skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Wow, this is the first post I have ever read that even kind of implied that Andrei Alexandrescu was a Blub programmer.

Part of being a Blub programmer is that you don't even think about the issues. In regards to the weird features brought up, the underlying issues behind these features have been in the C++ consciousness for some time. Below are some talks and resources covering at least some of these issues.

Sean Parent - Inheritance is the Base Class of Evil - https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c...

Herb Sutter - You don't know const and mutable - http://herbsutter.com/2013/01/01/video-you-dont-know-const-a...

Andrei Alexandrescu - Systematic error handling in C++ - https://channel9.msdn.com/Shows/Going+Deep/C-and-Beyond-2012...

Herb Sutter - Writing Good C++ by Default - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEx5DNLWGgA

Andrew Sutton - Generic Programming with Concepts Lite - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwXq5MqY2ZA

One of the things that helps with avoiding "Blubness" in C++ is the significant interest in languages such as Haskel (which is not considered a Blub language by anyone except Agda programmers) and in applying the techniques and insights where possible to C++ whether through writing new libraries (see for example Fit by Paul Fultz II -https://github.com/pfultz2/Fit) or through new language features (see this post by David Sankel - http://davidsankel.com/uncategorized/c-language-support-for-...)

Finally, is also interesting that Paul Graham's blub paradox is being brought up in regards to Rust, C++, and D. The Paul Graham article is in large part talking about the power of meta-programming. In this regard, D and C++ are significantly more powerful in that regard. Features like higher kinded types (template templates), variadics, and non-type template parameters help in this matter. When you can write a function that can generically work with a tuple with any number and type of parameters, you can do some pretty neat stuff. For some examples take a look at Boost.Hana by Louis Dionne (http://boostorg.github.io/hana/). In this regards, Rust is actually the Blub compared to D and C++.
Few thoughts:

* Was your GA reporting period covering the day? The reporting always defaults to up until yesterday for me

* AdBlockers! Facebook click tracking may use backend metrics while GA is frontend, and blocked by various adblockers.

I've really enjoyed Segment.io, you can track GA page views etc via the backend which could provide better metrics ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Inside NASA’s Plan to Radically Redesign How We Fly
"Homogenous european states."

Did I miss something?
> The easiest way to be a 10x engineer is to make 10 other engineers 2x more efficient. Someone can be a 10x engineer if they do nothing for 364 days then convinces the team to change programming language to a 2x more productive language.

Seriously?
Skype to hide IP addresses by default
How to read a scientific paper
The EU might have started it (Microsoft, Google - I felt that was a measured response though), but the US is currently stepping up the game with a 10x magnitude difference in force. This feels somewhat aggressive to us Europeans.

The VW stuff seems way too aggressive. Particularly with the very recent history of bailing out US car makers in mind.
Webpack HTML plug-in in a Nutshell
Crooks steal over $50M from aircraft systems manufacturer FACC
> It really feels like a landgrab and not anything anyone has been asking for.

Benevolent DRM. Mozilla wants to control the software, even though users want to be in control. Plugins are the reason people always give for using Firefox. Justifying control by citing non-technical users is telling: users are to be managed and controlled; users aren't "us" but the other.
If you think I'm wrong, you can provide citations or make an actual argument.

Asking a barrage of innuendo laden questions to create doubt is not an argument.
I was pretty sure it does that, since people in projects I work on use it. To make sure that I'm correct, I just ran it on some code I work on, and indeed, it wants to add (...c should add these lines ... ) implementation details to a lot of sourcefiles.
ISTM this was due more to the windfall situation than to agriculture specifically. The marks happened to be farmers, but what made them marks was the fact that they had more money than they knew what to do with. That is, I wouldn't be surprised to see a similar story about the Dakotas in the years before the oil price dropped.
Related...Apache, nginx, and probably other web servers can be coerced into handling sendfile() for you.

https://tn123.org/mod_xsendfile/
https://www.nginx.com/resources/wiki/start/topics/examples/x...
Why Understanding Space Is So Hard
New Biggest Prime Number = 2 to the 74 Mil  Uh, It’s Big
In Case of Blizzard, Do Nothing
Try to find a laptop that combines:

- powerful Unix-like shell and internals for when developers need to work

- no-brainer UX when developers do not want to have to work

With some bonuses such as:

- retina display that doesn't mess up every other app's windows

- a trackpad with multi-finger gestures that actually works

It can be done. Quite a few laptops are now getting there.
Yup totally agree. That was not a 10x engineer, that was a 1x at best and probably < 1x. Building overcomplicated systems is a sign of a bad or inexperienced engineer and nothing else.
I think the question of 10x engineers is actually ill-defined. There are developers I can consistently outperform by a factor of ten, do in half a day what they spent an entire week on and end up with a better solution. They are not necessarily fresh out of school but somehow managed to survive year after year even though they don't even know the language they are developing in. And I don't mean the ugly details of the memory model but basics for professional developers like generics or interfaces.

But what does that proof? I think nobody doubts that the difference between a bad developer and a good one can be a factor of ten or more. Outperforming a good developer by a factor of ten is a totally different story. It is certainly possible if you have some good insight, if you spot some non-obvious structure in the problem that you can exploit to make your life a lot easier. But doing this consistently is probably at least a rear feat.

So the question is to whom do we compare our 10x engineer candidates? The average one maybe, but the average of what? Your team, your company, the entire industry? I would argue that the age respectively experience structure is really important. When you begin you learn a programming language but it takes some time until you really learn programming, until you reach the point that the languages no longer matters and you are able to focus on mapping your problems to more abstract concepts and typing it out in some language becomes the boring but necessary part of your work.
The article goes on to suggest that there are "1000x" engineers who can do things other engineers cannot do. The article intentionally obfuscates the point to try to disguise the idea that talent really does vary tremendously and that no amount of teamwork can match rare insight.

It's become politically fashionable to discount the contributions of individuals, because if we think about differences in talent and follow the implications, we're led to crimethink. There was even an article on HN a little while ago suggesting Einstein didn't really do anything important and that his discoveries were just a product of his time.
Why would referring to Trello by its name be illegal? They do not make any false statements!wnts about Trello.
Are SIMs a thing in America? If so, is buying a second cheap phone for emergency use not an option? Put your normal SIM in it when required. Cheaper phones tend to have decent battery life, because they don't have any battery-sapping features.
>Also, I hate the term "10x engineer". Everything follows a normal distribution.

A normal distribution doesn't preclude the existence of a 10X, just describes the rarity.
Netflix will increase the price of streaming for its most loyal members
Is one person with $5000 more valuable than 5000 people with $1? If you're a person without $5000, no; if you're a foundation, apparently.
Well, that was one of the basis of my test. My client is slowly moving to the cloud and more and more apps will move to the cloud. This is not a pure perfs analysis as I don't have sufficient hardware to do it and I won't. The cloud is here to stay, we should be prepared for it. But yeah, my methodology's not perfect.
>Also, I hate the term "10x engineer"

Even if people were to use a new term such as "3-Sigma Programmer" instead of "10X Programmer", the ensuing debates would still be the same.

To make peace with the "10x" label, I suggest people just think of it as a figure-of-speech instead of a mathematical term. We don't get hung up when people say "Star Wars IV was ten times better than Phantom Menace" or "I'm not even 1/2 the football player I used to be."
Well, what if you don’t have “most others” being 10x worse than someone in general, but you have a few .1x engineers.

If you put them all on the same team as a 1x engineer, there will be the perception that one engineer is 10x most programmers.
He's trying to say that Social-Democratic policies can only work in Europe because it has a more homogeneous culture ?

this is not even false, it makes no sense :D
Uh, not the best example. I don't "let" or "not let" other consenting adults date.
GT Eesti Typeface Story
There's no need to turn this into an anti-(fill in the blank) thread.
I guess I'll be the one to add the old classic (which I'm sure the author intentionally left out): "In Tetris, just as in life, it is your mistakes that pile up while your accomplishments disappear."
Why would you want to work with someone who is "fierce and mean"? Sounds totally unprofessional.
Generally, not a thing.
The Dodwell Manuscript
A lot of people suggest that 10x programmers aren't jerks because they reflexively disqualify jerks from the 10x category. That's wrong and reflects wishful thinking. Do they think Linus is a middling developer because he's also a jerk?
The 10x thing is like some weird, less quantifiable, engineer analog to Mensa.
Nukes probably play a large part in this too.

It's unthinkable at this point for any of the large nuclear powers (e.g. the permanent members of the UN security council) to engage each other in direct military confrontation. Barring an early armistice, there's a high likelihood of human extinction as soon as one side gains the upper hand and the other side believes it has nothing to lose.

Much safer for everyone to expand their sphere of influence through proxy wars.

"I do not know with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones."
This is what I like about non-SaaS models like desktop or server software -- they can have zero burning rate. Even if you're out of money you can stop developing new versions of the product, fire everyone including yourself, and simply keep your website alive (which costs pennies). Your customers keep using your product and you still have a chance to get new ones.
Give a developer an inch and they'll take the football field. Maybe that's an acceptable risk, but I wouldn't take that risk.
IMO a 10x engineer is, more often than not, just a well-positioned engineer - the right person at the right place and right time.

Someone working within their field of expertise, with the tools to get it done, and without the typical roadblocks that stand in the way. Hopefully you've been there and know how it feels.

And maybe you've also been at the other side of the spectrum, working with an ever-changing, badly designed and documented piece of technology, with many surprise problems biting you in the ass, ever changing goals, and bad management decisions.

I've been a 10x engineer at times. But I know I've also been a 0.5x engineer. The knowledge on how to solve a problem and how to find an answer doesn't change, but the perceived throughput of a person definitely does.
It is basically cryptocat.
Can you back this up with some data? This might actually match my observations but I never considered the possibility that it might be a bimodal distribution.
Hey, I didn't mean anything wrong by it, and probably should just have had said something like "there's no diversity". Reason I said that is because many people say SV is diverse because of the Asian population, but IMO even though it is a minority population-wise, I would say they aren't in tech.
Exactly. It's very hard to argue that a strong economic risk is not also a national risk.
The no shame in changing positions is key; it describes the difference between humble and egotistical or science and religion.

I think you're right that many 10xrs like to debate, and that value can come out of debate. However the best 10xr Ive worked with was equally at home with a 3+ hour technical debate or collaborating with folks who don't give their best contributions during debates. Brilliant, efficient, effective, collaborative, quick, and humble.
What evidence? There was a famous study by a college professor 10 years ago, but he retracted his research as flawed.
> You actually need practice.

I don't think anyone's disagreeing with you regarding the need for practice. Reading, Discussion, and Practice are all part of a balanced education, on any topic. I'm objecting to the notion that there are topics for which the written word is useless.
Is It Obsolete – The Core Duo MacBook?
Look on the bright side - at least you don't need parachutes!
Built in testing suite is coming with the next release - 1.3.
What looks overcomplicated to a 1x engineer may be quite simple to the 10x. This in fact the most painful point to overcome with them: that not everybody is as skilled as them so the software should be designed and written accordingly.

In my (limited) experience, those that don't learn this tend to do all by themselves "because the others can't do shit", get overworked and are unpleasant to work with. Those who do are able instead to focus on the most important (and interesting) parts while letting the others taking their boring share.
But the critical function for both concepts is re-usability, with a reasonably fast turn-around.

Going to orbit with payload is no doubt hard, but has been done by 11 countries, not counting that within the USA multiple manufacturers have build rockets for NASA (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_first_orbital_laun...)

Re-usable rockets had never been done before (except perhaps the Space Shuttle, although a different concept). This is the 0->1, and now Blue Origin can work at incrementally flying higher with larger payloads.

Certainly not to take away from what Space-X has done - they've set many records themselves and operating commercial launches, which BO looks to still need time to do.
Focusing on personality characteristics of great engineers is how lesser engineers try to maintain their position in the status hierarchy when they know they can't compete on technical merit. A healthy company recognizes this dynamic and shuts it down. An unhealthy company indulges it.
Looks like you can use flags on the fix_includes.py script to avoid that, so something like:

fix_includes.py --ignore_re '^boost' < /tmp/out
Things have changed since I was in my 20s. What is obvious now wasn't so obvious then. Pensions have disappeared, medical benefits have shrunk, 401k's have been on the rise while company contributions to them have shrunk, and then there's social security, which none of us can expect anymore (they even keep raising the age on it). So while planning may be obvious now, all of these things have happened relatively recently for folks approaching retirement.
No 10x engineer is a True Scotsman.

That's why this whole topic is stupid.
>> This guy and another built all the systems for this company, and a product that was the cash cow.
> There are no 10x engineers, but plenty of .1x engineers.

If there are plenty of 0.1x engineers, then an x engineer is actually 10 times better. The units doesn't matter if the ratio keeps being the same.
The iPad 1, is it obsolete yet?
In the UK you pretty much can pay yourself entirely in dividends. What many people do is pay themselves over the National Insurance threshold (£8064, which nowadays essentially matters only for being able to claim a state pension eventually) but below the personal allowance (£10600, below which you don't pay any income tax), and then the remainder in dividends. Note as of the 2015 UK Budget the law relating to dividends has changed which makes the tax due far closer, and that comes into effect for the 2016/2017 tax year.
Apple Can Still See Your iMessages If You Enable iCloud
Bitcoin: Too Big to Fail
My translation: labeling an engineer as 10x may be mis-attributing the discrepancy to individual people, when the causes are most often environmental. Sure, there are outstanding performers and catastrophic duds every once in a while, they do exist. But more often than not your performance is less a reflection of innate skill and more a reflection of things like your managers, your situation and motivation, your momentum and familiarity with your tools, the mood in your office, your level of ownership, etc., etc..

I have been both subject and observer of situations where someone's performance was amazing in some cases and lacking at best in others. I have experienced being 10x when the situation was right, and 0.5x when it was wrong.

So how do you make a 10x environment on purpose? I've tried on teams I've led, and it is by no means easy. Can anyone with concrete experience share reliable tips?
I was under the impression that `Option<T>` and `Result<T, E>` were monads.
The Cities Where Rents Will Fall This Year
Is there a summary version of this story without all the "long form" padding about the color of everyone's hair and dirt?
Perhaps they could get it if their members were not permitted to drive for competing services at the same time.
Agreed, there are no 10x engineers, we all have 10x moments in time once in a while. We all have moments when we feel we can't tie our own shoelaces without help.
Streams, Rulers and Laziness
>If you played Tetris at the slowest possible speed for the rest of your life, you could possibly never lose. The only enemy would be fatigue. But the algorithm for beating Tetris is not complicated, and you have plenty of time to move the pieces to their optimal locations.

I believe this is inaccurate. If you play long enough, you always lose. Proof: You cannot cleanly make lines with only s-pieces. If you assume a random distribution of pieces, you eventually get a string of s-pieces long enough to exhaust the game board, though you can keep it going for a very long time.

I would like to hear this uncomplicated algorithm for beating tetris.
I'm not sure how many others share my view but I think that regulation is worth the benefit to security. I have always been very skeptical of the "but it'll hurt innovation" claim. Won't it promote innovation in new approaches for securing low-cost devices? It sure seems nebulous to me, but I am willing to be convinced otherwise.
"If Europe opens the gates to Muslims, Europe will became a Muslim territory".

There are many caveats to this. For example, the US absorbs so many immigrants of different religions that it's guaranteed to stay secular.

"In Qur'an it is said that anyone that does not believe in Ala, Christians and Jews should be killed"

I have been ignorant of Islam. But, if this is true, is the Qur'an not hate speech ?
Chrome: Removal of geolocation APIs on insecure origins
There are no dream jobs, just jobs or dreams:

. Build your own company and you will finish accepting profit as flagship.

. Find a job where you lead the direction and internal politics will make you adapt to a whole way against their life goals.

. Make an open source project that no one will use.
I am inclined to agree.
Then what are we arguing about? Whether there are people who are much better than other people? That's trivially true.
Many generations voted in the elections.
Just to clarify, you're blaming one of them?

An image from the same page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hauser's_law#/media/File:U.S._... . Folks argue a lot but rate is fairly steady.
Yes, absolutely everything follows a normal distribution. Everything.
Please don't.
How Los Angeles Is Changing the Way Men Dress
Ha! Good question. I wrote this comment with out much thought really. He CAN be... maybe "stern" is a better word? He's generally totally professional, nice and friendly, but he doesn't let people push him around, and he pushes back when he needs to. He's "well rounded", how's that?

Good lord I sound like a ridiculous fan boy.
Yes, and it's so well-understood that talking about whether 10x engineers do and don't exist is ridiculous. It seems like it's just a circlejerk, where everybody secretly thinks they're a 10x engineer so we keep talking about it.
The healthcare bill took forever to pass because of its half-assed marketplace that's offering terrible healthcare for lots of people. $621/mo premium with everything out of pocket up to a $6,000 deductible is a joke. That's as much as a mortgage payment for many people and it amounts to nothing more than catastrophic coverage.
I guess this can be a problem for cross platform code, yes?
can you tell us more about the design alternatives?
This is really old but the article mentions splice() and here's the original thinking on that syscall. Linux didn't take all the ideas but they took some:

http://www.mcvoy.com/lm/bitmover/lm/papers/splice.pdf
Culture/environment is a critical enabler, but alone it doesn't create 10x people.
I think that's kinda the point. It's saying the ratio is accurate, but it's not due to humans with some superpower. It's that there are many people in the field who underperform.
I think you'll enjoy this talk: CppCon 2015: Atila Neves "Emacs as a C++ IDE" - https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5FQwQ0QWBTU
I imagine it's just a phrasing thing, he probably means someone that sticks up for themselves. I've seen a lot of very effective engineers get bogged down in bad work because they wouldn't push back on ideas/projects that were obviously not great ideas.
MONSIEUR JOURDAIN: Oh, really? So when I say: "x := x+1" and "throw new Exception” is that monadic?

PHILOSOPHY MASTER: Most clearly.

MONSIEUR JOURDAIN: Well, what do you know about that! These forty years now I’ve been using monads in programming without knowing it!

-------------------------------

With many apologies to Molière, many things are monadic including state and exceptions. Most programming languages introduce them as first-class core concepts rather than as monad instances. Hence you can use them innocently, without realising that they are monadic.
Thank you so much. Been doing lots of phoenix+react and blogs like this are a tremendous help to the community.
I disagree. The entire practice of development is making simple parts and linking them together in a simple manner to create more complex parts that are still simple to understand at their level.

Your computer is extremely complicated, but it can be broken down to parts that are simple to understand in each level. That's pretty much the entire benefit of a good engineer. They know how to make self-contained things whose purpose and interface with the rest of the system is easily understandable.
We Made an Instagram of Medical Records
That’s true in a mathematical sense, but it’s not how some or possibly most brains work. For example, “plenty of .1x” engineers doesn’t have to imply a majority, it could be just enough that you run into them on a regular basis.

If you were interviewing and on Monday you have a 1x engineer and 9 .1x engineers, you’d assert you met a 10x engineer. Then on Wednesday if you had 9 1x engineers and one .1x engineer, you’d assert you met a .1x engineer.
They do if they are going to violate everyone's privacy. Authoritarians just don't register this.
Right, which is why 10x engineers don't really exist in places that don't value some level of engineer autonomy -- you can't make great decisions if you can't make decisions at all.