skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Reducing the size of a program by an order of magnitude requires better abstractions, not shorter selector names. I'm not saying names have to be long, I'm saying they should be whole words, not abbreviations of words. The English language is full of whole words that are still very short.

Math notation is horrendous by the way, too many implicit assumptions about the readers background knowledge. See what Gerry Sussman has to say about it. The great thing about code is it forces one to be explicit, which forces one to actually understand and learn.
I agree with you 100% that basing decisions on stereotypes is flawed.

But I was of course replying in the context of, not only the poster's reply to the Gartner reply, but to his original post (http://infovegan.com/2010/07/19/why-developers-should-run-fo...)

In there he espouses programmers' (and for some reason he thinks web developers are higher up the totem pole than "regular" developers) knack for solving problems, looking for novel solutions, etc. etc., in the context of issues that are increasingly technical (which I think is debatable).

I think one particular aspect of programmers, a stereotype if you will, is that they don't like to compromise and are generally quite independent of mind. Perhaps one could argue this would be a Good Thing™. But, if you look at all the disagreement amongst programmers, I don't see why their proposed solutions would be better than they are currently (in the end it is about politics).

To your question: "Are scientists really rational?" - see my caveat :-)

(PS: I think politicians should focus on creating policy, not try to solve problems that the free market solves better).
I'm not being sarcastic at all. I know several people who would make excellent developers, but they went into teaching, or consulting, or marketing, or whatever. The pay is either equivalent or less, but the status for those positions is higher.

Here's an anecdote: a friend of mine decided that the template blogs available were not what he wanted for a website to showcase his art. So he taught himself php, sql, html, javascript, and gimp, rolled his own site, and asked me to look at the code. It was completely fine -- on par with work I've seen from professionals with 2-3 years experience. He works at Starbucks, which is the kind of job you get with a BFA.
iOS4 added the ability to access the Photo Library in a similar way to the Address Book. You are no longer limited to accessing one user-chosen photo at a time.

Even better/worse, you also have direct access to the camera(s), which means you don't need to prompt the user or display anything on-screen to capture photos or video.

I know Android clearly warns users about an app's capabilities. Does anyone know if that opt-in, or is it derived by some type of code analysis?
Do you say that because these results have been published before or because "everybody knows this"?
Surely they've already thought of this.
Right, I didn't say the Evo is LTE. You might get an argument from Sprint about WiMAX not being 4G (even if it won't be the standard) but the point I was making is that the move to 4G is already underway and deployments around the world inevitable.
To achieve this performance we made some rather big changes to Webmachine. Basho will be looking into incorporating those changes into the mainstream Webmachine code.

Having worked with Webmachine, I'm really excited to see these big changes - does anyone know what they are?
"A programmer with 10 years of experience can be 10x (or more) more productive than a graduate". I couldn't agree more and indeed sometimes it can be up to 100 times. Not necessarily because of their productivity but because of the absolute mess that they don't get you into.
I agree. Ideally we would have Richard Feynmans and Carl Sagans of programming and computing. Both these people did wonders for the public's perception (and understanding!) of science.
And the idea that money does make you happy is a lie spread by rich people so that the rich people don't kill themselves?
Adding Optional Static Typing to Python [2004]
For computing I'd definitely be interested in somebody with a music degree--music is said to have a strong correlation with programming ability.

Of business and marketing I know nothing at all.
OK... jQuery Deconstructed now has 3 colour options: Colourful, Pastel and Grey :)
Just remember tbe opportunity cost of not doing a relevant degree with those four years. I graduated a few years ago with English Literature but I'm kicking myself for not doing CS. I'd be so much more comfortable right now if I had.
If the majority of people is shy an introvert in a sense, I say we have a lot of votes in our favor. And we don't need to be social to socialize, we can do it all on the web.

Don't tempt us...
I'm confident I can gain experience for any area I might want to go into in the future - where I am currently, mainly focussing on marketing with an slight techy twist, I've created expensive advertising campaigns for companies like Dell, AMD and PC World, having had no experience prior to this job, plus on the side I've played a big part in various events, and management of 20 or so servers/websites.

Basically the last few years I've been doing my best to build up experience in as many of the areas that interest me as possible, partly because I love what I'm doing and partly because I want my CV to be non-restricting to any future path I might want to take.
How to get up after a job rejection
I got a job rejection today and it is not a great feeling. How do you get up after that? Do swear your self to get better and apply again on similar job or get depressed.

I would get better, but my country seeks only php programmers and i do not like php. I know how to use it, but i think its kinda hack this over this language. So i have to get better at this language or move. Is there some god job resource for freelancers. Thank you.
Out of curiosity, where can you have four different majors? (We didn't have official "majors" at all where I went to uni, but I always thought they were something of which you only had one or two.)

If you're studying four subjects in your final year, how do you go into any depth in them?
That strikes me as dangerous - if MS Windows licenses then rule out what you're wanting to do you're up the creek without a paddle (perhaps you'll still ahve a spoon to paddle with, same system but only OSS VMs). If the licenses can be worked around then you're better building that I'd have thought.
Crossfit Games - a UFC like opportunity awaits
Crossfit, a burgeoning workout routine is about to explode and expect UFC like revenue from advertisers once the Crossfit games are televised.
Bad Advice: Don’t Sign Your Credit Card
The Trouble with Multicore
I've already got four years of (in my opinion quality) working experience, and to be honest I think that most of the overall life-lessons that a music degree could teach me I already have - the biggest reason I want to do it is learning more about the subject, than using it as a way to improve myself in other areas.

(I asked HN more to see if it would give the impression of having improved my other areas, than if it would)
This looks like design trends of the non-designer. I've found that web design has improved greatly over the past few years, as best practices and technology have "aligned" with designers' vision.
It seems this overlaps the second half of the Founder Conference http://founderconference.eventbrite.com/

That suggests you're not likely to see some of the early-stage startups who might otherwise be interested.

How late do you expect your event to run?
The problem is, it's very immediate and short term to see a saving from outsourcing now, while the pitfalls that it could potentially create could take years before they get to the point where it because clear that outsourcing was a bad idea.
I own the Zoto trademark and also find it a not-so-great name! :P
I upvoted on the assumption it was sarcasm. If it wasn't, I want my upvote back!
Sorry, can you define BFA?
I'm very aware that there are plenty of non-Oxbridge universities in the UK (and elsewhere of course) that are of a high quality, my reasons for wanting to go to Oxford specifically aren't (entirely) because of the name it's made for itself.

- Most of my ancestors on my mother's side went to Oxford or Cambridge, so feels roughly inherited (no university on my Dad's side)

- I've lived in Oxford all my life, and a.) love this city and b.) have grown a sort of irrelevant pride for it (kind of a more localised patriotism)

- I've very close personal ties with two colleges here at Oxford, one of which is the one I'd like to attend

- I happen to know a few professors at Oxford (all in Music, as it happens), one of which is the director of music at the college I'd like to attend

The fact that "Oxford" on a CV traditionally looks better than some other universities is just an added benefit, I'm not someone who would chose it purely for that reason.
As a former automotive engineer, I can say I didn't use my math much either. In fact engineering in my experience was mostly project management, the degree just gave you the background to work with everyone else.
Pilot Handwriting: Generates a font from your handwriting using your webcam
Bachelors of Fine Arts.
How facts backfire
Using the contents of images or videos to target Web ads
>I guess they were trying to justify their name and logo.

It seems like a chicken-and-the-egg conundrum. :)

I just can't figure out why they would want it in the first place. I assume they did beta testing.
While you have a point there, the article is about employees quiting or leaving the company that you have no control over and that you can only stretch the time retaining them.
It doesn't load for me either. I suspect this is upvoted on the basis of its title and well-known submitter.
Now you're talking.

Maybe if these guys were funded to a reasonable, lean level (as opposed to complete funding starvation), we'd get better behavior. If you compare their funding level compared to, say, drug enforcement, it's clear that we're a little misbalanced. "Catching the crooks" always sells better than "keeping kids out of juvie so they don't become crooks", no matter which one is more cost-effective.
Frameworks are like crack. At first they make things feel great and quick and easy, but eventually the framework forces you to work around it and adds layers of complexity. It invades your application and forces you to do elaborate dances when you need to do something a bit differently than the framework thinks you should do it. Eventually you wind up spending more time fighting the framework than writing your app.

Rails, .NET, various J2EE bloatware, etc. are all things that I've seen the same pattern with.

Eventually I realized that there was no such thing, really, as a good vs. a bad framework. All frameworks are bad frameworks. I realized that I should spend no time looking for a framework for the same reason that I should spend no time looking for a disease.

Instead of frameworks, we need better and richer platforms with better and richer libraries, support for a variety of good languages, etc.
Have you guys tried Reeder? It's a general purpose RSS reader, but right now (for me anyways), it's the least annoying iPad app for Hacker News.
They sure can take away what they paid for if it turns out they paid for something illegitimate. Try buying stolen property and see what happens.
Agreed. I think the dark would come before web 2.0 and the grunge would be parallel or just after web 2.0.
Absolutely agreed. I want Steam for movies and music. I'd actually start spending money DVDs and TV series if a service like Steam existed. (Well, more money than my current "buy Supernatural on DVD and nothing else" policy, anyway.)
The thing is, IMHO Programming to most people is boring. It's like telling them you're a builder. Yeah you lay some bricks and cement and build stuff. (Well actually, they ask you to fix their PC, since you must know about such things if you're a programmer).

We're not on the cutting edge of science, we're often not inventing anything new, we're just doing boring grunt work shoving things together. We're factory workers. In 50 years our jobs will all be obsoleted by automation. We just happen to be in a time where there's still value in being able to manually translate 'what I want' into 'what computer understands'.

The public doesn't want some 'stellar factory worker' championing assembly lines, because it's boring.

I think we need to get real. Programming isn't something most people are interested in, it's not glamorous, it's factory work. Lets not delude ourselves that we're at the cutting edge of new discovery.

Of course there are stereotypes that are very real here. Just like the average man in fashion is camp, the average sysadmin is scary. People who work with computers often do have real 'people' issues. Perhaps that's why they gravitated to computers in the first place. There's no point denying such things.

Building companies, developing products, increasing revenue are all far more interesting to everyone.
Yeah, most of us are crying ourselves to sleep every night sleeping on our giant dragon horde of money. You know who's actually facing significant persecution and bigotry? Gay people. We get a few odd jokes and have to endure the existence of “Big Bang Theory”.

I had hoped this article would be about admonishing programmers to stop being bigots. The community has a lot of sexism and ageism in it (levied in all directions). It also has a lot of irrational wu in it. For example, there are people who think that if you don't use a certain text editor, you aren't fit to work.
The Web 2.0 one looked like a bad attempt at the whole Web 2.0 look - the gradients should have been a lot more subtle.
I don't know, I think it's fair to say that computing is a field where really smart, but shy, individuals can participate and excel, compared to many other fields of work. That doesn't mean that everyone in computing fits that description, but it does suggest this group will be overrepresented.

He goes on to say, "Every developer I’ve ever worked with, for instance, is probably more qualified to be a member of Congress than most of the members of Congress we have now." I could say the same about almost everyone I've ever known. The problem is that politics isn't appealing to the type of individuals we consider exemplary, regardless of background. Just look at local politics, where you'll often find aimless drifters or self-serving candidates on the ballot among others who understand that government is complicated machine that needs to be run competently for everyone's benefit. But back on topic, how many of your school board or city council members are also software developers? My guess is few or none, because they just aren't interested or feel that it's too challenging to promote logical solutions in an environment of irrational rivalry.
This blog post is filled with the same amount of stereotypical bullshit it supposedly is furious about. And it's not helping anybody.

The real question here is, how many will read it a second time while actually thinking about what it says?
Bulk Stock Data Series Downloader
Indeed. There is practically no difference between the quality of any of the Russell Group universities. But only Oxbridge graduates feel the need to mention their college within 2 minutes of you meeting them.
You'll notice he keeps suggesting his opponent's throws. He demonstrates the game to the first player with scissors, who then throws scissors. Then he demonstrates how "rock smashes scissors", so his opponent thinks "Rock!" and throws it. Later in the video, he flashes scissors for no apparent reason before a throw, with success.

Watch the video, he 'seeds' his opponents throughout.
You missed the point entirely.

My point is that they weren't even looking for a superconductor. They were on a fishing expedition for a perfect resistor. As a result they took lots of interesting compounds, cooled them well below the temperature of liquid nitrogen, tried to run a current through them, and checked for resistance.

The actual idea that they had? Nobody has succeeded in finding that yet.
How to Apologize in Difficult Situations
It seems to be working for cooking subjects, too (http://cooking.stackexchange.com). That might just be because it's overrun with geeks right now. There's a pretty strong overlap between code and food hacking, so that could help explain it.
Is it really a tragedy that the world is being deprived more software developers? Doesn't the world already have pretty much all the software developers it needs?

Or, to put it another way, if the (relatively mild) stigma of software development keeps people out of the industry, it helps to raise the pay of those who are in it.
Can this be abused? Loading a page in a tab, I may not notice the URL changing from wickedsite.com to mybanksite.com, all without a reload.
Starting at 0 makes people feel leet since they can pretend they're programming--since arrays/lists start at 0.
Have you ever heard of a pay scale that pays Programmer III ten times as much as Programmer I?

Yes, ibanks and hedge funds routinely do this. Both programmers probably go by the title "VP", however.
It was a bit tongue-in-cheek, but I have never used anything beyond sophomore linear algebra in my work.
Have you considered offering a customer self hosted option? It sounds like you could easily position it as a lightweight alternative to Citrix and Windows Terminal Services.
It's a good article but something I've been surprised to find out is true since I've spent some time at a very large corporation for the first time is that a place like this has a large contingent of developers that they seem to prefer to not be very good at what they do, there just isn't an interest in 'standards of excellence' or what have you.

It's an economic decision, they just aren't interested in what very talented developers have to offer, except for a very small portion of their business needs. It's essentially factory work. A car manufacturer could pay more for artisans to work the auto assembly line, and it may have some sort of positive effect on the overall elegance of the workmanship, but there's a quality trade off to be made and the vast majority of cars sold aren't a Lotus Esprit nor will they ever be.

I don't justify this way of thinking, to me its the scorched earth of capitalism with very limited consideration of the social, cultural, and environmental implications of placing profit motive on a pedestal of not just utility but also of righteousness, but that's me and that's not 99.999 percent of the employing population. This is not an IT turnover crisis, as much as we can come up with stats and anecdotes, this is a global turnover crisis, and it's because the value sought is not related to, as I said, social, cultural, and environmental balance and success, it's about money. Sorry to be the freak here, but this is the elephant in the room and why is it so hard to acknowledge?
Sleazebag is one of one nicer things I've heard about Zuck, but he's definitely not an idiot. Remember that this isn't the first serious lawsuit about the origin of Facebook. He seems like a real "ends justify the means" type.
Thanks for the link to this. Not that I think this book is the best thing for the OP (although he/she may enjoy it), but this is just the kind of book that I would like to read.
As an upper class western white male, I am thrilled to consider the possibility of feeling oppressed.
Depending on the incorporation structure that Facebook has, and the stated shareholder disclosures and shareholder agreements signed, this could cause serious difficulty for other investors, and possibly employees of Facebook. Those are real damages, and judges can and will consider them along with the $1k.

In general, American judges have tended to care about this sort of thing -- they are very corporation friendly, especially to reasonably good corporate citizens.

This judgment if done quickly and at the rate asked for is largfer than most tobacco company rulings; and they have knowingly been addicting and killing hundreds of thousands of children around the country! (And have in some cases taken many, many years to wind through the courts.)

In short, if you put in $1k into a startup, and then those guys abandon it, go start a new company with your technology and raise a million dollars, you damn well better be in touch with those founders and investors early if you want to protect your investment.

Think about that for a second: you're a passive investor, hence don't add value to the company outside your money. You put in enough money for one month's rent in Harvard Square. Now, you get outside investors who have put in, say a million dollars. No matter what your agreement with the founders, who invented all this stuff, what do you think the million dollar funding group will offer you when you start rattling their cage around the time of closing the round?

The point is, if he has a real claim, and if he had pursued it as he should have, he still would, right now, own much less than Zuck does if he'd had any sort of quality angel or Series A investors. A guy that takes 50% for $1,000 is NOT an angel. He's either total smallfry or a predator or both; he wouldn't be welcome around the table with legit investors, and he almost certainly would have been bought out for either a small amount of nonvoting stock, or cash, like say $50k.

This would be different if he and Zuck had sat side by side for a year, working on features and split equity based on that, very different, but that's not the situation, no matter how much of a tool Zuckerberg was at that point in his life.
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Yawn. Another "OMG programmers can't handle multicore!" bullshit article.

I do threads all the time, and there are lots of things out there like various MapReduce toolkits that make it even easier than dealing directly with threads if you want. Threads are not that hard. It just takes an understanding followed by some practice to get a sense for it.
A Few Blocks, 4 Years, 52,000 Police Stops
Part of the problem is that the movie industry has proven time and time again that they can't be trusted in this area. You'd have to be an incredible optimist or on the industry's dime to really believe their claims.

Steam is an example of a service that has done this exact thing incredibly well, and it would absolutely not have worked without Valve building up a reputation for integrity and professionalism.

If Valve came out with UltraViolet, I'd be chomping at the bit for it because I trust them to honor their agreements and plan accordingly to do so into the distant future.

I wouldn't trust the movie industry at all, let alone enough to sign onto a service like this. They may never be able to regain the potential for consumer trust, and it's their own damn fault.
Excellent execution. I'd certainly be interested in the paid service when it comes out. The 100% opensource idea is probably a distraction you can do without at the moment. I want the paid service to be great. I won't care if it is opensource or not.
This made me smile a little bit; I majored in Math because I thought CS would be too easy.
Why not all of Zuck's shares? He's the one that went and sold the rest (apparently illegitimately).
This is an idea that was pioneered by Smalltalk, where you don't need files to organize your code. But I don't see why it can't be used in other languages, such as Java, using a class-based editor (instead of a file-based one).
Well, in this case, it's more a matter of damages need to be weighed for fairness.
one should be smart not intelligent.
Donald Knuth -- "How Did I Get Into Computers?" Video