into Metro.Windows 8 is a write-off in terms of corporations- Microsoft expects very few to upgrade to Win8. So they sacrifice a bit of usability to kickstart tablets, then bring back the start menu to make corporations happy in Win 9. |
With Sinofsky Gone, Start Menu Could Return to Windows 8 | My prediction has always been that the start menu is gone in Win8 to force people into Metro-mode and bootstrap the tablet app ecosystem. Once the tablet ecosystem is well populated then there's no need to force users into Metro.Windows 8 is a write-off in terms of corporations- Microsoft expects very few to upgrade to Win8. So they sacrifice a bit of usability to kickstart tablets, then bring back the start menu to make corporations happy in Win 9. | cough I had a feeling... coughI'll just leave this here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4793620 |
With Sinofsky Gone, Start Menu Could Return to Windows 8 | cough I had a feeling... coughI'll just leave this here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4793620 | The UX is broken, but adding the start button would only break it more. I don't have much confidence in their design team, but I think they know there is no returning to the start button. |
With Sinofsky Gone, Start Menu Could Return to Windows 8 | The UX is broken, but adding the start button would only break it more. I don't have much confidence in their design team, but I think they know there is no returning to the start button. | Classic Shell is free and open source. No need to buy Stardock.
http://classicshell.sourceforge.net/ |
Bill Gates' AMA | > No Content Found> Quite flummoxed. Terribly sorry.I assume that's not what I was supposed to see? | Someone had built a web app to show IAMAs better, but I can't remember the url, does anyone know it? |
Bill Gates' AMA | Someone had built a web app to show IAMAs better, but I can't remember the url, does anyone know it? | "Bill Gates Answers Almost Everything In Reddit AMA": http://www.forbes.com/sites/kellyclay/2013/02/11/bill-gates-... |
Bill Gates' AMA | "Bill Gates Answers Almost Everything In Reddit AMA": http://www.forbes.com/sites/kellyclay/2013/02/11/bill-gates-... | Can someone explain the part about cheap kids from the stork, please? I may have misunderstood that. |
Bill Gates' AMA | Can someone explain the part about cheap kids from the stork, please? I may have misunderstood that. | Did you generate this automatically or did manually?. I've always wanted a better way to read AMA afterwards. |
Gamifying Algebra | 'My own son can get quite frustrated after performing a lengthy series of computations to solve an algebra problem, only to be told that the answer was wrong due to an arithmetic error; I am sure this experience is common to many other schoolchildren'This frustration is largely due to the fact that such a useful lesson for life is generally neglected, skimmed-over or outright deliberately denied in order to satisfy the ideologues of 'modern education'.Thus many people are way too much surprised that being right is what matters, not the amount of effort it took to get there. | Playing the demo game, I think the idea has merit. But I'm concerned that even the presence of numbers is a turn off - that aspect certainly looks unappealing.Perhaps reverse the application of the initial observation, that many games use maths, and start with a game without any figures, then, show the numbers behind it, in phases. This would create a link between something kids already grasp, and something new (numbers), which is a great way of learning. It would give the experience of a deeper world being revealed. And if using the numbers also made it easier to beat the game, it would give them a motivation; an example of useful application; and a sense of mastery.For the game designer, that initial version with no maths would also make it clear whether the game was any fun in its own right. (It seems educational aims often obscure this.) |
Gamifying Algebra | Playing the demo game, I think the idea has merit. But I'm concerned that even the presence of numbers is a turn off - that aspect certainly looks unappealing.Perhaps reverse the application of the initial observation, that many games use maths, and start with a game without any figures, then, show the numbers behind it, in phases. This would create a link between something kids already grasp, and something new (numbers), which is a great way of learning. It would give the experience of a deeper world being revealed. And if using the numbers also made it easier to beat the game, it would give them a motivation; an example of useful application; and a sense of mastery.For the game designer, that initial version with no maths would also make it clear whether the game was any fun in its own right. (It seems educational aims often obscure this.) | Idea for a simple mobile game, Gauss Jordan Golf:- Specify 18 (or a multiple thereof with minor number changes) equations of varying difficulty.- Allow free choice of standard computer calculated operations, and a give-up button once you reach, say, 5 strokes.- Keep a highscore.Could be extended by viewing Gauss Jordan class of problems as a golf course and adding other courses.The emphasis on a low stroke count as well as removing the obstacle of arithmetic makes the experience more like a game, just like Tao is suggesting. This assumes a low stroke count is a good metric, as well as something necessarily desirable - something that might not be true for all classes of elementary mechanical problems. |
Gamifying Algebra | Idea for a simple mobile game, Gauss Jordan Golf:- Specify 18 (or a multiple thereof with minor number changes) equations of varying difficulty.- Allow free choice of standard computer calculated operations, and a give-up button once you reach, say, 5 strokes.- Keep a highscore.Could be extended by viewing Gauss Jordan class of problems as a golf course and adding other courses.The emphasis on a low stroke count as well as removing the obstacle of arithmetic makes the experience more like a game, just like Tao is suggesting. This assumes a low stroke count is a good metric, as well as something necessarily desirable - something that might not be true for all classes of elementary mechanical problems. | I'm not sure that gamifying algebra will make it any more desirable to kids. I think that those who want to see it as a game already see it as a game in their heads. I know I certainly did back in high school.Still a cool idea though! |
Gamifying Algebra | I'm not sure that gamifying algebra will make it any more desirable to kids. I think that those who want to see it as a game already see it as a game in their heads. I know I certainly did back in high school.Still a cool idea though! | I'm reminded of Manufactoria ( http://pleasingfungus.com/Manufactoria/ ), which does a rather nice job of 'gamifying' a concept that's effectively Turing Machines. |
A Mac Pro Mini | Apple has abandoned any users who need real power. They have abandoned enterprise. They have abandoned video, 3D, DAW. My company, which would love to maintain our Mac fileservers and OpenDirectory, but we are being forced, kicking and screaming into the open arms of Windows Server, Active Directory, and ExtremeZ-IP. We don't need "desktop-lite". We need server-grade multi-core workhorses to run CPU-intensive workflow automation services (graphic arts, print production, high-end color stuff), but can't get them.And their iMacs and Mac Mini's? Yeah, we use them as servers because we have no choice. We actually need Thunderbolt now. But they are buggy as hell. The built-in network interfaces on them drop for no apparent reason, and need to be re-started. Three separate boxes do this: 2 iMacs and one Mini. We have actually resorted to putting SmallTree PCIe gigabit ethernet cards (Intel Pro chipsets) into Thunderbolt PCI express chassis, in order to get a stable ethernet stack. Those never drop on us. How can Apple get something as basic as a stable Ethernet port so wrong? No load testing. No desire to fix their drivers or firmware, whichever is responsible. | Well I dont think that a retina iMac will suffice. I had a mac pro for my home music studio. The point of it was to be a beefy machine that was plenty expandable had lots of disk space and was quiet for the horsepower it provided. Mac pros fit that bill perfectly. it was easy to load them up with fast server class hard disks plug in your audio interface, any DSP boards, dongles or whatever else was required and then you forget about it (that is, until you see your electric bill the next month...)I got the 2008 octocore Mac Pro and did just that and ran both mac os and windows on it until I finally sold it last year(regrettably to help pay for personal circumstances as well as a lack of time for music production) and never had a single issue with it.THAT is what I spend the extra money on, I want a beefy computer that will last me 5 years. That is what the PRO audio crowd wants them for. I would imagine its not much different in the graphics/video arena either. |
A Mac Pro Mini | Well I dont think that a retina iMac will suffice. I had a mac pro for my home music studio. The point of it was to be a beefy machine that was plenty expandable had lots of disk space and was quiet for the horsepower it provided. Mac pros fit that bill perfectly. it was easy to load them up with fast server class hard disks plug in your audio interface, any DSP boards, dongles or whatever else was required and then you forget about it (that is, until you see your electric bill the next month...)I got the 2008 octocore Mac Pro and did just that and ran both mac os and windows on it until I finally sold it last year(regrettably to help pay for personal circumstances as well as a lack of time for music production) and never had a single issue with it.THAT is what I spend the extra money on, I want a beefy computer that will last me 5 years. That is what the PRO audio crowd wants them for. I would imagine its not much different in the graphics/video arena either. | A Xeon class CPU is quite a bit different than the mobile/desktop class CPU Apple puts in their other systems.I think Macro is being a bit dramatic in that a stagnant Mac Pro means the end of an era and I call bullocks!Intel's Xeon chips do not advance at the same pace and have themselves stood still. Look at what Dell and HP are selling, they're basically the same CPUs (albeit you can buy one generation newer).What the Xeon workstation/server architecture provides is a fat I/O pipe that's still extremely important to music and video professionals who rely on near zero latency. Even photoshop cringes when working in print media scale designs that take up a couple gigabytes in a document.Besides, Apple tends to move slowly when a product isn't front and center, usually milking a design for all it's worth. Tim Cook said they're working on a pro device that will be out this year and I believe him. |
A Mac Pro Mini | A Xeon class CPU is quite a bit different than the mobile/desktop class CPU Apple puts in their other systems.I think Macro is being a bit dramatic in that a stagnant Mac Pro means the end of an era and I call bullocks!Intel's Xeon chips do not advance at the same pace and have themselves stood still. Look at what Dell and HP are selling, they're basically the same CPUs (albeit you can buy one generation newer).What the Xeon workstation/server architecture provides is a fat I/O pipe that's still extremely important to music and video professionals who rely on near zero latency. Even photoshop cringes when working in print media scale designs that take up a couple gigabytes in a document.Besides, Apple tends to move slowly when a product isn't front and center, usually milking a design for all it's worth. Tim Cook said they're working on a pro device that will be out this year and I believe him. | The one reason people (like me) still want to keep the Pro alive, the one thing that no other Mac can do, is support for more than two screens.Now, Apple already made it abundantly clear what they think of multi-screen desktops when they designed, and then failed to fix, the native full screen feature of OS X.I love my Mac Pro mainly for this one reason, but honestly, like many other Pro customers at this point I'm just waiting for the other shoe to drop. I'm not going to have different platforms as my laptop and desktop, so if the Pro goes that's it for me and Apple - if by that time there is no real alternative to achieve the same thing. This is a hugely depressing thought. I hopped on board when OS X came out and never looked back to the Linux desktop since. For me, it has never been about the hardware, but OS X which always felt like home. |
A Mac Pro Mini | The one reason people (like me) still want to keep the Pro alive, the one thing that no other Mac can do, is support for more than two screens.Now, Apple already made it abundantly clear what they think of multi-screen desktops when they designed, and then failed to fix, the native full screen feature of OS X.I love my Mac Pro mainly for this one reason, but honestly, like many other Pro customers at this point I'm just waiting for the other shoe to drop. I'm not going to have different platforms as my laptop and desktop, so if the Pro goes that's it for me and Apple - if by that time there is no real alternative to achieve the same thing. This is a hugely depressing thought. I hopped on board when OS X came out and never looked back to the Linux desktop since. For me, it has never been about the hardware, but OS X which always felt like home. | The iMac isn't a developer machine. It looks on paper like a developer machine, but when put to the test of compiling large C/C++ projects day in day out it fails. We see more failures in iMacs than any other desktop we have at work. Way more hdd failure and gpu failure than our dells or other mac machines. |
Rietveld - code review Google style | Back in November 2009 I was on vacation in San Francisco and decided to drop by the Google campus in Mountain View to visit some friends.Of all the things they showed me there, Mondrian (of which Rietveld is a fork of) impressed me the most. More so than dinosaur skeletons, space ships, 3D Google Earth terminals, or free amazing meals.I was working in a startup at the time and we did not do code review at all. After seeing the Google workflow and having their build processes explained to me in detail, I was trying to set up code review before commits at the startup too. I hoped to improve code quality with this. Unfortunately the tools we tried were terrible and so it never took off.To this day, not getting the necessary processes in place remains one of the biggest regrets of working there. Now I work at another place where we don't do that either. Too bad. | My last team switched from Subversion/Rietveld to Mercurial/Review Board about a year ago, and I have to say that I much prefer the latter.Even leaving aside the advantages of a DVCS such as Mercurial, I think that Review Board has a cleaner, more responsive UI. The "interdiff" feature (i.e., show diffs between changesets in this review request, not against the trunk) is pretty great, too.Also, as a fairly mainstream Django app, it's not dependent on the App Engine runtime, which lets you run it on any standard Python/WSGI-capable web server on any recent version of Python. (App Engine only supports 2.5.)If you're using Mercurial or Git, I'd highly recommend you check out Review Board; the initial setup is easy if you've deployed any WSGI apps before, and the web API makes it pretty easy to tie into your ticketing/CI/IRC bot/etc. |
Rietveld - code review Google style | My last team switched from Subversion/Rietveld to Mercurial/Review Board about a year ago, and I have to say that I much prefer the latter.Even leaving aside the advantages of a DVCS such as Mercurial, I think that Review Board has a cleaner, more responsive UI. The "interdiff" feature (i.e., show diffs between changesets in this review request, not against the trunk) is pretty great, too.Also, as a fairly mainstream Django app, it's not dependent on the App Engine runtime, which lets you run it on any standard Python/WSGI-capable web server on any recent version of Python. (App Engine only supports 2.5.)If you're using Mercurial or Git, I'd highly recommend you check out Review Board; the initial setup is easy if you've deployed any WSGI apps before, and the web API makes it pretty easy to tie into your ticketing/CI/IRC bot/etc. | have a look at gerrit[1] if you are a git user. it's a complete rewrite of rietveld (in java) and tied closely to git which is because the main contributor is Shawn Pearce (who is also main contributor to git[2]).[1]: http://code.google.com/p/gerrit/
[2]: http://git-scm.com/about |
Rietveld - code review Google style | have a look at gerrit[1] if you are a git user. it's a complete rewrite of rietveld (in java) and tied closely to git which is because the main contributor is Shawn Pearce (who is also main contributor to git[2]).[1]: http://code.google.com/p/gerrit/
[2]: http://git-scm.com/about | Why not just use Crucible if you are running a small startup? There license cost is $10 right now, and it has a lot of niceties.
http://www.atlassian.com/software/crucible/ |
Rietveld - code review Google style | Why not just use Crucible if you are running a small startup? There license cost is $10 right now, and it has a lot of niceties.
http://www.atlassian.com/software/crucible/ | Doesn't bugzilla (although ugly) handle the same workflow that he is describing? We have svndiff linked in for the side by side diffs, but that is the only thing missing. |
I Don't Want to be a Teacher Any More | There is a serious moral hazard faced by most administrators of the so called "heroic professions" (doctors, nurses, teachers, fire-fighters etc). The trouble is that their jobs involve taking care of people and a significant portion of their personal identity is wrapped up in this. Doctors will work extra unpaid hours "off the books" so patients won't suffer, teachers will buy classroom materials with their own money, fire-fighters will still respond to fires, even with inadequate safety gear etc.Bureaucrats are more or less free to make whatever cuts they want in these professions because they know that those on the front lines will quietly mutter "I will work harder" and pick up the slack until the stress finally drives them from the profession entirely.I've never once seen an employee of the DMV run out to kinkos and spend their own money because the copier was broken. | I think there's two sides to the story.Actually, no, there's more than two sides to the story, and the idiots who think there are two sides to the story and making everything worse:* Some teachers are awful, and the unions protect them. They also manipulate educational policy, both to improve teacher conditions (which is fair enough - that's their job), and to push the pet beliefs of a couple of batty union leaders.* Most teaching "methods" (fads) suck, and are cooked up by the kind of people who get PhDs in "education" - ivory tower researchers who can't do, and can't teach, but can publish in a naval-gazing journal.* Most "methods" (fads) require mounds of paperwork, so the teachers can prove they are complying.* Direct Instruction (DI) was found to be the best teaching method by far, the last time they did any serious research. However, it does cramp creative teachers, and it's quite possible that more serious research will find better methods (possibly based on DI, but not as anal), but the opponents of DI don't want serious research (as their pet "methods" suck, compared to DI, and they know it) and DI fans think the problem is solved.* Some kids are "special needs". Some kids are dumb. Some kids are smart. Some kids just look dumb because they aren't motivated, and some kids just look smart because they are being pushed hard, and nobody can agree what "smart" and "dumb" means. Mixed classes are good in some ways, but they can't be too big (or the teacher can't help the outlying kids). Big classes are good for the better kids, but only if they are streamed.* Text books are often terrible.* School work can be assessed (extrinsically motivated) or un-assessed (intrinsically motivated). Extrinsic motivation drives out intrinsic motivation, but some assessment is necessary. The current trend is to pile on more assessment (both tests and formally assessed homework) under the assumption that kids have already been jaded by the existing assessment, and no longer care about learning for learning's sake.* We are spending too much, and not enough.* Finally, there's rarely any end goal in mind. Or there are several end goals, and everyone forgets which ones are important. Feeding universities, creating a skilled workforce, providing opportunities for poor kids, getting good numbers in international tests, and most importantly convincing parents (voters) that something needs to be done, and we are already doing all that is humanly possible to help YOUR child beat the kid sitting next to them. |
I Don't Want to be a Teacher Any More | I think there's two sides to the story.Actually, no, there's more than two sides to the story, and the idiots who think there are two sides to the story and making everything worse:* Some teachers are awful, and the unions protect them. They also manipulate educational policy, both to improve teacher conditions (which is fair enough - that's their job), and to push the pet beliefs of a couple of batty union leaders.* Most teaching "methods" (fads) suck, and are cooked up by the kind of people who get PhDs in "education" - ivory tower researchers who can't do, and can't teach, but can publish in a naval-gazing journal.* Most "methods" (fads) require mounds of paperwork, so the teachers can prove they are complying.* Direct Instruction (DI) was found to be the best teaching method by far, the last time they did any serious research. However, it does cramp creative teachers, and it's quite possible that more serious research will find better methods (possibly based on DI, but not as anal), but the opponents of DI don't want serious research (as their pet "methods" suck, compared to DI, and they know it) and DI fans think the problem is solved.* Some kids are "special needs". Some kids are dumb. Some kids are smart. Some kids just look dumb because they aren't motivated, and some kids just look smart because they are being pushed hard, and nobody can agree what "smart" and "dumb" means. Mixed classes are good in some ways, but they can't be too big (or the teacher can't help the outlying kids). Big classes are good for the better kids, but only if they are streamed.* Text books are often terrible.* School work can be assessed (extrinsically motivated) or un-assessed (intrinsically motivated). Extrinsic motivation drives out intrinsic motivation, but some assessment is necessary. The current trend is to pile on more assessment (both tests and formally assessed homework) under the assumption that kids have already been jaded by the existing assessment, and no longer care about learning for learning's sake.* We are spending too much, and not enough.* Finally, there's rarely any end goal in mind. Or there are several end goals, and everyone forgets which ones are important. Feeding universities, creating a skilled workforce, providing opportunities for poor kids, getting good numbers in international tests, and most importantly convincing parents (voters) that something needs to be done, and we are already doing all that is humanly possible to help YOUR child beat the kid sitting next to them. | The United States spends more money on education per student than just about any other country in the world[1], and it has been growing quite rapidly over time[2]. America is not a penny pincher when it comes to education. One graph beats many paragraphs of anecdote by someone with an axe to grind. Anyway, I flagged this article because I'm hoping to see less politics on Hacker News.[1]http://www2.ed.gov/about/overview/fed/10facts/edlite-chart.h...[2]http://www2.ed.gov/about/overview/fed/10facts/edlite-chart.h... |
I Don't Want to be a Teacher Any More | The United States spends more money on education per student than just about any other country in the world[1], and it has been growing quite rapidly over time[2]. America is not a penny pincher when it comes to education. One graph beats many paragraphs of anecdote by someone with an axe to grind. Anyway, I flagged this article because I'm hoping to see less politics on Hacker News.[1]http://www2.ed.gov/about/overview/fed/10facts/edlite-chart.h...[2]http://www2.ed.gov/about/overview/fed/10facts/edlite-chart.h... | Canada has demographics comparable to the US's, but pays its teachers much more. The results are evident in OECD's "Programme for International Student Assessment" (PISA) http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/34/60/46619703.pdfA rewarding job with decent compensation and time off makes teaching jobs pretty competitive. |
I Don't Want to be a Teacher Any More | Canada has demographics comparable to the US's, but pays its teachers much more. The results are evident in OECD's "Programme for International Student Assessment" (PISA) http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/34/60/46619703.pdfA rewarding job with decent compensation and time off makes teaching jobs pretty competitive. | When you make it big, never forget your teachers... a phone call, a text, an email, a visit means a lot |
Top Stories On HN vs Reddit | "I took two numbers that depend on the size of a certain population, let's call it X. Those numbers were X1 and X2, and were, predictably, of the same order of magnitude, since they're just different measurements of the same thing (the upvote activity of the entrepreneurial community on social news sites).Then, I took the first number and multiplied it by 10. To my surprise, after this operation, the first number was about 10 times bigger than the second number!" | A reddit/HN-like voting system is inherently unstable, as some users just skim over top stories and upvote them, creating a positive feedback loop. If you have few submissions, this effect is weak. As the number of submissions, users and votes all grow linearly with respect to each other, the number of top stories and the number of stories an average user can read stay the same. This means the stream of new stories gets less and less readable, while top stories stay readable, which makes larger and larger percentage of users just skim over the top stories, and quality suffers. It would be interesting to create an accurate mathematical model of this behavior, maybe this would let us significantly improve stability. |
Top Stories On HN vs Reddit | A reddit/HN-like voting system is inherently unstable, as some users just skim over top stories and upvote them, creating a positive feedback loop. If you have few submissions, this effect is weak. As the number of submissions, users and votes all grow linearly with respect to each other, the number of top stories and the number of stories an average user can read stay the same. This means the stream of new stories gets less and less readable, while top stories stay readable, which makes larger and larger percentage of users just skim over the top stories, and quality suffers. It would be interesting to create an accurate mathematical model of this behavior, maybe this would let us significantly improve stability. | A better way to compare might be to look at the top n stories over the past m days on the two sites, and see how much overlap there is. You can see the top recent stories on HN at http://news.ycombinator.com/best.Or you could just take snapshots of the two frontpages every 12 hours or so for a couple days. |
Top Stories On HN vs Reddit | A better way to compare might be to look at the top n stories over the past m days on the two sites, and see how much overlap there is. You can see the top recent stories on HN at http://news.ycombinator.com/best.Or you could just take snapshots of the two frontpages every 12 hours or so for a couple days. | http://www.paulgraham.com/hackernews.htmlPG says that the comment quality is the most worrying part of the site ("Bad comments seem to be a harder problem than bad submissions. ")Perhaps a better way of measuring the difference, would be to parse the comment threads and compare length (PG: length of a comment is directly proportional to the intelligence/civility of the poster) or frequency of memes.I suspect this would show HN to consistently score higher, but not as dramatically as your analysis of posts. |
Top Stories On HN vs Reddit | http://www.paulgraham.com/hackernews.htmlPG says that the comment quality is the most worrying part of the site ("Bad comments seem to be a harder problem than bad submissions. ")Perhaps a better way of measuring the difference, would be to parse the comment threads and compare length (PG: length of a comment is directly proportional to the intelligence/civility of the poster) or frequency of memes.I suspect this would show HN to consistently score higher, but not as dramatically as your analysis of posts. | I applaud your effort in looking into this. However, I believe that when people say HN is turning into Reddit they don't mean that the same stories are being submitted, they just mean the same quality of stories. |
Leaving Go | If you're looking for a language that will enable "bottom-up development", where you gradually define, in Paul Graham On Lisp style, a language optimized for your problem domain, Golang is not the language for you.Similarly, if you're looking for a language that will read and write like a specification for your problem domain, so that writing your program has the side effect of doing half the work of proving your program correct, Golang is also not a good choice.What's worse, those two approaches to solving programming problems are compatible with each other. Lots of sharp programmers deeply appreciate both of them, and are used to languages that gracefully provide both of those facilities. If that describes you, Golang is a terrible choice; it will feel like writing 1990s Java (even though it really isn't).There are two kinds of programmers for whom Golang will really resonate:Python and Ruby developers who wish they could trade a bit of flexibility, ambiguousness, or dynamicism for better performance or safer code seem to like Golang a lot. Naive Golang code will outperform either Python or Ruby. Golang's approach to concurrency, while not revolutionary, is very well executed; Python and Ruby developers who want to write highly concurrent programs, particularly if they're used to the evented model, will find Golang not only faster but also probably easier to build programs in.Systems C programmers (not C++ programmers; if you're a C++ programmer in 2014, chances are you appreciate a lot of the knobs and dials Golang has deliberately jettisoned) might appreciate Golang for writing a lot like C, while providing 80% of the simplicity and flexibility value of Python. In particular, if you're the kind of programmer that starts projects in Python and then routinely "drops down" to C for the high-performance bits, Golang is kind of a dream. Golang's tooling is also optimized in such a way that C programmers will deeply appreciate it, without getting frustrated by the tools Golang misses that are common to other languages (particularly, REPLs).At the end of the day, Golang is overwhelmingly about pragmatism and refinement. If you're of the belief that programming is stuck in a rut of constructs from the 1980s and 1990s, and that what is needed is better languages that more carefully describe and address the problems of correct and expressive programming, Golang will drive you nuts. If you're the kind of person who sees programming languages as mere tools --- and I think that's a totally legitimate perspective, personally --- you might find Golang very pleasant to use. I don't know that Golang is a great language, but it is an extremely well-designed tool. | It's ironic that the "better" the language (for some hazy definition of "better") the less actual work seems to get done with it. So Go can be pretty annoying at times, and so can Java (I've said before that I find the two almost identical, but that's beside the point now); and C is horrible and completely unsafe and downright dangerous. Yet more useful working code has probably been written in Java and C than all other languages combined since the invention of the computer, and more useful code has been written in, what, 5 years of Go(?) than in 20(?) years of Haskell.Here's the thing: I am willing to accept that Haskell is the best programming language ever created. People have been telling me this for over 15 years now. And yet it seems like the most complex code written in Haskell is the Haskell compiler itself (and maybe some tooling around it). If Haskell's clear advantages really make that much of a difference, maybe its (very vocal) supporters should start doing really impressive things with it rather than write compilers. I don't know, write a really safe operating system; a novel database; some crazy Watson-like machine; a never-failing hardware controller. Otherwise, all of this is just talk. |
Leaving Go | It's ironic that the "better" the language (for some hazy definition of "better") the less actual work seems to get done with it. So Go can be pretty annoying at times, and so can Java (I've said before that I find the two almost identical, but that's beside the point now); and C is horrible and completely unsafe and downright dangerous. Yet more useful working code has probably been written in Java and C than all other languages combined since the invention of the computer, and more useful code has been written in, what, 5 years of Go(?) than in 20(?) years of Haskell.Here's the thing: I am willing to accept that Haskell is the best programming language ever created. People have been telling me this for over 15 years now. And yet it seems like the most complex code written in Haskell is the Haskell compiler itself (and maybe some tooling around it). If Haskell's clear advantages really make that much of a difference, maybe its (very vocal) supporters should start doing really impressive things with it rather than write compilers. I don't know, write a really safe operating system; a novel database; some crazy Watson-like machine; a never-failing hardware controller. Otherwise, all of this is just talk. | This is a great rant. Having recently done the 'golang' tutorial on the site a lot of it resonated with me. I have a slight advantage in that I worked at Google when Go came into existence and followed some of the debates about what problem it was trying to solve. The place it plugged in nicely was between the folks who wrote mostly python but wanted to go faster, and the folks who wrote C++. It was a niche that Java could not fill given its structure.In a weird way, it reminds me of BLISS[1]. BLISS had this relationship to assembler that "made it manageable" while keeping things fast. BLISS was replaced by C pretty much everywhere that C took hold (one theory is that BLISS is the 'B' programming language, Algol is the 'A' language, personally I think BCPL is a better owner the the 'B' moniker). The things that C has issues with, memory management, networking, and multi-threading, Go takes on front and center. It keeps around some of the expressiveness and type checking that makes compiling it half the battle toward correctness.Now that was kind of what the Java team was shooting for as well but with limited success. I feel like between Go and Java we've got some ideas of what the eventual successor language will look like. For me at least that is a step in the right direction.[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BLISS |
Leaving Go | This is a great rant. Having recently done the 'golang' tutorial on the site a lot of it resonated with me. I have a slight advantage in that I worked at Google when Go came into existence and followed some of the debates about what problem it was trying to solve. The place it plugged in nicely was between the folks who wrote mostly python but wanted to go faster, and the folks who wrote C++. It was a niche that Java could not fill given its structure.In a weird way, it reminds me of BLISS[1]. BLISS had this relationship to assembler that "made it manageable" while keeping things fast. BLISS was replaced by C pretty much everywhere that C took hold (one theory is that BLISS is the 'B' programming language, Algol is the 'A' language, personally I think BCPL is a better owner the the 'B' moniker). The things that C has issues with, memory management, networking, and multi-threading, Go takes on front and center. It keeps around some of the expressiveness and type checking that makes compiling it half the battle toward correctness.Now that was kind of what the Java team was shooting for as well but with limited success. I feel like between Go and Java we've got some ideas of what the eventual successor language will look like. For me at least that is a step in the right direction.[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BLISS | These sorts of posts are profoundly boring. I know people will up arrow it -- some sort of spiteful "Down with Go!" contrarian thing, when they aren't talking up rust -- but it isn't because the content is interesting or illuminating, but rather as some sort of activist thing.This particular piece (by a high school student, as an aside) starts off trying to create a surrogate for generics in Go.Don't.Here's the thing -- most of these posts are not about people making real code, but people making -toy- code. Where every function is all things to all people.The number of times I've needed a generic abs in my life -- zero.The number of times I've needed a double floating point abs in my life -- every single time.That's the thing about generics and real, actual world code: Your types are generally much less amorphous than you think. They really are. This illusion that everything needs to be everything just does not hold in the real world.But it is always the tiring example used against Go. Boring. |
Leaving Go | These sorts of posts are profoundly boring. I know people will up arrow it -- some sort of spiteful "Down with Go!" contrarian thing, when they aren't talking up rust -- but it isn't because the content is interesting or illuminating, but rather as some sort of activist thing.This particular piece (by a high school student, as an aside) starts off trying to create a surrogate for generics in Go.Don't.Here's the thing -- most of these posts are not about people making real code, but people making -toy- code. Where every function is all things to all people.The number of times I've needed a generic abs in my life -- zero.The number of times I've needed a double floating point abs in my life -- every single time.That's the thing about generics and real, actual world code: Your types are generally much less amorphous than you think. They really are. This illusion that everything needs to be everything just does not hold in the real world.But it is always the tiring example used against Go. Boring. | The agreeableness of Python is the reason I settled on it after experience with a bunch of other languages. I was starting to find software engineering to be a chore and was losing interest in it until I started using Python. No language is best at everything, and all the ways python isn't the best have been worked around without much bother.Go did not strike me as a language I would enjoy writing, despite the strengths it surely has in some areas. I would just be giving up other strengths I prioritize more highly. |
Giant squid filmed in Pacific depths, Japan scientists report | I remember when I was little, hearing that they had no real recorded evidence of the giant squid. It immediately created this massive sense of excitement and wonder as to what else could be swimming around in the ocean.I still to this day am in absolute fascination of random pictures that show up of creatures from places like the Mariana Trench. It just boggles my tiny brain that so much biological diversity exists.Here's a few that popped up on Reddit the other day --
http://imgur.com/a/xkfSv"And lo on the seventh day, God slammed a bunch of shit He wasn't finished with down at the bottom of a trench and hoped that nobody would notice." | This is a better link I think, it has the video of the film being aired in Japan.http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/08/giant-squid-video-j... |
Giant squid filmed in Pacific depths, Japan scientists report | This is a better link I think, it has the video of the film being aired in Japan.http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/08/giant-squid-video-j... | I know the ocean is huge, but why don't we (or are we?) send hundreds of micro-robot vehicles down?> After around 100 missions, during which they spent 400 hours in the cramped submarine, the three-man crew tracked the creature from a spot some 15 kilometres (nine miles) east of Chichi island in the north Pacific.Because that sounds sub-optimal. Do you really need humans for tracking? |
Giant squid filmed in Pacific depths, Japan scientists report | I know the ocean is huge, but why don't we (or are we?) send hundreds of micro-robot vehicles down?> After around 100 missions, during which they spent 400 hours in the cramped submarine, the three-man crew tracked the creature from a spot some 15 kilometres (nine miles) east of Chichi island in the north Pacific.Because that sounds sub-optimal. Do you really need humans for tracking? | Architeuthis, one of the "last mysteries of the ocean."I thought it was generally held that we know less about the world's oceans than we do about the space around us. |
Giant squid filmed in Pacific depths, Japan scientists report | Architeuthis, one of the "last mysteries of the ocean."I thought it was generally held that we know less about the world's oceans than we do about the space around us. | If you love this sort of thing, I'd love to suggest you join:http://www.reddit.com/r/deepseacreatures/Amazing pictures from a brand new (day old) community. :) |
Why all Americans should have to carry ID | There's a very good reason why Americans don't carry federal identification at all times, even though other nationals often do. Constitutionally, states must honor with "full faith and credit" other states' "public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings" (Article IV), so for the most part, a state government-issued identification card has the same authority as a federal-issued one, since each state is obligated to give it the same credence they would their own. (America's extreme form of federalism is to thank.) Although there are obviously instances where this isn't necessarily true, carrying a passport around along with a state ID would be redundant in most cases within the US -- even the TSA, for example, puts a state ID on the same level as a passport.I know this wasn't REALLY the point of this article, but it did make me wonder about the constitutional/legal issues involved. | Unfortunately there are two inescapable ugly facts here:Unrestricted immigration and a wealthy welfare state are incompatible (at least for the foreseeable future where so much of the world's population isn't wealthy).It takes more than boarder controls to restrain illegal immigration---well, the sorts of border controls that'll work for a country like the US (we aren't going to Berlin Wall our borders for many obvious reasons). |
Why all Americans should have to carry ID | Unfortunately there are two inescapable ugly facts here:Unrestricted immigration and a wealthy welfare state are incompatible (at least for the foreseeable future where so much of the world's population isn't wealthy).It takes more than boarder controls to restrain illegal immigration---well, the sorts of border controls that'll work for a country like the US (we aren't going to Berlin Wall our borders for many obvious reasons). | The problem with this idea is that it while the author proposes that "Those who fail to comply should be liable to detention until the cops who picked them up figure out if they're really true red, white, and blue Americans, no matter whether they are black, brown, white or shades in between." the reality is that black and brown people would be singled out for 'paper checks' far more than white people. |
Why all Americans should have to carry ID | The problem with this idea is that it while the author proposes that "Those who fail to comply should be liable to detention until the cops who picked them up figure out if they're really true red, white, and blue Americans, no matter whether they are black, brown, white or shades in between." the reality is that black and brown people would be singled out for 'paper checks' far more than white people. | I have several German coworkers. They have (and have to carry) the national ID cards described here - they look to have been the idea behind the passport card now available from the US. There doesn't seem to be anything required for Canadians or US-ians, but I think a lot of people don't carry all their ID's all the time (unless a border-crossing is intended).It strikes me as a reasonable argument that things should apply to all equally. Cynically, start with government officials, and then extend it to the general population once things are debugged. |
Why all Americans should have to carry ID | I have several German coworkers. They have (and have to carry) the national ID cards described here - they look to have been the idea behind the passport card now available from the US. There doesn't seem to be anything required for Canadians or US-ians, but I think a lot of people don't carry all their ID's all the time (unless a border-crossing is intended).It strikes me as a reasonable argument that things should apply to all equally. Cynically, start with government officials, and then extend it to the general population once things are debugged. | This is the single dumbest thing I can recall reading on Hacker News. |
Ask HN: How did you come up with your startup idea? | I’ll start. Basic process: Applying solution from one domain to another + luck.When I was working as a corporate lawyer, I noticed that both our clients and we could be a lot better at capturing institutional memory. The problem wasn’t that we didn’t have systems in place (we had email search, a wiki, an up-to-date website, top-notch on-staff researchers, etc.), but that there were no incentives for those with knowledge to take half an hour out of their day to contribute this knowledge to the systems. With size, the non-processes that work for smaller firms (coffee break, knowing what everyone’s working on, etc.) were failing.From /. to StackOverflow via HN, Foursquare, etc. there are many examples and templates of how to use karma and game-elements (e.g. badges) to incentivize contributions. Moreover, many of these elements should be compatible with the work environment as they would permit management to identify contributors (high-karma and badges) and domain experts (subject-area of contribution versus job-title). The incentive-element should be very strong: if management is on board, employees are on board (e.g., if karma matters as part of one’s work-review).The second part in my process was to speak to future clients (management at mid-sized companies), users (lower-level employees who would use the system) and other entrepreneurs to gauge whether the problem was actually a need (i.e., would anyone be willing to pay for it). | Reading widely (i.e. not just technology blogs/forums), being genuinely interested in what other people do and the problems they experience in doing such things, dissecting a problem to see whether it can be avoided or ameliorated, exploring existing attempts to do so, analysing their benefits and failings, developing an alternative approach to the problem, discussing this with people I trust who have different knowledge-bases (particularly if they have knowledge of this area), reflecting on whether it still seems like a good idea, doing some rough calculations about market size, pricing (or other monetization route), and feasibility given my own skills and network, concluding whether it is a good and implementable idea and, if so, getting to work and continuing to work long after the initial excitement wears off.tl;dr: Assuming until proven otherwise that everyone has something to teach me about the world. |
Ask HN: How did you come up with your startup idea? | Reading widely (i.e. not just technology blogs/forums), being genuinely interested in what other people do and the problems they experience in doing such things, dissecting a problem to see whether it can be avoided or ameliorated, exploring existing attempts to do so, analysing their benefits and failings, developing an alternative approach to the problem, discussing this with people I trust who have different knowledge-bases (particularly if they have knowledge of this area), reflecting on whether it still seems like a good idea, doing some rough calculations about market size, pricing (or other monetization route), and feasibility given my own skills and network, concluding whether it is a good and implementable idea and, if so, getting to work and continuing to work long after the initial excitement wears off.tl;dr: Assuming until proven otherwise that everyone has something to teach me about the world. | Three ways:
1) I see something I like and want it done better.
2) Randomly, enters my head. Like connecting stuff. This happens alot when I walk.
3) Observing a need
4) Testing out a new theory :D(I should stop doing these they are unprofitable)
------
You should try to observe yourself when you are creative and what you do. That's how I found out, that creativity is anchored for me when walking[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_conditioning]. |
Ask HN: How did you come up with your startup idea? | Three ways:
1) I see something I like and want it done better.
2) Randomly, enters my head. Like connecting stuff. This happens alot when I walk.
3) Observing a need
4) Testing out a new theory :D(I should stop doing these they are unprofitable)
------
You should try to observe yourself when you are creative and what you do. That's how I found out, that creativity is anchored for me when walking[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_conditioning]. | One project I am working on is the reimplementation of some old software I wrote 8 years ago. It worked very well but had some conceptual problems and got very bloated. New version offers more or less the same, but in a more modern way using modern standards and fixing some old problems.
I had the idea to do this out of frustration about the old code and that we had no nice way to build custom systems.
So I wrote a prototype that covers most features of the old system. Prayed to the flying spaghetti monster that my old client would love the idea and give me some cash for development and to provide me with his sales infrastructure in exchange for shares. Everything went well. :)The other project I am working on is a mix of existing technologies with very domain specific features for a very targeted niche. The idea came up because I wanted my girlfriend to quit her job and work together with me. (solid relationship since 10 years; we already worked together) So we started brainstorming about how to combine my IT skills with her knowledge about the specific niche to make something that could help people do their job better.
The initial idea has nearly nothing to do with our current product, but lead to discussions with our target group and more ideas about how to make something nice. |
Ask HN: How did you come up with your startup idea? | One project I am working on is the reimplementation of some old software I wrote 8 years ago. It worked very well but had some conceptual problems and got very bloated. New version offers more or less the same, but in a more modern way using modern standards and fixing some old problems.
I had the idea to do this out of frustration about the old code and that we had no nice way to build custom systems.
So I wrote a prototype that covers most features of the old system. Prayed to the flying spaghetti monster that my old client would love the idea and give me some cash for development and to provide me with his sales infrastructure in exchange for shares. Everything went well. :)The other project I am working on is a mix of existing technologies with very domain specific features for a very targeted niche. The idea came up because I wanted my girlfriend to quit her job and work together with me. (solid relationship since 10 years; we already worked together) So we started brainstorming about how to combine my IT skills with her knowledge about the specific niche to make something that could help people do their job better.
The initial idea has nearly nothing to do with our current product, but lead to discussions with our target group and more ideas about how to make something nice. | In one case I know, the founders wanted the company they were working with, solve/improve their product using a new way of solving a problem. The company management didn't think the idea would work. The founders had enough courage to prove they were right, pitched in many, many hours to build a prototype and demo, convinced a few seed investors and VCs for small amount of money, and they were right. They then picked up enough market share for the competitors of the original company to take notice, and acquire them. You may find this path very common. |
Execution in the Kingdom of Nouns (2006) | It's nice to see this classic appearing on HN. Certainly worth a reread. (Edited, thx tikhonj)The first time I read this article was about one year after leaving University. I graduated as a near pure Java developer and worked in a pure java consultancy. I could have recited various GOF design patterns from memory. By pure luck I was hacking about in Erlang in my spare time.In Erlang I was managing to piece together a pretty mind bending (for me) application for distributing depth-first search algorithms over a network. I was neck deep in learning about all sorts of hard problems and it was only afterwards that I noticed that I had barely missed the lack of Java-style object orientation. I was a changed man :) I am still a Java dev but I preach OO moderation.Objects are great, but 90% of the time you probably wouldn't miss them if they weren't there. Now I program Go in my spare time :)https://github.com/fmstephe/Erlang-Sat-Solver | I like first class functions. I get hung up on the trash example in this essay though. To show the commonality of verbs in a person's general understanding Yegge says 'get the garbage bag from under the sink'. WTF (Who the fuck) 'gets' the garbage? I do. 'I' is implied. I get the garbage from under the sink. Or perhaps 'Steve' gets the garbage from under the sink. These are nouns (or pronouns, whatever).If anything, verbs do nothing without a noun to do them, and nouns need verbs to do anything. So perhaps we should just acknowledge the value of traits, objects, and functions and move on. Forgive me (but correct me first) if I have missed something massive here... I'm trying to drink as much as Steve is alleged to while writing this comment. |
Execution in the Kingdom of Nouns (2006) | I like first class functions. I get hung up on the trash example in this essay though. To show the commonality of verbs in a person's general understanding Yegge says 'get the garbage bag from under the sink'. WTF (Who the fuck) 'gets' the garbage? I do. 'I' is implied. I get the garbage from under the sink. Or perhaps 'Steve' gets the garbage from under the sink. These are nouns (or pronouns, whatever).If anything, verbs do nothing without a noun to do them, and nouns need verbs to do anything. So perhaps we should just acknowledge the value of traits, objects, and functions and move on. Forgive me (but correct me first) if I have missed something massive here... I'm trying to drink as much as Steve is alleged to while writing this comment. | This is a real classic. As someone who had only done imperative programming before reading this it really inspired me to give FP a try and led me down the road to trying Scala and then Haskell. However a year into this adventure, I still prefer "nouns". I think the human brain really does work imperatively for most logical problems. I can't deny that for a single problem the functional solution is often more " beautiful" , but the end user can't see the beauty of my voice and I can always think of an efficient imperative solution much faster. I hope one day I'll have a functional epiphany and be able to write Haskell as fast as I can write Java but so far I haven't had such luck. |
Execution in the Kingdom of Nouns (2006) | This is a real classic. As someone who had only done imperative programming before reading this it really inspired me to give FP a try and led me down the road to trying Scala and then Haskell. However a year into this adventure, I still prefer "nouns". I think the human brain really does work imperatively for most logical problems. I can't deny that for a single problem the functional solution is often more " beautiful" , but the end user can't see the beauty of my voice and I can always think of an efficient imperative solution much faster. I hope one day I'll have a functional epiphany and be able to write Haskell as fast as I can write Java but so far I haven't had such luck. | Too long. An idea could be stated in a few sentences.)Java:This is an instance of an mammal of an animal kingdom which doesn't include dolphins and whales, which has a..., placed within the instance of a class Plain of polymorphic shape which has some private attributes...ML-family:This is a member of a set of only mammals of animal kingdom, excluding dolphins and whales, of small size, which has a..., located on the member of a set of geometric figures....Lisp:The cat sat on the mat. |
Execution in the Kingdom of Nouns (2006) | Too long. An idea could be stated in a few sentences.)Java:This is an instance of an mammal of an animal kingdom which doesn't include dolphins and whales, which has a..., placed within the instance of a class Plain of polymorphic shape which has some private attributes...ML-family:This is a member of a set of only mammals of animal kingdom, excluding dolphins and whales, of small size, which has a..., located on the member of a set of geometric figures....Lisp:The cat sat on the mat. | OOP goes bad when you take a centralized design and nominalize the verbs, yes. It's more fun to think in terms of trained animals: "Trash, go empty yourself outside." TrashBag >> emptyInto: vessel
|here| here := self place.
self go: vessel place.
vessel add: self spill.
self go: here
This seems just as reasonable as the English he wrote. (I like functional programming too.) |
Rate my startup: Gantto, easy to present Gantt charts on the web | 1) If you have collapsed a rollup and it contains tasks with precedents for other tasks, then the rollup needs to have the lines added.2) If you collapse a rollup, it should still be draggable in time (left and right) and this should move all tasks within the rollup as one thing. The first task seems to have that functionality, but that's not intuitive.3) Why can't you drag up and down since you have move up and move down?4) On the date picker... DD, WW, MM, QQ, YY, ALL... but where is financial year? Or rather... custom iterations (fortnights, financial year, reporting segment, etc).5) If I stuck this on a web page... could I give it data somehow? Could I provide it with some XML (since I note you allow save in that format) via JavaScript?6) Colours... but yeah you're getting to that. The templates... they're kinda ugly but you've got the right idea and people will want to fit them to their own company scheme.7) Your zoom buttons need a "Return to default".8) It's got to be said... but you really need to allow XML import from MS Project files.9) Keyboard shortcuts. Think of the power users... they should be able to create tasks with the simplicity of moving through Excel... this is what your competition is. So they need to tab to go right (rather than next active control in the tab order) and return should go down to the next row.Those are some starters :) | It's flash-based. I would have skipped the link if I had known.My corporate desktop does not include flash. Surely corporate users are part of the core audience for Gantt charts? |
Rate my startup: Gantto, easy to present Gantt charts on the web | It's flash-based. I would have skipped the link if I had known.My corporate desktop does not include flash. Surely corporate users are part of the core audience for Gantt charts? | Your demo is ugly (Sorry, had to say it), but it works and I like the fact that you can pan around by clicking anywhere. That is not obvious however and might need a hint somewhere. The custom scrollbar is not intuitive because of the coloring, I kept thinking the track was the slider and vice-versa. After playing a bit more with it I discovered you have color themes. DEFINITELY use one of those by default. The grayscale theme is super boring and completely opposite of your goal which I believe is to "show off" your project schedule.I think you should be able to pan by dragging the chart header (the months/years).Turn on alternating columns in the demo. Also use the square or round corners but not the one in the middle.Also the task tree could stand to be widened a bit by default, it looks weird that in your demo you start off with a bunch of tasks only showing halfway.Expand/Collapse should be a single button, the icon of which changes to indicate state.When you do a snapshot it is not clear what the output file is going to be I just got a file called "chart" - is that an Image? Is it a MS Project file?I'm not sure you want to use the full blow "File/Edit/Format/View/Help" menu. It blends in too much with the chrome of the browser window and you would probably be better served (in terms of UI/UX) by using standard icons for the most commonly used items. Also add contrast to that menu/toolbar (Still talking only about file/edit/etc...) so that it doesn't blend with browser chrome so much.The units on the "Zoom tool" in the bottom right corner are not obvious to me (the P and W)Otherwise its looking really good. Keep at it! |
Rate my startup: Gantto, easy to present Gantt charts on the web | Your demo is ugly (Sorry, had to say it), but it works and I like the fact that you can pan around by clicking anywhere. That is not obvious however and might need a hint somewhere. The custom scrollbar is not intuitive because of the coloring, I kept thinking the track was the slider and vice-versa. After playing a bit more with it I discovered you have color themes. DEFINITELY use one of those by default. The grayscale theme is super boring and completely opposite of your goal which I believe is to "show off" your project schedule.I think you should be able to pan by dragging the chart header (the months/years).Turn on alternating columns in the demo. Also use the square or round corners but not the one in the middle.Also the task tree could stand to be widened a bit by default, it looks weird that in your demo you start off with a bunch of tasks only showing halfway.Expand/Collapse should be a single button, the icon of which changes to indicate state.When you do a snapshot it is not clear what the output file is going to be I just got a file called "chart" - is that an Image? Is it a MS Project file?I'm not sure you want to use the full blow "File/Edit/Format/View/Help" menu. It blends in too much with the chrome of the browser window and you would probably be better served (in terms of UI/UX) by using standard icons for the most commonly used items. Also add contrast to that menu/toolbar (Still talking only about file/edit/etc...) so that it doesn't blend with browser chrome so much.The units on the "Zoom tool" in the bottom right corner are not obvious to me (the P and W)Otherwise its looking really good. Keep at it! | Probably just a coincidence, but -http://gantto.com/http://preceden.com/ |
Rate my startup: Gantto, easy to present Gantt charts on the web | Probably just a coincidence, but -http://gantto.com/http://preceden.com/ | 100% flash? No thanks. Good luck though. |
Praising Kernel (The Axis of Eval) | Kernel the language can be found here: http://web.cs.wpi.edu/~jshutt/kernel.htmlWhere the author mentions that it is related to his doctoral dissertation, Fexprs as the basis of Lisp function application; or, $vau: the ultimate abstraction[1].[1] http://www.wpi.edu/Pubs/ETD/Available/etd-090110-124904/ | I think I'll use this opportunity for a shameless plug: https://bitbucket.org/AndresNavarro/klispThis is my ongoing project for a Kernel interpreter. It's already functional and it even has documentation. It is still, however, a work in progress! |
Praising Kernel (The Axis of Eval) | I think I'll use this opportunity for a shameless plug: https://bitbucket.org/AndresNavarro/klispThis is my ongoing project for a Kernel interpreter. It's already functional and it even has documentation. It is still, however, a work in progress! | Also: have a look at https://github.com/manuel/schampignon (an interpreter for a Kernel-like language) |
Praising Kernel (The Axis of Eval) | Also: have a look at https://github.com/manuel/schampignon (an interpreter for a Kernel-like language) | I generally agree with alot the autor said and I will surly check out kernel.About JITs
----------------I agree that Scheme missed the JIT thing. Most Scheme compiler are AOT but Scheme would be nice to do research in JITs for dynamic languages. Now we have it in JS witch is more complicated. It would be nice if there would be a fast and small JIT for Scheme that is good for learning. is there something like that? I know Racket has something like that but Racket is much more then just a JIT for Scheme.About Clojure
----------------I think the author missunderstands Clojure (not just in this article). The "see the need (... of eval)"-statment was not about eval in general. Clojure has eval. The statmand was about having eval in ClojureScript (Clojure that AOT Compiles to JS) and there is not a priorety because its need is much less then the usfullness.Clojure wants to be practical now and not be revolutionary. It never said it want to be ideal it just makes the best of what we have. |
Praising Kernel (The Axis of Eval) | I generally agree with alot the autor said and I will surly check out kernel.About JITs
----------------I agree that Scheme missed the JIT thing. Most Scheme compiler are AOT but Scheme would be nice to do research in JITs for dynamic languages. Now we have it in JS witch is more complicated. It would be nice if there would be a fast and small JIT for Scheme that is good for learning. is there something like that? I know Racket has something like that but Racket is much more then just a JIT for Scheme.About Clojure
----------------I think the author missunderstands Clojure (not just in this article). The "see the need (... of eval)"-statment was not about eval in general. Clojure has eval. The statmand was about having eval in ClojureScript (Clojure that AOT Compiles to JS) and there is not a priorety because its need is much less then the usfullness.Clojure wants to be practical now and not be revolutionary. It never said it want to be ideal it just makes the best of what we have. | I've read about Kernel before, but this time I wondered if $vau is in any way related to 0 from Jot (the turing tarpit best apparently best used as a Goedel numbering).Maybe I should just write jshutt... |
Show HN: 300x288 pixel clock using HTML5 canvas and Javascript | Nice. I've got a minor obsession with alternative ways of displaying the time of day. I've made a canvas clock or two of my own, and I used http://www.let.rug.nl/kleiweg/abclock/ glued to my root window for the longest time.I like that your clock simply displays the time of day as a visual ratio of time elapsed to time remaining. Of course, at the one-second-per-pixel scale, getting the precise time of day at a glance is a little tough.Have you considered using color to earmark blocks of time? If it's 300 pixels wide, then a row is 5 minutes. Have you tried maybe some pinstriping on each sixth row to show hour marks? Maybe wider, like 2-hour blocks? I think it would give a lot more information in a single glance.Do you think turning it 90 degrees and having it progress left to right would be easier or more intuitive?
And what about the size? 300x288 has its advantages, but have you played with other aspect ratios?I'm not trying to pick apart your work, I'm trying to suggest different ways to take it because I like what you've done.
If you want to return fire, I made http://slumberheart.com/things/clock.html earlier this year and would love to hear some suggestions. | Neat! Here are some pedantic suggestions:<!DOCTYPE HTML> is necessary to let IE9 work without whiningimageData is slow and I'd avoid using it. In this instance you can accomplish the same effect with calls to fillRect.As it stands right now, you are setting the fillStyle of the arc each time but only need to set it once since the fillStyle never changes. In fact, you probably don't even have to recreate the path each time, since the last path ought to still be there, so the only thing that needs to be in the loop for the arc is `ctx.fill();`! (Haven't tested, but that ought to be the case) |
Show HN: 300x288 pixel clock using HTML5 canvas and Javascript | Neat! Here are some pedantic suggestions:<!DOCTYPE HTML> is necessary to let IE9 work without whiningimageData is slow and I'd avoid using it. In this instance you can accomplish the same effect with calls to fillRect.As it stands right now, you are setting the fillStyle of the arc each time but only need to set it once since the fillStyle never changes. In fact, you probably don't even have to recreate the path each time, since the last path ought to still be there, so the only thing that needs to be in the loop for the arc is `ctx.fill();`! (Haven't tested, but that ought to be the case) | OP here. My plan is to next render a 270x365x320 brick in a similar manner.I'll leave it up to you to figure out what that will represent. |
Show HN: 300x288 pixel clock using HTML5 canvas and Javascript | OP here. My plan is to next render a 270x365x320 brick in a similar manner.I'll leave it up to you to figure out what that will represent. | I found this oddly depressing. |
Show HN: 300x288 pixel clock using HTML5 canvas and Javascript | I found this oddly depressing. | Can someone please explain what makes this particular canvas experiment so interesting, especially because there are more interesting, complex and beautiful demos available showing the power of canvas with JS? |
Slaying dragons with git, bash, and ruby | You should really look at the sample hooks. Instead of of recursively grep'ing the entire source tree, you can look at just what is being committed. For example, for pre-commit you can do this instead: #!/bin/sh
if git rev-parse --verify HEAD >/dev/null 2>&1
then
against=HEAD
else
# Initial commit: diff against an empty tree object
against=4b825dc642cb6eb9a060e54bf8d69288fbee4904
fi
if git diff --cached --diff-filter=AM $against -U0 |
grep "require 'ruby-debug'; debugger" > /dev/null
then
echo "Error: You twit, you've left a debugger in!"
exit 1
fi | I noticed he uses the env trick for his shebang for ruby. I was first acquainted with this for Perl, and I've since more or less stopped using it since it caused about as many problems for me as it solved (funny thing, systems with the perl binary in a silly place sometimes have env in the 'wrong' place too :/). I'm kind of surprised that it made the jump to Ruby, since to my knowledge it came into use after the Ruby community had already finished borrowing from Perl that which it was going to borrow. |
Slaying dragons with git, bash, and ruby | I noticed he uses the env trick for his shebang for ruby. I was first acquainted with this for Perl, and I've since more or less stopped using it since it caused about as many problems for me as it solved (funny thing, systems with the perl binary in a silly place sometimes have env in the 'wrong' place too :/). I'm kind of surprised that it made the jump to Ruby, since to my knowledge it came into use after the Ruby community had already finished borrowing from Perl that which it was going to borrow. | For me this comes out as dark blue print on a dark blue background - I have to highight text to make it visible, let alone readable.That can't be what was intended ... |
Slaying dragons with git, bash, and ruby | For me this comes out as dark blue print on a dark blue background - I have to highight text to make it visible, let alone readable.That can't be what was intended ... | I don't like workflow enforcement in git commits; I commit broken/failing code as a safety net in case I really break it later.More: http://blog.brycekerley.net/post/1082060161/pre-commit-hooks... (and http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1669583 ) |
Slaying dragons with git, bash, and ruby | I don't like workflow enforcement in git commits; I commit broken/failing code as a safety net in case I really break it later.More: http://blog.brycekerley.net/post/1082060161/pre-commit-hooks... (and http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1669583 ) | On a related note: git-hooks seem like a better way to enforce workflow than something like git-flow which got a lot of press here in the last few weeks.Personally, I'd much rather have something prompt me and say "you're about to push to a remote master from a feature branch, are you sure you want to do this?" rather than using a new set of high-level abstractions such like 'git make-release'. |
Wakemate (YC S09) helps you kiss groggy mornings goodbye | That $5 pre-order is far too easy to do. I bought one without stopping to research other products like the http://www.fitbit.com/. Brilliantly designed pricing.It's a lot like Glastonbury ticketing. Deposits in autumn, full payment in January. This is extra profitable because in January many people are short on cash post-christmas and either can not or choose not to pay the full amount. You get to keep the non-refundable deposit and then sell the ticket/product again to another person.As an aside, any idea on how hackable the Wakemate is? Presumably other devices could talk to it over bluetooth, eg a homemade arduino based alarm clock. Will the bluetooth protocol and data format used be published? | I was fortunate enough to know these guys while they were building the wakemate prototypes, and even luckier to have had the opportunity to sleep with one (of the devices) for a week. It has made a tremendous difference in how I feel when I wake up. Congrats guys! |
Wakemate (YC S09) helps you kiss groggy mornings goodbye | I was fortunate enough to know these guys while they were building the wakemate prototypes, and even luckier to have had the opportunity to sleep with one (of the devices) for a week. It has made a tremendous difference in how I feel when I wake up. Congrats guys! | I really like the idea, but putting "(works on all phones)" on your front page is kind of shady if the actual requirements are bluetooth and internet access and third-party app support. No phone I've ever owned has all those features. |
Wakemate (YC S09) helps you kiss groggy mornings goodbye | I really like the idea, but putting "(works on all phones)" on your front page is kind of shady if the actual requirements are bluetooth and internet access and third-party app support. No phone I've ever owned has all those features. | This looks like the same technology used in the ubiquitous sleeptracker. http://www.sleeptracker.com/I've heard complaints that it doesn't accurately monitor your sleep cycles because it uses an accelerometer which obviously doesn't work if you don't move enough.There is a product called Zeo that supposedly detects your brainwaves but then people complain about having to wear a strap on your head. http://www.myzeo.com/Anyone want to share their experience with these sleep aids? |
Wakemate (YC S09) helps you kiss groggy mornings goodbye | This looks like the same technology used in the ubiquitous sleeptracker. http://www.sleeptracker.com/I've heard complaints that it doesn't accurately monitor your sleep cycles because it uses an accelerometer which obviously doesn't work if you don't move enough.There is a product called Zeo that supposedly detects your brainwaves but then people complain about having to wear a strap on your head. http://www.myzeo.com/Anyone want to share their experience with these sleep aids? | What kind of battery does it use and how do you charge it?
How long before it needs to be charged. Your website is quite informative about the science but seems to leave out this basic operation information.
Looks cool anyway, with free shipping to Belgium I'll definitly order one. |
Delivering Breaking Bad on Netflix in Ultra HD 4K | For a small to medium displays at typical viewing distances (this includes most "big screen" panels you can buy at your local electronics shop), 1080p meets or exceeds the limits of the typical human eye's resolving power. Without using a projection system and a large screen or a stupendously expensive (>100" diagonal) flat-panel, 4K is a subtle upgrade at best.When video is encoded with insufficient bandwidth, compression artifacts (e.g. macroblocking) are anything but subtle. These artifacts typically are not constrained to one or two pixels, but ramify to much larger portions of the image. Netflix has, by necessity, used insufficient bandwidth on practically their entire library. My money is on Netflix's over-compressed 4K being inferior in quality to Bluray 1080p for the vast majority of users. | The biggest problem holding back adoption for 4k media is vendor lock in. You can't get 4K unless you're on a Sony/LG/Samsung "Smart TV".There is not a legitimate technical reason why I can't watch House of Cards in 4K on my Seiki through my PC. I watched the trailer in 4K over a dozen times on YouTube.Gamers want to play games on low input lag 4K screens from brands like Asus, Dell, Acer. 4K is much more easily justifiable when users can buy a single screen for their games and ultra-hd content.Gaming PC's are about the only units with enough compute for highly compressed h.265 playback without built in hardware acceleration, so I don't understand why the market has not made this content accessible for me to purchase. |
Delivering Breaking Bad on Netflix in Ultra HD 4K | The biggest problem holding back adoption for 4k media is vendor lock in. You can't get 4K unless you're on a Sony/LG/Samsung "Smart TV".There is not a legitimate technical reason why I can't watch House of Cards in 4K on my Seiki through my PC. I watched the trailer in 4K over a dozen times on YouTube.Gamers want to play games on low input lag 4K screens from brands like Asus, Dell, Acer. 4K is much more easily justifiable when users can buy a single screen for their games and ultra-hd content.Gaming PC's are about the only units with enough compute for highly compressed h.265 playback without built in hardware acceleration, so I don't understand why the market has not made this content accessible for me to purchase. | I'm old enough to remember tv shows making a big deal about being in color, then stereo, then HD. The big change in going to 4K is that Netflix doesn't need regulatory permission or ten years of drafting standards to make the upgrade. |
Delivering Breaking Bad on Netflix in Ultra HD 4K | I'm old enough to remember tv shows making a big deal about being in color, then stereo, then HD. The big change in going to 4K is that Netflix doesn't need regulatory permission or ten years of drafting standards to make the upgrade. | This is great and all, but what are we gonna do with 4K streams when Comcast can't even deliver a low-quality stream? |
Delivering Breaking Bad on Netflix in Ultra HD 4K | This is great and all, but what are we gonna do with 4K streams when Comcast can't even deliver a low-quality stream? | How many GB/min of footage is this? I can't imagine ever being able to stream that here, where our high-end quotas are measured in 100s of GB/month. |
Programmer Competency Matrix | Funny how people who write articles are what makes a good on their programming blogs often include "writes a programming blog" as one of the attributes a good candidate should have...Hmmm, maybe my comment should read as: "it doesn't perfectly describe me in every way, hence it's a terrible list" ;) I'm getting too many 2's damnit! | I think this is a reformatted version of this: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=232192 |
Programmer Competency Matrix | I think this is a reformatted version of this: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=232192 | This may be pretty useful for as a pre-interview form to fill. Definitely not as a tool to generate a score or to filter candidates, but as a way to easily get an idea about somebody's strengths and weaknesses and to start conversation. Also, if you have some code samples in advance (which you should always do) they're dead easy to verify. Actually just verifying them is not a bad interview in itself. |
Programmer Competency Matrix | This may be pretty useful for as a pre-interview form to fill. Definitely not as a tool to generate a score or to filter candidates, but as a way to easily get an idea about somebody's strengths and weaknesses and to start conversation. Also, if you have some code samples in advance (which you should always do) they're dead easy to verify. Actually just verifying them is not a bad interview in itself. | These all things can easily be learned. Anyone can jump from 2 to 4 in a couple of weeks by learning binary trees, SVN, starting to write unit tests, and do all the other skills. Wouldn't make him less of a moron.It is the abstract thinking, akin to what is needed at TopCoder and mathematical olympiads, that makes a programmer great, not his fucking .emacs file or nice template for a file. |
Programmer Competency Matrix | These all things can easily be learned. Anyone can jump from 2 to 4 in a couple of weeks by learning binary trees, SVN, starting to write unit tests, and do all the other skills. Wouldn't make him less of a moron.It is the abstract thinking, akin to what is needed at TopCoder and mathematical olympiads, that makes a programmer great, not his fucking .emacs file or nice template for a file. | I'm surprised that I'm mostly 3s and 2s after 4 years of experience at Intel and 1.5 years experience doing side work at college jobs. Working on many projects has allowed me to focus strongly in a few areas. I'm still a "1" in TDD because I only write unit scripts after the code is written and focus more on getting stuff accomplished. |
Pop-Up House: The affordable passive house | I've said this on previous threads, the problem isn't the availability of cheap building material or designs, it's the availability of cheap land. There's no pop-up property unfortunately. | Did they leave the foam exposed when they were done? That's not really a good plan.They don't prepare the ground first? Isn't the house going to sink during the first heavy rain? |
Pop-Up House: The affordable passive house | Did they leave the foam exposed when they were done? That's not really a good plan.They don't prepare the ground first? Isn't the house going to sink during the first heavy rain? | Suspiciously absent from photos: plumbing and electrical.What good is 'outstanding insulation' with no heating/cooling? |
Pop-Up House: The affordable passive house | Suspiciously absent from photos: plumbing and electrical.What good is 'outstanding insulation' with no heating/cooling? | LVL on grade? How is that not going to rot?You could probably get around that by pouring a slab with small stem walls and building inside that, but that's not what they're doing here... |
Pop-Up House: The affordable passive house | LVL on grade? How is that not going to rot?You could probably get around that by pouring a slab with small stem walls and building inside that, but that's not what they're doing here... | This concept would be awesome as a tiny house.My 7-year-old daughter just asked me the other day, "We can build a tiny house when I'm 11, right?" So I have another four years before I need to do something like this in tiny house form. |
A Lesson In Timing Attacks | Posted 3 years ago:http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=760917It looks like kapitalx appended a query param (s=1) in order to avoid the duplicate url check. | What happens if, on inequality, you have a 50% chance of doing one more comparison operation?The way I figure, which may be incorrect, is the following:You have x options (here it is 16). x^2 gives us 256 different options for this example. However, if it's only correct correct half of the time then we have to repeatedly cut down our search which results in series:sum (x^2)/(2n), n=1 to mwhich is(x^2 H_m) / 2Is this correct? Could someone explain how many random extra comparisons would be needed to thwart a timing attack? |
A Lesson In Timing Attacks | What happens if, on inequality, you have a 50% chance of doing one more comparison operation?The way I figure, which may be incorrect, is the following:You have x options (here it is 16). x^2 gives us 256 different options for this example. However, if it's only correct correct half of the time then we have to repeatedly cut down our search which results in series:sum (x^2)/(2n), n=1 to mwhich is(x^2 H_m) / 2Is this correct? Could someone explain how many random extra comparisons would be needed to thwart a timing attack? | You should never be doing a string compare on the exact string sent over the network anyway. You should be hashing it first. Hashing destroys any value in knowing how much of the substring you matched. |
A Lesson In Timing Attacks | You should never be doing a string compare on the exact string sent over the network anyway. You should be hashing it first. Hashing destroys any value in knowing how much of the substring you matched. | While I believe the author that it's measurable over the internet.. I'd love to see an example of the code on the attacking side, so I could test it for myself.It just seems like it wouldn't be measurable, and I'd love to test it and prove myself wrong. |
A Lesson In Timing Attacks | While I believe the author that it's measurable over the internet.. I'd love to see an example of the code on the attacking side, so I could test it for myself.It just seems like it wouldn't be measurable, and I'd love to test it and prove myself wrong. | 20µs == 20 microseconds == 20 * 10e-6 seconds. 100ns == 100 nanoseconds == 100 * 10e-9 seconds. 2 GHz == one clock cycle in 0.5 * 10e-9 seconds. And that's how long that one comparison would take; not accounting for branch prediction and other interferring stuff inside the processor. It's not an attack, it's a joke. |
Ask HN: How many hours do you spend coding per day? | My answer to the second question would be to spend as much time on it as you find enjoyable. If you don't find any amount of time programming enjoyable then you're going into the wrong field.As an example when I was first starting out I would spend 8+ hours a day programming because I found it to be a lot of fun (this was when I was in middle school, after being in school for a full day)Currently I'm 23 and work at an early stage healthcare IT startup and I still get the same feeling from programming as I did when I first started, and I can spend hours working to solve all the problems that popup throughout product development. Sometimes I get so wrapped up into solving a problem that I have a hard time falling to sleep because my mind is constantly thinking about how to solve it, and I actually do tend to come up with a lot of my solutions during the 10-15 minutes before I finally get to sleep.I might be predisposed to programming though because my grandpa was a programmer for over 25 years and I was always fascinated by his stories on the job | 12-13 on some days - I work full-time and then spend a few hours working on an open source project. I don't intend to always do this but right now I have a reason I'm working on the open source project (Specific goal) so am doing it for now. When I first started I would literally spend 15 hours some days because I was trying to cram a lot of learning into a small period of time.The personal project time is much more productive, the 8 hours of work, I guess, is questionable as to whether its "Writing code" as a lot is wasted wrangling with the legacy app I have to deal with, debugging old legacy code, etc but even though its writing less code I find it far more stressful than working on my own project where I am mainly writing code.I don't advocate anyone work for an employer by spending more than 8 hours a day working unless you're being paid really well but when you work full time and want to get stuff done outside of work its inevitable that you have to spend extra time coding. |
Ask HN: How many hours do you spend coding per day? | 12-13 on some days - I work full-time and then spend a few hours working on an open source project. I don't intend to always do this but right now I have a reason I'm working on the open source project (Specific goal) so am doing it for now. When I first started I would literally spend 15 hours some days because I was trying to cram a lot of learning into a small period of time.The personal project time is much more productive, the 8 hours of work, I guess, is questionable as to whether its "Writing code" as a lot is wasted wrangling with the legacy app I have to deal with, debugging old legacy code, etc but even though its writing less code I find it far more stressful than working on my own project where I am mainly writing code.I don't advocate anyone work for an employer by spending more than 8 hours a day working unless you're being paid really well but when you work full time and want to get stuff done outside of work its inevitable that you have to spend extra time coding. | I've never been reliably productive for more than 4ish hours of code per day.When stuff is exciting or trivial it's easy to get list and spend longer, but in general I consider it a good day of I wrote for 4 legitimate hours. |
Ask HN: How many hours do you spend coding per day? | I've never been reliably productive for more than 4ish hours of code per day.When stuff is exciting or trivial it's easy to get list and spend longer, but in general I consider it a good day of I wrote for 4 legitimate hours. | Three or four years ago, maybe 10-12 hours spent on thinking about programming, probably no more than half that spent actually writing code.Today, I'm burnt out and have written only a single line of code in the last month, for recreational purposes. Took about two hours of work. Ugh. |
Ask HN: How many hours do you spend coding per day? | Three or four years ago, maybe 10-12 hours spent on thinking about programming, probably no more than half that spent actually writing code.Today, I'm burnt out and have written only a single line of code in the last month, for recreational purposes. Took about two hours of work. Ugh. | I program in spurts of 15-20 minutes throughout the day for a total of about 4-5 hours. If you're not employed in a traditional sense I find it best to write your code when you're in a super motivated, super stoked frame of mind because you'll write better code and have more fun doing it. |
Building Jabber Chat Bots in place of redundant web applications | This is an interesting solution, but I wonder if it was more novelty-based, than a product of necessity. It's true that the chat bot can be decentralized, running from anyone's laptop, to serve incoming requests. However, so could a web application. Sooner or later, it would have to be run from a dedicated server anyway. As far as maintenance, how is a chat bot wrapping the script any easier to maintain than a web app? | I almost had a tear in my eye while watching that video.
It makes me feel like we're back in the 90s creating IRC bots, but come to think of it, it's a simple and working solution to some problem. |
Building Jabber Chat Bots in place of redundant web applications | I almost had a tear in my eye while watching that video.
It makes me feel like we're back in the 90s creating IRC bots, but come to think of it, it's a simple and working solution to some problem. | So is there an easy way to set this up, preferably server-agnostic? |
Building Jabber Chat Bots in place of redundant web applications | So is there an easy way to set this up, preferably server-agnostic? | i feel this is all essentially what message oriented middleware is. |
Building Jabber Chat Bots in place of redundant web applications | i feel this is all essentially what message oriented middleware is. | I enjoyed this and quite an inspiring alternative to solving problems. |
What Happens When Digital Cities Are Abandoned? | When I was eleven years old, I discovered a star wars themed lpmud. Mudding led to creating, which led to mudlib hacking, which led to software development.I still get goosebumps when I think about the impact that community had on my life.MUDs tended to be free to play and were run by unix hippies. The line between playing and coders was thin and easily crossed; playing the game led almost inevitably to understanding the mechanics and becoming a coder. I feel sorry for today's generation of gamers, since there is a much larger wall between playing and creating these days. CodeCombat and others are trying to bring that link between gaming and programming back - good for them. | The video game community I met my wife in 15 years ago... still exists. Pieces of it died over the years (there was a time when basically nobody could get the game to run and the competitive sites all disappeared) but there have always been a handful of core sites that stuck around, and a handful of developers managed to revamp the game for modern play. One of the major groups has been running since 1996, though it had a few years of extremely low activity.About a year ago, an old friend contacted us and let us know he was playing again. We contacted friends, and they contacted friends, and now we've got a bunch of us back together -- playing every day, even going to a LAN party this week.Part of what's interesting is that some of the major sites that didn't survive have sort-of but not entirely lived on in new incarnations. The new competitive ladder is based around some of the same principles as the old one, but with some influences from newer games as well (like a Starcraft2-style tier system that ranks players as gold, silver, or bronze.)If you remember Descent fondly, come join us: http://descentchampions.org/new_player.php (includes links to many of the still-active sites and groups.) |
What Happens When Digital Cities Are Abandoned? | The video game community I met my wife in 15 years ago... still exists. Pieces of it died over the years (there was a time when basically nobody could get the game to run and the competitive sites all disappeared) but there have always been a handful of core sites that stuck around, and a handful of developers managed to revamp the game for modern play. One of the major groups has been running since 1996, though it had a few years of extremely low activity.About a year ago, an old friend contacted us and let us know he was playing again. We contacted friends, and they contacted friends, and now we've got a bunch of us back together -- playing every day, even going to a LAN party this week.Part of what's interesting is that some of the major sites that didn't survive have sort-of but not entirely lived on in new incarnations. The new competitive ladder is based around some of the same principles as the old one, but with some influences from newer games as well (like a Starcraft2-style tier system that ranks players as gold, silver, or bronze.)If you remember Descent fondly, come join us: http://descentchampions.org/new_player.php (includes links to many of the still-active sites and groups.) | The MUD that I played on in middle school and high school, Viking MUD, is still around. http://www.vikingmud.orgI think the directions to the main areas will be burned into my memory forever. On this MUD, when you reached level 20 (which took around a week) you had a choice to make your character "eternal" and continue adventuring or you could choose to make your character a "wizard" who could create new areas yourself and write scripted actions for your area. However, you could no longer take part in the actual game itself. Scripting the areas I had created was some of the first programming experience I ever had.A big difference between most of the games today that I play and some of those old MUDs was that there were very serious consequences to dying. You lost a level and all your gear if you died and it was extremely easy to die in the game, both from NPCs or other players in certain zones. Dropping from say, level 28 to 27 represented a solid week of hard leveling effort that was lost. I remember I died 3 times in one evening and almost wanting to cry I was so upset. It did make the game that much more intense though because the stakes were so high.I still login occasionally but it is rare to see more than a few players who aren't idle. I remember that the quality of the community was very high. I don't know if it was because there was a relatively high bar to join and interact with the game that self-selected those kinds of people or what. You had to have the technical chops to connect to the internet, download and install a MUD client and then connect to the appropriate server. Then to be successful at the game itself you had to have a lot of patience, have a good memory and be able to read and react quickly. |
What Happens When Digital Cities Are Abandoned? | The MUD that I played on in middle school and high school, Viking MUD, is still around. http://www.vikingmud.orgI think the directions to the main areas will be burned into my memory forever. On this MUD, when you reached level 20 (which took around a week) you had a choice to make your character "eternal" and continue adventuring or you could choose to make your character a "wizard" who could create new areas yourself and write scripted actions for your area. However, you could no longer take part in the actual game itself. Scripting the areas I had created was some of the first programming experience I ever had.A big difference between most of the games today that I play and some of those old MUDs was that there were very serious consequences to dying. You lost a level and all your gear if you died and it was extremely easy to die in the game, both from NPCs or other players in certain zones. Dropping from say, level 28 to 27 represented a solid week of hard leveling effort that was lost. I remember I died 3 times in one evening and almost wanting to cry I was so upset. It did make the game that much more intense though because the stakes were so high.I still login occasionally but it is rare to see more than a few players who aren't idle. I remember that the quality of the community was very high. I don't know if it was because there was a relatively high bar to join and interact with the game that self-selected those kinds of people or what. You had to have the technical chops to connect to the internet, download and install a MUD client and then connect to the appropriate server. Then to be successful at the game itself you had to have a lot of patience, have a good memory and be able to read and react quickly. | I spent far more time in the computer lab playing muds than actually working on homework. Funny that so much of my sophomore year was spent in a particular mud, but I can't even remember its name now (to be fair, this was 20 years ago). I still remember the general location of my guild, and the stupid forest you had to go through to get to it.At that time (shortly before the internet became known and the eternal September started), muds were this magical place where the NPCs I'd imagined in all the text adventures I played suddenly became real people, connected from some other computer lab somewhere. That was the point that I had no doubt the internet was going to be huge.My experience with Second Life was very different. I worked for a company providing software for libraries. When libraries were build SL versions, something felt wrong about it. Why would somebody want to escape the real world to find...the real world? |
What Happens When Digital Cities Are Abandoned? | I spent far more time in the computer lab playing muds than actually working on homework. Funny that so much of my sophomore year was spent in a particular mud, but I can't even remember its name now (to be fair, this was 20 years ago). I still remember the general location of my guild, and the stupid forest you had to go through to get to it.At that time (shortly before the internet became known and the eternal September started), muds were this magical place where the NPCs I'd imagined in all the text adventures I played suddenly became real people, connected from some other computer lab somewhere. That was the point that I had no doubt the internet was going to be huge.My experience with Second Life was very different. I worked for a company providing software for libraries. When libraries were build SL versions, something felt wrong about it. Why would somebody want to escape the real world to find...the real world? | The MUD featured in this article, Achaea, I used to play as well way back in the day. I moved on to its sister game, Lusternia, where I met quite a few friends which I still remain in contact with to this day.It's a shame how modern games don't even come close to the amount of immersion simple text-based games offer. Even popular MMOs don't even scratch the surface on the amount of connection I felt towards these universes. It's a she that they're not as popular. |