skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> I wonder how many years until software production will reach the level of maturity where we don’t just fix bugs but, when bugs happen, we stop in our tracks, shocked that bugs happened at all in the first place

This happens all the time in software engineering. Less because we're shocked that bugs could happen, and more because when you are working from the assumption that what has happened should not be possible, when it happens, that means your mental model of what is happening within the system is wrong in some way.

There are the bugs you understand (or think you understand), and those you can safely allow workarounds for in most cases, because you understand the scope of the problems. Then there are the bugs that you don't understand, and it's important to be very careful and provide them the attention they deserve, because while they may be simple fixes, they could just as likely be an insidious case of data corruption or loss that you weren't ware of.
The Service Locator Pattern Is Not an Anti-Pattern  It Is Pivotal for OOP
"This is exactly what debugging is"

Yes and no. Debugging (in the sense that programmers do it) stops when you learn "X wasn't initialized" or "that buffer isn't long enough for the trailing zero".

This is root cause analysis (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Root_cause_analysis). It goes way deeper into "why the problem happened". The buffer may be undersized because the programmer isn't educated well enough, because (s)he was too tired to think properly, because the spec specifying the maximum size was wrong, etc.

Each reason leads to a different fix, often through more iterations of asking "why?"

The programmer's lack of education can be caused by a problem in hiring practices, by low quality of internal courses, etc.

The programmer may be tired because of long working hours, because of troubles at home, because (s)he goes out too much, etc.

That buffer size might be a typo, an OCR error, somebody declaring the maximum size to be N because, otherwise, the data couldn't be fit in the current hardware, etc.

Each explanation comes with a different way to prevent the problem from occurring again (something that traditional debugging does nothing about. Initializing that variable makes the problem go away, but in itself does nothing from you writing code with initialized variables in the future)
Ditto. In September, I took a road trip to NYC and back. It was my first time out of town in 6 years. Now all I can think about is how I can't wait to do it again, and my job bums me out more than ever...
Not really familiar with async-await but perhaps std::future and std::promise are helpful?? Less low-level than threads to some extent.
It's like middle-aged disillusionment combined with the 5 stages of loss, writ cultural.

I guess we're at stage 3 : Contriving a story that we can swallow. A story that will make us feel better about our fucked up machine-drone lives.

We're working on that story every day all day. You can see it on tv. Thrashing like a dog with its leg in a trap.
> Compared to that time (1920s, 1930s), people today (in the developed world) really DO NOT have to work so hard and the surplus is huge.

We could be working even less though.

https://c4ad.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/epi-disconnect-betw...

http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/worktime/
> The government signed on not the people.

The same can be said about many nations. We should all contact our representatives regardless. However, the last time I did this, one of my supposed reps sent me a condescending form letter in response. She wasn't even gracious enough to lie to me and say she valued feedback from her constituents. It came across more like she knew better than I did and that's why she was voting against the interests of the people.
Imagine your startup is unwelcome at VC events because you're considered a coward after declining a duel. Or if you're an employee, you're passed up for promotions on the same basis.

You can think it bogus all you want, but that is small comfort if there are concrete socially-enforced ramifications for declining a duel.
5 Ridiculously Common Misconceptions about UX
Ask HN: What makes an app valuable?
Hi, HN!

I have some vague ideas about what makes an app valuable, but nothing too concrete. (Users? Returning Users? Paying Users? Paying Returning Users? IP? Talent of Employees? Threat to Incumbent Companies? % of Market Claimed?)

Could anyone provide me with either resources to scour, or just their own thoughts?

Thanks,
Mike
Well, that is sort of what I meant. If nostalgia for the "glamorous" days of the 1920s resonates with you, then you should remember that it was not all fun and games for everyone, just a select few. Apparently, that's what the parent comment meant as well. So I still don't see the problem.

FYI, my own wife occasionally expresses nostalgia for more glamorous and elegant times. She often laments that, for example, no one gets dressed up to go out any more. So my comment was in no way meant to be judgmental.
Ha, I am surprised to see that page on HN.

I remember finding this way back in 2002, after making my own "Quick and Dirty Preview of Solid State Physics". I had to make this site for a seminar class. Basically each student had to present on some general physics topic and then make a webpage for it.
http://www.pha.jhu.edu/~jeffwass/2ndYrSem/slide1.html

Made me realise after coming across the Britney Spears page, the brilliance of basing a potentially dry academic presentation around a pop culture celebrity.

Eg, another pop cultural site/meme around that time was MC Hawking (E=MC). Some guy made gangsta rap tunes using a voice synthesiser similar to Stephen Hawking's, with loose physics references.

Btw - in my seminar class, the best presentation (maybe the only one I remember) was by one dude (now a professional astronomer) who interspersed graphs of cosmic inflation with pictures of an inflatable sheep sex doll. The prof wasn't too pleased. Not sure where that webpage is nowadays...
I believe you, but when I worked in a medical office in 1993 vendors were saying that exact same thing.
With the whole "Everyone Should Learn to Code" movement taking on so much steam, I cannot help but wonder why there isn't a similar "More People Should Learn to Do Basic Diagnosis" movement. We need a shit ton more Nurse Practitioners and "basic" doctors to diagnose and treat minor ailments, so doctors who have gone to 6-year plus medical school can spend time on the more serious ailments.
You could think of types being a form of static analysis. B originally had no types. I think static analysis integrated into languages can progress as people realize there are things that they really don't want to be able to do 90% of the time.
Subversion and amount of logic are main concerns. Lattice aint Virtex6 last I checked. I agree on RISC-V/DARPA comparison though.
My story is similar. I loved computers and programming, have a degree, done it for years, in my early 30s. I spent 80-100 hour weeks keeping a dying startup alive for a year without pay before finally leaving. My mental state was very similar to what you describe: Loss of interest, decreased self-worth, and an uncertain future. It sucks and I'm sorry you are going through it.

I wish I could tell you how to move past it, but I haven't figured that out yet. I also suspect different things work for different people.

I agree with the others who suggested this may be burnout and/or depression. It was in my case, although I am predisposed due to personal and family history. Consider therapy, meds, exercise, socializing, and self-help books. I recommend the CBT-family of therapies (CBT/DBT/ACT/REBT) and books by Albert Ellis and David Burns in particular. Therapy and self-help can be beneficial regardless of whether or not you have a mental illness.

I would not recommend what I did: I moved to a new city to take Masters-level CS courses as a non-matriculated student, with plans to apply to grad programs if it worked out. It didn't. I failed miserably. If you don't have an interest in the professional work, it may transfer to academic work and further complicate a difficult transition. The lack of social support and career network also shouldn't be underestimated. Although switching gears and pursuing education may be exactly what you need, be aware of the risks.

Make a goal of building the life you want. Don't fret over sunk costs. It's not too late to start over or change direction, and your skills and experiences are likely to be valuable even in completely unrelated pursuits. Best of luck!
Floor Length Strapless Sweetheart Lace Dress
Advancement arguments did not entirely convince me. Autoland and "cruise control".
Technically you could fit those to any aircraft. Maybe Lockheed should have done that?
We should be living better considering how much immeasurable wealth society as a whole have developed. The problem is not that we are not making zero progress as a society, the problem is how much we are being held back by the greediest at the top. For those, efficiency is a matter of maintaining control, not moving us forward.
Also, the probability of being elected president is definitely not evenly distributed across the U.S. population:

1. If you have no prior political experience (e.g., you've never been a governor, U.S. senator, mayor of a major city, etc.), you probably won't get elected unless you're wealthy enough to be able to spend $100 million of your own money on your campaign.

2. If you're less than 35 years old, or were not born a U.S. citizen, you have a zero probability of being elected president since you don't meet the constitutional requirements to hold the office.

3. If you come from certain ethnic or religious groups, your probability of being elected are greatly diminished. The U.S. has only had one Catholic president (JFK), and no Jewish or Muslim or atheist presidents.

4. If you're not good at public speaking and TV appearances, you'll never be elected president.

I expect that my own probability of being the next president is zero, but my probability of winning a lottery (if I ever buy a ticket) is some very small positive number.
C-style memory management is important to know about but in C++ land, RAII and C++11 features are here to help. Move semantics, use of containers, references etc. all mean many of these bugs are a thing of the past.

In addition, extra tools and profiling / static code analysis has helped me to write better code.
Inside the Wall Street Journal’s Prediction Calculator
> There is a BIG problem with the current model of the advertising industry. It's based on STEALING attention from people. This is an outstanding lack of respect.

Not to be flip, but when has advertising not been about trying to command the attention of those who would otherwise ignore what you have to say?
Not having dictation is just dumb. Voice rec is quite capable these days and the doctor's time is too valuable to waste on their typing speed.

One note though, the PC never really has to be any good because most of the EMR crap is accessed over Citrix... To make IT's life easier (in theory) and avoid having the need for fancy PCs on the wards.
The doing gives context for the reading phase. Without it, there is no place for the concepts to attach in the graph of knowledge. It is similar to skimming a book to get structure, knowing the destinations allows the journey to make more sense.
Velocity Definition, What Is Velocity in Agile Scrum Methodology
As a JMU alum, I it was both interesting and burdensome to see the other side of the 'Burg that I was sheltered from when at school. Myself and most of my classmates were aware of the duality of Harrisonburg's culture, but to see it from this angle makes it more poignant than it was when I was at school.

Whether the approach is perfect or not, the intentions appear good to me. I worry though that the yard would just be a revolving door for people that have long-running disputes. Of course, having the same two people fight each other every few months is more desirable than the more permanent alternatives.
With respect to the linked article, that software development team might as well live in another planet. Sure, they develop software for a living, and so do many of us here, but their approach is so different from ours that they are effectively practitioners of a different profession. It is dishonest to insinuate that any programmer could perform well at a job consisting in developing error-free software.
I run a company which develops medical devices, many of which combine mechanical, electronic and software engineering. It's well known (and a running joke) that software engineers from non-medical fields think it is acceptable to ship their product with serious defects. It takes a long time and a lot of training to get them up to the level that we need, more so than for mechies and sparkies.
Some previous discussion on Hacker News:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6513765

300 points | 824 days ago | 120 comments

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9015092

161 points | 336 days ago | 50 comments
Show HN: A new News site
Number of active users is the most important, and realistic growth expectations.
I use a separate machine to play the music, as I don't like the bleeps and bloops Windows normally generates, either.
These are two great responses, but they seem to be saying opposite things.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10877128 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10877121

One says electrons bump into electrons, the other says electrons bump into non-charge-carriers. Someone on Twitter said it was phonons.

I guess I can kind of imagine a pachinko machine, but this is all very unsatisfying. :-)

Edit: From the Wikipedia link: "Charged particles in an electric circuit are accelerated by an electric field but give up some of their kinetic energy each time they collide with an ion"

I mean, electrons are very very lightweight and tend to move quite slowly for typical currents. How much kinetic energy can they give?
Making Popcorn with Coke / MADNESS
I find it interesting that a "killer feature" is talking to my TV. I find the Apple remote quite easy to use within Netflix for scrolling etc. and don't really have a problem using my iPad as a remote if I want to type things.

Perhaps I am just old but voice recognition is a great feature, but not one that would "kill" the competition or make me chuck my AppleTV 3rd. gen in the bin to rush out and buy an Amazon device.
I would therefore not label it "killer".
The very insightful chart mentioned above: http://www.lumapartners.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/201...
Thanks for all your advice! I really appreciate it.

I'm going to follow up with a notice of payment due, and lawyer up. sigh
Have no idea what you are talking about, as we had multiple color printers in my team.
Ah yes, the moral duty American colleges feel for ensuring a rounded education at the low low price of tens of thousands of dollars per year.
I didn't downvote you but I did think the comment had an aggressive tone to it. Probably just the sarcasm at the end. Obviously that's not what you intended but maybe others read it that way as well and jumped to downvote rather than respond.
I don't really see it as pure ad hominem; it's a demonstrable fact that malpractice insurance rates are not tied to malpractice award amounts, and that capping malpractice awards does not rein in the absurd ballooning of malpractice rates.
Some of it is a perception issue, no one wants anything but the very best for their loved ones. So nurse practitioners, while great in theory, are only acceptable for others...

Of course if you live in the boonies, a nurse here is a heck of a lot better than a doctor 4h away.
What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: "This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life will have to return to you, all in the same succession and sequence—even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned upside down again and again, and you with it, speck of dust!"

Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: "You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine." If this thought gained possession of you, it would change you as you are or perhaps crush you. The question in each and every thing, "Do you desire this once more and innumerable times more?" would lie upon your actions as the greatest weight. Or how well disposed would you have to become to yourself and to life to crave nothing more fervently than this ultimate eternal confirmation and seal?
Just as space is what gives matter room to exist, probability is what gives information room to exist. In this unfolding of probability to information, there is a possibility for choice to exist.
Sure, but are you sure that we wouldn't get worse results and thus decreased living conditions?

On the other hand, who is 'we'? Some people already work even less ;)

Just to make clear, I do not argue that the situation is good as it is, I just replied to the post that complained that Russell was naive and off the mark. In my opinion, as far as predicting the future can go, Russell was fantastically right in many things. Of course not everything is right and we should work even less.
It seems HN likes to complain about the ad industry when in fact what they're really criticizing are ad tech firms. Ad tech makes up a small fraction of the ad industry. Defaming the ad industry because of ad tech firms is like slamming the entire automotive industry for faulty airbag manufacturers.
You're incorrect, the cost of medical care is measurably lower as a result of tort reform in Texas. And maybe more importantly, accessibility of care has increased. You see price reflected in at least two places: 1) the variable in the formula for medicare reimbursements that reflects practice environment costs, and 2) more visibly, in Obamacare rates for the State of Texas, which would be significantly higher in the pre-2003 med mal environment.

Here's an interesting read on the financial impact of various State medical malpractice environments:

http://epmonthly.com/article/the-medical-malpractice-rundown...

http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMsa1012370
Server Tycon: a game about managing a server farm
I'm using Papertrail and the experience so far is not so great. Dashboard UI looks like it wasn't updated since 2005. Also, the free plan is a joke: 10Mb of logs per day. When I started I managed to stay under this quota, but recently I've added a couple features that spits additional log data. Now I have to either filter some valuable logs or become a paying customer (which I can't afford for such thing as logging).

Looking to migrate to https://logentries.com At least their free plan offers 5Gb/month.
This was one of the more helpful resources I found in 2001/2002 when I was taking semiconductor physics.
I already put my information on backerkit, but it still says "ready to ship".
This pretty much sums up the entire thread.

No one is understanding that having a few extra hours a month to build features and find customers is worth a couple hundred bucks. It's probably worth thousands of dollars a month.
First we would have to find a research job which paid as well as SEO jobs do.
Number of errors fixed. Software engineers fix more errors in their designs, ergo, they must be using better practices! /s
How pigs are helping researchers tackle antibiotic resistance
Why I Carry a Newton
Typing on tablet, apologies for terseness.

* simple machines
* highly regular, not littered with corner cases
* state isolation, fast and easy to restart
* linguistically and semantically simple

The affordances of Erlang are a good starting point, as they encourage simple machines with isolated state while the language lacks the ability paint oneself into a corner semantically.
This strategy makes sense when the odds of winning are known, and the jackpot is not shared.

The powerball jackpot is shared so you would need to factor in the likely number of people you would share with which would be complicated to figure out.

There are cases in gambling where the jackpot is not shared, for example poker machines.

The odds of winning remain fixed, yet the jackpot slowly increases, moreso when there are many machines linked to build the same prize.

At a certain level of jackpot the math works out and it's a sound strategy to pour money into the machines.

See: break even point
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_jackpot

Here's a person who's written about dedicating their life to this approach:
http://www.amazon.com/Million-Dollar-Slots-Peter-Liston/dp/0...

If you were going to invest in lotto with shared jackpots I've heard anecdotes that choosing numbers 32 and higher is a better way to go because people tend to pick birthdays. I think looking at past drawing results and whether there was a winner or not you could analyse if numbers are picked disproprotionately, but I'm not sure what sample size would be needed to generate meaningful results.

All that said, I can think of many things I'd rather develop expertise in than reverse engineering the payout odds of poker / progressive jackpot machines.
"As soon as your infrastructure becomes more complicated, you can use Heroku instead of hiring people to manage it for a while"

Having a Iaas/Paas doesn't mean you don't have to manage anything - that's a myth. Sure, it might be doable if you own a trivial app with just 1 web server + 1 app server + 1 database server. But once you're doing anything remotely complex like building a 10-node Elasticsearch cluster that is running out of RAM, or a 10 Cassanda node cluster, or a Kafka queue that can overfill, you always need an engineer to manage your infrastructure.
And thus, every boneheaded project that ships with -Werror enabled will inflict an excrement tornado of FAIL on its grateful users and packagers.

THIS IS WHY YOU SHOULD NOT USE -Werror. NOT EVER. (And if you can't bring yourself to do anything about mere warnings, you shouldn't be in software engineering.)
I think it's more a symptom of how out of touch people are with the age of many of the things we think of as "advanced" tech. The first aircraft autopilot system was developed in 1912; instrument landings have been around since the 1920s; and fully operational autoland predates the TriStar by almost a decade.

Granted, early instrument landing systems weren't as precise or as convenient as their modern-day equivalents, but you can implement basic ILS with a few carefully-placed radio antennas (and in fact that's how it was done back in the day), and the modern systems work on exactly the same principles.
Stellar says they're "the world’s first commercial operations system for Part 135 business jet operators", which means their flights have commercially licensed pilots working for regulated carriers, not private pilots illegally carrying passengers for hire, like FlyteNow's pilots were. So it sounds legal.
I know, I hope my Background as MD and CS plus the idea we had will make it different. We are working on something similar to an IDE :)
If it was still available I would totally get one.
Hi,

the model is not available!
Now go back and read the news reports about he ashley-madison leak. Those with .mil or .forces.gc.ca email addresses probably had some sleepless nights, and a few long talks with commanding officers. The likelihood of promotion after that leak is slim.
How are you using window functions for querying the hierarchy?
That isn't charitable. My take is that the op would advocate building a Popsicle bridge per day, each able to take increasingly excessive loads.

A civil engineer should have many fully understood failure modes under their belt.