skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I think it is quite mistaken to put brevity above everything else. For a 100-year language, presumably with corresponding 100-year codebases, surely the promotion of readable and refactorable source code would be the key. Macro systems already provide a means toward brevity - whatever the language itself does becomes inconsequential given that.
I'm sure they lose sleep over it.
I think the guy's got a valid point, although perhaps not related directly to the "quantity" of work that you do. The real message here is "Follow this rule if you want to succeed: Whenever you're about to complain about something you haven't acheived, do something productive towards achieving it".
Cats domesticated humans
The question has already been asked on yc news ;-)

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=104802
I have generally felt that short programs feel more elegant and enjoyable -- as long as the "flow" of the program is clear immediately by looking at it. So PG's emphasis on brevity is correct, I think.

The other problems people talk about (make this refactorable, etc. etc.) are essentially problems which arise when we transition from a small code base to a large one. And to have any insight about that, I suspect we will actually need to first build something truly large in Arc. Without doing that, arguments from both sides will just be fanciful and sensationalistic blog crud.

New languages are designed so that we can think differently. Let's first try to honestly think about such an artifact and see if we can express it easily using Arc. Hack first, folks, then talk.
Guy Kawasaki interviewed about Truemors on "On The Road With iV"
I'm sure http://www.longbets.org/2 seemed reasonable when it was made but not that it's 2008 it's not so clear. Who gets to choose the keywords?
On the other hand, all the areas that Yahoo is currently good at could potentially be up for grabs again. There is a real risk of Flickr, Delicious and other 'hot properties' being neglected or ruined in the long run by Microsoft. Think of the great lead Hotmail had before being acquired by Microsoft and what it has achieved since. This can only be good for startups.
yes :p
Perhaps you should try reading one not written in English?
Numbrosia doesn't work properly in my browser (Opera). All the cells are empty.

Heres a picture: http://i260.photobucket.com/albums/ii23/numbrosiaopera/Opera...
Watch out for airplane stats that count accidents/mile. Accidents/hour is a much more relevant measure.
bingo. the japanese don't like unicode.
What a stupid argument. Instead of having 3 chances in a million, now you'll have 2.

Maybe startups would be better off if they just forgot about acquistion as an exit strategy and concentrated more on building a sustainable business up front.
4 Simple Habits to Power Up Your Negotiation
I wonder how business jets and very light jets compare to big airliners of similar ranges.
Arc-ish web programming in Python
10 Steps to Making Money from Smart Ideas
Well, to my understanding, the first one is pretty obvious and it was covered already here. But definitely I'd like to see the types of answers for the second one. ;)
My answer to number 2:

Kevin has discovered the universe's greatest civilization: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Attractor

It is definitely one of the less important questions on the application; I think PG said once I this forum that he was the only one that really cared about it out of the partners.
the Joel Spolsky one is really good to listen to. He has some good advice.
An anonymous ex-employee? 1 of 14600? That may or may not know anything about any Microsoft teams at all? Meh.
Just counting the tokens in the codetree is not an acceptable measure of brevity, because it implies that adding primitives to a language always makes it more powerful as long it makes your application shorter just once.

But adding primitives has a cost too. You could just have let, or you could have a let for one value, one for more values, one for more values initialized as nil, or as 0, or as an empty string, etc.

In Ruby I write expressions like this a lot:
condition ? string : ""
I'd like to say:
condition &&? string

This would make my applications shorter, but, I claim, less readable and no more powerful.

To measure power, it is not enough to look at succinctness - you must hold something else constant too.
It doesn't look like whoever wrote that has ever been involved in a startup.

Following the advice given in the article will give you tons of paperwork, and lots of stuff to do that isn't important.

Spend your limited resources wisely: build a product.
"50x as many readers as the paper, and about 1/50th the revenue"

The question, of course, is how do they fix this problem...not "How do we continue to pretend that the print business will always be there?"

They've got a great technology team on the ground--see some of the recent Open Source announcements from them. But, obviously, they don't know how to make money on those 50x readers. I don't either...but they're going to have to figure it out, or die a slow death.
Ten Most Wanted Design Bugs
Qi is just a little too out there for me. All variables uppercase? Autoquoting symbols? The bizarre list syntax?

I do like the built-in partial application as well as pattern-matching. But basically it feels like Prolog with a more Lispy syntax.
Eureka - It Really Takes Years of Hard Work
Non-obvious winners and losers in Microsoft Yahoo Deal
Definitely worth a read.

Bustes the myth that some people just have good ideas and make millions on them.

Unfortunately it's all about hard work. :-(
Everything you should know about me as an entrepreneur you could learn from my OB/GYN
You must remember the authors are government IP bureaucrats. These are the people who make IP lawyers look exciting and rational.

IP Australia would NEVER suggest that people actually DO SOMETHING without spending $100K on legal and consultants fees.

They would know what an innovation was if it bit them on the bum. They just do not get it.

I have been trying to teach people how to do a startups for nearly 20 years. (yes, I am old)
Richard Hayes
RHI
First look: Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) alpha 4
Take the C++ Challenge (entries will be judged by quality rather than fewness of lines.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Id_Tech_4

Take the Java Challenge (entries will be judged by quarterly revenue, rather than fewness of lines)

http://www.ebay.com
I think Tog wanders away from the "design bugs" topic but here's his list:

- Identical controls used for asymmetrical weapons systems, with insufficient mode feedback.

- If the computer loses power for more than a few thousandths of a second, it throws everything away.

- Nine separate and distinct design bugs in the OSX Dock.

- Designers offer no way for users to discover why a given menu or option has been dimmed (grayed out), nor how to turn it back on.

- 15 Dec 2008 sorts as being before 2 Jan 1900.

- Many browsers disallow entry of spaces & other normal human-language characters into web addresses. The rest do inappropriate things with them.

- Weird formats for standardized data.

- ecommerce sites are making it as difficult to buy products as humanly possible.

- "Smart" functions often make the wrong decisions.

- Focus stealing.
Greenspun has some data: http://philip.greenspun.com/flying/safety
How about releasing the source to news.yc so we can see how terse it is for a non-trivial application :)
I will eventually, but first I have to abstract out all the news.yc-specific stuff.
I don't often say this, but you're just plain wrong.

The reason to invest in teams and markets is because products change dramatically and often in early stage startups. Here's a quote from Fred Wilson (one of the top consumer VCs, in terms of performance):

aEURoeaEUR|Of the 26 companies that I consider realized or effectively realized in my personal track record, 17 of them made complete transformations or partial transformations of their businesses between the time we invested and the time we sold. That means there a 2/3 chance youaEURXll have to significantly reinvent your business between the time you take a venture capital investment and when you exit your business.aEURX

Regarding barrier to entry, I believe that phrase refers to the difficulty in starting the business-- not running it once it's successful. Of course Flickr and Digg are expensive to run at this point. But a good hacker or three could duplicate the core featureset in a few hard weeks of coding.
Bob Metcalfe: http://tinyurl.com/3yqsb6

"1. Selling Matters

I have a six-story townhouse in Boston overlooking MIT on the Charles River. I often invite young engineers and would-be entrepreneurs over to schmooze. Many of them tell me my townhouse is beautiful and they hope to invent something like Ethernet that will get them such a house.

The picture they have in their heads is of me lounging around on the beanbag chairs in a conference room at Xerox PARC in 1973. They see me having this idea for a computer network and submitting it as an invention proposal to Xerox. Then they envision me putting my feet up and letting the royalties roll in until I have enough to come up with the down payment on the townhouse with the river view.

My picture-the actual picture-is different. It's the picture of innovation rather than invention, the weed instead of the flower. In my picture it's the dead of winter and I am in the dark in a Ramada Inn in Schenectady, New York. A telephone is ringing with my wake-up call at 6 a.m., which is 3 a.m. in California, where I flew in from last night. I don't know yet where I am, or where that damn ringing is coming from, but within the hour I'll be in front of hostile strangers selling them on me, my company, and its strange products, which they have no idea they need.

If I persist, selling like this for 10 years, and I do it better and better each time, and I build a team to do everything else better and better each time, then I get the townhouse. Not because of any flowery flash of genius in some academic hothouse.

Most engineers don't understand that selling matters. They think that on the food chain of life, salespeople are below green slime. They don't understand that nothing happens until something gets sold. The way I think about it is that there are three sets of people in the world. There is the set of people who will buy your products no matter what (think of your mother). There's the set who will never buy your products (think of your competitors). Both are much smaller than the set of people who will buy your products if the products are competently sold to them. That vast middle set is why sales is so important, and it represents one of the key differences between invention, which comes up with a brilliant new idea, and innovation, which gets that inspiration out into the world.

Sales may not matter in invention, but it matters-in a very big way-in innovation."
Hacking real world: 200 people "frozen" in NY Grand Central NY
Microsoft plus Yahoo Strategic Assets in Email
I wonder how many had their wallets lifted. It would be fun to see them wakeup to defend their possessions. Hacking hacking the real world.
The idea behind Arc seems to be to create a new language to stand the test of time. The problem I'm having with this challenge, and Arc in general, is that it's very domain specific.

Now, lisp /scheme is really great at making DSLs. This example makes me think that Arc isn't a new all-purpose language, but rather a DSL language that can easily be modified to withstand criticism. "It doesn't have feature x!!!" ...2 weeks later... "Well, it does now."

I'm not saying that DSLs are insignificant, or that Arc's creation was trivial, but when examples like this are used, it feels more like a framework than a new paradigm. I think most Python/Ruby/Haskell/(modern language) hackers could fairly easily implement a library to do what Arc does in about as many lines, but they wouldn't call it a new language.
Giants can fail. That is a very important message for entrepreneurs, shown in a huge blinking neon sign# by this potential deal. The question isn't just "who will buy me" or "what if I'm copied by a giant", but also, "can I beat the giant?"

You can.

# remember that huge neon Yahoo sign on Houston in Manhattan? I do :)
"Maybe startups would be better off if they just forgot about acquistion as an exit strategy and concentrated more on building a sustainable business up front." -- Lol, so now all those useles widget startups will be screwed.....

back to the basics.
I'm not seeing the connection between the title and the article?
The same group dressed with blue polo shirts and khaki and entered in a Best Buy. Security guards and managers thought it was some kind of elaborate Thomas-Crown-like heist.
Microsoft, Intel, etc. fear that the next hundred million computers sold won't run Windows and won't be Pentium 4 SUV-gas guzzlers but economical, efficient vehicles that transport adults and children alike on the information superhighway (did I really just say information superhighway?)
Anyone have an Eeeeee PC? They sound really interesting. They put to the test the idea all you need is a constant connection to the web to do all of your work today. I generally develop with telnet + Emacs over XWindows, anyways.
A few people have emailed me already, which is great! For the sake of saying so more directly, anyone who is interested in trying out testomatix when it launches can email me at ebeland at gmail.com.
people were calling websites properties back in the mid 90's.

developers : properties :: web developers : web properties
Am I the only person that doesn't like the brown?
That's really neat. Nice work.
All languages are not created equal
Better than free
Great post, lisper.
What's the connection between the link and the url, you may ask?

Well, have you heard, or perhaps made, the insightful claim that all languages are essentially the same since they all boil down to machine code?

In one sense this is correct, but in the same sense that everything in the world is the same because there are really only colliding atoms (quanta changing energy levels, or what have you). Yet, we still think there is such a thing as a "thing."

Why is this? To cut a long story short, I submit the above linked Kolmogorov complexity is mathematical proof of the existence of "things." To bring this back into the CS realm, pg has said the only way to get the power of lisp in another language is to essentially recreate lisp in said language. So, if it is coherent to equate a language to a set of specific algorithms or programs, then it is a short hop to say certain programs are irreducible (i.e. Kolmogorov complex) and are therefore not just machine code.

No matter the method or number of numbers a computer cranks through, it cannot recognize these special programs without beginning with them (yes, very similar to Godel's undecidable sentences). And thus, one distinct k-complex computer language cannot eclipse another without already containing the k-programs of, and therefore being, the other.

What say you?
You're not alone.
Languages are about a powerful set of orthogonal primitives (types) and I see pg trying to distill web primitives in a language. I haven't thought enough to say whether there is such a thing as a web primitive truly orthogonal to standard types, though. But, I think it's an interesting question.

I'm sure someone has addressed this very well, but I'm not sure where to look. Anyone happen to know?
Neither are you.
You might note that the links to the wiki require a username/password. This appears to be a private area for ThePoint.
Eric Raymond suggests that hackers prefer cats rather than dogs ( http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/miscellaneous.html ). Do you agree? I do.
Thank god for this. Railsconf '07 was awful.
> Anyway, if it's such a problem, there's nothing to say you can't put parentheses around every operation in infix notation, at least in any language that I know of!

Most of us have to read code written by other people. Those other people don't have exactly the same precedence defense habits that we do.

No, we don't have to end up in the nasty middle ground where the paretheization is inconsistent and buggy, but we do. Since the "infix is good" theories and argument predict otherwise, how much weight should we give them?
It's basically secure, p2p collaboration. You have spaces with tools that serve different functions, such as discussion, file-sharing, instant messaging, etc. You invite people to a space and collaborate using the tools.
Yes. I know more hackers who own cats than own dogs. However, I'm acquainted with ESR and we have acquaintances in common, so I'm not really an independent data point.
apl for one.

And then there's associativity. It doesn't much matter for * and +, but it matters a lot for / and -, and if you think that * and / have the same precedence, it matters for .

And, you're continuing to ignore the fact that there are far more infix operators. Even if infix worked for +-/, that doesn't tell us that it works when there's .,->,<, &, ?, %, $, #, @, ~, ^, |, \, =, and so on (such as digraphs).

No language that uses infix has resisted the temptation to extend it past the point where it causes more problems than it solves.
He's kind of late to the party, given that others have been pointing out the various problems with the NYT for years.

The main problem they have is that they can no longer truly frame themselves as the "newspaper of record".

They have been too partisan for too long on the political front, and the quality of their writing has declined too far, to be taken seriously as the "best" newspaper.

The purple prose, the injection of the writer's too-cute witticisms and observations into what should be factual reporting, and their sometimes quite odd choices of what to run on the front page, have finally caught up with them.
My process has only 3 steps:

1: Cut a hole in a box.
2: Put your junk in that box.
3: Make her open the box.

And that's the way you do it!
Apple losing battle to keep iPhones 'locked'
Yahoo says Microsoft bid review may take time
The Next 25 Years in Technology
Great post indeed.

Also, APL is some crazy shit.
I found this quote (from its wikipedia page) interesting:

"Advocates of APL also claim that they are far more productive with APL than with more conventional computer languages, and that working software can be implemented in far less time and with far fewer programmers than using other technology. APL lets an individual solve harder problems faster. Also, being compact and terse, APL lends itself well to larger scale software development as complexity arising from a large number of lines of code can be dramatically reduced. Many APL advocates and practitioners view programming in standard programming languages, such as COBOL and Java, as comparatively tedious."
I didn't believe his bit about ryanair so I had to go check it out myself. Ryanair.com A one way flight Dublin to Rome costs 0.01 EUR plus 22.74 EUR for taxes/fees
Here's a Scheme version. (Gauche, with a web framework Kahua):

(define-entry (said)
(define (page . s) `((html (body ,@s))))
(page
(form/cont:
(@@: (cont (entry-lambda (:keyword foo)
(page (a/cont: (@@: (cont (entry-lambda () (page "You said: " foo))))
"click here")))))
(input: (@: (name "foo")))
(input: (@: (type "submit"))))))

I'm defeated. I admit Arc is quite optimized for web app, at least.

Now, beyond a certain point, optimization becomes specialization.
It's like compression. The more you know about the domain, the shorter
you make the frequent patterns, and the net amount of code gets smaller.
But how do you know you're not overspecializing?

Some of Lispers, including me, have this fear for overspecialization.
Reading arc does have an effect to cure that. I see some nice
abstractions in arc which I'd like to steal from.

I'm more curious, though, to see wider range of applications in arc
and how the core abstractions will live up.

(btw, Paul, if you read this could you reset my password in Arc forum and send it to shiro@acm.org?)
and if he doesn't read this, just email him about it, he doesn't bite...
we have a language we use at work (internal, proprietary) that was originally based on apl (albeit with all ASCII chars). It is incredibly efficient to write code with, especially for mathematically oriented apps.
The Evolution of Reddit
Bidding reaches $18.55 bln in U.S. wireless auction
Amazon to Buy Audiobook Seller for $300 Million
Ambitious Hacker set out to prove that he could exceed better educated Investment Bankers
This reminds me that a while back I read a theory (http://www.ornery.org/essays/warwatch/2005-06-19-1.html) that dogs and humans domesticated each other, and that "We remain deficient in the things dogs did for us; they continue to depend on us to provide them with food and protection.", and that "that dog brains and human brains underwent a shrinkage about ten thousand years ago, again at the same time."
Except one about web technologies. Have you ever bought a Ruby on Rails book?
I did. Twice.
Ron Paul 2008.
That's hilarious. I wonder what they ended up doing. Have a link to more info?
I enjoyed the story but I'm not sure how much of a hacker this guy was.
Look at the recent startups bought by Yahoo. When was the last time you heard anything from them again? The one exception is Flickr, but they were profitable and on a rocket ride to the top before they got acquired. As for all the others, the users are wondering when they'll ever see a new feature.

So for all we know, the situation might be better for startups after a Microsoft-Yahoo merger.

Google's acquisitions tend to have some unique technology. Yahoo's acquisitions have mostly been innovators with media and audiences. Does anyone know if there's a pattern with Microsoft? Microsoft has said they want to acquire a bunch of startups.
They're abandoning it later this year. Shuttleworth isn't a big fan of brown either.
Ken Iverson's Turing Award lecture, "Notation as a Tool of Thought" should be interesting to you and others here, particularly those who subscribe to the "implementation as specification" idea.

http://www.jdl.ac.cn/turing/pdf/p444-iverson.pdf

Some of the ancedotes here are good too:

http://keiapl.info/anec/
I'll gladly catch a train to Portland for a cheap rails conference that doesn't suck....
Thankfully, there's a config menu that lets you change the color, as long as you pick a set of "controls" other than Human, You can have the Human icons and window borders with any color though.
I think you may have mixed people up, I've been arguing against infix, so I'm not continuing to ignore that ;p

I believe I posted a comment pointing out that lots of people aren't completely sure, offhand, if && or == has higher precedence.

And even in this branch of the thread, when I said he could have omitted some of the parentheses, I didn't mean to say infix is powerful because it can use less parenthesis. it gets rid of them with a dirty trick that doesn't scale. What I was pointing out is that people don't actually know the infix precedence rules by heart (like they try to say they do. they say it's so natural...). so they end up putting parenthesis frequently just cause they aren't sure.
LOVE IT!
(reminds me of the Photosynth demo @ Ted Talks)
we just launched http://www.cellspin.net/ at the DEMO conference (http://www.demo.com). it is a service that provides easy to use mobile software for you to send your media from your phone to your favorite websites (flickr, facebook, youtube, etc). we also have a website where you can manage the content you have uploaded and keep track of what your friends have been posting. check it out and let me what you think (ian [at] cellspinsoft [dot] com). we're always looking for new sites to add as destinations. please give me any feedback you have! i'd love to hear from you guys.