skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I would argue that there isn't so much of a different between intuition and rational thinking as one might think.

Rational thinking is mostly understood to be a deductive form of "thinking" that a electrical/mechanical device could simulate with the technology we have no. (Evidenced by, say, Mathematica.)

Intuition is a more organic form of rational though; generally unchecked for errors (before your rational thought process gets ahold of it and examines it thoroughly), but exploring possibilities for solutions that may not immediately follow from the data you have in front of you. It skips the intermediate steps and delivers an abstract pathway to your solution, which you follow, and prove to work, with your rational thought.

Intuition is more like +N un-processed rational steps at once, with a higher probability for error. As long as we assume there is some difference, they're are co-dependent and just as valuable as the other; you need equal "amounts" of both to solve the difficult problems.
Intuition is good at finding what to do and what approach to take. This is finding the new dot in the unknown.

Rational thinking is good at explaining why does it work, then. This is connecting the new dot back to what you already know.

Further, my observations suggest that those two are not mutually exclusive. Intuition and feelings can indeed be based on what you already rationally know. They just operate on the unknown area that your consciousness can't reach yet. Intuition isn't too helpful unless you know something about the problem domain. Similarly, rational thinking can't really warp to anything truly new without intuition: the rational mind per se can only take what is already known and expand it a bit. To do otherwise would be, to the rational mind, well, irrational.
Lepid0ptera ---

A think you may be concentrating on a different subset of the commentary than I am. I see a lot of different viewpoints:

1) Wondering if we should trust only one side's account without knowing all the details.

2) Wondering if she's being irresponsible by _not_ escalating it to a police matter.

3) And yes, wondering if she's making too much of a deal about nothing.

I'm most interested in the second. I feel like she's getting push back from people who feel that by trying to handle the matter herself, she's not properly adopting the socially acceptable role as a passive victim. I think you might miscounting some of these responses as being in the dismissive category when they are actually something else.

Or maybe I'm miscounting the 3's as 2's. Or maybe I'm misconstruing her response as being extra-legal --- for all I know, she's decided to file charges AND name names. In any case, I find the HN discussion more useful than silence, and better than most of the internet discussions I see elsewhere. Certainly a greater variety of viewpoints would be help this process. You're bold and write well --- if you're not already here, come and join us rather than pointing out the lack of diversity from afar.
Apple and I.B.M. Aren’t All That Different
The best programmers I know have EE degrees. Just saying...
When faced with actual evidence/proof, some people will still not accept it.
If the naysayers would spend $20 like the school kids did and make their own model they could prove/disprove it themselves.
You can read more comments here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1628216 , from when this story was last posted.

It's still a great read.
Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed The Art of War

One-paragraph pitch:

In order to win, we should operate at a faster tempo or rhythm than our adversaries--or, better yet, get inside the adversary's Observation-Orientation-Decision-Action time cycle or loop. ... Such activity will make us appear unpredictable thereby generate confusion and disorder among our adversaries--since our adversaries will be unable to generate mental images or pictures that agree with the menacing as well as faster transient rhythm or patterns they are competing against.
The term profit share makes me curious (about something). Can you please find the link where Jobs says so?
When you're close to a deadline you're stressed and a code generating machine? That sounds like you do pretty well actually. Stress can be incredibly beneficial for you (in fact if it weren't it probably wouldn't have been naturally selected in every animal on earth): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eustress

"I cant afford enjoy the activity by honing my assignment."

I don't know if this is your case (correct me if not), but it sounds like you're striving for a perfect project, and can't get to it because of the deadline. At some point you have to say "this is good enough."

"Will this change when (if) I become a working programmer?"

It'll change if you get a lax job with a low work expectancy (corporate job). But if you have a job with high expectancies and quick deadlines (startup), then no it probably won't change.
Same article as these:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1834234

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1835401
Why is that good? It also doesn't solve:

int *p = malloc(LOTS);
int v = read_from_network();
int o = read_from_network();
p[o] = v;

if that malloc fails, for example.
Isn't he a (not identified but rather planted) UPS guy? Either way, much better example than mine.
I do not think we should really presume anything.

> That she hasn't pressed charges is still above and beyond the call of duty on her part, […]

This I disagree with. A public outing can be just as, if not more damaging to the alleged assailant. It is possible that she also thought or thinks along your tracks, but I do not think it is factually true that this is somehow a "soft" option.
Yes, tail call optimizations include mutually recursive functions.

Note that your example was not of tail calls, however. (Tail call would be: return A(...); that is, a tail call is one whose result is immediately returned.)
Anyone who would know what would be a winning strategy for Japan right now would be rich quick :) Japan after roaring 80s and a huge real estate boom, crashed in 1990 and never recovered. The last numbers are really frightening, see http://dl.dropbox.com/u/6010227/Webshare/China%20Japan%20Pre...
I disagree with the author. I've yet to see an abstraction layer that doesn't end up as the lowest common denominator of all databases supported or becomes a leaky abstraction.

Databases are different — accept it. I use PostgreSQL and Redis — there is really little they have in common and I use them for completely different purposes. I can't see how you could stuff all that into a single abstraction. I mean, in my Clojure code I use SQL transactions in one part of the program and Redis' optimistic locking (WATCH/MULTI/EXEC) in the other. They are _different_ and they are supposed to be different.

I also believe that the whole story about how difficult it is to "switch databases" is a red herring. If your code isn't a pile of spaghetti, then your database access functions are grouped together, not spread all over the place. This usually means that instead of abstracting the database with a generic database API, you abstract the database with your API, which only performs the operations you need.

If you do that, then a) switching databases isn't that difficult, b) your "database DSL" becomes your DSL, not somebody else's.

As a practical example, my code has a namespace called "distributed" which abstracts distributed synchronization using Redis. I can call (distributed/register-server), or (distributed/dequeue-job). The functions are very short, and really consist of redis-clojure calls with minimal database logic. Now that is a DSL I like.
I take advantage of Python's docstrings to describe what the following code does to the point where I don't feel the need to add blank lines within a function. It's all explained upfront, which seems to improve the readability of the compacted code. This habit has spilled over to other languages with no implicit structure so that code is organized between descriptive comment blocks. This has been really helpful with markup languages like PHP or Coldfusion, where indentation is meaningless and often negatively affects the quality of the outputted code.
Who Are We Trying To Impress?
You don't have to spend millions on Oracle. You can spend thousands on SQL Server or get PostgreSQL for nothing too.
Tangentially related: I've started using the Google Closure Compiler, and I see JS in a whole new (and mildly depressing) light now.

When I first learned to use jQuery, I went hog-wild, running circles around fellow devs who didn't use it. I got so into JS, that I started writing more logic in the client, because I could, and because JS, with it's loose typing and object notation was just a fast place to write code.

Now, two years later, I've embarked on a large project, an HMI in an industrial sector, and I of course made heavy use of jQuery. After 4000 LOC, the program needed some serious re-factoring in order to handle the next level of complexity.

To handle the complex demands of the application, I decided to use the Closure Compiler, which is great! The only problem is, that now, I'm writing typed code, in a non-typed language, and there's not much to really like about the language, besides the fact it's on all web browsers and has a ton of third-party support.

I guess my point is: I think tools like Closure Compiler and others which produce "compiled Javascript" are the future, if anything is. Maybe we'll see Python, or Java get JS like support in the browser, but if I could talk to the me from two years ago, I'd tell him: "Start using the Closure Compiler, and use less jQuery."
The power of making a single comment on Reddit
I'm thinking about getting a new Macbook Air, but I'm concerned about his desire for unlimited fast CPU: the new Airs have pointedly lacking CPU resources.
I like to think that intuition is the statistical part of the brain, and it can learn larger sample sets than you can handle rationally. As so, you should trust intuition when you know you have enough experience on the subject.
Top Twelve Tips for Running a Beta Test
make something.

preferably something you can send people a url for or something you open source on github.
Steve Yegge once wrote a post on this sort of thing. It's called "Have you ever legalized marijuana?", but it doesn't focus on marijuana all that much.

Well worth the read: http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2009/04/have-you-ever-legali....
If you're planning on running a private beta, this article is a MUST-READ.
Part two was just posted a few days ago:

http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/Content?oid=5393442&m...

I'd encourage everyone to read this. About 1 in 3 Americans die from drug use or drug-related causes, so there is a real need for more people to become the 'drug geek' among their circle of friends.
Interview With Steve Huffman From Hipmunk
Maybe. To visually divide sections,

- between groups of member variable declarations if any

- between function definitions if defining more than one

- after local variable definitions if any

- before a big ugly comment and probably within the big ugly comment, but the big ugly comment needs to be removed eventually, so no.

- and finally, before the ANSI "return 0;" in main

int i;

for (i; i < 10; ++i) {
if (i % 3)
array[i] += 2;
}

http://hoop-la.ca/software/cat/cat.c
For some reason that "An" irks me way more than it should.
I have a quick suggestion for blog posts like this: don't assume that readers have any idea what it is you do. Take the opportunity in the first paragraph to describe what your product is and why people use it. That way, people coming to your post who aren't already users will be oriented immediately. They will, I suspect, also be more likely to use your product.
Having just read the book Influence by Cialdini, this strikes me as perfect use of the social proof principle, regardless of if the numbers are real of not. "Hey, this app has a million users, it must be pretty good".

Personally, I couldn't register. Keeps saying I have no network yet other apps work fine.
I wonder why Ping or WhatsApp wasn't able to get this viral. The only viral feature I saw is when I installed it, it went through my contact list (I'm assuming) and found all my friends that already have it installed. Others were able to find me even though I didn't enter my phone number when signing up. Weird.
I like this article.

I like how they talk about drug smuggling technology in terms of natural selection against an inhospitable environment. It reminds me of hacking.

Less people die from hacking.
I thought tryptamines are the type of chemicals which psychedelic drugs are derived from. I had no idea it could make you SLEEP.

Even with that said, if it did knock him out, it's slightly worrying that either he didn't read about the side-effects or there was no indication that this is a possible side-effect.
Read the best books. OP already referenced SICP and TAOCP, so it sounds like he's on the right track.
It was originally only for ONE college campus. What this means is that you can't just pick programmers. You probably want it to be the place to find python programmers or perhaps even a more specific niche.
In a related matter, I smiled when I saw this: https://github.com/krainboltgreene/learn-you-an-ruby-for-awe...
1) Comparing all Android devices to just the iPhone is also deceptive.

2) It is much more important to compare OS share to individual phone share. This is because it indicates the industry's trajectory far better. A user who has an Android phone and purchase another and not have to spend anytime learning a new framework; he'll highly likely buy a new Android phone (regardless of manufacturer) when he needs a new one. And on mobile devices, downloadable apps remain very important; the most popular OS (not phone!) will get the most developer attention, producing a virtuous cycle for the winner.
The (almost) Bookless Library
Don't take a feature request at face value, translate it into a request to fix a problem.

Customers will always solve your problems poorly. If they didn't they would be in your business.
I'm curious why the Kik team decided to create 3 mobile clients before a Windows or web client. Is Kik aimed at children and teens with parents that access their kids' online accounts?
Congrats to the Kik team!

When I first heard of Kik, I thought it to be somewhat repetitive. There are tons of apps just like it. But, the viral nature of the app sold me. The fact that contacts are automatically added allow me to use the app immediately.

The next steps for Kik are crucial. People are going to have a problem with being so accessible to people they don't know. The ability to block users might arise conflict with "Why did you block me on Kik?" I'm interested to see how they handle these issues. On top of that, they're adding image support, which I think is a pretty hefty dent on their servers.

Again, congrats on the growth, but good luck with keeping your users! As of right now, it took me a whole minute to send a Kik message out. I'm sticking to Blackberry Messenger for now, which by the way is an amazing client minus lack of cross-mobile platform availability.
I used to buy into the idea that reading a book, any book, is a good idea. That may be true if you're learning to read, but most books are junk and add no value to your life. You can stagnate easily by reading lots of potboilers, for example.
Congratulations! We hear a lot of fun stuff from our baby monitoring customers. One of our users called it "Baby TiVo" ... you can export clips to send to the family, so it's lots of fun.

As for screenshots, did you check out http://www.dropcam.com/demo? You get there by clicking "See it live" on the homepage. We should probably add links to it from the learn more/product pages.
Not quite the same, because the new version has a bunch of features added. If you'd like to stick with the camera analogy, you should think of the pylons framework more as a good lens for the DSLR. Most of the features are from the body, so you upgrade that and keep using the same lens.

The Pylons framework was almost entirely just glue between your choices of ORM/templates along with using WebHelpers and Beaker. Those projects are still in use with pyramid, still getting updates (and thus a pylons project will still get feature updates via them).

I tried to explain this better here:
http://groups.google.com/group/pylons-discuss/browse_thread/...
Trust me, I feel like that much more of a dweeb when I tell people out loud.

"I'm writing a book, Learn You...(whisper)an ruby(whisper)...For awesome Power"
Is it just me, or are other people also annoyed by the incorrect usage of "2.8 times faster than the wind"?

The actual speed record is 27.7 mph in a wind of 10 mph. That's 1.77 times faster than the wind, not 2.77 times faster. (It's impressive and cool as hell; I'm not quibbling with that...)
I think there'll always be a place for scripted (non-compiled) languages, particularly in the web context, no matter how complicated Web apps become. And there are lots of strategies for complexity management; compilation is just one possibility.

It's never the case that the shiny new technology blows away the busted old technology; more like the new stuff becomes another blade in your swiss army knife.

What's the learning curve for Closure like and how did you come up to speed on it? It is like an API or more like a tool like gcc?
Potentially relevant: http://www.anandtech.com/show/4000/apples-11inch-upgraded-ma...
Source? 1 in 3 sounds ridiculously high.
I think they've corrected the title since then, it now says 12% of his stake.
Well I dare say why not keep going with the trend and have it something like Learn you the Ruby for great good! (At least that hurts a bit less :))
Capital gains taxes rise in 2011. That might be a factor that the author should consider.
I appreciate the focus on constructive --- that's why I'm here rather than on Reddit. Yes, there times when explaining things that seem like they should be obvious is exactly what is needed. Sometimes the obvious has already been taken into account, sometimes it hasn't.

My comment was intended as constructive as well: from afar, I can't tell if you are a step ahead of Legion or if he is a step ahead of you. And I won't even hazard a guess as to which step I'm at. I was aiming for feedback that you would find useful, either by confirming your diagnosis or helping to refute it. I feel no contempt toward either one of you.

I think the odd thing in this case is that the 'victim' is not properly playing her role. Rather than being damaged for life and seeking the help of the 'authorities', she seems to have assumed control of the situation herself. For me, this makes a response like Legion's socially acceptable, even if misguided. Cheers!
It's more like 1 in 139 - not 'one in three': http://www.latimes.com/sns-viral-death-causes-pictures,0,407...

The leading cause of death (Heart Disease) kills 1 in 3 or 4 depending on the source: http://www.benbest.com/lifeext/causes.html#data_usa

Illicit drug related deaths are relatively low, 17,000 deaths in 2000 http://drugwarfacts.org/cms/?q=node/30 - compared to nearly half a million deaths related to smoking.

That said, you are totally right - everyone should be aware of the risks - even if you don't take drugs others around you might need educating. And part 2 is a great read.
It's one of those ideas that sounds great when you hear about it in college, but doesn't really work when you try it in practice. "Universal" data abstraction layers like ODBC and object-relational mappers like Hibernate, Django, SQLAlchemy, etc. have been around at least since the mid-90s and perhaps before.

The problem is that all those inconsequential differences between data stores are really important. The article explicitly says "Scalability and performance are outside the scope of this", but in real-world software, scalability and performance matter a lot. When we'd tried out Hibernate for a past employer, performance dropped by 80% - data operations were now taking 5x as long to complete. You can recover much of that by tuning your mappings, but by then, you're pretty much writing SQL anyway, and your app wouldn't work with any database other than the one you tuned for.

Also, nearly every app needs its own data abstraction layer, one that works with the particular operations and domain objects of the app rather than tuples and records and tables. At this point, there's little reason to go through another abstraction layer, adding complexity and slowness to your program, when your calls to the data store are already localized to one module.
I will never watch a DVD that I buy, only one that I rent.

When there is no consequence to procrastination, it is inevitable. It must be true then that deadlines add value.
At the moment I just like to build things. If I'm lucky and keep it up, hopefully there might be some opportunities in the future to do more with it.
While it is very interesting to analize insider trading, I dare to say the tech bubble is not about to burst, it is just shifting gears from big companies selling packaged software (MS, Oracle) to small web startups focused on the long tail.
http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2010/09/21/pie-chart-apples-outr...

An old one:
http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/Steve_Jobs_Talks_Mark...

"If you went to BMW and asked them why they donit outsell the Ford Taurus, they would say they donit want to make that sort of car," says Mr Jobs. "Apple has 25 million customers around the world, and our goal is to give them the best personal computer that we can, with the best operating system and some of the best applications."
Oh man! Shucks. "The" would have been so much better :/

I need an INTERNET search and replace.
I was wondering why a piece like this would have been selected for inclusion in the Wall Street Journal, that is until I came across the phrase "white males".
In these interviews I rarely come across a piece of software or hardward that isn't accessible from an economic standpoint. Almost always run of the mill stuff. A nice reminder to a guy like me that can get caught up in gear/books/sites, etc. It's not the gear it's 'that' and 'how' you use it.

I just finished reading "Coders at Work". An I 'used' this would make an interesting site as well. Especially if there were pics of some of those old machines. I borrowed a unix book from a friend and he had been using an old punchcard as a bookmark. Neat little find.
Why working from home or Starbucks is a bad idea
Git - SVN Crash Course
Oh that is something I did not know about. Thanks for the tip!
The unclosed parenthesis is irking me more, he opened it in paragraph 2 and never closes it!
And there's a special one-time gains-tax-exclusion for small-business investments before the end of this year -- so a good time to reallocate into startups.
The levamisole test kits should be made available to the smugglers. If the smugglers knew they were shipping (detectably) impure cocaine, there would be pressure on the producers to stop cutting the product.

(... and a little voice in my head tells me that we'd be better off if drugs were regulated rather than illegal.)
Any language that is stuck in a non-text, non-diff-compatible, or where the program is combined in the same binary file with data.

Most commonly, this is found in the files generated by desktop database products such as MS Access, Filemaker, etc.

It's a program maintenance nightmare.
Indeed. Perhaps a better question would be, how can a fresh CS grad convince a team of experienced software engineers he's not hopelessly theoretical...