skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I love screencasts/videos to help "get" a new tool. Examples:

Ruby on Rails screencasts: http://www.rubyonrails.org/screencasts

SLIME movie: www.cl-user.net/asp/web-sites/slime-video

Peepcode - http://peepcode.com/ (RoR topics)

The SICP movies (very long, ~30 hrs total) take forever but they are so rich there's not much temptation to skim. http://swiss.csail.mit.edu/classes/6.001/abelson-sussman-lec...
I'm getting 3.5ish now on my Lenovo with a battery that's nearly two years old and it's pretty delightful on my frequent 5 hour flights.
The distributed nature of Git makes it easy to maintain my local patches that Git will attempt to use even against newer versions of Arc as they get released and other folks would be able for example to pull in changes from my repo (and I could from theirs) if it solved an urgent problem before PG could incorporate them into the codebase. It simply makes it easier and encourages collaboration. Certainly not necessary however.

Maybe I should create a repository and mirror PG's releases for a while.
I learn by modifying.

I think just about every language I have mastered has been because I started learning it by hacking on someone else's code. (mastered = know well enough to implement projects from scratch with ease) I would say I 'know' probably a dozen or more languages enough to read/write useful code, but have only mastered maybe five... and all of those because I spent a lot of time dealing with existing code, so I learned by toying with it. Sadly if I don't use something for quite a while (like Scheme, which I used to live and breathe, but haven't used in probably three years), I become pretty rusty with it, but I suspect this is normal.

My current languages of choice are probably Ruby, JS, and Arc (for the fun factor). I actually learned ruby because I didn't like Rails, and tried for a while to write my own framework, before discovering Merb and tinkering with it instead. JS always scared me for some reason, but I finally picked it up because I wanted to use jQuery and ended up tracking down bugs in their UI stuff. Arc I am learning currently, just by playing with stuff submitted by others.

So in short, I learn by modifying other code, and eventually get comfortable enough that I can just write from scratch. I actually like the book examples, because they put the finished code online. I don't even bother reading the chapter where they explain the code... I just load it up and start tinkering and learn from that.
Jumbala : An Action Language for UML State Machines
What I've always wanted to do before hiring someone is work with them for a while. It usually doesn't take too long to get a sense of how good somebody is and how easy they will be to work with.

How good a new team member will be on a project is a complex question. The only really good indicator of the outcome is the outcome itself. Giving a good technical interview is not that great a predictor (although better than years-of-experience). What I like about this strategy is that it eschews gimmicks and gets as close to the real situation as possible.
The 'pre Arc' Arc (a.k.a. 'rep')
You find Lisp documentation subpar/incomplete/obsolete/lying? Maybe for a given implementation of Lisp, but for the languages themselves, I have found Lisp documentation to be some of the best written that I've seen...
Thanks for this link!
Years of experience gainfully employed in a particular industry can be a useful metric but merely years of experience of a particular technology isn't that illuminating. I have 8 full years of experience playing guitar. Can I really play guitar? Nope.
god bless Andreesen. As someone who actually used to use Mosaic, I feel vaguely vindicated that he is not, in fact, a dumbass.

Disney, in particular, looks to be set to go on a rampage. Internally it's pretty clear that some dead weight needs to go, and new talent is finally being purchased at market price -- Pixar was the top of the slope.

As far as I can tell, Yahoo would be a very expensive albatross for Microsoft. And I'm just fine with that. Meanwhile the rest of the field remains free to innovate and shoot for Teh Next Google status/mindshare.
I too find that the best way for me to really learn a programming language is to use it, though I do begin by reading documentation.

First, this familiarizes me with the language constructs, what is and what isn't available, and I can build up a "mental diff" of how this new language is or is not like other languages I already know.

Perhaps more importantly, it also gives me a clue as to if I should bother spending my time to really learn the language well. For example, I've tinkered with Ruby, and read some Ruby documentation. It appears to be a fine language, but I don't see it offering me anything that I find lacking from Python or Lisp. So I've never taken the time to become expert with Ruby.
I'm more referring to the Terms of Service of something like AmazonMP3, which specifically and categorically says that you cannot do exactly what this site does.
librep - combining best features of Scheme and Common Lisp
That is a pretty good paper. I haven't gone through it in full detail, but the sections I read were excellent. Thanks!
"What could be a better mark of irreversible acceptance [of the Internet] than adoption by the Amish? I was visiting some Amish farmers recently. They fit the archetype perfectly: straw hats, scraggly beards, wives with bonnets, no electricity, no phones or TVs, horse and buggy outside. They have an undeserved reputation for resisting all technology, when actually they are just very late adopters. Still, I was amazed to hear them mention their Web sites."

I certainly hadn't considered the Amish as late adopters.
Is that the mentality that gave us Arc?
Is it really 8 years of experience? If you spent the last 6 years doing the same thing basically, it's really just 2 years with lots of sets/reps.. Years of experience are overrated and I think HR folks are just trying to control IT/tech departments by imposing their standard lingo/Y.O.E. requirements

In my first programming job, the team was busy with an fix-the-alpha/get-the-beta-out crunch so they assigned me and the other new member a game project to code. I did networked Othello, using Java Swing over Java RMI. The code design was poor since I didn't know better but it kept us busy and we got to present it to the rest of the team (it was a nice diversion from their crunch-time). The code review was strict but good natured (as they knew we didn't know better). But we learned.
typically years of experience refers to using the given technology or product as if you were working full-time using it (so about a minimum of 40 hours per week). I'm going to average it out to 20 hours since there is plenty of overhead in a 9-5 job. Assuming 50 weeks per year that's about 1000 hours per year. I'd say 7 years translates into 7000 hours of experience (this reminds me of the way pilots count experience as the number of flight hours).
We (Winter 08 YC accepted) have 2 founders who are college dropouts (tho one managed to finish his degree after we were accepted), and one founder (me) with a Psychology Degree from a crappy little liberal arts college.

I think YC and the others are looking for demonstrably talented people who yearn to build/launch things. Going to an ivy league school or working at a big company don't necessarily demonstrate these qualities. Even if they do (a little), there are plenty of other ways to show that you rock.
The list of most commented threads is dominated by an artifact, because at the bottom of some essays I link to the News.YC thread as if it were for blog comments. E.g. "Microsoft is Dead" is not the most interesting story to News.YC readers. In fact, last time I looked, most of the recent comments were just people saying "fuck you" at various levels of articulateness.
congrats nick!
Sig is a subset of apropos.
Sounds like RTS for the battle field. Can't wait for they day when teenage Supreme Commander experts take out entire countries using point and click control of swarms of robots.
I showed this to my father and he cried. He couldn't believe someone would open it after so long.
Market price + welfare.
A Founder's Tale: Angels vs. VCs
i have an original ipod that it's still shrinkwrapped. i'll make a flickr photoset in another 20 years.
"WTF...you scheduled an 8:00am code review for the Weblogic properties file."
Is this bad. I get this a lot from my co-workers.
The XO has a really innovative dual mode screen with a super high DPI black and white screen with no backlight.
Inside Vista SP1 File Copy Improvements
Photoset for antiquity's sake? Optimistically, we'll probably be in the Matrix/on the Holo-deck by then...
I think 1/2 but I could be wrong.
great post. i think the point about the merger being a huge distraction for goog/msft/yhoo is also important for startups that cough might be making competitors to things large companies might also be working on :)
Other than Club Penguin and Pixar, has Disney done any acquisitions recently? These are the only two substantive ones I know of, but maybe there are more on the smaller scale?
What about a service that reads my blog, i.e, real person, then converts it to audio? Paying radio personalities to do this during songs?
Good luck to Time-Warner. Many customers have no idea about the size of a gigabyte. This is especially true for people with big harddisks and a fast connection. An ex-client regularly sent me huge files because he had no concept that a video was bigger than a text file.
I agree (Probably because I grew up with abstractbill hacking on the same home computers ;) ).

Tip the lego out and play around with the interesting gears and see what you can do. Throw away the manuals that tell you how to build exactly the same car that everyone else is building - obviously skim through them, or look at them every now and then to see how things can fit together. Sure find out from somewhere how a differential gearbox works, then play around trying to build one.

I like to have the manual for reference - 'The definitive javascript', or the ARM7 manuals or whatever reference is needed, and sometimes dip into those in the bath or before bed. But 'learn the language' books don't seem to make much sense to me.

Exploring is so much more fun than "designing using approved methodologies like everyone else is, using the same framework/libraries as everyone else is". IMHO you're likely to end up with a far better result as well.

I just don't understand people who don't have that tight feedback loop. People who write a program from scratch in one or two hits, then execute it. That's like recording yourself playing a piano concerto with earplugs in, then listening back to see if it sounded ok. Better to have the feedback earlier so you can adjust.
I really hate it when some people that call themselves programmers, still use PHP for serious development.
A student book exchange strikes me as a tad seasonal, like selling Christmas trees.
Seeing that sawfish was using a Lisp was the thing that convinced me Lisp was never going to go away and I should start using it again.
I don't think there is anything wrong with PHP for serious development, as long as you're using it with an MVC paradigm or framework. It is faster than Ruby.
Related to what you're saying, I think, is what's on the back of The Little Lisper regarding its question-and-answer presentation versus the expositional presentation of normal textbooks:

Reading a conventional textbook with expositions followed by problems may keep the reader a passive follower of the displayed line of reasoning.

What is wrong about passive reading?

It is not always wrong, of course. It can be quite relaxing, but passive reading does not invite the reader to think over the twists of reasoning he may be inclined to. This reflection is necessary in order to doff the wrong twists and to fully appreciate the line of reasoning of the authors.
From comment:

I tried to prove my friends wrong. Techcrunch does not destroy startups.
reports from the blogosphere indicate that the internal battery is not too difficult to replace, if you're willing to fiddle with a dozen tiny screws. but that's not the kind of thing you want to do on a plane.
You may give a possibility to users whose have OpenID, Live ID, InfoCard etc. to sign-in using these IDs as well.
Google Teams With Twitter For Super Tuesday Tracking
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primary_color
I knew I should have specified I was talking about some of the librairies, not the language itself. :|
I learn by reading the FAQ, leaping into the deep end with some stupid project, and then repeatedly harassing people who are smarter than I am.
I jump right into coding, although I don't like shells too much. I like Googling for tutorials and using language APIs. That's probably why I like Ruby and PHP being they are compiled at runtime. Been getting into frameworks lately. I like it when someone else has done the heavy lifting.
I am using odiogo now on my blog. It is free now and there is a wordpress plugin. The conversion is not in real time. The latency is around 2 hours. Their plugin will supply flash base player to playback the mp3. The quality of them is much better than windows XP's text to speech.

My humble opinion is if you really want to charge the service, you probably need to shorten the latency. If the web service guarantees any popular blog post can be converted into podcasts in 2 minutes after text is finished.
The more I learn about development - and the more I work on real projects - the more I realize that we're perpetually at the "apprentice" level. By that, I mean that we're writing new code with no standardized solution. With few exceptions, old problems eventually get packaged up in a preexisting library or app, so unless you're fanatical about reinventing wheels(a good student exercise), all programming problems eventually involve a stage of research; maybe several stages, as once you get far along one track you realize the structure of the code, which probably looked OK at one point, is now completely wrong and get the urge to rewrite. The old "write one to throw away" adage.

And indeed, once you've rewritten three+ times, you've probably figured out a nearly optimal structure for the particular problem, but most production code can never get there. The perceived cost of rewrites is very high, and it's hard to know, in a strict business sense, whether it's the right thing to do.

That's why I think experience can only help so much.
A very well written essay.
http://www.renexcel.com
brad's life - A proposal: email to URL mapping
When you're running a business, you have to succeed in all areas of activity from coding to marketing to admin and a whole lot of miscellaneous tasks. Do the 10% in each area which gets 90% of the result. Then backfill as appropriate. If you're developing an AJAX website then it is significantly easier to develop it using Firefox. Early adopters probably won't notice that it doesn't work on other browsers. Then fix the compatibility when you've got time.

I'm astounded at the level of complexity facing contemporary web designers. I'm also appalled by the level of compatibility and stability between websites, browsers and plugins. 10 years ago, I could design a webpage and test on Netscape4. With no further testing, I knew how it would work or degrade on all browsers down to Lynx and Mosiac1.2. Many "designers" couldn't achieve that compatibility, even with a few iterations of feedback. That was just static HTML. Nowadays, you've got the added complexity of JavaScript1.5, CSS and smart web frameworks.
Your analogies are improving - these ones are much better than the one about a car with a wooden chassis ;-)
Where is the best place to advertise to get viral promotion?  California?
I'm not so concerned about who will click on ads just yet. What's best for viral promotion on say Stumbleupon or Facebook?
I don't have a Mac.
The only problem is that South Korea will rule the world - StarCraft is the national sport.
Sounds cool! Congrats on shipping!

Anxiously waiting for Mac version :)
Can we have a highest-modded comments scoreboard?
This is the funniest thing I've read on this site ... ever.
I would say that framework != language. C++ is an example where I would trust someone who has been using it for more than a few years more than I would trust someone who has used it for 6 month (depending on their other experience).

Using C++ under something like MS Visual Studio is closer to the 6 month test...
If you're stupid enough to seek the approval and affection of a bunch of lawyers and mega-corp. Office-Space type VPs of whatever, you don't have the confidence it takes to start your own company in general, let alone to do so and persever in this economic climate. With all the time and energy you'd waste in this process you'd probably be able to find ways to do imprtant stuff for free.
I'm glad you caught that
You originally left that as an open question:

What I meant was that in any language anyone would design, they would be identical, but that if someone wanted to design a language explicitly to disprove this hyphothesis, they could probably do it. I'm not even sure of that, actually.

The weaker thesis is harder to contradict, though.
You could probably get an even better DPI daylight readable screen if you only allow for 2 colors. No dual mode.

There are many, many cool things in the XO. Too much for what I'm talking about.
Ah, well, carry on, then, carry on. :-)
Looks like they sold out... if it was legit and available, I think it would be an incredible investment based on the MLB minimum salary of $390,000. Of course, there must be a reason this guy needed $50k.
Ask YC: Male video game addiction is neural, study suggests. How about hacking addiction?
> Learn Blub in 21 Days

I find these books really objectionable. They propagate bad practice and minimal understanding. Furthermore, the type of people who need to Learn Blub in 21 Days are in headless chicken mode - they've got less than 21 days and they don't RTFM.

Another objection is the cookie-cutter approach to the teaching which may work for some but frustrates if you want to understand underlaying rules. If I had 21 days to learn French, then I'd start with the grammar. This phrase-book approach to programming gives you 20% of the benefit after exerting 80% of the effort. The 80-20 rule is suppused to work the other way. You're supposed to get 80% of the benefit from 20% of the effort.

> K&R

I read some of the first edition of K&R and I found it enlightening because they'd written it for the benefit of other C compiler writers. Furthermore, the first edition is a snapshot during development and they're quite candid about unfinished features. It also gives tips on programming style. Ignore these tips and you'll discover the cost later.
> Weekly lessons here and there helped but I really didn't start climbing up the pretty-steep Salsa learning curve until I started messing up on the dance floor dancing with random women.

I wonder if the adrenaline and stress makes a big difference. For example, I've been trying to improve my German for roughly forever, trying assorted books and CDs and such, but the best results have come from going to a weekly class.

Even without (much) studying I learn all sorts of things, and I think it's because I'm put on the spot to read things, conjugated verbs, make up sentences, and so on.

All of the real-time pressure (though, really, it's fun overall) seems to make a big impression on my brain.

Now I need to try speaking German to random women. :)
Leveraging existing code is an undervalued skill. It gives satisfaction when you're learning. It also gives immediate benefit to the programmer and other users.

"Hello world" is great for set-up of your development environment, but after learning a few basic structures, you'd get great benefit from just wading into an open source project. Should you learn more theory before you get overwhelmed by the size of a codebase? No. Nowadays, many paid programmers are unaware of recursion and quicksorts but it doesn't stop them earning very good salaries.
Time merge media
I agree that the "most commented threads" isn't exactly a "best of" list--in fact, they're some of the more controversial/ugly threads to appear on YC, but that's why I found it interesting.
Whats your YC Settings?
Share your max and min visit. Is your noprocrast even set.
Question - how can they avoid SEC regulation and rules? Being a market is a difficult and expensive thing to do....

[edit] looked at the FAQ, however they don't actually state WHICH of the exemptions they fall under. I thought if you issued a security that had more than 20 non-qualified investors you needed to do reporting and file w/ the SEC.
"One caveat in version control that often programmers fall into is
trying too much to have a perfect versioning history. In this
situation, the developer spends too much time trying to separate
commits in semantically well described changes and attach too
well written description messages."

I plead guilty!
...and down you go!
Arc - An Unappreciated Approach to Language Design
Usability: The Key to Good Website Design
MacBook Air Haters: Suck My Dick
As far as learning languages go, I agree, knowing how to write a quicksort doesn't help you learn Language X. When people talk about learning languages, I assume they mean learning the syntax/idioms. For that, it makes sense to look at a lot of existing code (to me at least).

When it comes to actually implementing something substantial (once you are past the tinkering and learning stage), I find it sad that so many programmers can actually get away with not knowing basic things like recursion and how a quicksort works (and I have worked with quite a few like this in the past).

I had a guy argue with me that his sort (which was basically a selection sort), was faster than the quicksort/mergesort I was suggesting because "it is fewer lines of code and therefore fewer machine operations". Apparently to him, being able to read and understand it faster meant the computer would likewise do less work. Sadly, he was my boss, and I knew then I should be moving on.

Most languages today will do mundane things like sorting for you, but I still argue that knowing why Tail Recursion is the preferred way to recurse and how nesting loops can get out of control are vital to do anything useful. I would rather interviews ask theoretical questions like this instead of silly "can you regurgitate the syntax to do Y in Language X?" questions.
The Programmer's Prenup
Wow, looks really cool. I haven't tried it yet because I'm on a Mac... And I don't think I could convince any of my friends to try it either. It's hard enough to get them to share their music in iTunes and not to mention having to install Java.

Just out of interest: Did the FAQ come across as arrogant to anyone else?
softlayer, layeredtech as mentioned above are both fantastic albeit on the pricey side.

currently with vectoral.info, have been with them for something like a year now and love them in general, but their selection of linux distros is meh.

what was wrong with amazon s3?
Founder of MP3.com starts business-info wiki
True. I like Cake Php. But I still wouldn't consider php for serious dev.
Call me stupid, but I have a prejudice against recent startups that use php. It smacks me that they couldn't find smarter developers that know something else.

Im sure, there are great php devs. out there, but from experience, %90 are not. It is the barriers of entry are too low for php to get started, which is not necessary a good thing, as you end up with many so self called "experts" than know nothing.
lol, don't neg me bro...
When I think about what technology was like 100 years ago, I'm dubious that aiming at 100 years from now is sensible. Creating and popularizing a good, hacker-friendly language that works well now is already a tough challenge and a worthy goal.
just people saying "fuck you" at various levels of articulateness

<cynicism>Isn't that what 99% of all comments on the web are?</cynicism>

I think that is why I enjoy YC News so much, the rate is only like 30%.
as opposed to what? 90% of Ruby Developers that are?