skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> I liken coding to playing a musical instrument.

Except with a musical instrument, anybody can judge whether you are good at it. Not so with programming. Everybody who ever wrote one line of HTML can call themself a programmer, but only trained people can tell whether you are a good one.

You might say at this point: so what? But I think the distinction is important, because it may be the reason the "driving force" is missing for a lot of people. If programming really had "rock stars" we might have had a lot more good programmers.
It's the same logic I use against idiots that are obsessed with DRM. If it cost you effectively nothing for someone to use your product (in unit costs not including R&D) isn't it better to have 1 out of 10 pay than to have no customers at all?
You're applying a broad principle (competition is good) without considering lots of specifics.

First of all, within free software, collaboration is a lot easier than competition. Sure, we should all try to be the best we can be, but if our "competition" is also free, we can just grab their stuff and re-use it. We cannot, however, grab whatever we want from Matlab and re-use it, so we do have to compete against them.

Secondly, even if I agree with you that competition is great even in this case, how do you want me to modify my behaviour? To stop collaborating with Julia? To view them with more suspicion? To refuse to help them when they ask for help?

I already try to match features whenever possible. The feature I'm most envious of is their JIT compiling, but it's very difficult to implement this. Vice versa, I don't think they have a goal to match our features, such as a native Qt GUI or an exact implementation of the Matlab language.

Julia and Octave have lots of ideological differences too. For one, Octave is a GNU package, so it tries to adhere to the GNU coding standards and ideals. In particular, we prefer to call ourselves free software, not open source, even if both terms mean the same thing. I think the most important thing is to enable unfettered scientific computing. Julia's main goal is to provide a better language for scientific computing, while ensuring user freedom is a secondary goal. So far they have not compromised user freedom, and I hope they never do. So, there you have it, we're already competing on something?
I too have a child with Autism, though she is under 3 and we're still learning more about what her challenges long term might be.

I also am an engineer and the son of an engineer. My wife is a pharmacist and highly educated. We also dated in high school.

I know that within my paternal family there is a long history of high intellect and lack of social skills.

It's curious to me how much can be attributed to parents with higher education and means being more proactive to get a diagnosis for a high functional child versus the same demographic just being predisposed to ASD offspring.
And Frege was based on Haskell which takes the exact opposite approach: everything is pure/immutable by default, and extra effort is required to write impure code and mutable data. What if we had a plugin that worked this way? It would assume everything should be pure/immutable and require explicit annotations (@Impure, @Mutable) otherwise. There are a lot of complications, but it's food for thought.
I'm not sure how old you are, but what exactly are you expectations when you state Data science is improving, but you might be surprised how slowly.

We have machines that can categorise pictures better that humans. In 2011 that seemed completely impossible.
Thankfully the pendulum has swung back since the 90s.

Stepanov, the inventor of STL (The C++ Standard Template Library) was the pioneer in avoidance of OO. It was truly revolutionary, and had such a huge influence on library design that today most modern C++ libraries are designed the same way.

"STL is not object oriented. I think that object orientedness is [...] a hoax. I have yet to see an interesting piece of code that comes from these OO people. [...] I find OOP technically unsound. [...] I find OOP philosophically unsound. "

http://www.stlport.org/resources/StepanovUSA.html
For me:

A) Storing cash: I hate having to carry cash around just to pay for a ride home.

B) I'm drunk. I don't want to have to tell a driver how to get there. I can just tap the home button, it gives him the GPS coordinates, and then I fall into the back of his cab.

C) Quality: Uber cars are clean and feel safe. I've never felt like I'm sitting in 10-year old vomit-stains in an uber.
noise, biases, collisions, etc. due to imperfect or insufficient data, representational space issues, etc.
Oh we do "something" about it. But I just gotta point out that "forcing other people to do something" is typically a non-scalable solution. As soon as someone disagrees with you, you become deadlocked.

Its not enough to just say "force those other guys to clean it up". If you actually want to say that, you need an action plan (ie: how you plan to force those other guys to do stuff). If you're saying "pass a law", we can pass a law of course, but its not going to affect other countries.

This is a United Nations issue, and it needs to be solved globally.
The gp isn't calling that noise, it's the thousands of other things that they track that don't lead to anything that are noise.
I owned (via bundles) a series of FTP client and used even more over the years (2002 till today.

The most full-featured is by far the command line "lftp" client.

The best mac-client is by far Transmit.
Mind, are you not worried at all that it may have taught you a lot... about how to make a language for writing compilers in? (paraphrasing Chris Lattner)
Mark Zuckerberg Responds to Critics, Explains Where His Money Is Going
Have you ever played with Meteor?
What a silly article.

>> A lead author of the U.S. Patriot Act has some advice for European officials as they wrestle with the balance between personal liberties and security in the wake of the Paris terror attacks

That implies that security is actually achieved through a reduction in liberties, which is obviously not the case.

For example, monitoring the shit out of the general population didn't seem to help prevent the recent spate of shootings in the US.

>> He notes that at the time, a broad range of lawmakers, from security hawks to civil libertarians, voted for the bill

What's a "security hawk"? In light of the developments in the past few years, wouldn't it be more accurate to call them "tyranny hawks"? That would sound kind of unpleasant though.

>> The USA Freedom Act was signed into law in June, and government’s authority for bulk data collection ended this week

But let's not mention that in reality, the legislation did nothing to curtail the surveillance. It's unconstitutional to begin with, so why would any other law be an impediment?

>> Among other things, the prime minister proposed allowing authorities to hold suspects for 72 hours without a warrant and tag extremist young people with electronic tethers. “We must always preserve the balance between safety, freedom and privacy of citizens,” he said.

Extremist young people, you say? Here's the UK government's helpful advisory on what that might entail: http://www.cscb-new.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/CSCB_Ra...

>> "Showing a mistrust of mainstream media reports and belief in conspiracy theories" [..] "Appearing angry about government policies, especially foreign policy."

So I guess if you're 'mistrustful' of the US government telling you the economy is doing fine, that makes you an "extremist" that should be "tagged with an electronic tether", whatever that might be.

You shouldn't question foreign policy either. For example, clearly the US has done a wonderful job of fighting ISIS, right? To suggest otherwise would be heresy! Don't complain about meddling in other countries' affairs either, or you might find yourself "tagged with an electronic tether"!

Everything in "The Free World" is just doubleplusgood all around.
Suburbs, highways, and cars exist outside the US as I can attest (I used to live in Japan), but they are not the same suburbs and highways. Compare relatively car centric Naha, Japan to Houston. Very different development patterns because Japan doesn't have the same restrictions that America has. The car is not held above all other modes in Japan, efficiency be damned.

Some places have imported the American car centric suburb, but they will learn over time the lesson America has started to learn.
I wouldn't want someone driving me to be sedated.
PPA for PHP 7.0
Introducing Solid: BuzzFeed's CSS Style Guide
Checklists for productivity
Or even more reasonably, if I were spending billions on such robots and they became a pervasive part of society, such that every family had such a robot regularly visiting their house and their daily routine was dependant on such robots...

Coupled with the fact that the function of said robots could be changed with a code push...

Doesn't that create an incredible opportunity for monetization and therefore risk for future abuse?

Just because we could provide a perfect search result to any query if we knew everything about a person (including their current thoughts) doesn't make enacting that a reasonable or good idea.
Driving is hard. Or not. Driving an F1 car is hard. Driving an 18 wheeler is hard. Driving a Fiat is not. You can probably learn to "move" an 18 wheeler or an F1 car but bets are off whether or not you're going to go on to win any races. Have I run this analogy into the ground yet?
There's a big gulf between knowing how to code and working as a professional software developer.

I'm a writer for a marketing agency, but I write Google App Scripts, JavaScript, and PHP on a regular basis to automate tasks, try out ideas I have, etc.

There's no way I could work as a professional software developer, but I know how to code enough to help make my professional/personal life easier and more fun.

Isn't there something to be said for that? Not every skill needs to lead directly to a job. Can't it just be another skill to have when you need it?

I learned to code through Codecademy and trial and error with frequent Stack Overflow searches. If I can figure it out, anyone can.

Edit: For anyone saying they would hire me, I'm flattered but am very happy working as a writer who gets to program occasionally. If you're interested, here are two little projects I've put together: http://playRollo.com and http://WriteByNumbers.com. Feedback? Email me, paulcole@gmail.com.
My argument ultimately "there are better things to do". At the same time, interpreting ++ as add-add is certainly not an argument. You can say that you don't like infix and postfix operators, but not whether they are readable.

If you consider readability, then why !a instead of not(a)? Why || instead of or?
Coding requires a mindset that some people just don't have, or haven't developed yet. Ask any TA who has taught the basic "intro to CS" courses, and you'll hear lots of anecdotes which show that some people just don't get it.

Here's an example:

Q: write a program that reads 2 numbers from standard input,
and outputs their sum. For example:
First number: 3
Second number: 7
Sum is: 10

Here's a solution someone submitted:

print "First number: 3"
print "Second number: 7"
print "Sum is: 10"
Oh good, they're replacing nuclear with biomass...
I'm not sure I want my car turning snitch on me...
Your perspective is incorrect.

I've made my living by teaching beginners to code. I have been doing it for the better part of two decades, and I specialize in teaching students that have little aptitude for it.

I make my students code FizzBuzz. It is literally the 106th project I make them do. That is, they have completed 105 complete computer programs before getting to FizzBuzz.

And many of them still struggle with it. The nuance of else/if needing to be ordered in a certain way is something they still don't have a good grip on.

Programming a computer is very very hard for most people.
Counterpoint, I can knock out a first class "Stairway to Heaven" in the local electric guitar shop simply by remembering where my fingers should be but not having any clue about what chords and notes they are.

Can I be judged to be an accomplished musician upon that sole rendition?
In my mind, the erosion of privacy and freedom - some of the most vaunted principles of the West - is the ultimate triumph of terrorist organizations like ISIS and Al-Qaeda. They can't beat us by strength of arms, so instead they're stunting our culture.
I've always used this comparison too. Of course this same explanation can be used for many fields and career choices, but for technical fields I think it's easy to make this comparison. It's important to point out exactly what you just said though - "the hard way".

It's the whole nature vs nuture argument. I wish I could have told myself many years ago to focus more on my "nuture" side. It's amazing how far you can go when you previously wrote it off as being not naturally inclined.
> Hot code loading is the art of replacing an engine from a running car without having to stop it.

Except you can clone the car into a controlled environment, and test the whole procedure, before doing the actual replacing.
I agree with the author that boot-camps and the learn-to-code attitude teaches people generally that they could easily "do it if they wanted". This is slightly different to the intended message which is "you should do it, we can help".

Historically for me, I'm sure that kind of attitude pushed my clueless bosses into thinking I'm some kind of semi-skilled lackey that can readily be replaced with outsourced staff or graduate hires. It's kind of a self feeding one, because if they do outsource it works for a while, until a kind of critical mass happens and it starts falling apart. The confirmation bias after making this call also makes it almost impossible to undo.

I'd disagree on one point - and that is that programmer is a synonym for software developer. It's one thing coding yourself up some scripts at home, another thing altogether building a reliable, scalable technical solution within a (possibly large) team. All software developers are programmers, but not all programmers are software developers.
Because it optionally records ambient audio to play while looking at your panorama.
I'm not sure what an advisor will say about a doc student who says, let's just throw reams of data at a machine until we find a meaningful correlation, and then let's reason from the correlations

Currently they are saying yes, please, and desperately trying to source ever bigger volumes of data.

Norvig et. al's article "The unreasonable effectiveness of data"[1] has been cited over 400 times which is a lot for something with no formula.

[1] http://static.googleusercontent.com/media/research.google.co...
What I learned from four years working at McDonalds
> Unlike Python, short one line blocks can be expressed after the colon as a form of syntactic brevity

The author might not be aware of it, but Python does actually have this syntax feature, for this exact purpose.
Driverless cars aren't a fix for our transport woes
Thanks for the reply and the tutorial....any reason in particular that made you choose Redux over Flux?
Canadian ISP censured for ‘outing’ broke customers on Facebook
Work on the commercial project. Even if it hasn't shipped, it is something worth talking about. What features did you implement, what were the challenges you faced along the way, what would you do differently next time?
> Each of these jobs probably have a particular set of paths that lead to them.

I think the commonality is that at the minimum you need to be able to read English at a proficient level, which weeds out the vast majority of American adults.
The article makes good points but is a little harsh... of course mastery takes aptitude and practice and it is ridiculous to think that you could learn anything even remotely complex in an hour or a day.

But the "learn to code" efforts that are referenced serve the important purpose of exposing people who might have aptitude to the idea that they can realize that aptitude. I imagine that people without the prerequisite aptitude would just quit because it wouldn't interest them, and those who can cut it would continue on auto-didactically. I'm not trying to be too critical, but criticising those efforts with the idea that "it is hard, you probably can't do it" is unhelpful at best.
There was talk some time ago now about Signal server federation. I was under the impression that it was planned and either dropped or de-prioritised for now.

Certainly, it seems that while running your own server might not be actively discouraged, it isn't supported by the Open Whisper Systems team at the moment.
That's odd. Many people who have a Surface, myself included, consider the design elegant, sharp, and very appealing. I certainly find my Surface Book to be considerably nicer looking than products from another major vendor that is extremely popular here at HN. Surface products with their magnesium finish and crisp angles have a sleek high-end look that doesn't employ design refrains I find unseemly such as tapering edges and glowing logos.

To put it in your words, I had a strong emotional response to the design of the Surface Book and its unique hinge. It's not more of the same and it looks great.

Many of us fans of Windows Phone have picked up Lumia 950s because they are what is available today, but they were not designed by Panos Panay's Surface team. We are clamoring for an upcoming rumored "Surface Phone" that may have the Surface design motif which so many of us prefer. So the 950 feels like a stop-gap that was released to satiate fans as Panay's team cooks up something more interesting.

As a Windows Mobile user, I'd run Android apps if they were available, of course. But I don't really care if they're not. I have the apps I use (phone, messaging, maps, e-mail, browser, Twitter, news, calendar, Netflix, Kindle, photos, stocks, weather, music, podcasts) and one I'm starting to really enjoy: Continuum. So sure, running Android apps might allow me to enjoy the latest food delivery or clothing sharing service from Silicon Valley, but... meh. I'll pass.
Have you looked into F#?

It's been open source for a while and there is a very good ecosystem that exists already for it. Plus the language itself is a pleasure to use.
And my argument is that the Boston bomber warning from the Russian authorities doesn't appear like a typical "noise," at last for somebody just reading the news, like me.

I admit I don't know how many such warnings come from Russia, but I doubt it's really something overwhelming, especially compared to collecting every phone record of everybody, if you know more I'm surely interested.
Unfortunately I was talking about two things simultaneously without making the connection.

One, with professional juries (judges) a high conviction rate is achieved in Japan, possibly contributed to by the cozy relationship between attorneys and judges as well as some deficiencies in how its determined when to take a case in addition to laws and in addition to police misconduct.

One of the reasons (there were others, such as decreasing backlog) for the introduction of lay judges ("peer" jurors) was because it's thought they could prove more sympathetic to defendants.
This assumes that both lawyers were of equal competence. The authors does not think so (other members of the jury didn't think so).

In the end, won't the jury have to interpret "case law"? How can you be presented something without interpreting it.
I used to agree with you but now I'm not so sure. My uncle works in health care and had the same experience as me. He hated his old job, switched to a new one - is performing the same work, same hours, but the change in practice environment (better co-workers and more flexible scheduling) improved his attitude similar to mine, and now he's happy to keep working for another decade or so. It wasn't the hours he hated but certain toxic environmental factors (inflexible scheduling, overhead and bureaucracy). I have heard similar things from folks in other industries. Look at taxi drivers. From what I hear, it really sucked to work for medallion owners - you paid a flat weekly rate, and felt like you had to work 7 days a week or were losing money - and if you took a few weeks off (without paying the rate), you lost your grandfathered position in line. You worked for 12 hour shifts. Now with Uber, you can clock in and clock out whenever you want. No boss yelling at you because he is having a bad day and wants to roll the shit down hill. Same amount of work, same amount of money, but much happier drivers from what I can tell due to that autonomy and flexibility. Software is an awesome field with a lot of benefits that others don't enjoy but my sense is that there are a lot of fields within which you could increase quality of work life happiness by increasing autonomy and flexibility. Increased autonomy and flexibility, enabled by technology, if not a free lunch, might at least be a very, very cheap one. Whether large employers have an incentive to explore this or not (before some technology disruption forces them to) is another question.
Let's imagine that YOU were doing the rewrite, and for all the best reasons. Totally different situation. Would you write your code to continue saving some bizarre unnecessary data in the database, or would you get the job done with a sensible scheme? As for the other comment, were they supposed to continue renting out completely unused facilities in case someone came along who thought the old system was better?
Err, yeah, you could work as a professional programmer if you wanted to.

You can code. The whole point the article is trying to get across is that a lot of people are simply unable to learn how to code. You've learnt. You CAN become a professional.

You just don't realize it.

The step you've taken is the hard one. In fact, there's another big dirty secret in programming.

A load of professional programmers aren't able to do what you can do, they can't make new programs. They can only modify existing programs. Making new programs is beyond them (or at least takes them an inordinate amount of time). Automating scripts to make their job easier is something that they would take weeks to do.

EDIT: I'm not sure I agree with the article though, I've heard several arguments that we simply teach programming badly. Especially in universities.
One thing to consider is it is unlikely that a 1993 agreement included a provision for a fiber to residential home requirement.

It's probably a requirement for building fiber to commercial or government locations if a customer is willing to pay. Stuff that Telecom's do, it's just very expensive.
Yep, its like poisons that kill you by triggering an overreactive histamine response. The body's zealous desire to protect itself is precisely what kills it.
even more abused now w/ es6 arrow shorthand
> All the evidence shows that programming requires a high level of aptitude that only a small percentage of the population possess.

No such evidence, at least not in any respectful sources.

> will do nothing to help the skills shortage

Who said that this is the immediate goal of teaching as many people as possible to code?

> Given the skills shortage one would expect graduates from computer science courses to have very high employment rates.

This logic is broken on so many levels that it's even embarrassing to comment. Let's start with a trivial nitpicking that Computer Science education got nothing to do with the Software Engineering.

> there are two populations: one that finds programming a relatively painless and indeed enjoyable thing to learn and another that can’t learn no matter how good the teaching

It is really embarrassing that the guy who wrote it calls himself a programmer - i.e., someone who is supposed to be logical and rigorous.

There are far more categories that these two. And the most important category, targeted by all the programmes he's mocking, is the people who do no even know if they'll find programming enjoyable, because they never tried.