skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Software Engineering tends to be taught as, like, Practical Professional Software Development Tips.

And as a result software people seem to have no real concept of what “Engineering” as practiced in all the traditional engineering disciplines is.

Neither do I probably, but from the outside it seems to be something like “Learning how to work in such a way that the risk of known bad outcomes is mitigated.”

In software, since it’s still a quite new material, changing often, people seem to throw their hands in the air and just teach some common software development practices and move on.

And yet, I see so many companies making the same mistakes, and promoting managers who seem to fixate on their pet “bad outcome” to avoid while ignoring all the others.

I can kind of imagine a proper engineering degree in software though. It would probably be a whole set of engineering-oriented courses. Maybe:

- estimation, planning, Gantt charts, scrum, Toyota production method, etc... essentially project management with an emphasis on shipping

- deterministic resource usage: manual memory management, correctness proofs, big-O, etc

- performance instrumentation, including conversion, business model, and usability measurement

- error/bug tracking and resolution, including monitoring, ship/don’t ship decisions based on error rates, deliberate tracking of technical debt

Those are off the top of my head. I guess that’s just another random list of professional coder topics to care about. But I think it should be focused on cultivating deterministic outcomes, if we’re going to call it engineering.

And really, if we’re going to call it engineering, the set of practices need to be tested scientifically to show that they work.

... which makes me want to go read academic Software Engineering publications and are if any professors out there have already done just that.
premake¹ feels like an elegant autoconf alternative to me, and can be combined with various build systems including make. The syntax is far nicer than cmake too, but frankly that bar isn’t very high.

Sadly, it isn’t used by all that many projects² which holds me back from wanting to depend on it. I have played with it in a few personal projects though, and have been impressed.

1. https://premake.github.io/
2. https://github.com/premake/premake-core/wiki/Who-Uses-Premak...
Interview with Ben, founder of IPInfo that works remotely
This reminds me on 'Make vs. X' trend some years ago, where Make would be bashed how is slow, not extensible, had weird syntax and incompatible between implementations. So we got alternatives like Aegis[1], Scons[2], A-A-P[3] or Jam[4] instead, which were much faster and flashier on paper.

But guess what, Make is still kicking, GNU Make got a bunch of new goodies (Guile scripting or loadable modules to name a few) and all those alternatives are pretty much dead now. What I see now is that we are repeating the same mistakes only with flashier tools (node, python3, rust).

Although I always preferred Jam[4], I'm pretty happy with GNU Make now. Not perfect, does the job well and if I ever hit some weird platforms, I can always 'extend' myself to Autotools[5]. Funny thing, I'm even using Make to run Ansible scripts or compile Java/Clojure code and works like a charm.

[1] http://aegis.sourceforge.net/

[2] https://scons.org/

[3] http://www.a-a-p.org/

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perforce_Jam

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Build_System
Minimum viable infrastructure
What if you keep it frozen?
In Five Minutes, Be Tactical and Victorious or Die
> It is olive oil

Some of it is, some of it isn't; as the article notes, while some of the fraud is lower-grade olive oil, some of it is non-olive seed oils with additives to help it pass for olive oil.

> The problem is when the mix-ins are from North Africa, e.g. from Morocco, which are considered of inferior quality

No, the problem is that the mixins are lower-grade oil (not extra-virgin). While, yes, this oil often comes from North Africa, the origin isn't really the problem, the grade is.
Interesting perspective. From your profile it seems you live in London and maybe born there. The social life in the states (especially cities) is vastly different than European cultures.

It would be helpful to us who are accustomed to American social life to learn about what you perceive your social life tied into your work life to be like.
People are currently being paid to answer phone calls. Clearly, people value paying for that. The salaries are paid from donations and state payments to the nonprofit company.

Is there not a similar value proposition in having someone around to keep "You should kill yourself" messages off the suicide prevention message board, along with the scams and sales pitches?

Instead of paying someone to answer the phone at 1-800-DONT-DIE, you pay the same amount to moderate suicideprevention.org/board . Don't know where you got the idea of it being ad-supported, but you are correct that it's a horrible idea.

Not everyone is going to be in front of a full-sized computer in the middle of a crisis, but they are likely to have a phone. You at least need to have a mobile-friendly web interface for your support resources.
IEEE membership is worth it, if you value being a member of professional organizations, the opportunities for networking, and having a personal library of magazines from the IEEE Societies.

Similarly, ACM membership and the Special Interest Groups.

Financially, ignoring any sentimental value, it likely isn't worth it unless you are a student or work somewhere that pays for your membership. There are occasionally conferences or seminars that you'll find worth attending that will come at a reduced (or no) cost.

If you value being an active professional, then IEEE (or ACM) have plenty of volunteer roles that span public speaking, administration, standards body, or if you are so inclined and experienced, executive level work.
That’s good info about #1, because it seems to be an O(n * m) problem where n is number of existing copyrighted works and m is the number of uploads.

I’m more concerned about the way copyright itself may need to change to work sensibly with this — according to several UK lawyers I’ve talked to, under UK law any work is copyrighted the moment it is put down in a fixed medium. For example, this comment, the moment it is recorded to any database or cache. It is not a sensible rule as-written, and common law saying “now now, don’t be silly” is the only reason things are not already out of hand. Unfortunately most of the EU isn’t common law and one of the few countries which is is the one which is about to leave. It might be fine, but I can’t tell. I only speak English, mediocre German, and tourist/subtourist French and Greek.
How to Change Name in Pubg Mobile – Trick
> First off, $125k is the entry level wage in NYC and SF.

It's the entry-level wage at top-tier tech companies, and a few second-tier who can compete with them at the junior levels (like Bloomberg). It is not what the average new grad should be expecting.
"binary" and "blob" storage makes it even more confusing IMO. How about "file storage where you can only ever read, write or completely re-write (but never only partially modify) an existing file and there are no directories but the file names allow slashes so you can fake directories, and paths are called 'keys', where all the files you upload are publicly accessible via HTTP if you enable that and otherwise are accessible via a widely supported but annoying REST-based API and signed URLs, and where only download bandwidth and monthly storage (but not upload bandwidth) is billed, and is billed based on exact usage with no minimum recurring fee". I guess that's too long though.
The first part of the article seems to suggest that Apple overestimated demand for the newest phones. It could still be "the best selling iPhone of all time", but they had expected it to sell even better than that.
What kind of bonuses does GS pay, and how much of it is really performance related vs. showing up every day on time?

(Serious question, not snark).
Why 536AD was the worst year to be alive
How do you think threads work on Linux today? Libc creates threads with clone, a variant of fork.
I hope you never get any work done on your house.

"I've given you the architects plans for my kitchen. How long do you think it will take?"

"It will take as long as it's gonna take. Please sign this blank cheque."
…bless you?
This was discussed fairly recently. There are some oddities to the calculator. For example, the entire state of Oregon and the entire state of Massachusetts are on a single pay schedule even though there are enormous CoL differences between the main urban areas and the rural areas of those states.
I personally always found Tunisian or Turkish olive oil the best, or Greek as a replacement.
As the resident TypeScript advocate at my workplace, I sympathize.
Lame attempt at “TRBA” sarcasm, my apologies.
Don't look at the expectation of a single throw. Look at the distribution of the outcome after many throws. Relate that to the product of each throw's relative return. Look at how the log expectation of the product of n random variables converges as n gets big, and you see what to optimize.
I've worked from my house for 8 years now.

It saves gas, etc.
I don't need the social aspect of work (I'm introverted).
I really, really like working remotely.

But it's not for everybody. Sub-par performers especially will drag down productivity

So it's a mixed bag, IMHO. But for me, I love it.
Yeah, I assume the low usage of GraphQL in this survey coordinates/correlates with the low usage/knowledge about Apollo in this survey. Apollo seems the most invested in ramping up strong tools for GraphQL, so of course developers aren't likely to be using GraphQL if they haven't yet heard about/explored Apollo's efforts.

For instance, apollo-link-rest would be a strong way to bootstrap into GraphQL for shops with heavy REST investments.

That said, Apollo aren't yet doing themselves favors with nearly every part of their tooling still showing a "Caution: Active Development" warning. That keeps them right on that cusp of "Should I use this in production?" worry for enterprise, and slows adoption probably more than they intend.
Building a chat application using AWS AppSync and Serverless
Imba the new JavaScript based language having Python,Ruby inspired syntax
2 examples for optimizing for LuaJIT:

https://github.com/pygy/LuLPeg
https://github.com/pygy/strung.lua
That's a treadmill desk...

I really think this comment section is just people reading the article as "Standing desks are bad" and posting any positive thing about standing desks.

The article is, "Standing desks, by themselves, (no treadmill), provide no cardiovascular benefit. In terms of cardiovascular health, sitting maybe a marker not a cause."

That is, people who sit 12 hours a day on average, typically don't exercise and have poor cardio health. Simply standing instead of sitting won't help that, you have to exercise.
Yes, if someone has a home remedy that gets great results, why switch to a substance from someone in a lab coat?
I don't understand this. If you are not receiving rent, that's a huge opportunity cost regardless of what you are paying in property taxes.
What's an earthship?
Web site blocked.
It is really good tool and free one. Better tools are either commercial or requires a lot of learning.
And I bet they use Microsoft Windows.
It is, "Too much sitting over the course of a day is not healthy — let’s be clear. And as I’ve written before, exercise is the closest thing to a wonder drug. Few things provide such a health benefit."
Turns out, you and the author agree...

> Sit-stand desks are not exactly inexpensive, but like many things in life, they’re fine if you like them. And if it helps alleviate some back and neck pain, so much the better. It’s just that most people probably don’t need them.
Eddy Cue talk at Duke [video]
You just fix those problems in the future, it's just software.
For connection between technologies, this wheel chart type is not very helpful, things would be much clearer on confusion matrix[1]. It is a (ha!) confusing name, so it is better to call it coincidence matrix, but "confusion" is a traditional name for this already.

The authors actually use thix matrix type viz many times in the report e.g. for correlating salary information to other categories.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confusion_matrix
I don't think off grid, means completely isolated from the rest of the world.
The NYT Reveals the Horrors of Capitalism by Showing China’s State-Run Hospitals
> Which is why you should purchase Extra Virgin Olive oil from Greece, directly from Greece.

I think you misspelled “California”.

> Also the irony here is that for the "premium" Italian olive oils, especially the extra virgin, most of the olives come from Greece.

I thought Spain supplied more of the olives for Italian olive oil, and that was true across grades.
This is, in my opinion as a wedded empiricist, one of the main problems with science: it is extremely chauvinistic about forms of knowledge that did not originate in its chain of authority. A key function of the scientific culture is to establish the authority of a group who is qualified (according to the estimation of the members of the group) to rule on matters of evidence and methodology and, via their general approbation, to pronounce into existence new knowledge, which we then call "scientific" knowledge. Membership in this community is mostly through direct descent - graduates of the laboratory system.

This system, it is my observation, is extremely intolerant of knowledge produced by other systems. Other sources may be examined, but they must be interpreted, and more importantly tested, according to the established "scientific" methodologies (a collection of various inductive techniques, but, mostly, the use of complex physical and mathematical instruments), and then presented in the appropriately hallowed place using scientific jargon. Until such approval is given, the system is unwilling to acknowledge the validity of other kinds of knowledge. Thus, we have to once again "prove" what is already well-known to everybody.

A secondary problem is that the "acceptable methodology" criterion of scientific knowledge is subject to the latest vogue, and people don't read old papers, so everything we know must be re-proved or re-packaged using contemporary methodology every thirty years.
Wow! That's almost a bit of watering down of the activity!

But again, I'm in a climbing epicenter (Boulder), so I can go outside and find V1's that are nigh impossible for me to do. Problems that have been put up by people like Pat Ament, John Gill - there's still boulder problems put up 40+ years ago that still haven't had a second ascent.

I guess maybe my sentiment is also almost: bouldering should be hard. It's a problem! I would love to see footage of your 3's or 4's - I'm almost in disbelief.
You're absolutely right! It's certainly going to become cheaper and easier to host video!

With that said, is it perhaps possible that the problems publishers of content struggle with are in the main not those of the nuts and bolts of publishing? Perhaps, even, that these problems (content discovery, gaining access to users, analytics, ad management) might be well-addressed by platforms?
Torvalds Unhappy about STIBP Performance Hit – Default Will End Up Changing
Well then, maybe the real reason “why you’re having trouble hiring” is simply that “you’re not paying market rate”!

If an engineer can get a job at one of these companies, and work on exciting & fulfilling work, what’s the incentive to work elsewhere if you get paid a fraction of what you’re worth?
Exactly, that's what I keep saying about my bear repellent rock I keep on my front porch. Haven't seen a single bear yet.
Assembly (well, machine code if you want to nitpick) is still the representation of a program right at the interface between software and hardware. It's the processor's native API, no matter how many layers of additional abstraction behind that API. So it's a pretty important level of abstraction if you want to have a reasonable high-level idea of how a computer works.
> Yes, I use aggregators so I don't fall victim (as easily) to echochambers of my own design. All sources are biased, but at least you can hopefully get some idea of the truth by reading differently biased sources.

I'm not sure if that makes sense as a strategy. By relying on aggregators (that aren't human curated like Apple News), you're just getting the sources that do the best SEO. If your aggregator does algorithmic curation, they'll build an echo chamber for you.

I think if you want to avoid falling into an echo chamber, it's best to identify a couple of high-quality news sources with different perspectives, and read them unselectively. Say two national newspapers with different political orientations, an international newspaper, and a local newspaper.
The Tools Animals Use
Just for curiosity: you have moved away from Emacs org-mode?
If yes may I ask why?

I'm using Emacs since few times and it's now even my WM and org-mode is it's companion for nearly all docs/docs related stuff I use, never found anything even near comfortable and powerful as that combo...
Too many people took the wrong lesson from Dijkstra: that typing out "goto" in your code was wrong! The point is that structured programming helps you maintain invariants in your code, and reason from the syntax alone without having to know the entire dynamic history of the code's execution.

This lesson applies equally well to Angular's "watches" for example, or the heavily event-driven style seen in some Backbone applications, but these weren't spelled "goto" so people didn't notice.
Good to know. I've been intentionally getting a lot more active and have had to fight a bit of thirst for fear of repeating my folly. I won't be so afraid to drink a bit more.
Huh? Your parent obviously means that the C preprocessor is a macro language to generate host language syntax. The preprocessor language itself is pretty simple -- next to invisible in many cases.
magnesium sulfate? citrate? dose?
> or if every claim had to be prefixed with "there are exceptions, but."

I don't think that's ridiculous. Why not? People shouldn't be making trash general claims - now you say "don't point out exceptions"? so what's such a claim worth?
My two favorite make alternatives make HN in two consecutive days.

I like redo because with make you need to know two languages, with redo you know just one, the interface is simple and you get automatic dependency on build rules for free. Also the implementation is so much simpler than make, and yet I've not run into a feature I miss from make.

I like tup because it is very opinionated and forces you to write your build scripts in a reasonable manner, while also being very fast and very correct. It might be possible to write a tup file that incorrectly handles dependencies, but you'd have to work hard to do so.
Our Friendship Is Transitioning to a Paid Subscription Model
Ask HN: API with the best integration experience?
Have you ever integrated against a web service where the experience
was memorably delightful? Which service and what made it so?
I use Firefox with ad-blockers and it worked just fine for me.
I have a 1400 sqft apartment in Pacific Heights. It's hardly as bad as everyone wants to make it out to be. It's actually, by far, the nicest place I've ever lived. I think you really misunderstand the high quality of life can be in SF because of all the blogspam. Its hard at times, but it has significant rewards.
A16z Presentation – The end of the beginning
I think some of what hampers young guys love lives is the assumption that only "perfect" - in situations as well as looks - girls are worth dating.

Generally, "peer" women - that is, women of the same age and social standing - are "sleeping up." Because they can.

That said, plenty of niches exist for the enterprising -

1) Single moms
2) Older women
3) Girls you knew in HS / college
We'd go nearly extinct via pandemic long before we had time to find out.
I wonder if the structure of brain waves is a result of a gravity time crystal.

https://arxiv.org/pdf/1708.05014.pdf
Yep, I would often get a headache and think, "boy I should drink some water!" and it didn't go away. But then I would eat a salty snack and it improved.

I'm getting more active, but still not great yet. Good to know it's something that flexes with activity.
What are these "future tools" that Google is investing millions in for the industry? I am not sure what they could do to help? Putting back the search term in each click through?
I think the conclusion chart shows it clearly: Angular has very high usage (nearly as much as React) and very low satisfaction in using it.

(Which is often what you would expect of enterprise development: go with the solution "everybody else uses", whether or not everybody else enjoys using it. ;)
> In Italy or Spain, you can find "non extra-virgin" olive oil sold as well

Also in the US, you can find both virgin olive oil and (no modifier) olive oil as well as extra-virgin (and while EVOO is a higher grade, its only better for a narrow range of applications.)
Contrary to what the article says, there is no reason whatsoever that code in an eval, even if it uses the calling environment, cannot be optimised.

I work on a Ruby implementation that optimises through eval just fine.
Now I'm wondering if there are frontend devs who don't know where the name "WebAssembly" comes from...
SV might be the place to go for networking, if you want to do a startup or work in one of the FAANGs or FAANG wannabes, but the idea that SV is the only place where people know what they are doing is completely laughable self-congratulating bunk. Actually, I've never seen a place with more cargo-culting than SV.

But of course it is the only place to be if you want to "change the world" with the next Earth-shattering break-through like Theranos or Juicero.
Coming from a blue collar job (I work as an engine repair mechanic) ive never understood standing desks. most of the articles are right up there with either crystal chakra magic or "our ancesters were healthier!" crap.

I stand 6-8 hours a day. so do most of my coworkers. Simple observation of a chubby mechanic or a fat construction worker will tell you that the "standing desks are healthier" line is complete bullshit.
If they can solve head and arm bob, I'm all in.
> Good English skills can be purchased in any market in the world, for much less than what Americans demand.

Is this true? My experience differs; even hiring semi-technical roles where the most important factor was "high-level English competency" I've had really disappointing results. It gets better if you're willing to deal with less than that, but that's a pretty rough compromise for a lot of highly collaborative roles.

Strong technical skills are easier to source, but strong technical skills without good communication is tough to square.
It's different things to learn I guess. Heights are scary! But I feel it's something of a universal fear, like fire - or the dark. But you're on a rope, right? So there's nothing to be afraid of, and getting psychologically past that is something of a minor miracle, and a way to grow.

Finding a climbing buddy is one way that climbing can be social (there's also gyms set up w/auto belays).

The worst climbing injury I've ever succumbed to was bouldering. Chronic pain in my ankle from a fall. It's a safe enough hobby, but it's not impossible to be injury yourself (being as klutzy as me, helps!)

Getting that mileage, though, on a rope while going over easy terrain is a great way to build up confidence and allow those slow-developing tendons to get stronger, so that you can pull harder bouldering, and not kill yourself (spoken from experience!)
It's interesting to me that everyone here seems hellbent on ethics yet at the same time all of the big companies that we work for are some of the most unethical beasts in modern society.