skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Hedge funds on the brink as US Federal Reserve cash fails to ease crisis
Congrats! Product looks great!
The way to become a good programmer is to have projects that drive you. So build stuff. You'll find you learn very fast when there is something specific you want to do and you don't know how. So you should read books, certainly, but don't just work your way through books.

It doesn't matter super much what language you learn initially. So if you have some friend who is an expert in another language, you might be better off learning that, then switching to Javascript once you know the basics of programming.
I don't know anything about IRC; just installed mIRC, can you tell me how/where to find programming channels, esp related to Ruby/Rails?
"It takes all the hard work out of building database-driven Web sites. The secret is its 'scaffolding,' which provides all the basic Web functionality most sites will ever need. In effect, all you have to do is set up Rails, and then use the Ruby language to customize the site and add your own business logic."

While I know oversimplifications like those in this article have their place, they really annoy me.
I can see why you're saying what you're saying, but I didn't find debugging particularly hard, and binary size explosion is probably your particular compiler's problem: MSVC 7.1 works very nice with templates, generating code only when absolutely needed, and sharing generated method/function instances across multiple template instantiations when types allow.

Moreover, STL is beautiful. It was originally designed for Smalltalk if I remember correctly, and it's "ugliness" is nothing more than a bad implementation. Separating alogrithms away from the data types they operate on is a novel idea. Granted, you get it for free in dynamic languages, but STL goes as far as you can get in a rigid world of stone types.

I have been facsinated by C++, by its ugliness, its sheer size, hidden powers and fast code it generates. My interest in it has faded away as CPUs got faster.

In my opinion the biggest issue with C++ is the lack of any kind of modules, and the author of the original post correctly recognizes that. Those endless includes multiplied by need for templates, produce ridiculous build times and make it impossible to hide implementation details (everythin g is still exposed via hpp-files).
One of the most difficult parts of JavaScript and web 2.0 is getting things to work on all the different browsers. Install the most recent versions of the most widely used browsers: http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp

Quirksmode.org has some really good compatibility tables as well: http://www.quirksmode.org/dom/compatibility.html
On the business side, there is lots available online from the sec for public companies that can help you do things like size a market, list the top competitors, etc. See http://www.sec.gov/edgar.shtml . You can also use the google for talks by top execs, esp to analysts (esp. wall st.). That's a great quick way to get a sense of how they think about their different markets.
You're giving yourself a huge mountain to climb of research. Can you focus on a subset of issues? Note that customer info can be simplifying - if people are convinced something has poor performance, then that defines the market reality.
Cali, always ahead of the game. If I stuck to what I knew early in life, I'd be there. You are very lucky EDIT and smart.
This is cool. I only have one complaint: The highlight color buttons are way too small.
Build a flash game in javascript.
But I hate your commercial!
You're right, anyone who does that should win a Nobel Prize first. ;-)
Google has such good spidering and junk-disgarding capabilities that I think they are more likely to entirely enable the semantic web.
as the co-founding cto of hotjobs, i have to say, this is an excellent solution. well done folks.
Great idea about that semicolon.
I remember reading this in a dark period a few years ago, after struggling with a problem in physics. I cried, and folded back the page, knowing I'd read it again. I'm pleasantly surprised to find it would be here.
earle - would love to speak to you. shoot me a line: sumon@snaptalent.com
i thought we were having a hypothetical discussion about social news sites in general.
Heck, I flew in from the east coast of Canada with only $800 in the bank. If I can do it, you can too.
Yes, he clearly doesn't understand the concept that generalizations are not always better than specializations. You can also see this in his old mailing-list exchange with Marc Andreessen on the subject of embedding images (or arbitrary documents including other HTML, as TBL wanted) in HTML.
apt.
There's a big difference in the emotional experience of thinking you know something, and actually having proof of it. I think most theists would be similarly amazed by an encounter with a deity.
I certainly will ;). Great weather for outdoor hacking, friendly people, what's not to like? Almost anywhere beats NJ.
Maybe the student was just being humble? With a Japanese name, like Koichi, maybe he was expressing the Japanese cultural tendency toward humility and self-deprecation when communicating with superiors?
http://daniellefong.com

Random interesting things, plus hints to what I'm working on inelegantly strewn about.
Yeah, the missing semicolon basically represents a continuation to his state of mind at the time of exiting the programming function.
not in terms of your [naive] ideals of your own youth

What else are we, at our best, but the naive ideals of our own youth? Has the world added a worthy addendum? Not in the case of yours truly, at least....
Cool... http://awurl.com/kydnwg8299
Get that job at Google
I use C++ for image processing. Would I like to use Ruby? Of course. Do I know that if I do so I cannot process 30 frames a second? Yes. You take what liberties the problem at hand extends to you and save the dogma for the preisthood.
TiVo to bring YouTube videos to TV screens
NASA's demonstration of a wireless power transmission with 82% efficiency:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jd47JXuz0g8
Brain fitness seen as hot industry of the future
Myanmar's nutty scheme to solve energy crisis
Hacking attacks can turn off heart monitors
I frequent www.wickedfire.com and www.offtopic.com (their webmaster section). I'm more involved in marketing and advertising than hacking and these are places I go to get and give information and insights (respectively).

I try to stay away from forums since they can turn into mega time drains, but they allow for quick transfer of information and ideas, which is always great.

They both use vBulletin.
This might help
Best Practices in Javascript Library Design
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LKDImgRfrg
But if you're old school, you'll have already had the old version (CLR) on your bookshelf collecting dust. ;)
Compare http://www.catb.org/esr/writings/unix-koans/script-kiddie.ht... and http://www.bash.org/?742386
Ideas For Start-Ups
How do you seed it with the search space? Does it go out on it's own and crawl?
twitter @avinashv
http://avinashv.tumblr.com is Tumblr
The only problem I find with the article is the paradigm of programming in Lotus's earlier years... manual memory allocation, static types, ... things have changed in the programming, not to mention in other areas like software as a service and it being free. I don't think this is accurate anymore
Thanks, this is interesting!

What languages/technologies did you use to build this?
By this logic, advice from someone named "asdflkj" (or, "anewaccountname" for that matter), someone who couldn't even bother to think of a real account name, should be negatively rated through the floor.
Ask YC: Have you used trialpay.com as a developer or consumer?
Feedback wanted.
I second the Boyd suggestion. One of the best books I've ever read.
Be adequate with what you are asking for. You have the right to get paid fair salary. What investors may worry more then a few grands of salary raise, is how to keep your attention on the startup as much as it's only possible. If you're underpaid and cutting your expenses, you can't be a good person to develop a strategy on spending invested money. Know your value and you'll be fine.
Once in a while I visit:

http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com (custom ASP forum)

http://www.webhostingtalk.com (vBulletin)

http://wordpress.org/support/ (bbPress)

And a few others that I can't seem to recall right now :)
I thought this was a great point too, but I did not take it as literally. I find that if I walk out the door with something in my mind that needs to be fixed, a real problem that I'm not sure how to tackle, that I'll daydream about it while doing other things. By the time I get back behind the keyboard I usually am anxious to try out at least one strategy so I dive right in and get working.
First comment on the article's own page pretty much nails it. C++ is flexible enough to be used as beefed up C - templates instead of macros, abstract classes and 'this' instead of callbacks and their arguments, operator overloading to produce more compact the code, etc. Noone is forced to use multiple inheritance, virtual base classes, template specialization and other ++ wonders.

The guy also claims that "every single aspect of C++ being designed around higher performance instead of my productivity". This is false. The fact that it allows writing high-performance code does not mean it was one of the primary design goals. It simply was not, this aspect of the language was inherited from C .. which is one of the languages the author declares to be "going back" to. Kind of ironic if you think about it.

http://www.dmk.com/c++/stroustrup_1986_10.html
I used Django. Everything is written in Python, including the recommendation "backend".
This reminded me so much of a useful rationality anecdote, I almost thought it was going to be a link to it. Alas, it wasn't.

http://www.spaceandgames.com/?p=27

Now how certain are you that 51 is prime?
...if you guys still used forums in this day and age of social sites like this one...

I consider this (news.yc) to be a forum. Why would it not be?
Does fyynd correlate the interests of different users to branch out more?
CeBIT Australia sponsoring the Australian Startups Carnival 2008
Congrats! What's ironic is that I was lucky to record a video of Drew coding an early version of Dropbox last March, but as I didn't have a painless solution for backing up, I don't have a copy of it anymore. :)
Wouldn't it be better stated: "It takes some of the busy work out of building database-driven Web sites."??
Everyone else who came to Google was in the exact same position as you are, modulo a handful of famous people with beards that put Gandalf's to shame, but they're a very tiny minority. Everyone who applied had the same reasons for not applying as you do. And everyone here says: "GOSH, I SURE AM HAPPY I CAME HERE!" So just apply already.

And here, my friends, we have a wonderful example of something which statisticians call a "biased sample". Of course the people who (a) were offered a job by Google, (b) accepted said offer from Google, and (c) haven't quit, are happy about having interviewed at Google.

If Steve Yegge had (a) gone to Facebook and interviewed ex-googlers, (b) phoned people who were offered jobs but decided not to accept them (yes, we do exist), or (c) talked to people who flew across the country to interview at Google but weren't offered jobs, he would probably hear a rather more complicated story.
A small Rails site and why you should build one
Using Clickpass for OpenID Site Login
The Tools Google Uses Internally
Fashion for Geeks: Why bother?
Err, if you read Stroustrup's Design & Evolution of C++, performance clearly was one of the primary design goals. Goals 2 and 3 in the statement you linked to spell that out. If a feature could not be implemented without effecting the efficiency of programs that did not use it, the feature was rejected. One of the points that Stroustrup stresses in D&E is that he wanted no languages below C++.

There are many features that do have a runtime or space cost, but you only pay for it if you use it. And I think that in many cases, what you end up implementing yourself would pay the same performance costs, if not more.
yeah - should have picked a prime number. Just seems to work out that way - long enough for the details to get fuzzy so I want to read it again.
Actually, I don't think adoption is particularly important. Really all we need is enough context to probabilistically figure out semantic meaning, and any metadata helps with that. It's not like you need some top-down data schema. Google is already doing it this way already. I don't think semantic web technologies will do much more than make their work a little easier/more accurate.
Congrats! +1 also goes out to everybody on Hacker.News for being positive about new startups mentioned on this site.
Technology Review: Offline Web Applications
User Interfaces Rapidly Adjusting to Information Overload
The 20 most useful Microsoft sites for IT professionals
Former Microsoft Genius Masters the Culinary Art of Sous-Vide
One of the most interesting parts of the book is that it claims you should "never criticize" another person. It says that every person can always justify their actions in their own mind and all criticism is taken negatively. As an example, even mass murderers have been interviewed justifying their actions. I tend to agree with this philosophy.
The only way I see Google being "superseded" is if they cling to their business model to the extent that it jeopardizes their products. Web advertising, in its current form anyway, already looks like a sinking ship. Unlike IBM and Microsoft, Google inherently has much less user lock-in, so it'll be interesting to see what they do if their cash cow begins to seriously dry up.
The Most Meta Internet Video Ever
Has anybody here compared different JavaScript techniques for drag and drop? What works best?
Of course not: 91 = 100 - 9 = 10^2 - 3^2 = (10 + 3) * (10 - 3).
Revenge of the Experts
Who cares about a gig there? You think in 95 the founders there were reading "Get that Job At Microsoft"? I think Yegge has written some decent stuff in the past (in -v mode, of course) but I doubt most of HN is interested in joining the cult. Anybody that says "GOSH, I SURE AM HAPPY" while reporting to a cube has something wrong with them.

Build something new.
Jim Buckmaster: The reluctant CEO
Why Spitzer resigning may have been a bad thing
An early form of web site where all pages were static, and hyperlinks had to be operated manually.
Has there been a term coined for the Internet pervading into our home appliances - like the toilet, kitchen cabinets, the fridge, etc...

Some may sound silly but there are some amazing things going to happen in this space!
Is social networking a waste of time?
Congrats for the site.

Regarding presentation, did you reused any old reddit-like frontend? It looks a lot like links http://reddit.com/r/programming/info/61e7j/comments/c02j42c
Ask PG: Can I change my handle and keep Karma?
Is there a way? and if not can you do it for me, please?
The 50 Best Robots Ever
+1 for Firebug. Getting out of my Python comfort zone and writing Javascript used to be scary. But now that I have an awesome debugger and the ability to experiment at runtime (and jQuery) I feel comfortable writing enough Javascript to make my applications suck less.
The aphorism you quoted isn't the advice. Feynman's advice was not to be ashamed to work on problems that you feel you can make progress on, however "humble" they are, because those are the kind where your work matters. I think that's much more specific and insightful.

Also, his closing remarks have a lot more weight if you take in them in the context of being directly addressed from the teacher in question to the former naive, idealistic student.
I would have to agree. What you want is market exploration: who is your customer. Start talking to them. Ask their opinion of what's missing from current solutions. Don't try and chase existing players, talk to dissatisfied customers and folks who should be customers but aren't--find out why. If you chase the existing players you end up with a large feature set and the need for a large development effort that looks more superset than distinct. Think about features you can delete from existing solutions and still appeal to a segment of users. Think about one or two missing features you can add after you have deleted many of the existing ones. A really good book on this is "Four Steps to the Epiphany" by Steve Blank, cheapest place to buy it is here http://www.cafepress.com/kandsranch
how do I tell the application which user I am when posting a ranking?
I can't seem to get my news.yc username linked up to my OpenID. I login to my OpenID provider, then get to the point where I enter my news.yc username and password, but then it takes me to a blank page on news.yc. :(
Yes, the GPLv3 drafting process had something like this. Implementing this in a firefox plugin that logs into a web highlighting service might be a clean way to go about it.
You won't get anywhere just learning how to write functions

I totally disagree. Learning how to write functions is a big, big deal and will take you far indeed. I can't think of anything more important for learning programming.

Meanwhile, "object-orientated prototype madness" is entirely optional.
You didn't quite follow what I said or I phrased it badly. C++ performance requirements are inherited from "be like C" requirement. So when the guy says that he's going back to C, because C++ is "all about performance and not usability", it just does not make any sense.
people who were offered jobs but decided not to accept them (yes, we do exist)

I'll bite. Did you refuse a job offer from Google? If so, would you tell us why?
In "A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy" http://shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html Clay Shirky explains why this is a bad idea:

"If you want a good reputation system, just let me remember who you are. And if you do me a favor, I'll remember it. And I won't store it in the front of my brain, I'll store it here, in the back. I'll just get a good feeling next time I get email from you; I won't even remember why. And if you do me a disservice and I get email from you, my temples will start to throb, and I won't even remember why. If you give users a way of remembering one another, reputation will happen, and that requires nothing more than simple and somewhat persistent handles.

Users have to be able to identify themselves and there has to be a penalty for switching handles. The penalty for switching doesn't have to be total. But if I change my handle on the system, I have to lose some kind of reputation or some kind of context. This keeps the system functioning."
Ask YC: What are the command line tools you can't live without?
Obviously, tools like 'ls' will be in everyone's repertoire. Looking for some possibly obscure or under-utilized tools here.
+2 for Firebug. Firebug should be your number 1 priority to get familiar with.

jQuery... I have mixed feelings about it.

On the one hand, its very good for high level thinking and writing good, readable code. On the other hand, it slows down your javascript code by at least 2x, which is particularly noticeable if you're doing a javascript intensive application. Then again, the future of browsers is speeding up javascript, so this may not be an issue in a couple of years.

My experience with Prototype is that it handles the speed issue much better - however, it is a bloated monster of a framework.
Paradigms of Artificial Intelligence Programming: Case Studies in Common Lisp by Peter Norvig

(an excellent book even if you don't want to become a Lisp programmer)
How not to kill a kid's entrepreneurial spirit?
Programs like these, which help kids explore their creative and entrepreneurial spirit, hopefully will help nurture the future entrepreneurs in the far corners of the world.
I love "open" on Mac OS X.
I don't do intensive enough work, or know enough about Javascript frameworks, to notice speed issues. I generally use it to update a div with the results of an ajax call, to asynchronously submit a form, and to manipulate some UI elements: alternate row striping, show or hide, change the size of elements, etc.

I don't pretend to know what I'm doing with JS, so I'll keep your advice in mind should I have to figure out why something isn't as fast as it should be.
Build something new

Easier said than done, no?

Not to mention that if you think that no one is able to produce interesting work in a company like Google, than I'd say that you'd need to get out of the HN groupthink.
It's true! When I'm with the ladies I can go on for hours about a random content generator I'm working on for fun, I can forward tons of /. links with explanations about what makes them interesting, I can call with a frequency and average message length just past the line of "creepy," I can be visibly nervous and embarrassingly insecure, and I can show up for teh love having skipped a shower and on 3 hours of sleep. But as long as I throw on a $75 hoodie, some prefaded jeans, and a pair of Pumas, my shit is tight!
Easy. Google uses Linux. cperciva is a FreeBSD guy.
Angry because some random person (as in, you don't know him) on the net alludes to refusing an offer from Google?...

Regardless of the truth or otherwise of his allusion, I think your interjection is déplacée (misplaced).
Easier said than done, no?

What isn't?

than I'd say that you'd need to get out of the HN groupthink

I'd say that my thoughts are mine and mine alone, and you are free to get out and apply to the big G if it suits you.
Steve McConnell's Code Complete (2nd Ed is the copy I have) -- it seems like every second page I've read lays to rest some tiny unanswered question I've had in the back of my head since I started programming.
The easiest (& cutest:-) Ruby, heck even programming book ever written!
It's so informal and poignant that it really sounds like a programming fairy tale! And it's free!
It's pretty naive to think that every employee must either be a) unhappy or, b), screwed up
Internet wiretapping | Bugging the cloud
I've heard that Google has really mixed, often shitty interviewing and this just confirms the hearsay.
It's a pity that Peter is acting like a teenager. It looks like he says things only to get a reaction.

It gets better in the third part, where ideas are better articulated, like the prosumer paradigm.
Right. I should have said "something wrong with them in terms of the way I see things". But I took that as implied.
That was the third book that I was trying to remember but it became "etc". Thanks! I also highly recommend it.
Great job guys. I've been working with Sumon, Jamie and Tim and getting snaptalent setup on my site over the last 2 weeks. I like advertising jobs over the crap adsense shows.

example of snaptalent on the top of my site: http://paulstamatiou.com
Do you have any examples where C++ has been used as a systems programming language? I thought C held that role.
I hope you understand that while javascript has its uses, most web applications are built on server side scripting languages. Much to the chagrin of the hackers here at YC, I personally would recommend learning PHP or Python. Probably PHP though. (Cue Ruby fanboys and anti-php lynch mobs). Really, it is the place to start if you're interested in Web 2.0 application development. Javascript is a tool you can pick up later that allows you to do cool things with your site. But I mean, wouldn't you rather jump right into doing things right? Starting with javascript will end up being sort of like...taking a class in school; you have to learn a bunch of things first, figure out something to make, embed with HTML and toy around and in the end, do you even get anything functional? How bland is that?! Now, if you start with a server side scripting language, you get your "hello world" experience and you jump right in.

Just my 2 cents...
Xooglers Launch rentBits Vertical Search Engine for Rentals
IBM sees decline in number of U.S IT pros, boom in China