skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
This may be an "unpopular" view, but if you need a simple, no nonsense, well supported language, tailored for web use with no big gotchas and you are not facing any particularly exquisite engineering problems.... PHP is often a no brainer.

(it's kinda the Perl of web development)
Very poor piece. I didn't get anything more from the article than the headline already has.
Node.js ftw
This was the approach my current employer chose. They basically were like "Here's the challenges we expect you to tackle once you start. Let's discuss how you would approach each."

Essentially a high-level design session where they got to see my thought process and I got to ask lots of questions about the firm. The best part is that when I started they were pretty comfortable with my approach to certain projects as it was previously covered, and I knew what I was getting into. No big surprises for either side.
Another reason it's not Mike and Molly is because that show's already been picked up for the full season.
Brad Feld,Foundry Group,on Solving Venture Bias
I can just parse that as being sensible. Classical interferometers were first developed in the late 1800s, and if you put a laser in one then it will hit a beamsplitter.

(Similar: "In a steam locomotive, first developed in the early 1800s, a robot arm shovels coal into a furnace")

Not the best writing, though.
Yes I definitely will! It will at least make up for the other objectives that I have failed at miserably!
Use VB.NET at work, (consequently) playing with Clojure at home.
Utility vs cost not there. You still need to scan it one line at a time, not like a visual screen where you can see it all at once and focus on what you think will be relevant.
but you've been on for at least 6 months - I said either, not both :)
That to me sounds like a fairly generic reasoning for having tests. Moreover, your blog post reads more or less as "you must have tests", nothing about being "test-driven". I wonder if there were any TDD-specific advantages, and if they really outweigh boredom/inconvenience of having 1.6:1 test-to-code ratio.
what if we could recycle these into next gen solar panels? i.e. break them down to however possible, and remelt the plastic into new more modern cells 10 years from now? (I have NO idea if this is chemically/physically doable, just speculating)
I think as startups grow, they tend to end up with something of a frankenstein-ish mix of languages as they write bits that are well suited to each language. For us I ended up checking C++, Java, Javascript, Perl and Ruby, though we have little bits also in Python, Scala and PHP as well.

As a sidenote, we track which programming languages our webservices customers are using and I made a graph of such here:

http://blog.directededge.com/2010/05/30/what-programming-lan...
My feeling is that Behavior-Driven Development (which, as described below, is just TDD "done right") is what pushes this competitive advantage aspect. If you write down your user stories, and nothing is in those stories that says "Oh, that's cool!", you need to re-evaluate what you're doing. If the core requirements of your product doesn't do anything interesting, it's unlikely you have any competitive advantage.

I've been thinking a lot about TDD and BDD and [insert letter here]DD recently as part of ongoing research. One thing that got lost when unit testing was proposed is that it's your requirements that stick with you through levels of abstraction... the specification (ie. what you implement in code and unit test) is a by-product of having to talk to a computer to express a model that meets those requirements.

Unit testing, by itself, just validates that the model does what it says it does, but does nothing to assert whether the model actually does what it was supposed to do to meet the customer's requirements. That's what BDD ensures.
Ask HN: Our MVP that all started with the 'Domain Exchange' post. Feedback?
i would like to know how you searched for and chose the property. did you spend a lot of time searching for the right neighborhood? was the property in the city where you lived, or did you seek out a city with the economic circumstances to make your investment work? is this something that you will be able to replicate over and over again or was it a sweetheart, once-in-a-lifetime deal?
How Michael Arrington Told His Employees He Was Selling Techcrunch
I'm a few years older than Jason, learning Python, and just had my first child 2 weeks ago.

Calacanis is right about this much: having a kid is not overrated. It's amazing. However, I would echo another commenter here and suggest that what I've observed is that I waste less time than I did before the baby. Over the past few weeks I've been more focused and "in the moment" when I am working, because I know once my allotted work time is over, it's baby and Mommy time and rightly so. I've also, in general, been suffering fools less gladly. My time is worth more now.

The one thing I would disagree with Jason about is waiting until a specific time (he says 30-something). I think it's a mistake to reduce it all to a matter of age; it really does depend on the personalities and circumstances of the parents. Some people are not going to have the energy at age 40 that they had when they were 20, especially if you didn't take care of your physical and mental health when you were young. He's right to add that they use up a lot of your energy. Another reason to consider starting a family early. I'll be 60 when my son turns 18 and presumably starts college. Not everyone wants to do that, or can!
Hi there HN,

This may be a very liberal use of the term "MVP", but its never too early to solicit feedback from your (potential) target market. Israel (rasiel) and I met about a week ago thanks to the popular Domain Exchange post[1][2]. Right now we're feeling things out to get a gut check of how well we work together. After that, the plan is to hunker down and get something out the door--pronto. The more we learn from you all here, the clearer our product roadmap can become.

Tutorial Shop allows site owners to create guided tutorials that answer all their users' questions. Joe User can't figure out how to delete his pictures? With one click of a button and zero support from you, we get him back on track. Our tutorial steps in to actually point and click his mouse, leading him through the solution step-by-step.

We'd love to know what you think about our hypotheses on the problems we're addressing and the solution we've designed.

Problems:

1) Intuitive UI is hard to build

2) Users get frustrated when they get stuck (which leads to user churn)

3) Customer support takes time away from other productive tasks

Our solution:

1) Functional tutorials made from scripted mouse movements and actions (ensures that the user's problem is fixed)

2) These tutorials are created by our users with a point and click interface

3) Our user's tutorials are compiled and embeddable on their site for easy access (think UserVoice "Feedback" tabs)

---

[1]http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1794289

[2]http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1794474
Clojure.

I'm working on a map maker for role playing games (http://geodeist.com). The Java interop is a pleasure. I don't have to worry about portability.

No framework because I couldn't find anything suitable.
It has to be difficult, but everything in life is a choice about your division of dedication, time, and attention.

Cyril Connolly said “There is no more sombre enemy of good art than the pram in the hall.”
What Happened When I Yelled Back at the "Christians" Calling My Wife a Murderer
I'm talking to this guy on IRC right now.

"Thanks for all the responses! Unfortunately it looks like HN thinks I was replying too fast, and I am now blocked from posting new comments. I will continue to read replies though, thanks."
Applying to become the next CEO of Softbank Corp
Not saved but made them more. As head of ecommerce for a travel company I suggested small ux tweaks to their checkout process and they got a 25% conversion uplift. Worth something ridiculous like £5m per year. Needless to say I still got a poxy bonus which is why I now freelance :-)
Our website is a collection of interactive novels (aka "Choose Your Own Adventure", but that term is trademarked).

Specifically, http://www.choiceofgames.com/romance/ could use some sprucing up. There's a lot of clutter on that page, but it's hard to decide how to trim it down. Those "share" links are pretty important to our business, but they're so ugly where they are...

(Obviously we need visual design help, too, but I recognize that's not in the scope of this offer. Over time we'll certainly want to customize the visual style for individual games, like we did for http://www.choiceofgames.com/dragon/ but having a nice "out of the box" design would be fantastic.)

Thanks!

dan at choiceofgames.com
Try doing something else and letting your subconscious do some work. I try to have three or four tasks at once so that if I run into a problem, I can switch to a different task. Once I come back to the first task, something will usually click and let me continue.
Solar is a scam. Every solar technology advancement turns out to be a lie. I'm willing to bet money that this technology will never actually work or if it does will cost 100x and be 1/100 as efficent as they say it will be. (reference: nano solar, or any solar company since the 70s)
Commence the down voting.
"Nevertheless, there are many, including Feldman, who don't view Stewart and his program as above politics or partisanship. "The Daily Show's" popularity soared as a direct result of its relentless satirical broadsides against the Bush administration. While it certainly hasn't ignored Obama's foibles and missteps, the critique seems less frequent and more subdued. One telling statistic: During Bush's two terms, only one Cabinet member, Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings, appeared on the show. During President Obama's first two years, six Cabinet secretaries have been guests, plus the head of the EPA, and first lady Michelle Obama."

- Stupid statistic to point out. I'm sure many in the Bush administration were invited but chose not to come on due to the ridicule many of them would have faced. I vaguely remember Republicans sending out a memo telling their representatives not to go on the show.
None of us is an island. Taxes are the money that we pay to make our society civilised, and to provide the services necessary to allow those of talent to rise up above the crowd, instead of those that inherited wealth accreting ever more power. There are exactly zero examples of meritocracies without taxes in history, but plenty of examples of countries with taxes where someone with talent can rise to the top. I know which I prefer.

I wonder if John realises that a reduction in taxes could very well destroy the future of the next Carmack coming up through grade school in a modest neighbourhood right now.
A resource that has been of great help in staving off these feelings of helplessness (they come and go, and are always intense and overwhelming) has been Cal Newport's blog at http://calnewport.com/blog.

Some of his biggest ideas:
- passion is not something we discover but something we earn or build over a long period of time.
- Choose one thing that interests you (even if its a 'silly' interest) and has the potential to become a rare and valuable skill about which you could one day be passionate.
- Pursue that through undergrad and after, until you really have a rare and valuable skill.
- Leverage that skill to live a remarkable life.

His most recent post might be especially relevant: http://calnewport.com/blog/2010/10/16/the-passion-trap-how-t.... I have been writing about similar ideas at http://joshrule.com/blog/category/passion.

Again, you aren't alone. These feelings are common even in many people who generally know exactly what they want in life. The important thing is to learn how to deal with them and keep them to a minimum. Cal's blog provides some great steps toward doing that.
Tips for Startup Success from the CEO of Meetup
Which Wikipedia article?

There's a difference between propping up a failing bank (which I believe Friedman would be against) and providing liquidity to the banking system when a bank run occurs on a well-capitalised bank (which I believe he would support).

If you watch the Volume 3 "Anatomy of Crisis" about the depression, when a run on the Bank of the United States occurred despite it's being a sounds entity (when it was liquidated it paid back 92.5 cents on the dollar). It's failure created a domino effect according to Friedman. So he supported providing liquidity in that scenario.

I don't believe Friedman would support QE[2] when the banks are well capitalised. My interpretation of his ideas is that he supported a stable money supply, and Friedman was definitely against printing money in general.

That being said, the ideas I'm referencing were expressed in a time when inflation was a big problem.

I wish he were alive today, I would be very interested in his opinion.
Thats great you are much more focused. I have 3 under the age of 2 and I am still learning to be more focused.

How are you able to support you and your daughter? Is your startup already profitable?
Unfortunately, Slicehost is growing more and more irrelevant. I'll just have to bite the bullet and migrate the rest of my servers to linode...
I feel the article has completely missed the point. The "Rally to Restore Sanity" and Colbert's "March to Keep Fear Alive" are, at their core, satire, yes of Glen Beck's rally , but also of pretty much everything going on politically in this country right now.

John Stewart is a brilliant comedian who's core value is simple: life is too short to be so damn serious about everything. Lighten up, things are not that bad.
£5m per year! I am now almost embarassed to share my screensaver story! It is amazing how people can make massive savings or generate huge revenue through things that they themselves have done and not get rewarded for it. Companies then wonder why they lose their best talent..
'organic' doesn't mean the same in chemistry as it means in Trader Joe's
Ask HN: Signing the major deal
We're negotiating a deal with a large service provider here (South Africa), which will leave my new startup in charge of their reseller network.

It will make us instantly very profitable, but we still believe what we're offering them is worth more than what they paying. Unfortunately the way our system is designed we would only be able to sign one ISP per country.

On the up side, closing this deal will land us enough money (fully bootstrapped so far) to get the system ready for a full launch internationally, and give us a case study to show how we assisted this service provider in order to sell our service to other providers internationally.

On the down side, its probably a permanent deal. We're negotiating around a two year contract, but unfortunately our system will likely be tied into offering their services at the end of the two years. Having multiple service providers will complicate our system too much for the end users, and once they have their reseller network using us we can't really kick them off.

Anyone here have any related experience or advice?

* The two year deal is a little less than we wanted, but its the best we're going to get at this point in time. The alternative is starting our own ISP to exploit our system, which we have actually done - but running two startups is starting to get crazy.

* We would likely want to raise the percentage share we receive after the two year period, however if they refuse to sign we might even land up with less than initial contract amount -- this is if they determine we can't actually change providers.

* Would having a deal in South Africa likely affect our ability to sell at the end of the day? We'll never be able to sign a full global deal.
Let me re-iterate: as long as they are easily replaceable

In others words, design it with replacement by do-it-yourself homeowners in mind. I looked up the spec for one and it was 1250x800 mm (~4x3 ft) and weighted 12 kg (~25 lbs). That's a little awkward for one person to cart up a ladder, but what if they were half the size and had a strap handle on the side? What if they used quick disconnects for mounting? If you set out with these as design goals, then I'm sure a feasible solution could be found.
This essay has the word "work" or "working" in it six times.

It has the word "drink" or "drinking" in it seven times.

Edit: Downvote the joke if you must, but I really did admire Lorre's hustle over the years. It makes my late-night (sober) hacking seem somehow sane.
Well if you want you can also share in what programming lang you like to program - http://ilikeprogramming.com/ .

p.s. Ruby rocks
p.p.s. It's obvious that JavaScript will get most of the points. Every one use it for the front-end.
What I find more amazing is that they'd lived with a booking process that just didn't convert well for years and no one had ever questioned it. They just spent more and more cash trying to raise traffic and traffic quality. Small investment in the UX and they're in the money... (this is a big household name holiday company in the UK).
I agree. Let's replace all unthinking naysayers with thorium reactors.
The weird thing about this article is that he doesn't mention his wife at all. The only mention of wives in general comes at the end ("if you don't do this you'll have a spouse who is not happy").

It seems to me that whether you can have a baby and a startup depends almost entirely on what your wife is like. There's no reason your wife can't take care of the baby on her own with you popping in every now and then to put the bread on the table; it just depends on how supportive she is.

(Yes, this post is horrendously sexist, no I don't feel like discussing that aspect of it, so if you feel compelled to stand up for the notion that men and women are entirely alike then just move on. For the case of a female entrepreneur I'd say no, you probably shouldn't have a baby and a startup at the same time.)
Do you consider this question to be unanswerable?

Yes. Given a little time I could come up with 20 or more so ways of doing this. As to which one I would use that's not really answerable in an interview. The problem with questions like this is two weeks is a fairly long period of time. If it's literally all your working on then researching a few options and then asking some more questions is the best place to start. aka Is the access pattern random or would caching be useful? Is the data private? etc.
hey mike,

i'm also a solo founder in hoboken (sorry i creeped your resume). nice post. hit me up if you ever want to do a knowledge share or something.
Is that specific to TDD or just having a comprehensive suite of tests?
Is gently open source or could it be?
Career vs Personal Success: Why Do We Only Measure One?
Apparently this interconnect is so good it's not available outside China. I wonder if any technical information will be available.
IANAL, but I'd be worried that you would then be responsible (i.e. sue-able) if the actual responsible party did not take down the infringing content after you forwarded the notification.
Reminder why bundling Flash in Chrome might not be a good idea
The first thing I thought was "great, something else I have to create a new username and password for". Supporting OpenID, OAuth, or some other kind of federated login would be a major improvemnt, IMHO.
lol yeah, no i wasnt, but i'm happy to share how i get work and how to deal with getting paid etc.
Heartfelt though, and with the exposure Groklaw articles have, it's certain (?) to reach someone in Oracle.

I sincerely doubt that it'll make a difference, but it shouldn't be because no one told them differently.
PHP people seem to have an inferiority complex, always defending and rationalizing. Here's a secret for you guys, all the choices suck in one way or another.
Zappos CEO: Here's Why I Quit My Corporate Job At Oracle With No Real Plan
Why do the contents of this list (and the conspicuous languages that are not there) give me such a downer?
I'd agree entirely on that sentiment. Just in the last month alone I can feel a lot changing in my mind regarding the whole thing.

I have a feeling that as it becomes more all-consuming that roller-coaster is going to come to bear in a stronger way. Once your ego becomes tied to the success of your venture, small fluctuations can have powerful mental impacts.
Historians learn most about ancient societies by digging through their trash. We have left more trash that takes ages to degrade than all prior societies put together.

Only if they get serious about recycling, history will be at stake.
Most people don't especially like going up on their own rooves to install things. Some folks don't mind, but it's still a big disadvantage.
I've saved a number of people quite a bit of server costs with memcached.
> "To Hogan, the jitteriness suggested that the experiment had stumbled upon the lower limit of the spacetime pixels’ resolution."

Couldn't they just enhance that?
I second that. But it's about the time you have for your whole family including your wife.
Yes, http://github.com/felixge/node-gently .

However, it's still rather minimal and I'll add more stuff to it now that I actually know what I need to do with it frequently.
I think that "Quit the hit show you created and get right to work creating another hit sitcom for another wack-job diva because you are just plain stupid." was Cybill, which seems to match descriptions of it's star. Also, it matches "Get fired from your second hit show because the co-star wins a fucking Emmy... and you're stupid." (Christine Baranski)

I think "FINALLY learn from your mistakes and create a hit show with wonderful, loving people. Late in the second season during a rehearsal suddenly realize they are not going to hurt you." was Dharma and Greg, after which he started on "Two and a Half Men"

I'm kind of amazed at the ability of the human mind to store all that information about those shows over the years, and kind of ashamed that my mind seemed to have most of the information on hand.
Frinstance all plastics are organics, but they'll last a helluva long time in landfill.
I'd assume that this is because a mouse at rest is one that's probably unattended...
I hope its open next summer :)
Decision-making and some service changes
Someone needs to do something with Dirk Gently. I much prefer it to Hitchhiker's - it's a far more mature and cohesive work.
This is not entirely true.
There will be only 1 popup asking the user's permission to "run" java code through the browser. After that, the applet can download anything on the box it needs and execute it.

The applet has full access to the local filesystem with the same priviliges the original user has. If needed the hackers can further exploit the machine, by escalating user priviliges with some corrupt scripting..

One click is enough to seriously damage your machine, be careful;) This is what the popup looks like in Firefox
http://www.ussu.ca/studentgroups/JavaApplet.jpg
Ah yes! A foldable display with nanotech that could make tactile maps and such with different textures. That's what I want.
Bad Translator
Would have been more informative if Javascript was separated into client-side and server-side. It's obvious that everyone uses it on the client-side.
There's 2 aspects to it. First, the coverage which gives you the safety net. Second, specifying behaviour before implementation which allows you to maintain tight alignment between your requirements and code as they evolve. According to the BDD guys it's the second aspect that is more important.
If you find an acceptably-licensed template, why not? To save yourself time in terms of learning what it does, pick a simple one. A simple way to check: check its source code and see how much you quickly understand it.

Also, why not outsource this bit of the project?