skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> Since all engineers do this, why would developers do things differently?

Because, as arethuza said, programmers don't have the tools that other engineering disciplines have. Most notably, the equations that allow for predictive analysis and proofs of correctness.

A civil engineer that builds a bridge can be fairly certain it won't fall down even when it's still on paper, because he can reason about the forces and stresses and even environmental degradation via well known equations and models. This collection of predictive and proof techniques is what makes it an engineering discipline.

Programming doesn't have that, at least not yet. As you point out, the program is the input to the machine, not the predictive model. But at least if the machine acts deterministically, we can focus on proving things about its input, the program. There has been quite a bit of effort in the research community to come up with ways to prove correctness, but the state of the art is still a long ways from being something actually useful. Functional languages are (partially) a reaction to the prediction requirement. By not having side effects or depending on state, it's easier to make predictions about behavior. (Of course, lazy evaluation buys you a lot in expressive power and data structure efficiency, but offers a new hurdle in predicting performance).

And if you really look at it, Software Engineering is, well, not. Everything I have seen in the emerging Software Engineering field is really about managing people. It's about how to get 1000 developers on the same page (which is like herding cats) so they can crank out an operating system. Sure, there is a lot about testing and validation and change control, but it's still mostly from the angle of controlling the risk of a developer doing something stupid. The tools that would allow a software architect to write an exact specification of a project (bridge blueprints), prove it'll meet all requirements (not fall down), then turn it over to junior programmers (construction crew), just don't exist yet. Check out Rosetta for an ongoing attempt.

So maybe someday programming truly will be an engineering discipline, but right now it's more like having a million Wright brothers all building their own airplane, using whatever materials they are used to working with, rather than an established discipline like Aeronautical Engineering.
My mind is full of regret that my life is what it is due to torture, murder, and the theft and destruction of other people's property.

Are you seriously suggesting this is not something that occurs in China?
I'm conflicted here: I'm really happy that folks find my blog valuable, but I would strongly prefer never seeing two posts from it on the front page at once. (It just strikes me as... unseemly.)
When a C++ developer overloads operators in stupid ways, you fire that developer and rewrite his code. You shouldn't have to make other code obfuscated in creative ways (such as this void() example) to compensate for weird operator semantics in specific objects.
37signals > Mahalo,
JSON >> XML.
So what's the debate?
"Would you argue that the meaning I assigned to "I'm drinking water" as "I'm going fishing" would be valid English anywhere in the world? "

absurd example. No one anywhere in the world has such absurd correspondences.

"I think that would be absurd, because if we are to accept that then the construct of languages breaks down entirely, and people will eventually be hurling sounds at each another hoping someone discerns their intended meaning."

exaggerated.
Sad thing is that apple usually doesn't have a sense of humor. IIRC someone actually got banned from the app store from critiquing apple.
I have deliberately not followed this debate because I feel like it would take a lot of reading to really form a nuanced and correct opinion on it, which would then be useless because in most arguments you'd be facing a talking-points opinion (from either side).

With that being said, it seems to me that it's not increasing demand, but helping meet unmet demand. I'm a really high risk for skin cancer. If getting insured incentivizes me to get more regualar checks at a dermatologist, that's likely to save the system money over the long run. This isn't me falling to moral hazard.

The moral hazard in the system is for doctors and hospitals. My dad is a doctor (opposed to the bill, btw) but his main complaint is always about other doctors coding things like nasal congestion up to an unscrupulous level to pad their take from insurance companies. And don't get him started on hospitals.

Maybe that's something opponents of the bill are aware of and opposing. Maybe the bill does nothing to fix that. But don't blame patients for making rational choices regarding healthcare based on whatever system they find themselves in. Anyway, there's my uninformed opinion without much of a point :-P
I wonder if the fiasco is more a reflection of America's trends in car transmissions. Here probably around 90% of cars are automatic and people don't learn the underlying mechanisms of a transmission, rather they just learn to drive.

Anecdotal data point: I took my manual Hyundai SantaFe in for service the other day. The service department had to go through four technicians before they could find someone that could drive a manual.

People aren't learning what a neutral gear is for, nor are they learning the underlying mechanisms of how a car works. Everything has been abstracted away, and now they are being rudely awoken from all their assumptions. Perhaps what seems obvious to those of us who drive manual (get the car in neutral, turn it off) in a situation with a stuck accelerator is not at all obvious to those who have never learned that much about their car.
I'll jump on the "ignore tip #4" wagon (as long as you mention that it's naïve, and immediately move on), but I've got beef with some of the rest too:

2: More important than understanding what the problem is asking, is understanding why it's being asked. Do they want to see you come up with an interesting algorithm, or is it a simple matter of "does this young fellow know what a pointer is?" Figure this out, and you'll be able to cut your work in half, because you can avoid doing things the interviewer was never interested in seeing anyway. You can in most cases just ask straight out "you just want to see if I can flip bits correctly, don't you?" and get an honest answer.

5: Checking boundary conditions when coding on a whiteboard is bogus, unless that's the point of the problem, and not algorithmic complexity. If you're writing code with durability or atomicity constraints, or it's obviously a bit twiddling mess that was only asked to see if you can check for them, edge cases matter. If you're writing something complex at a high level, you should be able to get away with sweeping the null checks under the rug.

6: Some people (hi) can often keep track of a sizable number of invariants as they check over a bit of code, and this means they can run mental tests very quickly, that are often more thorough than running a few examples. It's reasonable and good to be able to do this (you'll be a great debugger), and a good interviewer won't discount you for it. In my case, I would do this mental check, prove to myself that it was right, then just say "ok, I'm convinced it's right, would you like me to sketch a proof, or run some examples?" If they want examples, you can use what you learned doing that quick check to generate examples that you think will hit the corner cases. You should really be prepared to prove it aloud, and then check some examples anyway, in case you forgot about some type of input (punctuation in the article's problem is a good example)

7: You should ask about the interviewer, partially to make the interviewer feel good getting to talk about herself, but mostly to find out as much as you can about her, and feel your way around what sorts of things you might be able to get away with in the interview, and what things she'll be hunting for. For this reason, you should ask these sorts of small talk-y questions before the bulk of the interview if possible, and use what you learn immediately to mentally prepare for the question, and to guess what sorts of questions you should ask, and what questions she'll be asking about your solution.

(Passed their intern interview recently too, high five Locke)
> If I just have the spark of an idea now, I can get a designer in Taiwan to design it. I can get a factory in China to produce a prototype. I can get a factory in Vietnam to mass manufacture it... And I can do all this at incredibly low prices.

Have you actually done that, Tom? Or are you just reselling us your same old fantasy story about how easy it is to coordinate a bunch of companies from a bunch of different countries and actually bring a product to market?

I can't even remember all of the other stories I've heard about multiple rounds of prototypes, production problems, sub-standard end products, etc (some of which requiring extensive travel to sort out). Or perhaps a partner company dissolves its relationship with you and decides to market the product on its own. Sure, it has to work out some of the time, but stop presenting this idea that international business is somehow this miraculously effortless process.

I know this wasn't the central point of a piece nominally about immigration and youth achievement, but the fact that he had throw in the same stale scenario that he's been writing about for over a decade makes it entirely impossible for me to take this guy seriously anymore.
Exactly, that's the point. You are extremely correct. Of course a non-technical founder can run a startup. However, there is this stigma that business guys have no place in a startup,and I wanted to show that depending on the type, of course they do.
First, this is not a "woe is me" tale. My life is pretty good. If I do less is startups, I've done pretty well. We're very far from socialism.

This one was actually pretty simple. An acquirer filed a 1099 in the incorrect category. We submitted an amended one, but the IRS wants to tax at teh higher rate. And, with giants penalties and interest. You basically have to a) pay the amount they incorrectly claim you owe plus the interest and penalties up-front. Then beg for your money back and b) pay lawyers to try to get them to actually respond. Once the IRS has your money, it's pretty much impossible to contact them and argue. The actual form we filled out, the 843, is pretty simple.

[As an unrelated point, if you're in CA, the current cap gains rate is 15% federal + 9.3 CA income + 1% CA mental health=25.3%. If if goes to the proposed 20% federal + 3.8% medicare + 9.3% CA income + 1% CA mental mental health=34.1%, that's a 34% increase on the taxes on startups in the course of a year... Granted, I care more about the hassle, but it's made me think.]
I'm curious how others think about this process.
Some quick googling did not find anything about CoQ10 being related to melatonin. I'd be interested in learning more about this. Do you have any sources?
No, I've acknowledged it in other comments.

I'm suggesting it is hypocritical to denounce China's govt, while accepting the same behavior from the U.S. govt.
> `method2` looks buggy.

Claim looks unfounded. (unless you can tell what looks buggy)

I'm not sure why they used a D-L list, but thanks for the link - I'll try to reimplement it with standard lists in a bit and run some bigger benchmark on it. Maybe collections need some tweaking? (I'm not saying list is always faster, only that it is for this specific example)
Ruby's first-class functions make printf-debugging obsolete
This is going to hurt startups. (the health care part is theoretically nice, but offset by the tax implications)

Short-term capital gains will be 15% (Fed) + 5% (Fed Increase in 2011) + 3.8% (this) + 10.3% (California). 34.1% capital gains!

This does not compare favorably to anywhere else in the world. For a CA startup founder, capital gains are going to be 1.5-3x higher than most countries.

This is an issue primarily because (half?) of US startups are founded by immigrants. At some point, it becomes more attractive for an immigrant to go to Vancouver, BC (21.5% tax rate, much easier immigration process, better quality of life than SFBA) or even to remain in India or China. The tax advantages might also push for Hong Kong or Singapore startups, with 0% capital gains and very low income tax.

A big number minus 34.1% is still better for an exit than a much smaller number minus a small percentage, but California is definitely not the only place to do a startup.
Painting the Mona Lisa with MS Paint
"We are no longer a farming nation as a whole" - That's fine (although farming is a huge export that is not likely to get outsourced like other industry), but we still have a significant number of states that depend on it. That "outdated concept" is not really so outdated.

The smaller breaks are BS. They do not allow for summer sports, actual camps, actual outreach programs by college, or decent paying summer jobs. If you need time for students with special circumstances (english as a second language) then use the summer for them, but not to keep everyone in school. Part of being a kid is learning to think and imagine, and schools are the last place those things are valued. Innovation happens here, and needs to not be stifled by some scheme to keep kids in school all year.

I also agree with prodigal_erik, why do they lose these lessons? If the lessons won't survive the summer, then they are surely not going to survive when they leave school.

Our schools are not the only place where learning happens. Jobs teach, summer camps teach, and sports teach. They all teach lessons that schools can't or won't.
Theory is science and math. Engineering is a craft. Engineering in teams is communication and human relations. Making artifacts that's easy and fun to use is psychology and arts. Selling that artifacts is business and marketing.

It's the mix of all this that makes engineering development so challenging and (potentially) fun.
With that being said, it seems to me that it's not increasing demand, but helping meet unmet demand. I'm a really high risk for skin cancer. If getting insured incentivizes me to get more regualar checks at a dermatologist, that's likely to save the system money over the long run. This isn't me falling to moral hazard.

Insurance companies, when not treated as healthcare sugardaddies, do not like paying for high healthcare as they want to make more money. They may give you discounts for going to more check up more, to reduce demand for their service later. If you can detect cancer earlier, than you may able to avoid higher cost cancer treatment later as well continue to be a source of revenues to the insurance company. Insurance companies don't make money off dead people, I think.
Hi guys. The answer is no, definitely not. When we first built Clickpass there was no google authentication Ali, you could only authenticate as part of getting authorisation for a particular google service. Contacts seemed the most relevant so that's what we went with. Code dev has been frozen on the system since the acquisition so we've just left it te same way. We don't store or even access the contact data though.
Both universal and particular statements are needed, and there are separate words for them. In your example, I would say "everyone has green eyes", "someone is tall", "someone isn't short", and "everyone doesn't have brown eyes". If "everyone doesn't" merely meant "someone doesn't", I would need another word that actually made that negative statement about every member of the group.
For anyone interested in a real story about small-scale remote manufacturing (circa 2000) read "The Mouse Driver Chronicles" http://amzn.com/0738208019 .

I suspect Joey Roth ( http://joeyroth.com ), as a one-person design shop, might also have some real, hard-earned, and even more current, insights into this space.

I simply can't trust the opinion of a billionaire journalist (through marriage) who's never tried to earn a living using these strategies to bring a real product to market.
Video Games: the addiction
The US is still a largely internalised, self-reliant economy for which trade with the outside world is relatively unimportant.

Unfortunately, the article seems to omit the extraordinary evidence to support this extraordinary claim, seeing as there's likely more than enough evidence to the contrary sitting on the author's desk, inside it, under it, scattered about his office, and on his very person if he would check the country-of-origin tags.
Sorry, typing on the iPhone - "Google API"
If you mean http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1205239 it was probably for the chargebacks.
I haven't seen Google denounce the Chinese governments torturing of people. Any links?

What they do seem to have done is denounce the governments censorship of the internet; which doesn't seem hypocritical because the US doesn't seem to have that problem :)
We DO have that- don't mistake America for the world.
The Golden Touch
I think that's a good description of the tradeoff. At some point, the filters, plugins, middleware and so on that let you focus your energies on the app begin to interact in non-trivial ways, and so the time you spent not having to worry about them during development gets repaid worrying about them in deployment.
it was down for a while eventually came back up
Though there may be other things wrong with it, given Wikipedia's Creative Commons-Share Alike license, it's certainly not stolen content.

It certainly does make me think about alternative ways of presenting Wikipedia that are more interesting.
about the "making people take you seriously".
I got some comments about me looking like a sixteen year old schoolgirl while I'm about 25. Well, I'm not particularly tall. But thinking about it, it's probably more about self esteem than a dressing issue.
Dave Beckett certainly does good work... I guess I was just curious what would lead to this scenario and what you're wanting to do with the datasets in such a raw format? You can also install allegrograph, which is written in lisp so that should make this crowd happy, it's free up to 50M triples or something. Oracle 11g also works, but we had to have custom patches to get decent RDF performance. It was not meant as a criticism, it just seemed like a lot of work vs just pulling into some triple store. Sesame is another good choice...
I don't sympathize much with the rich kid. The poor kid that can't go to school because he has to work to support his family has an actual, real problem. There's no easier way to get me to walk away from a conversation than when trust fund brats start whining about how they didn't get enough affection as a kid. Those difficulties can just be released, whereas abuse survivors and people in poverty have genuine problems - the rich kid just tends to be egocentric and if he realized all people were equal, then he'd have to realize his advantages and how much better he has it and shut his mouth and just deal with the troubles. I hate hearing excuses for weakness.
don't forget music.
> BTW, if you want, you could build a mathematical model of every program. 100% predictable

Have you ever tried to do this? Once you get past fibonacci functions, the amount of time and effort required is measured in PhD-man-years. And even then, all you have done is moved the risk from the code to the proof, because when you work on something that large, the risk that the model does not represent reality (either due to oversight, lack of understanding, or not correctly capturing the interplay between two aspects) becomes an issue.
The 100 essential websites
It's this.
I (asian) won several English and history essay contests in my midwestern state. Most of the winners were asian immigrants. Also did well in speech and debate. Me no speaky english too good as boy, but teacher spend time and long study to talk american.
I was using the article's own hyperbole. I know oxygen molecules and the moon are not games.
Thank you for this addition - this is a great article, exactly why I visit this site. I'm fairly surprised about the groovy execution time, I wonder if the ruby etc. enthusiasts could generate another set of benchmarks that support their particular bias.
Oops, I didn't mean to recommend their boards :) I meant they are not the best choice for starting with.

You'll want something that works out of the box, so that you know the bugs are in your code, not your soldering.
It's not entirely our fault, the language was designed to work like one thing (scheme-like), but look like another (c-like).

The baseless assertion rears its head again. People keep repeating this, and it's not true. JavaScript is not Scheme. It's not any more Scheme-like than Java, C++, Python, Perl, or many other languages. Lua and Ruby are far more Scheme-like than JavaScript.

I've commented before on people repeating this statement without ever examining it. I don't want to dredge up the arguments against it again ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1171202 ), mostly I just want to whine at it because it's so annoying. Why do you have to make JavaScript seem like something it's not? Are you trying to seem cooler by equating the language you work in to Scheme? What's wrong with JavaScript just being what it is?
Well, engineering is not like engineering. You can't paint all "engineering" and all "engineers" with the same brush: we're not all alike.

I've designed (physical) devices where the customer needed the end product ready in a few days, and others where it took months. Sound anything like software?

Software engineering is simply the process of using known concepts to build a software product. That's no different from "traditional" engineering. Just as you apply a different approach to a 3-page website versus an enterprise inventory app that must failover smoothly between 5 servers, a mechanical engineer will apply a different approach to designing a pickup truck versus a "Little Tykes" car.

The reason programs don't look like they're engineered isn't because we don't know how to (I'd like to think my software engineering degree counts for something), it's because we usually don't bother.
John Mauldin made a much better analysis of this. If we charge a tariff on China, will it really improve our trade deficit so much that our goods will be from Vietnam, Indonesia or [other country here]?

I suggest that anyone skeptical of this should go to their local mall and stop by a few clothing stores, like the Gap, Old Navy, AE, Banana Republic, etc. What you'll find is interesting. At the lower end shops (like the Gap and Old Navy), a lot of the merchandise is no longer made in China. But in higher end shops (like the Banana Republic), it still is.

I thought this was fascinating for different reasons than my mother (who discovered it), because you can see quite clearly, right there in the mall, that the economics is working, and China isn't some magical demon that can somehow keep on producing the cheapest. It's already cheaper to produce in El Salvador and Vietnam than it is in China.

Moreover, if you impose a tariff, then we'll just be buying crap from those other countries, which isn't going to help our trade deficit and our economy, and will likely start a trade war, which will in likelihood hurt our economy. Think about China pressuring everyone in their neighborhood to buy Airbus instead of Boeing.
YouTube: iPad model making, ten parts
Of course there are milestones (that leaves you something usable) in construction!

* Construction start

* Foundation completed

* Structure/Frame completed

* Roofing completed

* Interior Walls

etc etc etc.. I'm not in the construction business, but anyone with even the smallest experience (like putting up a deck) can tell you what critical milestones need to be completed. You can't start the roofing without the supporting foundation and structure completed -- nor can you put up deck railings without the actual deck floor in place.