skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I don't keep track of how many lines of code I write and subsequently delete; but here's the month-to-month changes in the total number of lines of code for my online backup code (http://www.tarsnap.com) throughout 2007, as measured by sloccount:

January +994
February +1291
March +691
April +1318
May +1431
June +1430
July +1497
August +2098
September -55
October +1392
November +618
December +934

In total, on December 31st 2007 I had 13639 more lines of code than I had on January 1st; that works out to 1137 lines/month, or 37 lines/day. (Yes, in September I wrote a negative number of lines of code: The 2098 lines of code I wrote in August included many common idioms, and in September I refactored those out into generic functions.)

I've commented before (http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2007-06-21-think-before-codi...)
that anyone who is consistently writing more than 5,000 lines of code per month is either writing trivial code or writing garbage; I think a 1000 - 1500 lines of good quality code per month is a reasonable target (at least as far as C coding is concerned -- I don't have enough data on other languages).

Assuming that Python doesn't vary wildly from C in terms of the amount of thinking required per line of code, I'd say that at 200 lines/day the danger is more likely one of not writing high enough quality code, not one of not writing fast enough.

Edit: It's also worth pointing out that, as Dijkstra commented, "we should not regard [lines of code written] as 'lines produced', but as 'lines spent'" -- given two solutions to the same problem, the one which uses fewer lines of code is generally cleaner and easier to maintain, since it will have less duplication and more layers of abstraction.
Children more vulnerable to mobile phone radiation
Agreed - I went through the same thing in HS and my parents used to bug me about it at first; Since I got good grades though, they did not give me too much grief about it ;)

Tangential, but my schedule lately has been pretty wacky according to some, but I usually start most of my intensive tasks around 11pm and work till about 6-7am and then go to sleep till 1pm with another nap in the late afternoon; This allows me to multi-task during the day!
There are two quick flaws with this argument.

1) It assumes you can't track ROI on 'traditional' marketing. You can. There are a myriad of ways: Using advertising-specific numbers with call forwarding; Statistics modeling; asking the customer, &c. People generally don't spend millions unless they know it's going to matter, and traditional advertising has defended itself more than once.

2) It assumes the purpose of advertising is 'click-through'. Most advertisement is building name recognition: not everyone needs an ACME Widget right now, but I want to make sure they know to go ACME when they need it.

3) It forgets you're competing in a shared environment. If Pepsi shrinks its ad budget, Coke wins. "Many manufacturers secretly question whether advertising really sells their product, but are vaguely afraid that their competitors might steal a march on them if they stopped."
hahah this takes the cake: "Paul Graham originally wrote reddit, in lisp, on the back of a napkin while he was waiting for a coffee. it was so powerful that it had to be rewritten in python just so that ordinary computers could understand it."
Nokia purchases 67% of Trolltech's stock for $103 million.
But the thing of it is that he DID make something people wanted, he knew it would work from past experience and just had to sell himself.

But still, it was a really risky move.
Okay, but it's not a hack then. Any idiot could sit there depositing a pile of money, withdrawing it, wash, rinse, repeat. He definitely wasn't making it clear as to what was going on.
Sometimes when visiting big cities I'll check google maps/city newspapers for big construction projects and high end hotels - then get reservations at them for a fifth the price. It's how I ended up in a penthouse at a swanky hotel in Toronto for an eighth of what it would have cost me otherwise.

Besides, when you're twenty stories up and can sleep through anything who cares what's going on outside?
jamendo.com is a great source for independent music. I suggest checking out Rob Costlow. He is an amazing piano player. Music is transferred via bittorrent and is in ogg and mp3.
Exactly branding was our marketing department go-to excuse for ROI negative campaigns.

We ended up trying to measure the branding by tracking users who came to our site directly by typing the url into the address bar, or who googled our website by name, so we can estimate how strong the branding was.

The only problem is you can't really do this on a per campaign basis, but if you geo target your campaigns and check the brand strength stats on the same geo targets you can get a rough estimate.
I know this guy that says "Why do you bother with Firefox? IE still dominates..."

I respond with "It's about the standards. I want to know, if it's only for myself, that I write valid code."

When I go to a website and see the little html validation icon turn green I smile with respect to the develop/designer. It truly is a task to have a large site be 100% valid.
Do you really want to bring up the importance of foreign language training in schools?
> I can make a long, long list of more worthy causes

If you had this much money then you'd just save the world, wouldn't ya? No.
You need to book appointments before you go.

Use Linkedin, Facebook, friends-of-friends, help-me posts on wherever... get meetings.

Say "I'm an entrepreneur from xxx and I'll be visiting the bay area on xxx. I'd like to meet with interesting valley technologists and businesspeople. If you could spare a few minutes of your time, I'd love to chat, get coffee, or have lunch. Thanks!"

[alter as necessary for audience, indirection, etc.]

Looking at one-story office parks is boring. Go inside and talk to the right people.
Stories like this come up every now and then on the internet meme machine. Really though, it's about how engineers/professionals are taught to attack difficult problems all the time, that all the solutions they think of are in terms of difficult problems.

When all you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail.
level ups:

25 points -- you can downmod comments

250 points -- you get to change the color on the top page

2500 points -- you can trade your karma in for cash or an epic mount
During my senior year in highschool, I was taking my second year of film production. We had a new teacher who didn't really know everything he was trying to teach. My previous teacher was a big name in the industry (he animated the end credits to Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events and a United Airlines commercial involving a dragon.) I learned more than I probably should have from him, but kept it a secret. At finals time senior year, most of the questions were opinionated (how many gigs does video take on a HDD, how many cuts does a typical commercial have etc..) I ended up getting 100% because I told the teacher he was wrong and proved how I was right. Everyone else did poorly.
Well, it is easy. Mandarin is a quite useful language if you are living in China, but it wouldn't help you if you are in Iceland.

Also, I've heard (don't remember where...) that not all languages are equal when conveying an idea: for example eskimos have a lot of words for snow and white. Some concepts would be very hard to express in any other language.

My point of view is clearly viased: I speak Catalan and Spanish (mother tongues) and I'm more or less fluent in English (hoping to take the CPE this june).
title bar color issue
on the submit post/comment pages, the title bar turns orange. i made mine blue...
Another comment here suggests an idea..

The YC folks here in the sfbay are supposedly all together in a building in Sunnyvale. They commune there daily and share wisdom. Can you ask, here, if one of those companies will host your visit and invite you in to chat?

This is just 1-2 hours of everyone's time, but will make all the difference. Besides, maybe one of them wants to hire you. :)
I think the best design would strongly encourage people to use shared workspaces but have private offices for everyone that wanted one.
Hah, didn't England go through this same scare a while ago?

Nothing quite like sensationalism in the media.
A linkjack from Valleywag in 2006 [http://valleywag.com/tech/google/five-reasons-no-one-will-re...]?

Anyway, companies as big and brilliant as Google don't fail, exactly. They create ecosystems that can keep chugging along for years, as their armies of geniuses build up layer after layer of mind-bogglingly profitable infrastructure. Then one day they wake up and realize the market's moved to something else and they'd have to dismantle everything to compete. Few companies survive that phase.

It is fascinating to me that Google's main campus block (buildings 40-43) is just a part of the old SGI campus. And there really were more than 43 buildings built by SGI. They were occupying them even into the early years of Google's ascendancy, wondering why these Google kids didn't have to pay for their lunch.
This claim is completely wrong. I'm living in France and no one around me think he is a hero. We are completely stunned by the irresponsible games banks play with OUR money. This is a kind French Enron scandal. Even worse, some politician have suggested that the state refunds part of the loss !!!! This means that every French citizen would have to pay for it.

For what concern the guy, the investigation is going on and it is pointless and even wrong to judge him in any way now. The thing is that people are puzzled that such thing could happen and thus the bank (ir)responsibility attracts more attention then the guy's role in it. But this doesn't mean this guy is considered a hero. This article is most probably written to serve a specific purpose. See what I mean ?
Scheme in Commercial Web Application Development [PDF]
I really like Helvetica. It's clean and simple. What more do you need?

I should also note that I am a fan of Myraid Pro.
A lot of the soundtrack is by this group: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Ten_Eleven

If you like them, email me and we can discuss files. Really, anyone here that likes music, email me, I've got a great collection.
Well, if you don't place much weight on foreign language, that's okay -- my point still stands. U.S. performance in math and science is comparatively disappointing.

I can't really agree with your position on language learning, but I'm a little biased. I've studied Ancient Greek, German, Chinese and Middle English.
"The Sandpeople are easily startled but they will soon be back and in greater numbers."
Designing More Usable Web Sites
Molecular Expressions: The fascinating world of optical microscopy
I agree and I've been on advisory boards where we were neither board members, nor investors. Essentially I've been given small amounts of company stock just for my PR value + occasionally helping the company out. In the one case where I really help a company out I was a paid consultant and not an 'advisor'.
Free and legal downloads
Ask YC: Why do people share on social websites (like Youtube, Digg, Reddit, YC)?
I have been thinking about this: What do you think is the need that drives the "social" media? Is it the feeling of charity, or something more personal, or do these users (who submit and filter content) expect others to return the favor?
>But it is not a good idea to have formal advisors who are neither board members nor investors.

Stock is worthless anyways, why not give out a small amount of equity to people who help you out? Sure, lots of startups don't have advisory boards, but what's the harm in having stock-holding advisors?
Interview with Con Kolivas
if the person you are teaching has a more mathematical background, then you will not have that much problem getting them used to functions calling self, and loops inside other loops, etc. The trick would be to reduce functions into smaller more elegant segments. And if they are not, have them take some math classes or teach them about project management :)
I'm not sure that internet ads truly pay that much less... is it cheaper to deliver a 15 second video ad to 250,000 untargeted people on the internet or on TV?
Nokia acquires Trolltech
Matt Haughey: All weblog apps suck
I enjoy taking short breaks from life responsibilities (coding, family, chores, etc) and see what similarly minded people are thinking about, ruminate about it and perhaps offer my own thoughts. The better YC topics and discussions have a Socratic feel I don't generally encounter in other places.
It's a positive type of social interaction that is different than real world interactions. For me, it's a way of feeling more connected to a culture that does not exist in Pittsburgh.

I contribute to news.yc because I find it more entertaining than TV or video games. I should really pick up Rock Band though, that could get me to quit news.yc for a couple days.
A lot of the big users of social media seem to view it as some type of game - who can get the most karma, votes, diggs, etc. That's not to say they are the most wanted users, but usually the most prolific.

The best users of social media have always looked like the ones who are just showing something 'cool' that they have done or understand that involvement in the social platform can bring great benefits back in the form of an active community.

At least that's what my guess is.
I must really suck, because between half and 98% of my programming time is spent making lines of code disappear. I seem to have some kind of horribly mistaken impression that I'm doing a good job when the code is more readable, more modular, more functional, and more succinct, all at the same time. I guess you must know something I don't.
Hed: "Nokia purchases 67% of Trolltech's stock for $103 million"

Misleading submission headline. Nokia plans to buy all of Trolltech. The release just mentions that 66.43% (not 67%) of shares have already irrevocably accepted the offer, making it essentially a done deal. The full price is reported elsewhere as $153 million.
And that's misleading? Do I have to put the whole article in the headline? God I hate social news sites sometimes.
Sadly, I read the entire thing. I know, I know. But it's 5am and I have programmers block.

Now, I may speak for myself on this, but I think the problem is not so much multi-tasking.. as it is being forced to switch ALL your focus from task to task.

I mean, for instance, I have found I work best when I am listening to music, chatting about something and coding as well. With things prioritized in my head.

Like he quoted in the article, "We can walk and chew gum". Yes, we can. But we don't walk, stop to chew some gum, stop chewing and start walking again.. ad infinitum.
I like your title better. I can already name a large number of things that a deaf woman and an endangered woodpecker have in common.

I think people vote up long, uninformative titles like this one because they secretly dread the prospect of reading about "second order" anything, but not about woodpeckers or deaf people (or cats or people being hit in the groin with a football).
When it comes to things like YC, Digg (Not so much YouTube).. for me, it's about information. I'm something of an information junkie. I need to be in the know.

And of course, I then like to pass that information on, so that it can be further disseminated.
I spend some time first thinking about what I want to write and with a paper and pencil do some pseudo code, data model, etc. so when it comes to writing the code, for the most part the buddle-neck becomes my typing speed and syntax error. So in a day I loose about 1 hour planning, 2 hours looking out the window, 2 hours of rethinking and stuff, and about 5 hours typing. and about 3 hours rewrting and making things smaller...

if I don't plan (and sometimes I don't because I get lazy) my productivity drops to about 3 hours worth of typing.

oh and I code in java.

Of course there are days when I do really poor job and days when I even surprise myself.

Lines of code is not important at all elegant and reusable code is.
Summer 2008 Funding: Mobile Web Developers Needed
Due to unforeseen circumstances, I now currently lack developers for a project for Summer 2008 Funding.

If you have experience in Mobile, Search or Web Development, and would like to be part of an exciting team, get in touch with me at the address below:

justinwhitefoot[at]clara.co.uk
Mainstream music industry realizes the value of 'free'
Downvote Bug?
I seem to have lost the ability to down vote comments. The arrow is there, and clicking the arrow changes the number with javascript, but a reload shows that the old number has really persisted.

I've confirmed with others that this isn't just happening to me (though, it does seem like there are still people down voting things, so it doesn't seem to be happening to everyone...).
For sure Qtopia has something to do with this, and at $103 million it's a bargain.
According to a survey from McKinsey[1], in answer to the question 'Why do you upload videos?':

* 65% seek fame/want the world to see their videos

* 59% do it for fun

* 41% want to share experiences with friends

* 29% want others to benefit from their videos

* 12% do it for other reasons

[1] - http://www.aedipenavarra.es/include_asp/fichero.asp?id=35
I actually just wrote about this today. I was going to use Pittsburgh as an example, but I chose LA and Jacksonville instead. http://daniellefong.com/2008/01/28/third-places/

Hacker News is an example of a third place. I hang out here, as I've hung out in many other netspaces. It's creative here, it's intelligent, and it's fairly diverse. People make things and write things and converse, and for many people, certainly me, that's a fundamental need.
Difficult to say what exactly it is, easier to say what it is not:

"do these users (who submit and filter content) expect others to return the favor?"

That would be the classical economic explanation and it would be wrong (for the typical user).
This from the ACT RSI group (Australia):

Some treatments were moderately or very successful for most who tried them, with very little or no adverse effect. These were:

* Bowen Therapy
* Alexander Technique
* Tai Chi
* Self Hypnosis

Treatments with adverse effects on more than 20% of those who tried them included:

* Swimming
* Carpal tunnel surgery
* Local anaesthetic injections
* Traction (the standout villain!)
* Stretches from a physio
* Cortisone injections

http://www.rsi.org.au/treatments.html
Ask YC: What causes startups to NOT build something users want?
PG talks about building what users want as the main indicator of a startups success, but there are a lot of startups out there building things that I can't see anybody wanting. Why is this? Are the founders not paying attention to their users? Investors pushing the company in a bad direction? Ignorance? Ego?

Maybe it's hard to find out exactly what users want, but what can founders do to make sure they aren't getting caught up in a bad situation that's pushing them in the wrong direction?
Python is a fun language to code in. I probably net five, ten max, good lines per hour.
can you please quote some examples for this...
Do yoga and pilates and stretching exercises every day
Perhaps it has to do with a karma threshold...?
Do a google search on 'failed internet startup'
25 points was the karma threshold for a long time; if it's not a bug PG changed in the algorithm.
> You could probably write a program to do it for you.

But only Lisp would get it right...
Not to pick on him, but there was a startup posted here yesterday that got some harshly negative feedback -- it seemed obvious to many people that users weren't interested in what he was offering. The most positive suggestions suggested alternative product features. I think some founders build a product for themselves and can't understand that it doesn't offer mainstream appeal.

It seems like an easy way to check yourself is to ask your target users.
Etirovaf has come up now as a YC funded startup:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=104772
i.e. "disruptive innovation". for a more formal jump into this topic, "The Innovator's Dilemma" by christensen.
It is a man. I was going to buy milk when they took the picture.
Good point, that was wrong of me.
I found exactly what I was looking for:
http://planetozh.com/blog/2004/09/click-counter-plugin-for-w...
Different parts of our mind are activated by different activities and stimuli, so I'd say our mind can do certain things concurrently. I know doing something kinetic (fidgety) can help my concentration.
I'm pretty sure these guys pitched me on an angel investment last year
Mediocre Marketing: How NOT To Describe Your Startup
Ah, and now I understand why there even can be multiple submissions: I guess because of the various random parameters some websites attach (session ids or whatever), the duplicate detection mechanism of news.yc doesn't work.

Makes me wonder if there could be a way to assign a unique id to every website. I guess at least for news feeds it already exists, but not every submission has a news feed.
Ask YC: what to develop first, Facebook App or Website?
Thinking about my current project, I just realized that it doesn't do anything I couldn't do with facebook - I assume anything a social network can do, a facebook app can do. So I wonder if I should create the facebook app first, and only later create a standalone website for my service?

And I just realized that there is no way to compete with Facebook, at least not without adding my own "Facebook Apps" feature: no matter how many features I conceive for my SN, I will never be able to add features as fast as the plethora of Facebook Apps creators out there. My only hope is that, just like me, not everybody wants to be on facebook.
Continuous Partial Attention ?

http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2005/06/supernova_2005_2.h...
I think that's right on the money! Asking your target users what they want. Maybe I could share a few things for what it's worth. Back then I wanted to build a Yelp! like site just for the sake of it. I was thinking that guys like me would benefit from it. To cut the long story short it didn't go so well. Anyways a couple of months before my failed attempt I built a simple to-do list application. My dad saw it and asked me what else does it do. To cut another long story short this simple to-do list evolved into a full fledged project management application that is aimed towards people who are in the same line of business as my father. It's feature set was built specifically by the recommendation of my users. And by God's grace I have four companies lined up in the trenches ready to buy my software :-). So yeah without a FGD (focus group discussion) my company wouldn't be where it is right now. I was constantly amazed by the difference between what I want as a user and what my target users want. So never underestimate a good FGD session or similar to my case several FGD sessions.