skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Oh yes - I don't think CMM &c are silver bullets.

But in the end, to build software you have to communicate. Once the group working on the software is larger than 5 or 6, unless everyone on the team is phenomenally good, you need to formalize this communication somehow. All of these formal development methodologies are ways of accomplishing that -- none of them are necessarily good, but at least they solve that problem so you can get to other problems.

Of course, this leads to other problems, such as the ISO 9001 compliant company that has all of its dysfunctional processes documented in explicit detail that must be followed. (I worked there once. It was like Office Space meets Brazil.)
haha sorry bout the post, and im not that young im 19 :s
Personal experience from AllegroStore, a predecessor of AllegroCache:

- In AllegroCache/AllegroStore, the class definition is the schema definition; so if the newcomer understands class structures he understands the schema.
- Hot-patching can be done through plain-old REPL. At least AllegroStore the system took care of key consistency (if it is explicit to the system).
- In AllegroStore schema change is handled as class change (of persistent instances). So you can use usual MOP to write update function, which corresponds to the change scripts.

The main difficulty, compared to RDBMS, seemed to come from the fact that the stored objects directly formed a graph, not a table. Some people seemed to have a hard time to "think" directly in graphs, and preferred table analogy.
We Want a Wii! (Still)
We talked about this yesterday http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=14719 which was not enough. The wii is too much and they aren't handling it in the correct manner either.
It's fine to have a house and a kid if you've already got capital. Most programmers in their 30's would hopefully have sufficient savings for about a year of no income - It is a pretty well paying job after all.
The first thing that came to mind was the funerals.com story in 'The Monk and The Riddle' (http://www.businessweek.com/2000/00_25/b3686077.htm)

I'm not implying this applies to you :) It sounds like you are sincerely passionate about the idea.

I think it's a valid approach to realize there are companies out there doing this, they aren't popular, and it's probably because they aren't 'doing it right'. So if you think you know how to do it better, by all means do it! Good luck.
Seems to me that your problem is not making your to-do list more efficient, but actually more effective. Any to-do list system (rememberthemilk, GTD, Outlook, etc...) will help you with the efficiency part, but not with the effectiveness part.

I highly recommend you the book First Things First, by Dr. Covey: http://www.amazon.com/First-Things-Learn-Leave-Legacy/dp/0684802031/
I think one of the major contributors for the change of impressions of MSFT between older techies and younger is Linux. For us older guys, MSFT ate everyone alive during it's hayday - Borland, Novell, Quarterdeck, GEM, Amiga, and so on. It seemed that no one - not even IBM - could compete with MSFT and survive.

Linux thrives and it's the younger generation of techies that have carried on this battle in an unstoppable fashion. Curiousity + frustration + dogged determinism has led to a people powered movement that could not be crushed by money, FUD or other corporate methods. Democracy and anarchism is the antidote to corporatism and fascism.
I think this dilutes the concept rather beyond the point of utility. A memorial site would need to foster a very specific mood and offer a few specific tools for this purpose.
Such processes should be fought tooth and nail:

http://www.fighttheprocess.com
What a douche. As if there's something glorious about being one of these 'tards who can't distinguish the difference between the way computers work and the way reality works. People, when speaking and writing, do not usually intend to be excruciatingly specific. Learn2deal.
Just saw http://www.nichum.com/ launched on a jewish yahoo group. I can see niche sites like this popping up to bring together people from all over the world who can't make it to a funeral. As baby boomers get older I'm sure these sites will gain some traction.

On a happier note, take a look at http://onlysimchas.com/ It's geared towards Jewish family celebrations - births, bar/bat mitzvas, engagements, weddings, and bdays. I know plenty of people who check it on a daily basis to track their friends and community.
First of all, 20 year olds are the last focus group for such a thing so it doesn't matter if you've never heard of it. That there are competitors shows there's something there. Thirdly, he's not trying to clone an existing service, he's trying to create a new one that makes sense to him from the ground up.
I've always wanted something that works like Omni Outliner does - with infinite indents. I've found several todo lists on several online project management packages, but this has always been the dealkiller for me. It's what allows me to break down tasks to bite sized increments - no matter how large the tasks are originally. I've only found that OmniOutliner and LifeBalance do this...and they aren't online. Doesn't seem like rememberthemilk does it either.
StumbleUpon launches StumbleThru
It seems if several startups merged into one, it wouldn't be an attractive acquisition. An acquirer might only want one subcompany, but has to buy the whole thing at a greatly increased price. Acquirers like the a-la-carte aspect of startups.

Startups do too. The founders started their company precisely because they didn't want their product to be averaged together with a bunch of others.
How to make money online while being a small business not based in the US
> look at Warren Buffett's philosophy on employee and management stock options. In earlier days he attracted key management with a fair salary

Today's environment is much, much different. ALL key manangement will require equity.

That example is kind of like saying Apple attracted people with a 1 MHz 6502 system. Different time, different standards.
Ask the Wizard: You Always Start the Last Company
These models were "invented" for non-technical types like MBA monkeys to help them feel like they are in control of software engineering process. If you look at these models closely, you realize they resemble various principles employed by mechanical/civil engineering.

So what we have here is the attempt by non-technical managers, to bring some "feel" of control over something inherently complex (software development), modeled by their semi-successful methods of management employed in traditional industries (read companies like GE).

What those guys fail to realize is that software engineering is fundamentally more complex and, therefore, unpredictable than manufacturing industry they're used to (from their business school books).

Pathetic.
How about a "possible spam" folder, kind of a counterpart to "best", like a purgatory where stories go but can still be seen, and can make it back out if actually useful?
This cognitive carousel thing is interesting, but the whole thing seems flawed.
Or at least there's not enough information on that page.
The general form of this is everything takes longer than expected.

On NerdTV, http://www.pbs.org/cringely/nerdtv/shows/ Max Levchin repeatedly makes the point that there's a difference between something being hard, and something being valuable.

Valuable things were probably hard to do, but there are plenty of things that are really hard but won't help your bottom line.
"The founders started their company precisely because they didn't want their product to be averaged together with a bunch of others."

I have never heard that as a reason someone started a company. People start companies because they want to have control and impact and work on interesting things and have more ownership.

I just wonder if it might be interesting to combine a team that's working on online collaboration, for instance, with another that's working on video sharing and a third that is building a community of some sort. Think 37Signals but from the bottom up.
IIRC, you said that the Viaweb programmers didn't have meetings; they all pretty much were on the same page and knew what needed to be done. The company did have board meetings, though, so it sounds like something you'd do re: business more than re: development at an early stage.
Both of those sound just fine, and I think the extra clutter you'll have in your namcespaces will be worth the extra exposure you get from not forcing people to sign up.
They sure are useful, but I think they're kind of creepy. I've seen them cheerlead beyond all rational basis for other companies, and I think having much of anything to do with them can give you a very warped perspective. It's like they're passing around Dixie cups of rather suspicious Kool-Aid.
Alexa v. Statsaholic: Tim Oreilly weighs in - sympathetic to Alexa?
Here's someone's summary from reddit:

"[They already had implants in their brains, and he]
gave them a slideshow to watch, with a button to push to advance to the next slide. But the button was fake. What really moved the slide was a motor potential building in the brain before they were aware of the desire to move it. It unnerved the patients, because it seemed to them as if the projector was always advancing just before they'd consciously decided to advance it."
I must admit, I don't understand this equity thing yet. But it seems to me that working for a company is simply an investment. So it seems that there are three options for a company:

a) it is already making enough money to pay the devlopers a good salary
b) it is not making enough money and takes outside investments to pay the developers a good salary = some outsider gets the equity
c) they pay the developers with the equity they would have given to the outsiders in b)

Seems simple enough - in all cases but a equity has to be given away, so why not give it to the developers to begin with.
I disagree with the rest. Not to rain on your parade, but I honestly dont know if I would want a website as a memorial. Grief is personal. People I grieve for, I dont want to cheapen by putting them online. I simply remember or talk about them.
"People start companies because they want to have control and impact and work on interesting things and have more ownership."

That's true. If these are the founders' main goals, they'll be less averse to raising the acquisition price or working in bigger teams. They don't even need to be a startup -- they could also be happy as an autonomous research project under the wing of a big company.

I was talking about founders hoping to get rich by selling their companies after a few years. In this case, they want the company to be small, inexpensive, and have few strings attached, to attract as many acquirers as possible.

Occasionally, two startups might be a perfect match for each other -- their combined product is far greater than the sum of the parts. In these cases, it makes sense to merge. It sounds like this is what you mean.
Fanboys are the people who not only protect your brand, but also push it. They won't just tell a few people about your service, they'll tell the world.

PG must've already read this article. Think about it.. how many other VC/Angel firms do you know that are generating the kind of buzz that YC has?

Wow.. I just realized that's us. We're the fanboys for YC.
This is a case of overgeneralizing. Evolution favors the organism most responsive to change; thus, one must recognize conditions how they are, instead of operating from a mental model of how they were, to increase one's chances.

It's always relative; a combination of idea and environment. The mistake is, when something doesn't work out, that we are tempted to say that the idea must be a bad idea. The correct inference is that the combination of the idea and that particular environment did not work.

The corresponding mistake is to assign blame to the environment and say the environment is just bad for everything. Note that hardly anyone makes that mistake -- instead, they say, "the environment isn't ready for this idea yet", noting that change is inevitable.

Another way of stating this is that the author failed to investigate why something was problematic. Instead, it's as if he was operating blindly; "I got burned by X, so in the future I will avoid X, because X burns." That's somewhat like a child bumping into a kitchen table and getting mad at the table. "Tables are a problem -- let's get rid of them."
Fine. Mathematics is generally based on so-called "non-logical axioms" -- non proven statements that we accept based on what a person such as yourself would call faith.

Still, I believe in mathematics because it works. Why do you believe in the god of the Christians to the exclusion of all others?
The key is keeping unrelated/spamish articles off the main page, but preventing users from downvoting controversial articles.
It looks very much like I didn't do a very good job of communicating my thoughts. I was actually trying to write an essay about the importance of the marginal.

Can you be a little more literal and tell me what part of the post seems to say something about distinguishing the difference between computers and reality?

Also, I thought I was hand waving the "99" thing and saying it isn't important how accurate the number is. Should I be more emphatic?
released! http://juwo.com Please provide your feedback - via email or the newer thread I started
some parts of teenwag are done in Ruby on rails though
python perl ruby c cpp lisp it has it all
I use http://colr.org
How does PG do autolinking of comments in News Yc i see we dont need a href, python cant use regexes, can you share the lisp code ?
1. Where did I put the doritos?

2. Man, these doritos are good.

3. Wow, someone just handed me a lot of money.
I don't think Myspace has any merit. I think it's doing well for the same reason that hit songs are doing well: random network butterfly effects. That experiment about showing people which songs were popular vs. not showing them-- due to totally random noise, one song (or startup) will be a little ahead, and then whoosh, it has all the listeners (or users). There's nothing about Myspace itself that makes it more likely among a field of similar, better-designed contenders to do well; it's just the random fluctuations of the market that made it king.
Pirates of Silicon Valley (Full movie)
Off the top of my head maybe 5-10% are over 30 and 5-10% nonhackers. I don't think we've ever had anyone who was over 30 and not a hacker.
How much did karma help? (How many of the top 30 news.yc users got interviews?)
MySpace: Better than Porn?
I've been hovering between #11 and #17 on the karma rankings and did not get an interview.
not that karma would be the only criteria-- I have a strong feeling my rejection was because my co-founder couldn't move to boston.
sigh why haven't you blocked submissions from this domain yet?
Just guessing, but I think he means that when he types in http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=15250, it appears as a hyperlink, even though we don't explicitly add an anchor tag.

The rest of the title is baffling to me: Python can do regexps through the 're' module, there are Lisp regexp packages available, and I'd imagine news.YC uses one of those.

P.S. The hyperlink regexp seems to pick up trailing punctuation, like periods, commas, and parentheses. Any chance we can exclude them from the link target? I think several of my links have broken because of that.
I'm also interested in how many of the top 30 applied and didn't get interviews? Of course, there are a lot of confounding variables here. A higher offer rate among the YC top 30 could possibly have nothing to do with karma.

For example, versus the typical SFP applicant, the top 30 might:

- Spend more time online & therefore more time on their project

- Be more knowledgeable about the startup scene

- Have a better understanding of what YCombinator is looking for

- Etc.
thank you!

I notice my karma has slid from 50 to 29 in 3 days!

Sam, were you able to see a demo?
actually the color scheme for my website is from dreamweaver 8 (Adobe) - this same site. So if you find fault...
Iframe resize for all browsers Any one know how to make it work?
Google Web History - Minority Report In the Making
I'm pretty high up in the karma, didn't get an interview. That's cool though, I like spending time here regardless.
Good luck on the interviews!
A friendly good luck to anybody interviewing tomorrow. Tell us how it went!
http://www.teenwag.com/poll?n=1544 Is it really better?
Paul has said before that he doesn't look so much at karma but instead at the quality and type of comments and submissions. When I heard that he was going to be using YC News as a way to filter applicants I was more than a little put off until he clarified that.

I'm sure he's looking for intelligence, creativity, positivity, and passion. High karma can reflect this, but it can also reflect an ability to be able to grind karma.
Do you have a link to the experiment?

Also, when you said there were better-designed contenders, did you have anything in particular in mind?

Don't forget, myspace was in the first batch (if not the very first) of sites for bands to upload their music and have it streamed over the internet. It had the streaming audio, and the strong community features. The initial communities grew up around the bands. It wasn't completely random that Myspace was successful, they were providing a real and useful service.

http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=15036

http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=13112
Breaking: Alec Baldwin Lashes Out at 11-Year-Old Daughter Degrading voicemessage
http://www.teenwag.com/showvideo/4289
Audio
http://alec.teenwag.com/playmusic/222

Virginia Tech killer video http://teenwag.com/playvideo/4183 VIRGINIA TECH SHOOTER CHO SEUNG HUI http://teenwag.com/playvideo/4184 Virginia Tech Shooter Home Video NBC News Cho Seung-Hui http://teenwag.com/playvideo/4182
isnt this really useful i love news y combinator
I want a general nonstartup folder in News where we can post non startup news vote up if you concur
Digg sucks
I'd rather be Microsoft than Yahoo - (37signals)
http://www.teenwag.com/playvideo/4294
who are most valuable vcs? in web20
I d rather be a startup that can bilk google and paul graham at the same time ;)
How useful are vcs like paul graham?
Is Scribd merely a porn aggregator?
all the docs on scribd is merely porn... i wonder wat he pitched pg ;)
Information wants to be free!

Don't delete this, a link isn't illegal. It's up to Google to police their site for hosting a video, all that news.yc is doing is linking.
Don't be a hero: Giving up is good - (37signals)
take a chill pill
yeah pg dont keep deleting all not yc stuff ;)
Lifetime free Pro accounts to developers - (SmugMug)
Well i was saying the python re does it well and the pg lisp one seems to pick up any thing that goes behind link so was hoping he ll fix it
Same boat. I'm with joshwa in having a cofounder unwilling to move to boston. Pretty sure that played a way bigger role than my comments here.
Heh. Good link. I am not married to this idea but for whatever reason, I seem to come back to something along this vein. I'm not sure if the timing is right yet, but someday it will be.

Thanks for the link and the "good luck". Same to you.
What was really fascinating was just how badly Bill Gates wanted to win.

If you also read Startup by Jerry Kaplan, you'll note that Bill was very keen to copy the pen OS that GO created and on seeing a demo as soon. In the end windows mobile won out though.

What did u find interesting about the characters?
Jessica Livingston's Founders at Work talk at Google
What I love most about the competitors I've found on Google, is that they are all just so very, very bad.
Slide.com becomes MySpace for slideshows
You're not raining on my parade juwo. I asked for feedback and got it. I can see why you might think having an online memorial would cheapen the memory. If you look at the memorial sites out there, they do cheapen it because they don't do a very good job.

The concept really isn't about the creation of an online memorial. It's really about providing a way for the LIVING people to come together, remember and talk. What's important here is the process of remembering and sharing with the intention of creating a memorial. My idea is simply a way to foster that connection.

I hope this frames it in a different light for you.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/15/magazine/15wwlnidealab.t.html?_r=1&ref=magazine&oref=slogin

is the study in question. No, I didn't have any Myspace competitors in mind; I just assumed that something so badly designed must have at least one better-designed competitor. Maybe a bad assumption, in retrospect.
Yeah. I just think about this every time a VC or some pundit says "but it's just a feature". I think it would be interesting to see a combination of these 'features' become a major player.

The goal is to get acquired and have a relatively big payday. But I think it's possible that a group of small players could merge and grow big enough to go public and compete with the big players. Of course the biggest challenge would be deciding who was 'in charge'.

If your company has 200,000 users and you can join forces with a few other similarly sized projects the new company would have more thinking and more manpower and resources and could benefit from some overlap in function and might be able to grow beyond some theshold that increases valuation multiples because of the viability of the company as an independent entity, and maybe even profitability. I think those things could very well outweigh the ease of fit of a feature. I'm sure it would depend on the buyers but it just might open doors to buyers that wouldn't be interested otherwise.
May all your wildest dreams come true.
You can't say these @ startup school either!
Being self-taught, I would suggest 3 things.

My first suggestion is to take a course in a programming langauge at a local college. Learning a language, any language, will start you off faster than struggling with it on your own. C# or VB.NET are non-intimidating and taught everywhere as they're the workhorse languages in many microsoft-based IT shops. They're not cool and hackerish, but have the instant gratification of easy GUI building which is helpful to beginners, and you can avoid memory management which is very intimidating to beginners. They're also taught EVERYWHERE so even in East Chucka, someone will have these courses in some format. Appreciation for the finer things (ruby and dynamic languages) is more clear when you've seen how the other half lives. Also, if you learn one of these languages, you can possibly get a QA or support job to pay for more classes. Lisp, Ruby and and Scheme are cool, but won't pay the bills while you learn.

The next thing I'd suggest is to come up with an idea for something you're passionate about creating, and learn the technologies you need to make it as you go. Having a project you're excited about is the difference between being hungry for a technology and choking it down like a cold piece of liver.

And finally, as the other posts mentioned, get the pragmatic programmers book when you're ready to learn ruby. I'd suggest starting with a Ruby course, but I'm not sure they exist on any wide-scale. Remember though, that book is focused on the framework, not the ruby language. Once you know how to code, you'll be all set.
News.YC Feature Request
I didn't get an interview. I suspect it's partly because on paper our idea sounds like every dodgy metoo startup rolled into one. Which it kind of is, but it's also a little bit brilliant.