skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
As the maintainer of a reasonably popular library, I actually get irritated by a lot of 'thanks', because they are in the form of this sentence:

'Hi, can you implement <Feature that takes a month of work>? Thanks!'

Usually from people who have never contributed anything.

Honestly, being thanked in any shape or form does nothing for me, Id rather have users be more considerate of our time and not abuse issues and the community for supporting their laziness.
> It is true that some of you guys can build a tool in a hackathon

I've kept some data on how much time I've spent on a somewhat popular open source project (+/-1000 stars on github, if that means anything).

Time to implement to scratch my own itch: +/- 24 hours

Time to write documentation, package, etc: +/- 70 hours

Time to handle bug and feature requests, support: +560 hours

So that's an overhead of around 2500%. If I was paid to do that, it would have cost around €130,000.- (and would have netted me around €5, because dutch taxes ;-) )

The emails and other forms of thank-you's from users make it more than worth it. Plus, I get to give back to the community.
“Meat stunts your growth” closes the conversation down if you’re 195cm (6’5”).
It is weird how people, particularly in the UK, particularly if 60+ years old fixate on it.
BTW this is actually to promote this: http://www.thankyouopensource.com/

Putting the link here might make it more obvious.
Anytime I find a very useful tool[1] or get help from a maintainer or author I always offer them a lifetime, free rsync.net account. A fair number of them have taken me up on it.

[1] Some examples of useful tools include: TextBar for OSX, git-annex assistant ... someone wrote a great encfs tutorial ... etc.
Doesn't i2p do that?

EDIT: Sorry, meant freenet.
They routinely do this. On occasion it's a civilian on the receiving end of this ridiculously expensive exercise.
OTOH, they have worse health prospects than most software engineers and they mostly have contractual requirements to live within x miles of the depot they're based out of.
9 React Libraries You Should Know in 2018
No they compete for unicorns. Normal developers who were privileged enough to be born in silicon valley and go to mit/Stanford/Caltech and aren't willing to work 16 out 24 hours of the day might as well not apply because you just get told to fuck off in every application
In particular, the prospect of access to the UK market on China/US/Japan's terms is cause for much enthusiasm.
Unlimited access meaning I can access the website as often as I want without having to pay more money.
"Our company doesn't discriminate against colored people, we are just very picky about or employees and white people happens to satisfy our requirements"
Personally I would say a tube driver is just as entitled to a decent life as an average software developer but I realize this may be the wrong audience for that argument.
I think so too. The disrespectful tone ("some guy") is very apparent in the article too.
PostgreSQL does have built-in support for a genetic algorithm based query optimizer. I haven't tried it yet, so can't comment on how well it works. Docs are here: https://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.6/static/geqo.html.
Roadmap Software Tools:  the Best Way to Streamline Project Management
> Why do you think half of software projects fail to deliver?

A number of reasons:

1. Bikeshedding over the tech stack

2. A glut of CS grads who see a bunch of nails to hit with their textbook and data structures and algorithms knowledge failing to engage in a proper engineering process

3. Poorly defined requirements (blame aplenty to go around here: product development giving insufficient thought to the product details, sales over promising, and "engineers" failing to contribute by treating partnering with these folks as an onerous chore rather than a necessary task)

4. Insufficient resources

And many more, I'm sure.

Developers aren't blameless, here. In fact over the last couple of years I've come to see them as being at least as much to blame as non-technical people, perhaps even more so.
You are absolutely not privileged at all - either you, your family or your nation worked hard for that.
New Toronto Start Up Is Dominating the Custom Packaging Industry
Treemarc just launched a new app called "Boxpool" where you can order as few as 50 custom printed boxes online. This new company working out of the OCAD U incubator is changing the packaging game. The box manufacturing industry is known for being blinded by traditional salesmen processes, and hideous websites. Check them out! https://www.treemarc.com/
How two decisions in Washington could turn AT&T into a uniquely powerful company
I too am planning my departure from the tech industry. I've been at several major startups in the bay area and I've worked for large tech companies.

I'm one of those people who are completely self-taught and passionate about technology, and I'm good at what I do. For me its a creative outlet. However, the dark side to this is that I'm frequently taken advantage of. And like the author in the article, I often work alongside people who couldn't care less or be bothered with this stuff. To them, its just a job, and they are masters at putting in the least amount of effort. They'll look at you with some kind of wonderment and incredulity and question why you even care at all.

Working in big tech (and some startups) were the worst. You had very little creativity, and there are plenty of other engineers devoid of any ounce of talent that will be quick to identity you as different than them and summarily drown you in dozens of pointless code review comments to stall your work and demotivate you. You'll often be forced to work with antique tools, ancient code bases and languages you hate and that have no future. Throw in a territorial devops person and a manager who treats you like a basic I/O device for shits and giggles.

If you have a vision for anything you want to build, or have an idea, better forget it. You better not collide with your product manager or the loads of management above you that don't actually contribute in any meaningful way to the actual product. They'll isolate you from customers and if you do come up with something original they will work to make sure you don't get any recognition for your accomplishments.

Sometimes it won't even matter if you're an early employee at a startup that is successful. The investors will just bring in all their own management and put you in jail anyway. If you're lucky once you quit or get fired you might be able to only get away with paying $15k or $20k to exercise your worthless, unsaleable options. This entire industry is a pathetic joke. I'm passionate about it still but I only like working on my own projects and ideas.

Eventually, you just give up. Its better to work in another industry, I'm trying to get into the art/design industry myself.
"The only pressure you get is the one you accept". Just learn to say no. I think that's the most important thing women and shy people need to learn. No.

"You should work late to show your commitment". "No".

"We over-promised so it is crunch time". "No".

"Here is a company phone so we can contact you easily in case of emergency". "No".

And sleeping enough every day is one of the most important things you can do. And finding a job in a good company even if you earn a little less.
You can only expect to be taken seriously for requests like that if you have been diagnosed with a medical condition. By then, you've already experienced significant pain, so the damage has been done.

Ergonomics for developers is difficult. Damage sets in so slowly that you don't really notice it until it's too late.
I couldn't agree more.

I've read that the people most satisfied in life are craftsmen who dedicate themselves to mastering a craft. There is not much craft in managing deadlines and customer commitments and such. It is necessary work but it is not creative.

On the other hand, crafting code is a creative activity. Even for the simplest projects you can appreciate the structure, and learn about the varying tradeoffs in complexity that are made by any particular design pattern. This type of thing is a very rich craft, and very satisfying to master.

The good news for us is that mastering this craft translates into satisfied deadlines and confidence in ability to deliver on customer commitments. We can be master craftsmen and be nearly guaranteed success in the knowledge economy, which is not a luxury of other crafts like art and writing.
> can be changed by 'f' because mentioning the 'x' object name in a function call may implicitly converts to the address of the object

(1) They are two different types and (2) it's clear to you at the calling site!
The author here, it's great to finally make it to the front page, thanks! :D
Initial inspiration for writing this post was twitter discussion: https://twitter.com/krzKaczor/status/933705625883889664
Nobody's forcing you to work for a union shop. Find a place that isn't unionized if you don't want to be part of a union.
New Toronto Start Up Is Dominating the Custom Packaging Industry
Show HN: Nebula – Alarm clock where you grow stars while you sleep
This looks great! I have two questions:
1) Can you resize the notecards for easier management
2) Can you export to .docx for publication submission?
That's true, good point.
Not sure if I’m considered an “old programmer”, but a few things I’ve learned:

* don’t use work email on your smartphone unless it’s required

* don’t take your work laptop home unless it’s required

* have something else going on in your weekdays. For me it’s the gym/yoga, for my (programmer) wife it’s taking ceramics classes
Why? Qt/swing/gtk apps tend to look like shit and are horrible to try and code
There are no standards and protocols in place for this, and there's no browser that enforces this.

If you think that taking something that's 80% there and filling in the last 20% for yourself counts as something that's "already" possible, then nothing is new and everything is already possible.

> Hashes of leaf resources would be embedded in parent resources up to the root document that you could announce out-of-band (e.g. https://example.com on 23rd of November 2017 has hash 1234566...)

This is really janky and not at all what I'm talking about. What I'm talking about is as simple as what happens now, e.g., "GitLab/Mastodon/Whatever XX.x Released".
Actually, in all projects I've been involved in I've gotten more than enough thank you emails. Not to mention hooks for consulting gigs (which I dislike and _rarely_ do), conference invites and job offers.

Open source has been _tremendously_ cost-effective for me. I do it for fun and because I genuinely like building open tools people like using.

This is me https://github.com/benjamingr https://stackoverflow.com/users/1348195/benjamin-gruenbaum - I have done some work but there are _a lot_ of people who have made bigger contributions than me.

Wondering if other people feel the same way or not. I _do_ give around ~30$ a month on patreon to projects I like just as a nice "thank you for maintaining this".
I am familiar with git-new-workdir. However, git-new-workdir wasn't safe and could lose you data.
That's interesting, I'd not seen this comment before.

So the good thing about System76 is that they can gather up the Linux users buying their products, and use the volume of those combined sales to give Linux users a voice with upstream manufacturers like Sager and Clevo.
I would think if they have data caps then they will have to determine how much data their own content consumes and count it against the data cap. Otherwise this is abusing their network monopoly to support and provide an unfair advantage to their content business.
Ha, the trouble is that pitchforks are more fun than facts.
That'a big deal. EE = most likely no property tax, which makes a vast difference in financial planning compared to the west. Basically if you're lucky to have a house or apt. you're set for good.
"Imma be a rapper" of programming.
>your family or your nation worked hard for that

That is the definition of being privileged.
Detroit is a hotbed of self driving technology right now. The biggest automakers in the world have not been sitting on their hands.

As a guide to midwesteners, it might help to think of them as any other consumer who is driven by economics and convenience when it comes to car purchases.

How do you convince the valley to use self driving tech? Maybe start with putting beds in the back seats since they can't afford exorbitant housing prices.
I interpreted the title as 'We have the policy not to thank maintainers of open source tools. Here is why.' glad it was quite the opposite.
Ways I deal with this as an open source maintainer of various projects:

1. Severely restrict the scope of the project (i.e. do one thing and do it well)
2. Don't feel guilty about saying "no"
3. Realize that people have no malicious intent or are lazy when they request <feature X that takes two months>. It's just like a normal customer in a business: they often have no idea of the cost and difficulties in implementing things. That's okay, it's my duty to inform them of that.
4. Refuse pull requests for features that I don't feel like maintaining. I always try to keep people from wasting their time and ask them to confer before implementing a feature.

I don't feel animosity towards people who (even rudely) request such things. But they can expect a short reply in the form of "I'm sorry, that feature is outside the scope of the project / is going to take too much of my time."
Really good advice. I think the perception is that if we say no we’ll be screamed at and fired. In reality your manager is more likely to become more flustered than you.
Thank you for sharing this. While it's good to be appreciative of our relative privilege in this market compared to other labor markets, it's nice to hear people admit that being a software engineer does nothing for your social or emotional growth. Sitting in front of screen day after day with little social interaction or meaningful collaboration takes a toll on you, no matter how much you're getting paid.

My exit plan is to become a landlord. I love fixing houses and there's something very satisfying about being able to physically experience the product of your work (unlike software, which is mostly abstract). I will probably need to work for another 5 years in order to build up enough rental income in order to justify quitting this industry, but it will be worth it. I would be absolutely miserable if I had to write software for the rest of my life.
Hi HN, I just wanted to add that I'm looking for any kind of feedback on the app. I've been working on it since graduating in may and released it a couple of days ago.
I think maintainers would definitely love more some monetary support rather than just a thank you, specially those doing it in their free time (since some maintainers of big open source projects are well established paid employees).
>
How about we change the laws so that people who support the union are free to join, and people who DON'T are free to leave?

>If unions are so great, then they should stand on their own 2 feet, instead of forcing everyone to join them.

If you can convince enough people, you can? But if people organize against you, be a good loser. Nobody except the very hardcore is saying:

>If private property is so great, then everyone who wants to have it should stand on their own 2 feet, instead of forcing everyone to accomodate them

to argue against private property or capitalism. But the same social contract that allows for private property can decide that if you want to have its benefits (e.g. the aforementioned private property) can recognize and protect the hard won rights of unions and workers. Stealing a bit of rhetoric, those who don't like it can go to some warlord ridden backwater, I hear there you are free to not follow any social contract if you are up to it
Cloudflare Might Be Exploring a Way to Slow Down Ajit Pai's Home Internet Speed
That seems like a really weird argument to me. First, you’re advocating for tax evasion rather than a particular type of currency, which isn’t a particularly good strategy for avoiding punishment. Second, it’s a really strong argument for cash and against cryptocurrencies — if you’re worried about someone mining your financial history, the last thing you want is to provide a permanent public ledger which cannot be removed (and before someone mentions tumblers, ask whether Daesh would be more likely to say “oh, guess you don’t owe anything” or “you MUST be hiding something, traitor!”).

Looking at the big picture, this is even worse: the way you don’t have Daesh is by having a strong society which has the resources to fight them off. A society with rampant corruption and black market activity is exactly how you create the conditions for them to thrive!
I don't have an answer for this particular thing, but will remind you that any bureaucracy tends to expand. So, what's the (state's bureaucracy) rationale to put itself at a place of control? Do they even need one?
Programming can be incredibly tedious. I often wonder why men want to do it. Why is it controversial that women find doing other things more compelling and interesting? Look at the subjects given a choice, chose at University. Isn't it a win for society when people get to do what they're interested i and passionate in. Instead of being shoehorned into some position that they hate.
Cross-platform GUI development in general is a dumb idea. The user chose a specific platform and expect applications to follow that platforms UX guidelines. Building a cross-platform app is basically saying you don't give a fuck about your customers. It's an insult to your users.
And no matter what kind of equality we strive for women are attracted to that success.
Alibaba’s rise creates 10 billionaires not named Jack Ma
> But if having 6 or 12 months worth of savings is a requirement, then you can rule out just about everyone except rich kids and upper middle class teenagers.

Disagree, but I suppose it's highly dependant on location and salary.

The last time I worked for a game company, I made $95k/yr, which equated to $5002/mo after taxes and deductions. This is in Toronto, Canada.

An expensive 1-bedroom luxury apartment steps from the subway was $2100/mo. My share of daycare cost for the kids was another $900 or so. Heating/electricity $100. Totally unoptimized mobile phone and fiber internet, another $220. Car insurance and home insurance, another $300. Gasoline $100. So, $1280 left over for food and random stuff. Let's say I bothered with any kind of cost-control: I could probably save $900 / mo. That's 2 mos salary in savings every year. After 10 years, that's 20 months in savings, without compounding or other windfalls. In fact, I'm now in a 2BR apartment that's $400 cheaper /mo.

EDIT> Forgot Long-term disability insurance, Life insurance, and medications. Call that another $500, but about $300 of that is meds. If you're young and healthy, or have full health insurance, hopefully you're paying less for medication.
> cushy life

Nice upholstery pun :D
Thanks for feedback! What do you think of pay-as-you-go model in this case?
Not in a negative sense he implied.
> Your site wants me to open an account before it is willing to show me something that would commit me.

I agree that an example video or two would be useful long term and I have been planning to add those eventually, but they aren't there yet.

> Also, to be perfectly homest, I would never open an account to see some videos.

Once the course is 100% complete I intend to post most of the videos to YouTube, but that will be gradual and I'll probably always have some sort of "bonus" for signing up. I'm not certain viewing videos on YouTube would result in you being tracked less, but at least it would give you options.

> Why, if I may ask, are you even asking me to open an account? Is this about you teaching me Go or is it about you trying to monetize me?

Being completely upfront here - both.

First, the course is in beta and I use email addresses to tell users about new exercises, request feedback, and try to improve the course.

Second, I want to teach to as many people as possible, but I also need to make a living. So far the best way I have found to do this is to occasionally collect email addresses and tell them about paid work that I think they might enjoy. I don't spam, I don't email often, and if you unsubscribe you will never hear from me again.

If that bothers you, you can just skip this particular course. I won't be offended and I get that not everyone is willing to provide an email address. I also provide free content that doesn't require an email address to access - both my blog and youtube channel are like this.

> What are you logging about me?

I don't track course progress right now - though oddly this is a requested feature by many others. I don't even have Google Analytics on the page.

That doesn't mean I won't ever add some tracking, especially if users are asking for a progress tracker, but for now I don't.

The videos are hosted through Vimeo though, and they appear to have a tracking pixel in their embed.

> Why not make account creation optional?

There are many reasons for this, most outlined above.
please make sure I hear about such article at mezood @ gmail :)
That is absolutely incorrect. First off he never said anything about natural aptitude. That is patently false. You didn’t read the article or you read it poorly.

He said change the nature of programming jobs. Make it more social, more collaborative (ie pair programming), better work life balance, etc. Having people sitting in a chair for 8-10 hours a day 7 days a week with high stress and terrible work life balance is the type of job that many women will naturally not be attracted to. It’s exactly what OP was complaining about.

Take the types of jobs that naturally appeal to many women and change the nature of programming jobs to fit those attributes and how you can achieve 50/50 balance.
I’ve been trying to work out the relevance of you driving a Porsche and the weird phasing (you called your car?).
Ironic confusion given the discussion on regional lanagaue variations.
My mother was a computer programmer. One of the first. She graduated college with a degree in Math in the 50s, and was hired specifically to staff up her company's computer division. I've still got a photo of her climbing a step-stool, and moving jumpers around on a room sized computer.

My first encounter with a computer was at her workplace in the 70s, when I was on a school holiday not observed by her work, and she had no babysitter. By that time, she was programming in FORTRAN and no longer moving jumpers. I remember that she sat me down in front of an old teletype terminal in the computer room and I got to play "Colossal Cave Adventure" all day. I was totally hooked, and I think she had to drag me away.. I still cringe at how much paper my day of exploring the cave must have wasted. After years of begging and pleading, we got our first home computer a few years later (Apple II clone, the Franklin Ace 1000), and I've been programming ever since.

Most people in my town were not exposed to computers outside of limited encounters at school. I think that day in my Mom's office was what got me hooked on computers, and what started me on my career path.
> 'Hi, can you implement <Feature that takes a month of work>? Thanks!'

Answer with an estimate based on your hourly rate.
I don't see how the 2c saving per chip, multiplied by any reasonable number of chips a person can swap in and out could pay for the work (in the so-called developed world, at that)? There are other good reasons to be doing that, like nearly instant turnaround time if a change in the firmware occurs in early production runs.
You sound way more offended than the person you replied to. All I see up there is a harmless, well-intentioned critique with a perfectly civil tone. Meanwhile, you sound angry.
Which is the point of stats, right? To know when it's better to use an index vs just read the whole table because you need 50%+ of it anyway.