skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Programming has a lot to do with people. People influenced the choice of languages, file formats, applications, and operating systems you use more than their technical merit on its own. The ability to convey technical merit and convince others of your message is crucial to being an effective programmer and is very much what leadership is. I've seen the smartest most capable programmers become dejected and rather useless because they lack these qualities. They end up working on the insignificant problems and surprise-surprise are miserable because of it.

These people usually like to make excuses, and refer to the Dilbert PHB effect as the root cause of the problem. That's a very cynical way to view the workplace. Although, Dilbert is quite funny I'll give it that. The Dilbert-style programmer is going the way of the do-do. It used to be that a programmer could be an asshole of a person and have no communication skills, because so few people understood computers. The market simply had to put up with these people. Circumstances have changed. There are people with great personalities that have compelling leadership traits that know how to program these days and they are finding the best jobs and exerting the greatest influence on the industry.

On another note, what makes you think that jobs are static experiences? Working at Google in 2001 would be far different from working there today in 2008. Good people move on from jobs because they out-grow them, the same way people move on from friendships but might never have had a falling out with the other people in those relationships.

Cheers, we'll just agree to disagree!
Agree. although you do feel a bit removed from the satisfaction of people using your stuff directly.
I should have just posted: "Ncache: a web cache system base on nginx." instead of just copying the whole tagline. by the time I realized my mistake it was too late to edit the title
I'm a programmer in Madison and would be willing to talk to you. email address is listed on my profile.

This website might be of interest if you haven't seen it: http://www.ocr.wisc.edu/entrep/
It didn't seem like all that much more evidence was required to refute your one piece of evidence that Digi-Key is evil because they don't want Octopart to list their prices.

Even if I had no evidence, my default assumption would be that they were good until confronted with significant evidence that they were evil. And between good and evil there's a nice-sized neutral middle area which it appears you have transited in one fell swoop based on your sole piece of evidence.

I'm not sure what other evidence of goodness you seek than customers' experiences with them. I have found their prices competitive - as another poster said - lower on some items and higher on others. They have treated me fairly. I don't believe that they are engaged in any immoral enterprises. I agree it would be nice if they cooperated with Octopart but to say that makes them evil is absurdly hyperbolic.

I can immediately think of some (non-evil) reasons for Digi-Key to prefer not to have Octopart include its pricing. It has invested in a web site which provides an excellent user experience and they would prefer not to make it easier for customers to use Digi-Key's web site as a reference manual for lower cost competitors (whether or not you believe this is inevitable). They would like to avoid doing business with customers who are concerned solely about price. They would like customers to purchase their higher-margin items based on past experience purchasing lower-margin items even though the higher-margin items might be cheaper elsewhere.
Yeah. The idea that marketing = direct advertising is a ridiculously narrow definition that needs to die.
The most obvious is coroutines:

def ping():
while ping_channel.receive(): #blocks here
print "PING"
pong_channel.send("from ping")

def pong():
while pong_channel.receive():
print "PONG"
ping_channel.send("from pong")

Most of the things that he has in there don't need to be done with generators, though generators make it more efficient and arguably cleaner. However, sometimes generators are just a twisted workaround for controlling program flow. Channels and tasklets in Stackless express program flow very well, in my opinion.

You can see more of what stackless has to offer here:
http://members.verizon.net/olsongt/stackless/why_stackless.h...
"Not everything is bad of course, lately a lot of developers switched to Ruby, Python and other elegant and much more abstract programming languages so at least developers of today are exposed to things like functional programming"

Well - maybe on the python side, I don't know, but most rails/developers and apps are blissfully unaware of anything remotely functional from what I have seen (of course DHH and rails framework people have a field day).
I can see where this guy is coming from. I've always viewed web programming as sort of "low brow" but in the end it is what is in demand so it is what you do regardless.
All I have to add to this excellent post is "a fool and his/her money are soon parted". It wasn't different back in the 1990's and it's not different now.
"The Essential Drucker" has the best excerpts form "Innovation and Entrepreneurship" in a tidy 3-4 chapters. It's highly recommended if you like reading "The Art of the Start" and those types of books.
Would you consider Octopart evil if they deny my request for their code/data so I that I can duplicate their site in order to provide an improved customer/vendor experience?
Ikea. It's sometimes frustrating how effective it is.
A Brief Why, What & How of Business Blogging
Well, you encounter problems on a daily basis. Next time you encounter something that was poorly organized, poorly created or just down right poor, then solve the problem that made it poor.

That is ultimately how I came to the vision of http://www.propertystampede.com . Ultimately I saw a problem of lacking innovation in the real estate rentals world. So I am solving it.

Chris
Coca-Cola. Who else would be able to make billions of dollars off an indestructible franchise on sugar water? (Or, in Dasani's case, tap water.)
Part search today is like travel search in 1995. I used to go straight to American Airlines to buy tickets and that was fine but how much nicer is it to buy tickets online now? I even travel more because it is easier to find things.

It is definitely nicer to buy tickets, but the race to the bottom in pricing has made the flying experience itself (not just the airport) a misery. There are predominately two options - be miserable with everyone for whom price trumps all (see also Walmart) or spend much, much more for a decent experience. There is no choice of spending 20% more to have a 20% better experience.

So while I value the ease of search and the low prices it precipitates, I am concerned that price competition will force a decline (or a polarization) in customer service. And maybe it is unavoidable.
What does this mean? You're writing a game people can play over IM?
I'd like to visit for a couple of days, probably around May 28th and 29th. If you are willing to spare an empty couch or space on the floor please email me too: pierrebombay [at] gmail [dot] com
Web programming is only boring because companies have been focussing on using the newer frameworks and tools to reduce the amount of time it takes to develop typical projects instead of setting loftier goals to use them to develop bigger, better, things. We should be building cathedrals, but instead a lot of people/companies are focussing on churning out the same old brick building; only faster and cheaper with a better paint job.
Players would compete to enhance the chatterbot. The better their enhancements, the higher they score.

The enhancements would be done by adding relatively simple rules. No programming knowledge is required.

I think players will find it fun as it involves making predictions about human nature.
I think for many seemingly simple web apps there's a huge payoff to spending lots of time adding serious behind-the-scenes brains. It's an especially great competitive advantage because it's invisible. Competitors won't even know how important that part of your system is to winning, so they'll hopefully never even try to implement something similar.

Max Levchin fighting fraud better than his competitors using sophisticated analysis/number crunching is a good example.
MBA's are great for 2 things:

1) If you are not a business undergrad, or have not picked up these skills on the job, then an MBA is a great way to get a solid business understanding that will prepare you for another type of work.

2) High ranking MBA programs attract serious talent, and then network that you acquire at a respectable university is also very valuable.

So really, if you want to change jobs, and want some credentials and training and/or want to fill up your linkedin profile with some future superstars, it's a worthy investment. Otherwise, it's probably not worth the time or money.
Can anyone get this to work in OSX? I remember trying a while ago and being unsuccessful.
That's an interesting idea - what are examples of things you would consider a cathedral? I get the sense that what you're getting at might not just be a failure of ambition but a failure of imagination.
Digi-Key is certainly not the only ones in this space that doesn't want price comparisons. What about McMaster-Carr? Not a chance in the world they are going to open up their pricing and availability to an Octopart site. Why? Well, I can't speak for them (although I worked there for 2.5 years), but I would guess it's because they want to maintain control. I don't think that necessarily makes them evil, however, because control can mean controlling the customer experience for the better. In other words, perhaps someone could legitimately believe that Octopart is an inferior (non-innovative) approach to part search, and that allowing your products to be searchable via Octopart would confuse and hurt, rather than help, your customers.

Your comparison to travel is an interesting one, because despite Travelocity/Orbitz/Kayak/etc. some airlines (Southwest) can still only be searched via their site. Ironically (despite the recent fiasco) I would consider Southwest to be a very innovative, pleasurable-to-fly airline.
Our goal for our startup http://www.propertystampede.com is to captures the dynamic listings that craigslist does for rental property, but in a fraud free environment.

Come check us out, and if you have rental property or are a property manager, please sign up for the beta.

Christopher Mancini
Co-Founder, Property Stampede LLC
I think it's great pg invited someone who gave a lot of opposite advice from what he has said at various times.
Bravo! I wish something like this existed on Linux: preferably implemented in the kernel so that it cannot be overridden with ifconfig or another command. Also: cute name for such a service: Go DOS Yourself.
Yes. Though I would hesitate to endorse a particular degree of "added value" from an ivy-league branded MBA. Do a simple cost-benefit analysis.

It occurred to me, during graduate studies for my MBA (at a lovely state University, thank you very much), how various disciplines have their different lingo. Perhaps the most valuable thing I got from the program was instilled by osmosis -- the lingo associated with a variety of disciplines, industries, etc.

If anything, an MBA teaches you the lingo of lingos; that is, it doesn't so much teach how to be a "generalist" (as was stated earlier), but more about how to be a "relativist". There are interesting problems to be solved in a variety of industries, and knowing both l33t and business speak puts you in a much better position for dealing with a variety of different people.
Oh man does this ring some bells for me.

I started bugmenot.com years ago to help people. And then I started retailmenot.com with much the same end in mind.

Because people dug bugmenot I got the critical mass I needed for retailmenot to work. Then it turns out you can make money off online shopping stuff.

Fast forward to now, we've got 5 staff still building cool stuff (that helps people), having fun and making money.

And curiously enough the business is called StatelessSystems.com

:)
Really? I'm not so sure.

Yes, some companies are running about doing things that are obviously good (feeding the hungry, clothing the poor), but for everyone else, I think 'good customer service' is the rarest and best compliment, because it implies a positive relationship.
Slapp: A simple chat wall Merb tutorial.
I didn't say anything about intelligence. I just said better engineers. Being a great engineer requires many qualities, of which intelligence is only one.

MSFT wants great engineers, and most of the people there probably aren't. Surely some are, but for a very long time now the kinds of people who make great engineers have shifted en masse either to going their own way (startups) or to working at Google, Facebook, or a number of other places.
The last thing I ever thought to see in a PG essay was a P. O'Brian reference! That was a nice surprise.
I agree 100%. We recently validated that there is a need for our product and it is an amazing thing. So much so, that one of our best clients wants to start promoting us to collect a commision on every new signup once we launch.

Its amazing that if you put yourself in the right place, or talk to the right people about your valuable product, then its like the virus from "28 days later", it spreads quick.

Chris
Co-Founder, Property Stampede LLC
gigablast.com ftw.
Wow. Next best thing to being there.
Same way as drugs and alcohol are evil. They create addictions and harm the users. Sure, everything can be used in moderation, but are moderate users of these things the exception or the rule?
It's kind of sad, really. Ballmer knows that something is happening, and that it's bad news for Microsoft, but has absolutely no idea what to do about it. Of course, they'll be around for a long time, much like IBM, and be profitable for many eons to come, but they aren't a source of innovation or inspiration anymore.
Mollom: Service for Helping Stop Comment Spam and Trolls
Google Website Optimizer
Hit me on my beeper, human.
I've been thinking about whether or not to buy some SBUX, and this might get me to do so. Any company can make mistakes; but those that treat their employees well and listens to their customers will succeed in the long run.
I think that was in the context of 500 per server... leaving out the number of servers. Or converted from Danish krones.... $20,0000 is like 95,0000....
Any one compulsive enough to attempt to correct other peoples perseptions of Python should be compulsive enough to actually check his page for HTML 4.01 compatibility. 'Cause its not. Otherwise an interesting article. Too many pieces of waffle for my taste though...

--hsm
Excellent advice! I second the recommendation for a Moleskine; they are very well-built, have a pocket in the back, and because they're a little more expensive, you tend to pay attention to them more -- and not leave them on the counter at Starbucks.

Also, when you identify a problem, spend a few moments thinking about why that problem exists, and jot down your ideas. Finding the obstacles is the key to figuring out how to scratch that itch.
Many successful businesses are based on comments by people solving problems for their friends and families; the man who came up with the Band-Aid did so because his wife was unusually accident-prone. Listening to the problems of the people around you, and helping them solve those problems, is not a bad way to go about things.
Thanks!

We started around end of October last year.
Is the Enterprise world Rails ready?
you should never dismiss somebody based on a single fact such as they have an MBA. doing so only restricts your options which isn't something a founder can really afford to do.
One issue, though, is that "good" seems to have a different definition for many of the really successful startups, i.e. being "robin hood." But, I am still not comfortable calling piracy a form of beneficial stealing. I do think such a thing exists in the realm of necessities for life, but free proprietary media is not a necessity. Such a business model is actually parasitic since a lot of capital is necessary to create high quality media. If you undermine the capital, you undermine the art.

So, the question in my mind is whether most of the do gooders are providing their own efforts for free or the efforts of others. Making money by giving away someone else's hard work and calling it good because it is free is distasteful.

But, I don't want to be too cynical. I do definitely agree that the fundamental purpose of business is to do good, i.e. create true wealth. Optimistically, if such an ideology can be spread effectively we could eliminate money, since computer technology gives us much more efficient ways to quantify transactions. This in turn would increase wealth significantly, since money is a big overhead.
> but think about the labor problems that would result in such a market

...you'd attract the best people. Give me a break about unrest -- that's great, because it will pressure other employers to improve at the same time!

> The people wouldn't take the jobs if they didn't derive a greater

> economic benefit from such a job than other alternatives they have.

That's only thinking short-term.

It's what a lot of people would like to believe, but they are making an assumption that misses out on something -- these aren't the safe, Western-style jobs you're accustomed to thinking about.

The economic benefit is frequently a net negative. What happens when you get injured in a place with lax safety regulations and no good or affordable hospitals? Or a job that involves lead dust inhalation? Asbestos? Pesticide exposure leading to birth defects? The list goes on and on. Sweatshops chew up human beings and spit them out.

The wage only seems better if you don't consider the true cost.

Additionally, importing these outside industries can be just as disruptive as handouts, because it unbalances the playing field so homegrown efforts at business can't even get off the ground. Or even worse if they get too many people accustomed to abusive treatment. Not to mention the lethal union-busting, environmental degradation, and bribing the local authorities to get rid of any native competition.

New Guinea tribesmen spend something like 4 hours a day providing for their needs. Would it be better to clearcut their forests for paper so they could have factory jobs, and pour out the toxic waste into their rivers?
Data: A Startup's Secret Money-Making Asset
Ideas for a non-web software startup?
I'm pretty depressed about the current Silicon Valley startup scene. First, it seems that everyone is chasing after the finite pool of ad money, i.e. the game is (at least somewhat) zero-sum. Plus, although AdBlock is right now limited to the tech circles, it will eventually spread to everybody. Second, none of the startups have interesting tech. For example, reddit or digg are just marketing + some pretty interface. There only place where powerful algorithms are employed seems to be at Google. What market should someone who is interested in working with algorithms enter? Is there a bright future in bio-informatics? I want to write software that will actually make a difference, not be the next twitter or facebook clone. Those are fun to play with, sure, but I highly doubt that it changed anyone's life the way Google did or genetic testing will.
Six Apart Launches Ad Network, Moves Into Services
I didn't say it was hard.

It's also very easy to differentiate between a crawler and a user. But they don't even have to do that. Blocking the entire AWS ip range isn't hard either. I doubt any craigslist users browse the site through AWS :)
> The markets seem to have figured out how to value potential dividends.

Over the last eight years a dividend focused investor kicked the ass of an appreciation focused investor. Those who picked dividend paying stocks in non USD denominations are even farther ahead.
Depends on why users think it's intolerable, I suppose. The most common complaints I hear about Vista, even from casual users, are about performance, and I'm not sure what you could do about that.
The airline industry is a capital intensive industry with a history of unprofitability and price competition that predates the internet.

As the joke goes, to become a millionaire is simple. Start as a billionaire and buy an airline.
Actually, thanks to all of you for posting the speakers' videos. DHH alone was well worth it.
I'd like to see some empirical evidence that moderate users are the exception, not the rule. Man smokes weed once a month in his home is not nearly so great a headline as "crack addict leaves baby at grocery store."
So you don't think men have a significant problem with pornography addiction, and/or viewing porn has bad effects on relationships between men and women?

Despite it being a conservative claim, and consequently people don't like it, the breakdown of the family is a very big problem.
37signals. Damn bastards have built a cult around doing everything their way (i.e just like every other company).

They're consistently on message, are great at promoting themselves and undersand exactly who their customers are. Brilliant.
Another route is to find a place where the cost of living is much lower for a comparable standard of living. According to my research, some more underdeveloped countries seem to be such the place:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=122341

Of course you might say the cost of living won't always stay so low, but if it goes up, then that means the underdeveloped countries are becoming more productive, and the world economy is becoming better. If your interest comes from investments in the world economy, then that means you should be earning more from your investments.
How about the fact that they sell coffee for $5?

Only marketing achieves that.
It really depends on your definition of self interest too.

Benevolent people either think their benevolence benefits them materially, or gain satisfaction from altruism. Both are forms of self interest.
American Student Assistance began as a traditional student loan guarantor that made more money when people defaulted--such is the payout structure in the student loan industry. They got paid for defaults, and paid for harassing people who defaulted.

Then they put together a program with the US government that made them money when they prevented people from defaulting, thus reversing the incentive. They built out reminder programs, tested, iterated and improved their default rate to one of the lowest in the industry.

Of course, the bush administration is ending the "Voluntary Flexible Agreement" program which made this possible.
We are working on a feature that will let you whitelist a set of people who are able to add comments. The author can also choose to disable commenting completely.
Sweet jesus, could one of you brilliant hackers please make this work in Windows. I'm using FlickrSync now, and it's nowhere near that cool.
You don't think mathematics is unified, i.e. something true in one area may not be true in another? I don't think a lot of mathematicians believe this, and it isn't clear to me that "infinity" refers to two different things in the two different realms (the other possibility).
So what are you interested in? Making money or changing people's lives? I kind of don't understand what you are depressed about. You say everyone is trying to be a twitter or facebook clone and/or chasing after ad money. Isn't that a GOOD thing for you since you are trying to do something in bio-informatics?
Forget about Silicon Valley and startups. Think of something that needs to exist. Then build it.

The first step is the only hard one.
Yeah, that's true. I meant more leaks in general.