MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
Can late starters in programming still catch up and land software jobs?
by howdy_asta | 2025-08-27 14:56:07+00:00
I’m entering my final year of college and realized I’ve made a big mistake — I never really learned programming properly, and I’ve never built a real-world project. Now with graduation and placements close, I’m wondering if it’s still possible to learn fast, build meaningful projects, and get job-ready.

Something else I keep thinking about: Would it make sense to have a platform where students could:

buy projects to learn from,

get mentorship/teaching to understand them deeply,

and eventually sell their own projects once they gain skills?

I’m curious what the HN community thinks:

Is it still possible for someone like me to turn things around?

And would such a platform actually be useful, or is it solving the wrong problem?
by gerardatkonvo | 2025-08-27 14:56:33+00:00
What kind of evidence do you want? I wrote Delphi for years and I'm now a Typescript developer. Is there any current major software written in Delphi?

The most important ones I found are the windows MySQL GUI, Cheat Engine and Total Commander. I genuinely was searching for more than 10 minutes and everything else is either abandonware or has been rewritten to a different language.
by NitpickLawyer | 2025-08-27 14:56:41+00:00
> I'm surprised they didn't take less risks just to avoid a narrative of failure.

That's the advantage of being privately owned. "Vibes" (hah) don't matter. Public opinion doesn't matter. What matters is executing on your vision / goals. And they're doing that.

The fact that they're bringing in loads of cash from Starlink surely helps. They haven't had the need to raise money in a while, now.
by JohnFen | 2025-08-27 14:56:45+00:00
I agree.

When I'm hiring, the accumulated skillset of the candidate, while important, is not the most important thing. More important things are: the ability to work effectively on a team (communication and cooperation skills), the ability to quickly learn new things, and strong problem-solving skills. If you have those, I don't care as much about your exact skillset because you can learn whatever skills you might be missing or weak on.
by bilsbie | 2025-08-27 14:57:23+00:00
What if the guy who built the world’s best rocket from scratch, who popularized EVs and brought self-driving tech to the masses, who built brain computer interfaces, dug tunnels, started OpenAI and PayPal…

What if he’s not an idiot?

What if we should actually be listening to what this guy says and considering it?

What if he has the same ability to see what nobody else can see early on in politics…

As he’s shown across the rest of his career?
by stuartjohnson12 | 2025-08-27 14:57:39+00:00
Incredibly common W for Anthropic safeguards. In almost every case I see Claude go head-to-head on refusals with another model provider in a real-world scenario, Claude behaves and the other model doesn't. There was a viral case on Tiktok of some lady going through a mental health episode who was being enabled and referred to as "The Oracle" by ChatGPT, but when she swapped to Claude, Claude eventually refused and told her to speak to a professional.

That's not to say the "That's absolutely right!" doesn't get annoying after a while, but we'd be doing everyone a disservice if we didn't reward Anthropic for paying more heed to safety and refusals than other labs.
by habinero | 2025-08-27 14:57:55+00:00
1. You think that because of a whole lot of propaganda. I don't think you can look at Biden's behavior objectively and come to the same conclusion. Old? Yes. Slowing down? Sure. Is that good? No. Was he the loopy basket case people liked to claim? Also no.

2. It doesn't matter if you are or not, you're parroting the propaganda lines. Primaries have always worked like this. Anyone who passed high school civics should know that. I did and I do.

3. "Russia, if you're listening..." lol

Anyways, people don't think Trump is an "agent" like a spy. The issue is his campaign and office are compromised and Russia has leverage on him. That's the real issue.

4. I still don't know exactly what you're talking about.

Y'all do know the "Epstein files" are mostly imaginary, right? I mean, obviously he existed, he trafficked teenagers for sex, and he kept records and such. And yeah, we already knew famous people tagged along with him.

But the idea that they're this spooky secret special trove of famous pedophiles that everyone in power is desperate to hide is straight out of QAnon baby eating fantasies.

Nobody did anything about it because there was nothing to do. Basically everything was mostly released years ago. Trump flogged it because it got a reaction and now he has nothing to show. It's honestly hilarious to watch it bite him.
by foxyv | 2025-08-27 14:58:10+00:00
That's kind of funny. Most fighter jets have an emergency override for the gear so you can use gravity or maneuvers to drop them to a down and locked position even during hydraulic and electrical failures. I can understand not being able to bring the gear up, but getting the gear down should be very easy.

I wonder if the F-35 has a similar gear override.
by wryoak | 2025-08-27 14:58:14+00:00
That’s a lot more topics than your title indicated. I guess in reverse order: to hell with age gap critics; you never mentioned wanting kids so idk why you’re worried about the when; if you don’t have a partner in mind then why bother thinking about marriage; if you know what your dreams are for future education then pursue those dreams, not the ones your parents outlined for you, and remember that trying to imagine the practicality of your possible futures is a dream-killing trap. If you want to kill a dream, then by all means do it, but be honest with yourself about what you are doing.

If it’s any consolation, I’m 36, researching masters programs and my partner just started taking prenatal vitamins in preparation for trying to have kids. You’re worrying about fitting in all the things people nine years your senior still think are realistic to accomplish in their own time.
by tannhaeuser | 2025-08-27 14:58:18+00:00
Unfortunately, that's simply not true. Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (in 2016 as the name implies) with gnome 2 and Unity was peak and Ubuntu has regressed since beyond recovery: snap or other desktop containers with unsolved/unsolvable permission problems, systemd, wayland, and any number of other zero sum changes behind the scene devs like to drool over yet not. a. single. user advance or new desktop app. Even the relative "progress" in browser-based collab tools we enjoyed since about 2017 is at risk as FF is left behind by the likes of MS Teams.
by viridian | 2025-08-27 14:58:29+00:00
One can be immersed in the behavior of the spectacle while also opposed to it. Frankly, I'd say that applies frequently to most situationists and critical theorists I've interacted with, including myself.

The fact that signposting "outgroup bad" is so psychologically rewarding, while nuanced discussions are more difficult, get less engagement from others, etc, is actually a critical reason we are where we are as a culture.

This isn't meant as a defense of or attack on GuinansEyebrows, more a self reflection of my own, similar behavior.
by cjbgkagh | 2025-08-27 14:58:33+00:00
The F-14 is twin engine, 40% more plane and can fly faster. Also the F-14 was considered expensive.

My main disappointment with the F35 is that it could have been a lot cheaper with modern design technology and manufacturing. That and the software is needlessly buggy. I had a friend working on F35 at a time I was working on software quality research, when I discussed the possibility of applying the research to F35 he let me know that bugs were seen as a cash cow and he would be working on bugs on the F35 until he retires. He was right. And now we have stuff like this happening.
by mapt | 2025-08-27 14:58:42+00:00
Do not decry the value of a hammer. There are more specialized tools, and they have their place. A shared property we value is that you can put the hammer down, and it stays a hammer. It doesn't Develop Ideas about spying on you, it doesn't pivot to being an awl, the handle doesn't spontaneously fall off, you don't have to re-learn how to hammer things.

I have to re-learn how to use software very regularly, and as more and more things become software I have lost some functional skills because there are only 24 hours in a day and I can't stay current on everything. If I haven't done a thing in six years, it means I need to research what the current software tool for doing that thing is, try installing four of those things and land on the one that isn't broken or some type of malware, and then teach myself an entirely new interface over time. I just wanted to hit a nail! My hammer was installed on my old computer! I knew that hammer!

But no, it's never that simple with software. I can learn 150 software tools to do specific things and have to re-learn something every week just to maintain capability. I don't have to do that with hammers, wrenches, saws, etc.

We need more hammer-like tools instead of managed, constantly updated "ecosystems", and when we do find a good one, we need a way to keep it. Because we have finite time and cognitive bandwidth.

"That was deprecated three years ago, why are you still trying to use an old version that doesn't even have security updates? What is wrong with you?! [WONTFIX]"... Fuck you, give me back my fucking hammer. I could do this task I'm trying to do in literally 90 seconds ten years ago; I'm an hour deep into determining how you would even begin to do it today.
by Eric_WVGG | 2025-08-27 14:58:44+00:00
There’s an important generational component that’s getting missed here.

Most children (American children, at least) grew up on Chromebooks. That instills a certain expectation of how these things work — documents save themselves.

To switch to Microsoft Office means adding a cryptic, unnecessary-seeming extra step. I imagine it feels something like having a laptop that's designed to be shut down before closing.

You’ve all heard the stories about college CS students who have to be told what a folder is — and those are the kids who actually want to work with computers. Now step back to the next generation of lawyers and nurses and novelists and think about their lifetime experience.

Microsoft is just chasing the puck.
Ask HN: How do you prevent or resolve cofounder conflict?
by shunicorn | 2025-08-27 14:58:50+00:00
I’ve been in tech (SWE) and consulting for 15 years, much of that in early-stage startups. I’m a founder myself and once had a fallout with a cofounder and friend. I’ve also seen other companies die because of cofounder conflict.

I’ve seen stats that say 65% of high-potential startups fail due to cofounder tension. Yet as far as I know, most incubators and accelerators don’t provide tools for alignment, decision-making, or conflict prevention.

Recently a former colleague in a 3-person founding team told me they were on the brink of breaking up. I’ve spent the last 5+ years teaching and facilitating Nonviolent Communication (NVC) and conflict resolution, so I worked with them for a month. We set up communication norms and a disagreement protocol. They’re still together and say their comms are improving.

I’m starting to think these kinds of skills and protocols could really help build trust within teams and de-risk venture investments.

I’m curious about your experiences:

- Have you seen good ways to prevent conflict from surfacing in the first place?

- When disagreements do come up, what has helped manage or resolve them?

- Have you seen incubators, accelerators, or investors provide any support in this area?

- Looking back, what blindspots did you have early on that led to conflict or rupture later?

- At the core of the conflict, what do you think was really going on? Do you think it could have been worked out with more support?
by bubblebeard | 2025-08-27 14:59:12+00:00
Initially, yes. For me, it took the joy out of development. I was at the point of abandoning it but decided to try some different approaches with it. I think it’s here to stay and felt there had to be some way to leverage it without it making me depressed.

The way I’m using it now I figured out through trial and error. I form a mental model of what I want from start to finish. I then break that down into pieces, and use AI (when appropriate) to generate the code for each piece in sequence. This essentially leaves me in power of the entire development process, but the AI helps me produce the syntax much quicker than I could without it.
by octernion | 2025-08-27 14:59:12+00:00
i just went on, searched bsky for variants of ai/llm/generative, and literally did not see one positive post after scrolling for several minutes (beyond some boring generative art slop, which isn't really "positive" imo).

it seems just the same sycophancy, but in the opposite way twitter is.

maybe my searches were poor so i'm curious what you see that is in any way "positive"; even given your example, searching for ai + cancer is just thousands of posts with some variant of "ai is a cancer."

it's so single note that it's no wonder that growth for bluesky has plummeted. it's just boring.
by baq | 2025-08-27 14:59:30+00:00
With all due respect Darktable is not a Lightroom replacement, having used Lightroom years ago the recent Darktable releases are maybe sometimes reaching Lightroom UX from back then. I'm sure the technical image processing stuff is best in class, but it's too much for me wanting to make my raw photos look better than what the camera does with jpegs by default. The addition of built in presets is extremely welcome, it should be exposed to newbies way more than it is currently.
by fanf2 | 2025-08-27 15:00:07+00:00
They care about exact slowdown factors, and they don’t like the instructions that use any of the CPU’s execution resources because the program’s real work interferes with the slowdown factor making it harder to control.

The NOPs in effect use up a small fraction of the instruction decode bandwidth, and if they insert enough NOPs they can reduce the number of real instructions that are issued per cycle and slow down the program with a fine degree of precision.
by naasking | 2025-08-27 15:00:19+00:00
> My point is that this pattern is not object oriented programming.

I think the "is/is not" question is not so clear. If you think of "is" as a whether there's a homomorphism, then it makes sense to say that it is OOP, but it can qualify as being something else too, ie. it's not an exclusionary relationaship.
by olddustytrail | 2025-08-27 15:01:01+00:00
There must be a name for this fallacy. You know where it goes:

Person/Company does crappy thing

People complain

Fanboy says "Person/Company could do amazing thing and people would still complain"

... when it's very obvious that company/person didn't do anything good.

I've seen it so many times there must be a name for it. Anyone know what it is?
by cesarb | 2025-08-27 15:01:58+00:00
> what kind of PR would involve that many files?

A very simple example: migrating from JavaEE to JakartaEE. Every single Java source file has to have the imports changed from "javax." to "jakarta.", which can easily be thousands of files. It's also easy to review (and any file which missed that change will fail when compiling on the CI).
by NitpickLawyer | 2025-08-27 15:02:32+00:00
They only have one more shipv2 right now. The next ones are shipv3. So my guess is that a ship catch doesn't make sense, since they're changing the architecture on the next ones. Would make sense to continue with limit finding (it's a disposable launch anyway, old gear) on things that carry over (i.e. thermal protection, ablative materials, crazy angles, etc)

One interesting point is if they actually go for orbit. It would take just a few more seconds to reach something like 200+km / 100km, a place where they could deploy some v3 Starlinks and gather data from the launch (i.e. vibrations, health, dinging on the door, etc). It would be a test where they get more data that's transferable to the new architecture, and relatively low risk of getting stuck in orbit. (low perigee would mean eventual re-entry anyway, hopefully over the ocean) The sats can probably raise themselves from there.
by mlyle | 2025-08-27 15:02:56+00:00
I don't think making things more expensive for consumers is going to help that happen. I think it's going to steepen the divide between capital and labor.

And most of the products we're talking about that are coming in via de minimis are not exactly competing with US "artisans."

Indeed, I'm helping train future US artisans, and we depend upon being able to get input components cheaply and consistently, which is becoming more and more of a problem and endangering my programs being able to do as much.
by baq | 2025-08-27 15:03:21+00:00
It's a shorthand for 'it's hard to get everything 100% working after a fresh install and it's hard to have it not break when it updates'. If you manage to get from the out-of-the-box 90% working condition and don't touch too many things afterwards, it works great indeed; hence the recommendations of starting out with legacy hardware so you're closer to 100% than 90% initially.
by nerdjon | 2025-08-27 15:03:31+00:00
As mentioned in the article, I think the single biggest reason was that Covid largely showed us that it is not strictly necessary to physically be together for everything.

Conferences, announcements, etc all happened virtually and things were largely fine. Sure things like networking were lost (and the associated drinking), and while that was valuable was not necessarily the marketed reason for the events.

We see the same thing outside of the professional space. Video Game conventions for example never really bounced back because the larger companies found out they can do things on their own terms virtually. Those conventions are still happening but they are not the same.

I do sometimes miss the free traveling but I also find it far more convenient (and less of an impact on my life outside of work) to do these things virtually.
by dfox | 2025-08-27 15:03:32+00:00
The article is somewhat sensationalistic. If you read the actual report you will find out that:

The pilot was not part of the conference call!

What froze was not hydraulic fluid for actuators (in some hydraulic line), but hydraulic fluid in the shock absorbers.

The last paragraph of the article and seems to be missing a few words and reads as the investigators blaming the people directly involved, which is essentially a complete opposite of what conclusions of the report say.
by billylo | 2025-08-27 15:03:39+00:00
The exact opposite: AI has made the mundane go away, so I can focus on the differentiating features.

1. I spend less time fiddling with Flutter/SwiftUI to make things look decent. 2. I don't have to worry about simple data management code much. 3. I learn new things much faster by watching AI does its thing.
by NoMoreNicksLeft | 2025-08-27 15:03:42+00:00
>Somehow, Microsoft managed to make the same feature sound and feel and be creepy.

The company they're imitating (poorly, as always) is one I've found so creepy that I actively go out of my way to distance myself from. For at least the last decade at this point. If Microsoft is being creepy too, this just means they'e successfully imitated the competition... for once.
by fluoridation | 2025-08-27 15:03:56+00:00
>but I don't think it's possible for them to say anything meaningful for comparison on their own.

It depends on how different they are. Saturn V was launched 13 times in total. Starship is already 75% of the way there and hasn't orbited once. Ignoring R&D and just going by launch costs alone, that's USD 4B (2025) to orbit 1 Saturn V, vs USD x to orbit 1 Starship, where x >= 1B.
by tombert | 2025-08-27 15:04:01+00:00
I do use LaTeX sometimes; I don't like Typst's equation syntax as much so if I know I'm going to need more advanced or a lot of math formatting I still do Pandoc or even pure LaTeX sometimes.

I think that LaTeX is mostly fine enough but there are a few bits of bullshit that I find infuriating, e.g. having to remember to do `` for beginning quotes, which apparently I will never remember to do until I look at the rendered document. Also, the errors when compiling are pretty opaque and hard to parse; I've done it enough now to where I can usually figure it out but they're certainly pretty weird to a beginner.

I think we're both kind of weird :). Weird doesn't mean "bad", certainly, I'm just saying that I don't think it's reasonable to ask a random non-techy person to learn LaTeX or how to render with Pandoc. I did my entire undergrad work in Pandoc->LaTeX->PDF, and my entire masters work in Typst; I didn't finish my PhD but all the work I did for that was in vanilla LaTeX.

Importantly, though, I get to do it all using Neovim + tmux, so I can keep using my normal "IDE" at all times.

For spreadsheets, I usually just use Calc for anything that requires privacy, and Google Sheets for anything where privacy doesn't matter. They're both good enough for what I'm doing.
by arn3n | 2025-08-27 15:04:11+00:00
I love conferences and talks and wish I could go to them more — what stops me is the sudden drop in corporate sponsorship of them. It’s been nearly impossible to convince leadership to spend money to train their employees or to socialize within their own discipline, and while I’d love to go to conferences, taking time out of my own PTO and my own wallet to see them isn’t worth it.
by boyka | 2025-08-27 15:04:11+00:00
> When we first launched native image generation in Gemini 2.0 Flash earlier this year, you told us you loved its low latency, cost-effectiveness, and ease of use.

I wasn't aware there is a channel where Google asks for feedback or where you are able to tell them that you love it. I only see a "report a problem button". Which channel is it?
by AndreasHae | 2025-08-27 15:04:14+00:00
The hate is more geared towards SPAs in general, but there are some shining examples that show that a well-made React/Angular/whatever app can have great UX - Clockify being one of them.

I don’t think the culprit apps would have substantially better UX if they were rendered on the server, because these issues tend to be a consequence of devs being pressured to rapidly release new features without regard to quality.
by the__alchemist | 2025-08-27 15:04:15+00:00
Not this variant.

I have no idea how VTOLs would work in this scenario, but I suspect it could be recovered safely in that config.

Non-VTOL fighter landings with improper gear configurations have various guidelines (As discussed in the report here) in their checklists, depending on which gear are down. They range from landing normalish, landing while applying counter-forces etc, to approach-end-resentment, to ejection.
by tasa999nine9 | 2025-08-27 15:04:23+00:00
> I think the biggest value, and the reason I personally get really excited to attend local and regional events, is the ability to have casual, non-rushed discussions outside of the session rooms.

As someone who's been to many meetups and conferences but who's generally unable to partake in "the hallway track" because of a potent cocktail of social anxiety, impostor syndrome and whatever else is going on inside my head, this makes me quite wistful. I feel like I've missed out on so much of what these events had to offer and, as the post posits, that's largely/probably a world that I won't even have the chance to go back to and try again. That all combined with the rapid rise of "AI", "agents", etc. -- none of which interest me at all -- puts me squarely in the _just coast until retirement_ camp but ... I'm not in a position to do that. I'm actually quite concerned about what the future holds and I feel like a lot of the folks in tech who've comfortably kept their heads down are going to be in for a rough transition period over the next few years.