skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
"why don't more hackers become managers"

Been there, done that. Won't do it again. Why?

1. I can earn more hacking.

2. I can get way more done hacking.

3. Hacking is more fun.

4. I like building stuff.

5. I hate doing lots of activity that produces little value.

6. I can still get lots of human interface being a hacker without being the bad guy.

7. I can cure my own headaches a lot more easily.

8. The computer does exactly what I tell it. Try that with any person.

9. I may be doing something that's never been done before. Less likely for a manager.

10. I'm a natural born hacker. I wonder if anyone is a natural born manager.
"""PS: What do you think of C++ as a language?"""

I love to write UNIX tools and network servers in C++. But for projects that don't need the raw speed I simply use Python or Java. You will be 10x more productive in those languages.

One more thing: C++ becomes really nice when you add the right libraries to it. The STL is extremely limited but now with Boost 1.35 things get really interesting.

Check out http://www.boost.org if you are serious about C++.

(Won't help much on Symbian I think, but that platform is terrrrrible anyway.)
YouTube + Google = Nothing much?
You are correct. I didn't notice that. I guess that makes all the more sense :)
Yes there are a few natural born managers, but they are rare and far in between.
I once had a philosophy professor who liked being provocative. He was a sort of evangelical atheist. He gave a talk entitled, "Is Belief In God Immoral Or Merely Irrational?"

That (unethical or merely incompetent?) is the sort of interesting debate they've created about themselves.
Of course money can buy happiness.

It buys one kind: what results from the relief of not having to worry about money anymore. ("Worrying" about losing your millions does not count; we poorer folks have to worry about that, too.)

Financial freedom does not automatically make you happy, but the universe isn't binary, and so being relieved of the biggest worry in modern life does buy you a good amount of happiness -- or at least, the opportunity for happiness.
Battle Of The Commodity Web Applications: It’s All About People
There is a reason why the web 2.0 social apps that you cite are so impressive - it's because they were made to "scratch an itch". Indeed, they were made by the very people who use them day in and day out.

Note that this pattern is seen at the sub-application level as well, in the emerging agile frameworks like Rails and Merb, where developers got fed up with the old way and decided to create a new way instead.

So how do we bring this to business? How do we break through the metaphorical gate?

First we have to realize that this "scratch an itch" pattern simply cannot play out in business exactly as it does in the social web. There are two reasons for this:

1. Business people - i.e., the people with an itch to scratch - are generally not programmers on the side
2. Even if they were programmers on the side, the applications are so big that if they decided to start programming one, they would have no time for their day job!

So how can we (a) know enough about the space we are working in and (b) think enough like our users to build compelling, user oriented business applications?

To my mind the answer is both simple and obvious: by involving the customer as often as possible. Only by getting feedback can we fill the gap between users and developers. And the more often we get feedback, the better. Here we converge on the agile methodologies that have seen a rise in the past 6-8 years.

Couple this with a startup that is fun to work for, and that attracts the smartest, most creative web developers, and you just might have a solution.

Of course there's still one missing piece: a couple of passionate founders who can attract that kind of talent to this kind of software business. I guess that's left up to the reader, as an exercise.
I've lived in Dallas for 9 years and Austin for 4 years. I've been a part of 2 consulting startups and 1 product startup, and most recently raised a Series A for my company. I know of many startup companies in Dallas, but the scene is very different from Seattle and the Valley. VC money is non-existent, with a few exceptions.

While many companies are started in Dallas every year, most of them are focused on non-software industries. On the software side, here are a few current ones I know about:
1) Swarmforce is a content system using swarm AI
2) Roov is a social network for the faith community
3) MileMeter sells auto insurance buy the mile
4) Viewzi provides view-based search

A list of some others can be found at http://www.texasstartupblog.com/2007/12/17/founders-in-dalla...

A good way to get involved in the Dallas software startup community is to visit Refresh Dallas, Dallas BarCamp, and Dallas.rb Reading texasstartupblog occasionally provides insight to a new local company.
"work is a default"

Gee, I never thought about it that way. I hope that's not true.

OTOH, I have to do what I'm doing. I have to.

This is the hardest thing to get other people to understand. One of the reasons I turn down a lot of consulting to work on my startup is because I'm sick and tired of doing things wrong and helping people get things done with crappy software and tools. For years I've said, "That sucks, I can do way better." So now I'm putting my money where my mouth is.

Make no mistake about it. I love what I do. I can't imagine not doing it. If you call that "working harder" or "default", fine. But please don't say none of us is bold. Some of us have the scars to show otherwise.
This isn't a housing application-- discrimination is completely legal.

In fact, the application is designed to discriminate against people who would be bad founders.
I'll be there with my co-founder (and brother) Mike representing Zamzar. We're flying out on Thursday, staying until Sunday - looking foward to it.

Come say hi if you see us at startup school (we're keen to network with more Brits). We look vaguely like the photo in this post:

http://www.folksonomy.org/2006/11/interview_with_zamzar/
"But please don't say none of us is bold."

I think you take things a bit too literally. This piece is about humanity in general, not "edw519"
Here are 3 ways I've identified highly profitable ideas:

a) Having a problem that needs solving. It's OK if it's a focused need, so long as you're not addressing a market which is too small. The world of people who research online is big enough. The world of Web 2.0 developers is not.

b) Careful listening to user feedback. Often users of one of my products have given me an inkling of the need for another. This will happen if (1) the original product works well, (2) the new product appeals to a similar audience, (3) you make it easy for people to give you feedback, and read it religiously and with empathy.

c) Being in-the-know about breaking trends. Make sure you regularly read (or at least skim) some high quality international publications. I read The Economist cover-to-cover every week, along with BusinessWeek. Worth every minute.

For me, each of these methods has been the catalyst for creating at least one successful online business.
I disagree with the thesis of this article. "Commodity Web Applications" underestimates the importance of getting details right. I voted it up, though, because I expect it to generate interesting discussion.
Mister, Can You Spare $200K?
You're right, Hank. I guess I just took a little creative license myself. It felt good.
| Do consulting on the side to self-fund. This is less risky than using credit cards. One partner works for a Big Old Dinosaur on contract for $20k per month and splits it 50/50 with the other partner, who builds the company which is shared 50/50 between the two. It gets a little more complex with more than two people.

This sounds like an awfully big share to give to someone for that much capital! Am I wrong?
I recommend Herb Sutter's classic Guru of the Week articles:
http://www.gotw.ca/gotw/
There's a lot of usually-uselss arcane stuff in there, but also a lot of valuable information.
Mitigating Partnership Risk: Hearing It From The Horse’s Mouth
One thing I've learned from watching people react to various essays, is that if they can read it as being about them, they will. You would be well advised to say "few" instead of "none" if you don't want to raise the ire of the few.
> PS: What do you think of C++ as a language?

I hate C++, although I'm using it right now since python lacks libraries I need (http://www.cgal.org/).

But I hate C++/STL/Boost far less than I hate C++. The STL and Boost make C++ feel almost like statically typed python, (while occasionally driving you mad with pages full of template errors).

An example (g is a graph):

list<Edge> to_remove;
BOOST_FOREACH( Vertex v, vertices(g)){
if (degree(v,g) > 2){ //Try to remove some ambiguity
BOOST_FOREACH(Edge e, out_edges(v,g)) {
...Do some euclidean geometry...
if (...Geometric constraint not satisfied...){
to_remove.push_back(e);
}
}
}
}

BOOST_FOREACH(Edge e, to_remove){
remove_edge(e,g);
}

This is almost a direct translation of what I'd write in python (if python had graphs as a data structure), except of course that to_remove is a list of edges.

Some people insist on programming C++ like it is c. I.e., they will build an array (hoping it's big enough, sometimes they will even error check if it's not), cast the edges to int's, keep track of how many array members represent edges and how many do not. If you do that, your life will suck.
Thank You for the response and the offer.
What about a few lines of ruby or python to loop over your messages and extract the From: or To: headers. I did this a long time ago but I can't find the code anymore. I do remember that it was a hack of just a couple of hours work.
People do this from all over. I have a friend here in Jerusalem who is a translator between Japanese and English. Having made many contacts when in Japan, all the work is now done over the web in an apartment in Jerusalem.

I do web development, but I find that meeting people over the web to do this is not easy. Anybody could be anywhere and trust is a problem. Some people have a talent for self promotion, and some don't. The web is loaded with self promoters and spammers. Standing out on the web is hard. Business tends to be about personal relationships and personal trust.

I observe that the people who make contacts on the web are very talented bloggers. Joel Spolsky and 37signals come to mind, also Raganwald. Oh, and of course P. Graham and ycombinator...
Thanks for the response.
Need to develop a mobile app for a client. PyS60 apps get really heavy because the interpreter needs to be added with the app.
hm. i used it to learn c++.
maybe thats one of the reasons i hate the language :)
Also, NewLC.com is a big community around Symbian development. They're a pretty good resource for tutorials and questions.
Wouldn't J2ME do it for you? Less of a learning curve...
> At least they did it by having the best product (unlike MS).

Microsoft fell into the DOS monopoly because they were effective at business and Digital Research (the more obvious vendor) wasn't.

Windows won because Apple (by choice or by failure) didn't succeed at beating PCs with the Mac and because they executed better than other choices for transitioning away from DOS (OS/2 in particular, but also notably GeoWorks). OS/2 was the inside-track solution that failed because it was too closed -- Windows was the comparatively open solution (because it ran on all PC-compatibles) that beat it.

Office won because it was a genuinely better product in a GUI than Lotus 1-2-3, WordPerfect, and other competitors. Word and Excel had been honed on the Mac for years as the overwhelming leader in the word processing and spreadsheet markets there.

Microsoft is not a company that got to be as enormous as they did due to one lucky break early on. They did it by building products that lots of people liked, by making smart business decisions, and by being the toughest competitor to face.

> Google is big because they have created a ton of value.

Google is a smart company that got off to a start with brilliant technology in a form lots of people love. But now that they are big, they have a lot of the same advantages Microsoft had in the 90s.

Would Google Apps really have vastly more mindshare than alternatives like Zoho purely on the product merits? Google is now in the stage where they can become one of the leaders in a market simply by announcing a product. This pretty much puts them where Microsoft was in 1995. That may be the free market, but if you're competing with them, it's pretty frustrating to know that even if you beat them hands down on product desireability, they can still win in the market just by being Google.
Hmm... I dont know for sure. Will check up. I think I heard somewhere that it is limited.
Famous Disasters In Market Speculation - Tulips Anyone?
flash is actually very much like java in the event handling dept. And javascript is changing to adjust to the superior features that flash has. The argument about people just use the web for information is rediculous, as the majority of ppl play online games, share video via youtube, have myspace/facebook and want VISUAL STIMULATION.

As a programmer, sometimes we have to step our of our comfort zone to see how the rest of the world uses the web. The average consumer responds well to many flash sites. This can not be denied from a developer standpoint.

Companies are making millions on those flash ads, and many of us are dying to get the user base so we can attract those tacky ads. Our stance as developers that this technology, which is on 90+% of computers is useless, may need some reevaluation.
Procrastination Can Be Your Ally
Nature's beautiful forms
"C++ Primer", by Stanley Lippman, Addison Wesley

That's probably the best introduction book. It's super-long, but after you've worked with C++ for a while you'll understand why. "The C++ Programming Language" has been mentioned here a couple of times, and it's invaluable to have as a reference later in your C++ career, but is almost impenetrable as a book for learning the language.
who wants to use the web without a GUI? how many ppl want an experience like that? Maybe diehard code nerds like a few of us, but we are a extremely small minority in the sea of web users.
As somebody who has devoted a lot of hours coding up a way to efficiently and quickly defeat a captcha system, I tip my hat to these skillful coders.
Information technology has just made it obvious to the poor countries how poor they really are

Not just information technology, but cheap air travel. A lot of people from poor countries have come to work for a while in their uncle's shop in the US.
True enough. Though if it weren't for Flashblock, it would be a whole different situation. (I'm often surprised to find out how much I'm "missing" when forced to use IE)
> I am looking for suggestions for good books for C, C++, STL and Symbian.

Accelerated C++ by Andrew Koenig and Barbara E. Moo is a very good book on C++, IMO. It's concise, it doesn't teach you everything but the 80% you will need most of the time and it introduces the STL right from the beginning.
Also this when you click on their store: "Thank you for visiting Psystar. We're sorry but the store is temporarily down due to the fact that we are currently unable to process any credit card transactions."

This vapourware?
More relevant, this isn't a job application. Employers do have to avoid discrimination.
I think they know this isn't a product or a strategy that can last, so the biz is a temporary clapboard structure hoping to keep costs down and sell as many boxes as they can before they fold and take the money someplace else.
Well, if by "learn", you mean "extrapolate", "surmise", "conjecture" or "speculate". I don't think you can make such sweeping statements without knowing more.
Reader's comment number 5 represents the purest example of "seed" funding I've ever heard of.
Equally awesome writing on another example, Roger Federer[1], by David Foster Wallace, a MacArthur guy and one of my favorite 3 writers ever:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/20/sports/playmagazine/20fede...

Sorry for the non-hacker content, but since the article's already here, no harm in commenting I suppose.

[1] Federer is, I would contend, the world's pre-eminent physical genius, though I don't know any brain surgeons.
Download a copy of Bruce Eckel's Thinking in C++. He's superb at bringing to light the quirks of each language he writes about.

http://www.mindview.net/Books/DownloadSites
Ask YC: Setting up a new Linux laptop
My new Thinkpad came in this morning, and I'm in the process of installing Ubuntu on it right now.

What applications should I install that will make life easier, coming from OS X and XP?

--Edit--
I'm a developer, so there are things that I know I will put on it:

Vim & Emacs

Apache

MySQL & PostgresQL

All the various languages I either work in or am messing with.
In that case, you make "time since creation" one of your parameters, and assign that an appropriate weight.
Find someone with a background in business and finance you trust and make them a part of your team. Great companies take a lot more than technology.
Well... What do you plan to do on it?
Looking for an UI & Graphics Designer
We're an online travel company looking for a designer to join our founding team.

The team is striving to build an Apple version of online travel -- a site that's fun, engaging, and easy to use for oft-dreaded trip-planning. Really something where the user's process is the focus, not the end goal of booking tickets like most travel sites out there today. More visual communication, information organized by how relevant it is to how you travel, a push of travel ideas (most sites already expect you to know where you want to go), game-type tools. We're focused on people our age who have a good enough understanding of technology that they expect more, especially of the travel arena since it's one of the main fun things we do. Why should that fun only apply to the period on the road only, rather than the whole process of figuring out all the interesting options out there and sharing your travels once you return?

Given our goals, we really want a designer to be part of the founding team to drive this vital piece of our vision. Right now we are in garage start-up mode and building a demo facebook application as well as the main site prototype. During this period, we're looking for someone to join us part-time. The plan is to raise funds after we have those pieces built, so at that point, we'd ideally want all the team members to go full-time.

I think it's a compelling chance to take the reins and build an innovative user-focused product.
If you're interested, email me Christen (at) thumbble.com. I'll also be at Startup School this Saturday, so give me a tap on the shoulder.

FYI, we are based in SF. Check out our recently started tumblelog (thumbble.tumblr.com). (But don't break into it.)
To me it sounds like this is one dude in a garage who thought it would be a good idea to sell hackintoshes.
If I was someone gullible enough to buy something from them in the last couple days I would be rushing to call my credit card company right about...NOW.
Could this be someone testing the market? Set up a site, fill it with content and get the press releases out there....
They copied someone else's intellectual property without giving credit.

What data could anyone possibly add that would change my thinking?
Funny chart detailing status of US airlines
YC is a great idea, Founder's co-op is the proof. Honesty dictates that they mention YC as their source of idea.
This is another opportunity for startups to get seed and backing. Coaching may not be as YCs, but hey why not try, apply!!!!
I think also you have to get in were you fit in. Hackers are hackers, if it smells like dirty laundry, tastes like old pizza and is as cheap as ramen noodles, its a hacker.
37,000 years ago, a new gene may have produced culturally modern humans
Unless the financing founder is also working on the product in the expectation that both will be working on it full time once there is enough money to do so.
@keefer I happen to work for a big P+C insurance company, doing java integration work on just such an unwieldy set of apps, and I couldn't agree with you more. Development is nearly impossible due to pretty much everything you state in para 2 and 3.

I just wanted to get this out there so people might be able to weigh in- you said "hardly anyone smart is working on making them better." First, let me say I completely agree. But what I was hoping for some feedback on is the WHY? I can say, from experience, my company doesn't even TRY to retain the "smart" people. We've been working on a huge, revolutionary change to our internal systems for almost 3 years now, but practically every "smart" person has been smart enough to jump ship. We've lost every senior dev and architecture person to other giant monolithic companies where they get paid to do EXACTLY the same thing. The funny part (to me anyway) is that nobody has even tried to retain those that are leaving. So we just continue to hemorrhage the great talent and the quality on the project goes down down down. I'm also pretty disappointed to see those people who were my friends going to companies that are just as bad as here- only because it's more money (so maybe they weren't that smart after all!)

I propose that it's a combination of two factors: 1. smart people are bored doing this type of work and will leave when they perceive a better opportunity (I'm going to as well in the next few weeks).
2. Companies don't understand that getting the "rockstar" talent is important, don't know how to recognize it when they have it, and don't know how to keep it when they DO find it. I think this was touched on pretty well in a few previous posts (I'll try to find the links and stick them on here in a bit).

You don't happen to work for a certain San Mateo based software company, do you?
Then who needs Twitter? Just go to any place of employment and listen.
Those are pretty interesting, thanks joshwa!
Well golly, maybe Ford should pay this guy a million dollars to explain it to them. Apparently they're all retarded and don't employ any logistics experts or industrial engineers.

The #1 reason Toyota generally outperforms Ford is that Toyota is not burdened with an extremely expensive and aging union work force.

>* is more efficient - less material lying around
>* reduces costs - less inventory

Left off: *Leaves the whole line catastrophically vulnerable to supply chain disruptions and equipment failures.

A lot of these JIT oriented production methods and floorspace optimizations associated with Japan are presented as clear win innovations. The truth is that historically Japanese plants had tight warehousing and floor space constraints and had to optimize for that. If you're not so constrained they're often silly ideas.
Berkeley student's Twitter messages alerted world to his arrest in Egypt
I had no luck with Totem, so I installed VLC Player for video and DVDs. Not sure if it is the best alternative, but it works fine.
"""This is almost a direct translation of what I'd write in python"""

Except that the C++ version can be highly concurrent and 100 times faster :-)

I'm exaggerating a bit here of course, but in many cases C++ can certainly be a better choice. Even though it is MUCH more verbose.

S.
Ah, you make an excellent point. I should edit the question.
Intelligence and rhythmic accuracy go hand in hand
Josuttis' "The C++ Standard Library" is the most heavily thumbed through C++ book at work.