skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The reasoning behind the separation in these steps is for 2 reasons:

To save time on both halves. That is, the designer is designing his/her piece without worry of the difficulty, and the programmer is designing the framework without worry of user intuitiveness and style.

It so often occurs that the designer and the programmer have slightly different ways of thinking. Each party has separate concerns for the final product, and each half should be individually thinking about the future of their work and how each can be maintained.

This article may certainly apply to, and almost addresses, a programmer without a sense of concern for the user's experience and general usability.

As a front-end designer, I need the mockup process for my own sake even more than for the sake of the final product. Personally speaking, if I were to attempt complex mockups without first laying out a grid and carefully choosing my color palette, I would quickly be overcome with the duties of writing the code, and the hundreds of short-term problem solving that would arrive. My passion is never to become a flawless programmer, but it is to flawlessly design an intuitive interface. When I am creating a mockup in photoshop, what I'm doing in my head is pretending. I imagine over and over again that I am a first time user to the site, and maybe even to the internet. This duty is daunting enough without having concern over how I will make it work.

Again, this article may whisper sweet nothings to a programmer on a tight schedule, but I can guarantee you that the time to simply layout a grid and pretend will save you the time it takes to just load the monster application. And I don't know about you, but I cannot imagine a site's usability on a simple piece of paper.
I've found you'll rarely find something inexpensive and really good, but you'll find really expensive and not good at all very very often.

I saw, recently, a "screen" delivered to a company from a high priced design firm in SF that had ~800px wide text boxes for "Username" and "Password" on a login screen. They paid ALOT of money for that.
Ultimately, Yang came up with a plan that provided full acceleration of all equity-based compensation ever granted to all employees. This plan has been described as a “poison pill” that served no purpose other than to thwart Microsoft. In an internal email, Compensia (a human resources consulting firm retained by Yahoo) President Tim Sparks had this to say about the plan: “That’s nuts“.

So if Yahoo were to be bought everyone with any talent who presumably would not want to work at Microsoft would immediately vest and leave? Wow. Could such a plan ever be in the interest of existing shareholders?
Then you might as well join a big company, because the entrepreneurial/hacker spirit dictates that you _must_ be willing to learn something new every day.
I am in the same boat as you and am actively seeking a UI designer. We are willing to pay up to $5000 or maybe even more for this service, but it has to be good and the chance of someone getting it wrong or asking for double the money is what's keeping us from taking the plunge.

But I digress, the point of this comment is to try out 99designs.com. I've seen some really good designs on that site if you know exactly what you want.

We plan on experimenting with 99designs once we have our site up and running with UI we can come up with as developers and hope to get lucky!
Use Cake to build an app that you can sell online as a service. If the service takes off, there's all kinds of opportunity for learning as it grows and technical requirements change (scalability, security, etc).

I've been doing client work in my one company for years (7 to be exact) and while it's an okay model for making a living, the revenue is connected with the hours you put in, which to be honest sucks. It means you can grow by adding people or becoming a bit more efficient, but neither of those allows for exponential growth. As such, it's not the right model for startups.

Instead, you want something where you make residual income every month off something like subscriptions. With that type of model, you make steady income (if you can sell it) and there's the potential for exponential growth without exponentially increasing the number of people involved.

As for ideas, most software you can write that you install on your own server (Cake type stuff) can be made as an on-demand service as well. And most jobs that are done in a consultancy can also benefit from software to make those jobs more efficient. I say pick one and go for it!
I like #2.

Solve a problem and find the people to whom that solution is most valuable. Start there, cater to them, make them passionate, and voila: there's your base!
Technically, you still don't regret it even if you aren't. ;-)
Option 1 - seems like an easy way out, and would probably negate your experience so far since "big companies" might not value your skills.

Option 2 - is very hard to do unless you have an idea that the community really really needs.

In my opinion you two other options:
Option 3 - try to expand your company by getting project contracts and not hourly contracts and get a decent size project to hire a partner, then go from their hire as you find more projects. (this is harder than I make it sound here, but worth it).

Option 4 - Come up with 10 ideas that you think you can develop within 40-80 hours (2 weeks) using cakePHP, this is the 6 month road. If any one of these generate enough ads revenue to allow you to not do client work all the time then it will give you time to think about what to do "next". You can then try to hire more employees, grow your business, go back to school, or even join a big company.
Founders in a startup usually sign something assigning IP related to the company to the company.
"While a foreigner in an european country, will always remain a foreigner, even they get the citizenship, a second class citizen."

unfortuneately i think it is a fair amount of truth in this.
My 22 year old self is less than 1 year away!
>Maybe what you should take away from this is that it's better to do your own thing, rather than be a slave to clients.

What the..?
Do your own thing instead of listening to your clients huh? Sounds like bread winning advice!

Sarcasm aside, I agree to a certain degree with the parent post - We do work for individual clients and design selection is their choice, since, drumroll, thats what they are paying us for! You can definitely help them out with suggestions, but ultimately your job is to make the client happy - If you are running your own company (or consulting) servicing clients, I'd say that is doing your own thing.
Actually they can, provided you state that you're looking for that level of work. Many studios operate through these services and simply turn-over the small stuff to the junior developers, or use templates.
"there is very little correlation between price and quality".

to a point. While design can often have a rang of price there can be a clear difference between paying some one a living wage and not. This number can vary international but it's good to know what is considered a professional wage abroad.

Also price can have a high correlation to experience. More experience is good if you care about the details but many rather stay cheap.

the design field is changing and there is a lot of price fluctuation and it can be hard as a company to gauge if a company is worth the price. But to say there is little correlation is a little misleading.
Isn't addons.mozilla.org written in CakePHP? They might need open source helpers.

If you did the same sort of thing for the Code Igniter framewor, then we'd be willing to help/donate a tad bit in that endeavor.
In my opinion 37 signals has the best job board with the best jobs. But personally I think the people applying also expect a better wage\price to come with that. For companies to attract truly the best UI designers I do think they have to pay a bit more for them. Though there are plenty of young cheep talent out there. They perhaps are not the best.
I agree.. us UI designers are rare on HN.

Hiring locally could be really good.. In general I think it's hard to find some one with an application portfolio though. Most are advertisement websites and it can be hard to gauge if their portfolio match your values.

Most UI jobs I see are either salary or long term contract. but I might be biased as that is what I look for.
Yes, as long as you keep in mind that macros can be much more than that.
You don't think that all of Google's web properties have good UI's? At minimum they are certainly quite clean and non-intimidating, which is the opposite of what I think you would expect from a company which "executed [their] UI like an engineer"

In terms of mobile I would agree that the Android demos don't look quite as slick as the iPhone, but give it some time before it is released.
I have a small enough room that my 27" monitor works nicely. However I read about HD features - "advanced signal processing, comb filter, blah, blah, blah" - that suggest that my monitor might not be as good quality as a TV just because it isn't optimized for that. I don't have a tv to compare it to unfortunately, but I see things like motion blur, crappy blacks, that make me think it could be better.
> they're transitioning from traditional analog video to IP-centric solutions and have no expertise.

Its astounding how little expertise they have in Internet Protocol, encryption, non-repudiation, codecs and RAID.
Dreams...
Are Trademe sellers ending up like eBay sellers? - A Dying Breed
Wow this is amazing. What many would do to have google use our code haha... Congrats man.
Dive into Python is a good book. Its available online.
People are pointing out this is likely a rewrite. Fun, anyway.
http://longtail.typepad.com/the_long_tail/2004/10/objection_...

The vaunted 57% number that the long tail is built on is actually half that.
I've always liked:
http://www.greenteapress.com/thinkpython/
You can post in SitePoint, because it is more matured than DPF when it comes to users. But DPF has huge population and traffic.
Free books:

http://diveintopython.org/

http://gnosis.cx/TPiP/ (txt processing)

http://www.swaroopch.com/byteofpython/

http://homepage.mac.com/s_lott/books/python.html

http://homepage.mac.com/s_lott/books/oodesign.html
This really depends what you mean by cheap. If you're the end user then yes, it's cheap. However, Drupal has had a lot of time and effort put into it. The important correlation is between that time and effort (and the quality of those putting in that time and effort) and the quality of the product.
What we dont need to innovation going is government involvement. What we do need is less regulation in areas affecting innovation. Immigration reform to let in highly skilled individuals (H1-B, etc), greater tax benefits for seeking science degrees and entrepreneurship, and ease costs on starting companies!
yeah I would agree with that...

I think at the way low end you mostly get very inexperienced people who have little to no experience oftain coupled with little to no skill. They may commit to a price but can't deliver on quality. It doesn't seem worth it to waste the money here. Just have your developer do something.

At the mid range there are still a lot of unskilled people but there are now skilled people as well. Here are the people you need to find. Because they are going to be able to deliver something quality and worth paying for. But they are not doing to be able to match the skills of best designed sites.

The high price range there are still the same match of good and bad. the good are really good. Best in the business. The bad are from the mid range or below that are super confident or really audacious.

It's hard to pick out the good ones even though interview in my opinion. you really need a large list of references to get a feel for the "company".
One reason I never even considered moving to Europe, but the US is getting really hard to get into. I am glad I moved here 12 years ago. Others are having a tough time and are often hostage to their companies since they can't change jobs easily.
[SF] Hack Python, Have Fun - Paid Summer Internship at Snaptalent
"...which makes wsgi applications (which can be deployed through several ways) very flexible..."

What are the preferred ways to deploy wsgi apps?
Pool Party - Cloud EC2 Computing Made Easy
I also wonder if "do no evil" includes not peeking at the fellow's gmail account.
Smartful Studios. Working on games for the iPhone.

But really that is just the first beachhead since all of my experience is as a programmer in the video game industry. The blue-sky plan is a media brand. Non-profit, fashion, beverages, events, Formula 1 team, etc. Think Virgin, Red Bull, etc.
No no. Dialup was 56KB/s not 56kb/s.
I agree...I feel quite shackled by the green card "process", which consists largely of incomprehensibly lengthy delays. It doesn't make me feel valued at all.

If I had it to do over, I would change this: get a PhD FIRST! If you educate in your own country and then come to the U.S., you are put into this magic bin that says you're better than everybody else, and 90% of the bull in the process is removed.
well its obvious they copied. It doesnt matter if it is a re write. They owe somebody a thank note.

So much for the do no evil bullshit.
The classic sign of someone unable to explain their point of view is screaming "You aren't smart enough to understand what I'm saying!"
Is there a mirror for the software?
love noah's stuff wish he blogged a bit more - classic thing he does is email anyone that comments on his blog
You could work with/for me.

Seriously.

I am one of those "non coding" founders.
I come from the entertainment biz and know first hand that there is a need for web app suite that would help about 1.5 E+3 people each to do what I did for the last 5 years.

The tools that exist for what I want to have developed either are no tools at all, something like a business process checklist, or do 30% of what is needed or required for the final outcome and does it poorly because the company that provides the tools does not want to give too much control to the user over the process.

I have personal seed money (not a ton, about 10k usd) to develop a demo with someone, and would rather have someone interested in startups than a dbase programmer off Craigslist.

I did some interface diagrams/sketches and wrote quite a bit on needed features. The 1.5 e+3 entertainment professionals (like me) in question work together twice a year to do about 3 e+9 euros worth of business each time.

If done properly the web app would be self enlarging/viral within this community.
The most amazing part of this post is that people are still using jottit.
This is truly awesome, though autism hasn't effect my family directly, the idea of open source solving a problem bigger than just hackers wanting more control of their software is great. When there isn't a market big enough for a commercial vendor to step in and build something, open source is the only viable alternative.
zacbrowser.com
Old-Fashioned Play Builds Executive Function
This article struck a nerve for me (in a good way). It's not just that Photoshop is the wrong tool for the job, it's also that it encourages a mentality in the designer which I think is totally at odds with a positive and productive user experience. In my experience, designers spend a lot of time in photoshop making designs that "look pretty" rather than actually useful and useable. Photoshop also completely fails if you do embrace a more iterative design process, where a lot of the design decisions and even feature ideas come from creating a working product or model and actually using it.

I do appreciate those who brought up Fireworks because in all honesty I had never heard of it. AT LEAST that encourages designers to embrace the native aspects of the web interface and thus to design more closely to the medium.

I don't know if my comments really add any value here, but I just had to get it off my chest. THANK GOD people are talking about this stuff though, because I really feel like web design is going to be stuck in 2002 until people move away from Photoshop.
Digg Analytics Tools Saves a Week a Month
A beta tester found that they could save a week a month by using Digg Analytics to maintain and prune their friend list.
Dog Training - Day Care for Dogs: Is it a Good Thing?
Since the early 1990’s, day care for dogs has become a growing business both for the veterinarians and normal people alike. It serves as a good place for animal interaction with the absence of a kennel.
With UI design in particular it's a killer. it actually requite good technical knowledge, good visual sense, good psychology background, understanding of business objectives... It takes that special person who can think in an interdisciplinary way, and that usually isn't cheap or easy.
Does anyone know about any other scientific journals with free access?
Ask YC: Questions on ASP.NET and Windows hosting (getting started)
To preface this, I know pretty much nothing about ASP.NET or Windows hosting. I know the two are not popular here, but I figure someone knows something about them. I'm very familiar with Linux servers and PHP/MySQL, but I have some free time this summer and wanted to look into ASP.NET a little more closely.

Before I look into it, I'd like to know just how different the hosting aspect of it is compared to the traditional Linux/PHP setup. I'm not interested in the language/design differences right now. Note that this won't be for a startup, but rather someone who might make a couple of small CRUD-type sites; nothing crazy.

For example, PHP shared hosting is a dime-a-dozen, and there are some very good providers out there. I see that there are some shared ASP.NET hosts with good reviews as well, notably discountasp.net; would this be fine for small websites, or do all ASP.NET websites really require a VPS/dedicated server (much like Rails)?

Likewise with a Windows VPS: I see these being offered pretty cheap (~$30-40/month) that comes with Windows Server 2003. I'm guessing I would be running IIS. Would Windows Server 2003 be difficult to set up and manage from someone who is used to setting up Linux servers? On the same note, how memory-intensive are simple ASP.NET websites? On a 256MB VPS running Linux and PHP, one can fit a ton of small-traffic sites on it with no problems.

Finally, would I need to pay anything in terms of licenses? It seems Visual Web Developer and SQL Server 2005 (Express Edition) can be downloaded for free to play around with, and it doesn't seem like you need a server license when you purchase a VPS.
The dumb name is hiding something very interesting: a personal dynamic datastore accessed with quasi-natural-language queries, like web search.
The Machine That Changed the World: Great Brains (history of a computer)
Run the Veterans' Administration's VistA EMR on Ubuntu
How do I get started in LISP?
I'd like to humor you with a story (although if you are feeling impatient and would like to get to the point, you can skip to the "here it is" part):

Now, I kept hearing about how great it is to learn LISP. It is supposed to adhere closely to what some people would call 'ideal' programming habits. I decided to give it a crack-- maybe what people say is true.

Unfortunately, what was supposed to be a short trip through the Google search engine ended up turning into a journey. No matter where I look, I can't find a LISP implementation.

It seems as if LISP doesn't have a very strong community (and when I say this, I mean in comparison to other programming language communities such as those for python or ruby).

I did manage to find a few downloads of what I think are implementations, but I feel as if they are outdated. I found more than enough material to learn from. There are great books and tutorials all over the internet.

So here it is: Can anyone direct me to the appropriate website where one can download the CLISP (common lisp) implementation for Windows (my Unix machine is down right now)?

Before somebody blows up on me for asking such a dumb question, let me explain why I posted this question here of all places:(1) this place seemed like my best bet since it seems like the largest gathering of people who may know LISP outside of actual LISP-related conferences (2) It may help others who fell victim to the same issue.
Gates' last act: frees IE 8 and Silverlight second betas
Where IT is seen as a cost without benefit, developers are second class staff. When managers are non-technical, any request for time or resources may be seen as prevaricating.
I'm currently just using mod_python for my Trac installation, but it's ridiculously slow. Any suggestions?

Edit: I switched to using fcgi and it's wayyyy faster. So there's reason #9.
Remote Git Repos: The Right Way
lots: http://www.doaj.org/
http://common-lisp.net/project/lispbox/

second result after googling for 'windows lisp'

As far as a community, it does exist but I'm not up to date on it but I'm sure some others on news.yc are. Last I remember, there were a lot of active newsgroups participating in Lisp discussion.
More exceptions: accidentally having a baby, committing a felony, ruining your reputation, dropping out of college, risking brain damage, etc.
The only ones I use are "Post to Tumblr" and "Save to pHome.us" (my site).

I submitted this handy bookmarklet the other day: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=206066

It translates between local and remote urls, including the stuff after the domain. http://example.local/user/foo becomes http://www.example.com/user/foo
Once you learn the basics, try just reading through your favorite open source project. I find it to be most helpful to read other people's code to get better at understanding the innards of a language.

Also, make changes, rework it, add debugging info, go nuts! Reading and especially editing the code of others is a great way to learn a language, imho.

Just pick something that people accept as well-engineered or at least popular enough such that enough developers saw the code to make it correct and 'pythonic'.
What 300 calories looks like in various foods
U.S. Internet will shrink to 2 strong players: report
I disagree with just about every position that the author made. To be brief, I'll only counter the author's main position: "The internet, along with all the other improvements have made the process of finding and acquiring information at cost approaching zero so trivial that the schools now seem out of place." I say that this is exactly the reason why we will need schools even more so. The overwhelming amount of information necessitates a subject matter expert that can cut through the fads and focus on the first principles and fundamentals.

Secondly, any person who advocates for using Wikipedia as a primary source is clearly an idiot who has no appreciation or capability of primary source research.
I am a dev for reliability software company and Octoparts solves part of a huge problem in the electronic parts industry. Users can now find, purchase and research parts using Octoparts. It'll be interesting to see if they solve the greater problem of providing additional metadata on all these parts. Either way the website is ahead of its time and quite useful! Good to know that even the mainstream media can see that.
Social Media is timely, get over it
In my view it is better than Google Reader's "note this" (followed by emailing). I say this because GmailThis! does not insert propaganda. It simply pastes the link and preps you to email to a friend.