skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I think that there are a lot of things you can do to sell to your industry. Having worked in restaurants and going to culinary school, I have had a first-hand opportunity to see the inner workings of these places. Here are some selling strategies that should work.

1. Develop a list of your potential customers. Keep this local in the short term, so it doesn't overwhelm you.

2. Create a 2 page business brochure that has stats about the industry, the problem you are solving and stats about where the industry is heading. Think infographic. On page 2 describe how your product meets all those needs, include some scenarios and a lot of screenshots. This needs to look good, not too technical, not too salesy. Look at the datasheets from NCR http://ncr.com/products_and_services/self_service_kiosks/foo... a minimum they need to good this good)

3. Take the list you created in step one and try and connections in your network of friends to them, linkedin is good for the bigger companies. For the SME's (small/medium enterprises) you need to think a little harder and maybe even make some calls.

4. Start making calls but DO NOT sell on the phone. People in restaurants don’t have time to talk on phones they have too much crap going on that they can’t be tied to the phone for 30 mins while you pitch. Only ask one question to start "When is the Chef/Owner/Manager in?" If you get the Chef/Owner/Manager on the phone ask them when is a good time to come in to talk to them is. If they ask you why, tell them you want to show them a product you developed for restaurants and you want to spend 5 minutes showing them how it can help. If they keep probing then try and say as little as possible about your product, focus on asking them questions about the need you are trying to solve. So if your product is in a new ordering system then ask them when they do there ordering from suppliers, are they happy with that process, etc...

5. Go there in person, be mindful how you look because before you even say a word they will judge you based on appearance. Don’t dress to formal (so no suit) or too casual (how you would look after 30 hours straight of coding). Make sure your breath and you don’t stink because people in the restaurant business have keen senses of smell (flavours are 10times smell, 1 times taste). Hand them a brochure and ask if they have 5 minutes. Then give them 30 seconds to scan the brochure, you will know based on the look of their face whether you need to continue your pitch or move on. If the face is blank then it’s a 50/50.<br>

That’s just the foot in the door, after that you need to convince them to buy your product or service. And the variability in that is too great to explain without knowing what you are selling.

Hope this helps
My suggestion: keep your job and work hard to become a better programmer in your spare time. Pick a side project that interests you. When the golden handcuffs come off, get the money, and move to SF to join or start a startup. You'll have more funds and be a better developer because of it.
And the fact that it is 2010 relates exactly how to wrapping character array functions? Because I'm not following. If you're in C and using strings, it's still 1985 for you too.

There may be a larger argument about whether the various standards bodies have so complicated C++ that it's become unwieldy -- the comment about exceptions in destructors has merit.

But that's not the argument he was making.

Good programmers are good because of the things they don't do. It's the guys who want to use every feature and library that are often the ones creating the disasters the rest of us have to maintain. So yes, the features and such of a language can hurt. But that's true of just about any language save some of the hardcore functional ones -- C++ maybe more so than the rest. Being a coder using modern languages means judicious use of complexity. Simple is almost always better. Which is exactly where he's coming from, he just takes his argument too far.

In fact, one of the things C++ teaches you early on -- or you suffer all sorts of pain -- is when to abstract, when not to, when to use libraries, when not to, and the dangers of frameworks. It's the very fact that it's such a complex monster that forces coders to keep it simple, stupid. You don't get that kind of thing out of the box in something like Java. This is more bad than good in terms of delivering solutions, but it also is not all bad. It has merit because it trains programmers about the kinds of disasters they can make. If you can write good, easily understood and maintainable C++ code, I can trust you with about anything. If the first thing you do is jump in the swamp where all the alligators live simply because you can -- templates, large inheritance trees, etc -- then probably not so much.
So. There's NO interest in this? Ouch.
The efforts by these tech and finance giants are definitely not "feel-good philanthropy". That's prob the most insulting thing I've heard said about their work considering that it's one of the largest philanthropic undertakings ... ever.
You'd probably encourage more women to start companies if you gave them free day care and household services.

Less of the "women" and more of the "people," please. Many men are involved in child care and housework in a significant way, and similarly have to make trade offs between work and family.
Being "successful" also means, at least for me, having a clear conscience.

I don't want to do business with people who will do whatever it takes to make a profit. Life is not a zero-sum game. Even if it were, there are limits to what a gentleman should and shouldn't do and Carnegie did a lot of the latter in his pre-philanthropist life.
Better this than releasing letters that triggered a fatal run on a bank (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IndyMac#IndyMac:_Collapse).

Semi-side note: if you were to bet today, he's going be the Senate Majority Leader in 2011 (based on the assumptions that Harry Reid will lose reelection but the numbers aren't there for the Republicans to gain a majority in the Senate).
Ah, mais apparemment il y a qn! Interested in a meetup? My email is in my profile. I wrote to three users a while ago whom I found on hackrtrackr, but got no replies. There's also PeterHammar and Pollux (Nyon), of whom I have no contact info.
This sounds like critism, but you are you critising? Women? Y-Combinator? "Society?"
How  Twitter Can Crush The Facebook Empire
Could we witness a retelling of David versus Goliath with an epic battle between the two largest social networking networking competitors? You have Facebook, which continually grows amidst its privacy woes. Then you have Twitter, which faces scalability issues with increasing usage. As big as they both are, Twitter is tiny compared to Facebook’s massive user base, but maybe not for long.
This seems like the wrong place to be asking that. It's like asking who has left the medical business in the doctor's lounge.
I also had some similar symptoms 2 winters ago. Turned out to be anxiety, stress, mediocre diet, and a bit of hypochondria. What finally got me out of the rut was taking a trip to San Diego, spending time with friends away from my commute in the cold/dark hours, and realizing that maybe it was all in my head. It was difficult for me to accept that I could be psychologically messing with myself, but this was ultimately the problem.
The part about "when you start to be able to browse actual web pages" sure sounded like a prediction; and by the time mobile web browsers caught up to the point where you could reasonably browse the open web on them, they were perfectly capable of running JavaScript just as well as desktop browsers.

This book was published in 2004, the same year that Gmail was released making heavy use of JavaScript to provide a much better webmail experience than previous competitors. So, it wasn't even that great a description of the present, other than the fact that he probably actually wrote it before the release of Gmail.

My main point is just that if you look at the one quote about an Apple phone with a web browser, out of context, he does look fairly prescient; but if you look at the rest of them, and the history of iPhone rumors, he has about as good a track record as anyone reasonably bright and paying attention to the industry.
Survey: 23% of IT managers have iPads
We all know this info is going to get out in some way or the other, but I won't hold my breath coz it may take too long.
A common tongue-in-cheek definition of "hacker" is "one who carves furniture with an axe".

Loyd Blankenship would go on to focus pretty heavily on his woodworking activities.

Make of that what you will. :)
The C++ standard library and std::string implicitly have specific constraints and use cases, but they were imposed by the design process, not by the language.

C++ has many string types because each string type has its strengths and weaknesses. For instance, QString is a fully-featured and Unicode-aware string written in C++ that I use most of the time.

std::string is good for most things. What are your specific issues with it?
Maybe we need to clue in the insurers? If I were writing insurance for a blowout, I'd want a petroleum company to be in the consortium I described. Hell, I'd help run it! I'd make damn sure they were doing rigorous research and engineering. (And hardware testing!)
I think this is a great idea. The prices seem REALLY high and of course the legal implications are also pretty obvious.

Where do you get these things printed?
As said in the previous writeups, the only really conclusive test is "Don't eat wheat for 3 weeks, then pig out for a meal. You'll know a few hours after that."

This isn't just experience speaking (though it is, my father was at best marginal according to the biopsy but it's definitely celiac based on this test), but also the best current medical research. Biopsies can have problems where they hit a normal stretch of intestine, even though large chunks of it are affected. Quite a bit of research remains focused on just the best way to diagnose Celiac, which is usually not the hard part of a disease, at least after several years of research. :)

If that doesn't definitively make you sick on the pig-out day, it isn't Celiac. Small improvements during those three weeks are modestly positive signs but not really definitive. (In my experience they were mostly within "placebo" range, but how sick I got after my last pizza was not.)
--HackrTrackr (HN users directory by location)--

http://hackrtrackr.com/

HN Post: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43942
I have a policy about not criticizing people in their house, and this is definitely not my house.

That said, there are some markets large enough to sustain many companies. Bingo cards probably won't support a company on the trajectory that YC would like. A/B testing, though, already supports many companies, from several big-freaking-consultingware companies down to VWO. There is room for more, and I'd suggest people remember that the biggest competitor isn't a just-launched startup or even Google. It is "Customer decides not to A/B test." This competitor is very popular, and has 99% share in the A/B testing space. Heck, it probably has 90% share among HN readers!

That is the enemy. Focus on killing that.
I'm going to take the long view and say next year. Apple is very Apple centric so I can't see them making a developer based announcement for anyone other than Apple developers. Based on that I'd guess WWDC in June 2011.

Plus they're selling the new iPhone with FaceTime right now so they wouldn't want to give a company like Google the chance to quickly implement it. WWDC 2011 is also when they'll probably announce the next gen. iPhone which presumably will have new features to focus their marketing on.
What about it can you "not take anymore"?

If the money's good and you're miserable anyway,the money isn't doing what it promised. Move to SF and join a startup sounds like a good way to inject some excitement. But that goes back to my original question.
Does anyone know what "open source attack tool" they'll be talking about?
Found Quotes
Comic Book Guy doesn't lisp like that; although his virtual twin, Go-Bots Guy from Robot Chicken, does.
Well explained. However many tools of ruby. Tools that we as good developers carry at the bottom of our toolbox for those rare cases where they make life a billion times easier, can also be tools of spaghetti. One of these is the ability to inject behaviors into a class. Its like adding to Array.prototype. The point is that just like a goto statement, it has a few legitimate uses, but most of the time leads to spaghetti code. I think every language has this, and there should be big flashing warnings when tutorials show this methodology stating that "use this only where appropriate, and it is usually only appropriate in these situations:..."
My bet: When FaceTime is available in Macs, iPads, iPod Touchs.

This way, other vendor will be seen as 'bandwagoning' Apple (by the general public) as they implemented FT year/year-and-a-half later.

Of course Apple created FT. And of course any other vendor implementing it will be 'bandwagoning' Apple. It's just the public who Apple needs to make clear that they lead, and others follow.
Tesla to build electric Toyota Rav4s
I know, but I figured the odds were good someone around here used to be a professional programmer, and is now doing something completely different, but still a hobbyist and HN enthusiast. I could be wrong.
I really like this article for the way it builds its arguments based on facts and draws measured, reasonable conclusions with no fanboyism or vitriol. Bravo.
Pretty nice. One suggestion (or bug I'm not sure): If I search in a city in Canada, I get result from usa.. is it possible to configure the "range distance" ? It's a huge difference if it's a 30min distance or a 10 hours or 3 days distance.. :D (But when I talk about range distance, I mean it in miles or somthing)
They have to defend their trademark, or lose it. There's no way you can keep that domain. I don't think this falls under fair use either.

E-mail their lawyer, Laurence Wilson at lwilson@yelp.com.
Expressiveness is important. I remember many times reading logic and missing the little tinsy ! before a giant expression not making the quick flag in my mind raise indicating that this is a unless, not an if. In ruby the idea of the unless is not to save typing. In fact if !foo is easier to write than unless foo. However after a tad bit of getting used to it, you realize that it becomes immediately obvious when skimming the code what the operation is doing.

The idea is lets leave the brainpower for the hard problems, and not require you to use all that brainpower to figure out the plumbing.
I did the reverse-- I went from majoring in English and teaching high school to embedded systems engineering.

It took a few things-- some aptitude for the field, a lot of determination, some money for a master's degree (over the course of 3 years), and a friend taking a chance on me with a summer internship. After about a year, it was pretty clear that it was going to work. I think I could make a similar switch again if I had the motivation.

It seems the major difference in your case is that you're not sure what you'd rather do, while I had a strong desire for engineering. I would try to figure out where you're headed before you start on the journey.
> If there are complaints about too little women in engineering, why aren’t there complaints about too few men in teaching or humanities?

There's no shortage of men in the humanities, nor in teaching once you get past the lower grade levels. In the US, at least.

The point of women in tech advocacy is that there are a variety of forces discouraging women into self-selecting themselves out of careers in technology. One is just the fact that there are so few women in tech to begin with. Another is that barely any can be considered high-profile. Then there are all the historical, cultural, and sociological factors.

This sort of advocacy is just an attempt to fight against those forces by establishing greater visibility and precedent for successful women in tech.

(As an aside, I think it'd be great if there were more female engineers in the dating pool.)
Is it unethical to simply import these other lists into my site (http://www.hackernewsers.com/) or is it just efficient...
Mozilla Gets its Foot in the Apple Door
It is no secret that one of the more annoying things about Apple is its ridiculously strict and long app approval process. This is annoying for consumers mainly because a lot of apps we would want to see on the iPhone platform are rejected by Apple, such as Google Voice to site one big example.
I did:

http://www.publicstatic.net/2009/01/sure-change-jobs/

The biggest adjustment for me was money. I'd gotten so used to buying whatever I wanted (not large things) that I had some money trouble early on.

But I'm back to programming now. I love it.
I couldn't say it any better then AmberShah.

For startup jobs checkout the VC firms sites. They have a shitload of jobs posted and you can sort by city.
>"How can you detect loops in a singly-linked list without modifying nodes / keeping accounting information around?"

What do you mean by "accounting" information?

The usual way to state this problem is, "How can you detect loops in a singly-linked list without modifying nodes and using O(1) data."

The answer is that you start with 2 pointers to the beginning of the list. Then follow the pattern of advancing the first twice, and the second one once. You have your answer when the first reaches the end, or the first and second point at the same spot.

There are a lot of problems with a trick like that. And it is true that if you've seen the problem before, you're going to be at an advantage. So practice a few of them to get use to the form. But there are enough such problems out there that it is significantly easier to become a good developer than to learn a broad enough selection of them to have a good chance of getting through a set of interviews off of memory.
I don't write C++ and have no issue with std::string. I was taking general issue with the OP's general issue with criticizing a std library alongside a language.
Doesn't the D language fix a lot of the issues that Zed is complaining about? Constantly surprised that it's not more mainstream...
I do not think so it's a wrong question here. Many a programmer feel this way at one point in time or other .
That was an error in my rewriting of the article title on submission, not of the article author. I must pay more attention in future.
Well, the data is out there in the clear, so I don't mind. Maybe that way actually some hackers will show up in the Zurich area on your site ;-)
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/129508/when-did-you-know-...

see the top-rated answer. on top of that, I'm basically not fulfilling my dreams, and I'm sort of preemptively feeling intense regret about my life. but I'm also preemptively regretting making that drastic change and having it ultimately fail me also. I guess I desperately want change, but perversely also deeply fear change.
First of all you mentioned two "unrelated" examples - one of which sounds like exactly the same thing in a different environment. Being a film maker is not a job either - I assume its like most creative industries and that 90% of the people who do it don't actually make a living wage. That's not to say don't do it but do think about what you are up to.

All of this suggests that its the moving on and not where you are moving too you are focused on.

Secondly - you don't sound like you have any dependants or responsibilities. So - best time in your life ever to make a move. (plus you can live for a year without income! Luxury!)

Thirdly there is never a best time to do anything. If you wait for all the conditions to be right you will still be working at the same job when you are 60 still hating every minute.

and lastly in general you get to pick one of a) safe or b) interesting in a job - it is very rare to get both immediately.

You are young and free - and if you can't pick (b) now you never will be able to. If you pick (b) now you can always go for (a) later or you will find a niche where your type (b) job acquires some safety

and ps. Corporate programming is totally rubbish for the most part in my experience and your feelings about the job are not the same as your feelings about software development.
i thought about that, all i'm doing at the moment is sorting by distance, irrespective of country. When more people are using the site it might make sense to change it, but right now most search results would be empty for anything under 300 miles
Hung the remote to an elastic cord, shake it, and let physics do their work.
interesting story, thanks for sharing it.
Sounds interesting but creating a product takes a lot more time than just writing the code. I'd be interested in hearing how much time you put into creating a product that provided you with a 20k to 50k exit. (Code and marketing time)

It seems as though working 15 hours a week for 6 months to develop a product that gives you a 20k exit would end up paying you $55/hour. Not a great return on your time in my opinion. But might still be worth doing at least once for the experience you'd gain in launching a successful product.
google spreadsheet of HN google spreadsheets :)
Minor title nit: I was momentarily confused as to how the RIAA spent 58 miles on lawyer fees. :) The usual way to write this would be "$58m" and not "58mi".
I was thinking of doing exactly this years ago. I sold my Infiniti, bought a used station wagon that cost half as much, and was going to put my self through massage school in Ohio with the proceeds.

A consulting job came up in Houston, and I've been "distracted" from this goal ever since.

I am again unemployed, and I too have about a year's worth of float time. The corporate world is pretty egregious at times. Human social dominance mechanisms are necessary for regulating large organizations, but they shouldn't be the primary focus of one's corporate existence. Unfortunately, they are just that for most organizations.
I'm really just a mediocre programmer with really good domain knowledge

Your problem is that you have no problem. Let me explain...

I believe that the "quality" of a programmer is not how much you know, but what you can do with it. So it you have "really good domain knowledge", then you probably aren't a mediocre programmer at all, you're probably a good programmer or even better.

Like many other hn'ers, I love to come here are check out the latest cool stuff people are doing. Then I hear the 2 voices in my head. One says, "That is so cool - I have to learn that!" The other says, "Big deal, I could do that in BASIC. I may need a few more lines of codes and a couple of hacks, but it will still do the exact same thing."

It's tricky to balance all the cool stuff going on with your ability to just get stuff done. You will never learn everything. You will never become the expert at more than one or two things. It's great to learn, but not at the expense of doing. You need both. There were many times I had to build something with my limited knowledge and wished I knew more. But then I built it anyway. Something built with limited resources today is better than something built perfectly tomorrow.

If you're unhappy with your job but like coding, then either find another job or start something on the side. But please don't fall into the trap that you aren't good enough because someone else knows something more. That will always be the case. You can't win that battle.

Just do the best with what you have and make a practice of adding to it a little at a time. Get satisfaction from the benefits you provide others with what you know now.
I don't hate software, but my job has made me realize that I'm really just a mediocre programmer with really good domain knowledge

You seem like a prime candidate for promotion to management or a more analytical role. Is this a possibility or something you can work toward?