skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
It's unfortunate that he thinks Perl is one of those lanagues (like PHP and COBOL) that you "shouldn't use" because it's useless, dead, broken, whatever. PHP gets a lot of hate because it's completely broken. The designers knew nothing about programming when they designed it, and that shows up every time someone writes a PHP site.

But I digress. Perl is not in the same class as PHP, it's in the same class as Ruby and Python. I think it actually one-ups those languages in a variety of places, actually. Perl has predictable scoping rules, unlike Ruby; and you can have multi-line anonymous functions, unlike Python :) I know this sounds like a broken record, but Perl's culture of libraries is something other languages really need to steal. The best part of using Perl is the code that you don't write ;)

Anyway, just thought I would clear this up. The world has a lot of hate for Perl, but it's mostly unfounded. Perl back in 1996 sucked, but programmers back in 1996 sucked. In the last few years, Perl has attracted a ton of exceptional programmers, and we have some really nice stuff now. (Moose, Ernst, Catalyst, DBIx::Class, the list goes on...)

</rant>
You know the syntax of switch in the language you have been using in the last three months. If you don't, something's wrong!
How is this article not dead yet?
The Berkeley I know valued differences in personality and personal style a great deal. Maybe a better word would be 'niche', but there is definitely a bias towards playing up one's oddities and particularities.
The example he cited isn't a copyright question. Deletion is not an exclusive right.
Indeed, whether candidates write code during their interview is one of the items on the Joel Test (http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000043.html).
Although, don't we sometimes unfairly criticize entities that are popular only because they are popular?
http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.wordpress.com/2008/01/30/40-indi...
Office Space Redux - Thief wrangles micropayments into $50,000
Sure, but we're talking about testing ability vs. memory - switch is incidental.
Applying Divine Proportion To Your Web Designs
Good point. Have you seen Swordfish? You can also evaluate how they respond to modern management practices.
Good article, but one nit. This graph is weird:

http://www.teamquest.com/images/gunther/ldavg1/LAFull.gif

It's hard to understand because the lines represent minutes (1 minute, 5 minute, 15 minute load averages) but the x-axis is in seconds. That means I have to divide by 60 in my head, which is a lot of unnecessary work.
I like them as long as pseudo-code is acceptable. I don't really care how good someone's memory is with regards to language syntax; I care about whether or not they can solve problems and think them through.
How do I get an invite to that game?
I'm from Tucson. There are a number of programming and DBA jobs in Phoenix. I constantly get contacted to do contract work in the area. I don't know how many startups are based in the area. I'd look into attending a Refresh Phoenix meeting or goto a startupdrinks. Though it looks the the startupdrinks site just sends you to other local groups.

http://www.refreshphoenix.org/

http://phoenix.startupdrinks.com/
If you have the sense from whiteboard discussions that the candidate understands computer science (like gets recursion) but you want to make sure they can code, why not choose a subset of a problem that you (your company) needs to solve?
Dennis Ritchie (R from K&R) explains "/* You are not expected to understand this */"
My elitist half couldn't agree more with this article, however my capitalist half recognizes commercial potential. That said, what I find more intriguing are the frequent social migrations that have occurred since Friendster. And I believe many social sites are over-valued and over-hyped (signs of a web 2.0 bust?) given the fickle loyalty of internet-social-bees.

That said, the rise of me-too .com hives give others the opportunity to improve, but are they really making significant strides in innovation that are lasting and unique? For example, Digg significantly improved an old concept from the early 00's known at 'top sites' by shifting focus to relevant content as oppose to site-specific. But, what have followers of the Digg model offered besides servicing a niche audience?

When this same me-too trend happened in web 1.0, funding dried up for a few years while the internet cleansed itself...
I'm over WordPress.

Drupal is my new love... however, they significantly need to improve their website to better service the growing community and module contributions.
/agree with most of the people here. Coding questions have a purpose.

You need to consider what you are trying to determine by asking any question. Really, what is it about the candidate you want to know? After pinning down precisely what you want to know then tailor a question to figure this out with as little peripheral stuff as possible.

If you want to know if someone can generate some code in their preferred language on the spot, fine. Pick a very simple problem, like 'Write a program to display numbers in the fibinocci sequence', and explain the fib seq to them if they don't know it. I wouldn't even count points off if they make any kind of mistake that a compiler would catch as long as they know how to fix it. Have them do it on the white board.

This kind of Q isn't designed to figure out how much they know of 10 different languages. It's designed to see if they can put some code down in their preferred language and have it do something useful.

The biggest constraint in an interview isn't the honesty of the candidate, or even their knowledge; it's the N hour time limit. Your goal as the interviewer is to squeeze as much information about who the candidate really is in the time allowed.
is there no way to get funded by ycombinator in between the winter and summer founders programs?
Google's Seattle Conference on Scalability v.2
Don't know why this is getting downvoted -- I read and enjoyed this books a lot recently. I'm finding this to be a great thread for resources to satisfy the curiosity about probability and statistics that they left me with.
Good way to get some free consulting ;-)
I've known the CEO of Aweber.com for years, and he strives to create a competitive service. They work very hard on deliverability and have connections to the big ISPs to deal with on-going issues. Good folks, check 'em out.
Speed Up! by making fewer ridiculous database queries with ridiculous clauses like "select ... where 0=1".
The grand design syndrome: Common plague for the eager newbie developer
I don't think he means open questions, but things related to the problem.

I interviewed once with a company that OCRed medical documents. One guy held up a sheet of paper and asked "How much memory does this take up?" which was a deliberately open-ended question. I was initially stumped, but then he started feeding me domain knowledge and assumptions, such as common DPI values and expected fidelity. Then I started coming up with estimates.

I don't think he expected me to have answer right off. I think he wanted to see how much I could figure out on my own if given hints.
Data Portability: Is the Social Network Data You’re Hoarding Treasure or Trash?
http://informitv.com/articles/2008/05/09/zattooclaimscopyrig...

In the UK at least it seems they have no agreements with the channels and they're claiming it's legal under copyright law when in reality it's largely a gray area.
I generally rebel at the idea of describing what VCs do as a "process" --- it's mostly a system combining the most salient attributes of a good-'ol-boys club and the recording industry. But yeah, at a certain point, probably around $100k, you're in that system. Not the YC system.
Zattoo is illegal because they are planning to insert advertisements in between moving from channel to channel, and in the UK advertising is not allowed on BBC channels because we the British public pay the license fee.

See:
http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/organgrinder/2007/08/tv_unfestiv...
...and...
http://informitv.com/articles/2008/05/09/zattooclaimscopyrig...

Quote:
In a statement the BBC said: “We have not entered into any formal agreements with Zattoo to redistribute BBC channels”. ITV said: “We wouldn’t rule out third party deals, but there aren’t any in place at the moment”. Channel 4 said: “We don’t have any formal arrangements with Zattoo”. Five said: “The inclusion of the Five service on Zattoo has not been authorised or licenced by Five”.
TypePad AntiSpam, A New Open Source Comment Spam Fighter
This might be pedantic, but many people also incorrectly say "hockey stick" when they mean exponential growth. Hockey stick growth would be more like a sudden change between two very different rates of linear growth, which would be equally traumatic for your start up in the short term but probably more manageable in the long term.
Absolutely fantastic so far (all things considered)... can't wait for a permission structure so we can actually use this thing behind closed doors (virtually of course)!!

We have fought night and day with different products and solutions that just aren't flexible, require crappy proprietary software (eBeam), or too problematic and don't function as intended. And they all share a common trait as you've already called out: "just not natural enough".

Pay attention to your competitor's mistakes, just don't get too wrapped up chasing their tail. So many bad solutions right now. While you missed first to market, it doesn't matter -- just make it the best. Good luck! You certainly have my support and vote of confidence... I would be very interested in private beta.

ps. I could see this being a prime candidate for acquisition by Adobe for integration into Adobe Acrobat Connect, that is... if that don't rob you. :)
Ask YC: When did you start having interesting ideas?
The other day I was trying to recall examples of specific interesting ideas I'd had before I started keeping an idea journal, which was around the time I went started college. The funny thing is that I really couldn't come up with much of anything. There was an essay that I'd posted on my homepage about an insight I'd had my freshman year of high school, but that was the earliest specific example of a non-trivial idea I could remember having. So I am still trying to figure out whether I just didn't start having interesting ideas before a certain point, or whether I did have interesting ideas but have just forgotten them all because I didn't write them down. I'm leaning toward never having had interesting ideas in the first place, but it's difficult to say. There seems to be a lot of cognitive research on ability to remember specific tangible events and routines from childhood, but not so much on ability to remember one's early ideas.

So how do I define an interesting idea? As a working definition, I'd say a prerequisite is that it's something novel. Maybe not totally unique, but at the least the kind of idea where you say, wow, I bet maybe maybe a few dozen or a couple hundred people have had this same sequence of thoughts before.

Examples: Seth Godin had an interesting idea the other day that as the price of gas increased and telecommuting became more common, the expectations for the quality of in-person interactions is going to increase accordingly. Nothing super complicated, just a simple cause and effect, but still I think it meets the minimum level for being novel and interesting. Seth comes up with a lot of novel ideas. Edge.org is filled with them.

I don't want to give any definition that's too precise though because I don't want my preconceptions to bias others. Other people obviously spend their time thinking about different stuff than me, so the set of things that qualify is probably larger than anything I'll be able to clearly articulate.

So when did you start having interesting ideas? What was the first non-trivial idea you ever remember having?
Pinch Media (analytics for iPhone apps)
Ability requires memory, at least for basic things.

You can't be a good programmer and forget the syntax of the language you are working in. If you need to look up something as fundamental as switch statement in the internet, it's like a writer looking up words in the dictionary before writing them down in his novel.
ah, yes - great book!
If you don't know the basic features of a language you don't know that language anymore. You maybe once knew it really well, and you still know the general syntax, but you aren't a insert language programmer anymore.

I do agree though that testing specific language skills is mostly pointless. The only time I've been given a programming test as part of an interview I was given a basic language spec that filled a couple pages then a book of problems to solve in the new language. Thats the way you should test programming skill in my opinion.
I just finished reading "My Startup Life" by Ben Casnocha. It's a good introduction to the entrepreneurial world for people just starting the journey, and it has some good insights that can benefit anybody. (Book site: http://mystartuplife.com/)
This is true. I aced the coding portion, but after 6 months, I was definitely not a good fit in the culture of the last company I worked for.
I think switch is a particularly bad example here. Honestly, I can't (accurately) tell you the last time I used one. It's not an every-day construct for a lot of people.
Download Firefox Day 2008 | Tech Jaws
Hooray for programmer folklore!
I don't think that I would ever hire a insert language programmer. When looking for someone to program, I'm just looking for a programmer; language isn't important.
MacBook Air, no question. It's fast enough.

I came to this conclusion unexpectedly, having lived with a couple of generations of MBP 17", and, tiring of slow laptop drives, got a latest-generation 24" iMac a few weeks ago. (Which is a great balance of disk/CPU speed, size and cost vs the high-end Mac Pros. I had a 30" cinema display on the MBP and found it too large, oddly enough, while the 24" size seems just exactly right, especially when paired with another 23" cinema display for serious real estate.)

Then, having passed on my latest 17" to my daughter for some serious InDesign production work (2000+-page concordance), I realized I'd need a portable machine, so got the Air as an after-thought, assuming I'd only use it on the road.

Without my realizing it, I had shifted most of my daily work to the Air (email, web browsing, Campfire, iChat, NetNewsWire, Terminal (emacs), etc.), leaving the iMac for only actual development work. (Mostly iPhone development these days.)

The Air seems just as snappy as my recent-generation MBPs, and it's a dream to pick up and carry around--more like a paper notebook than a computer. The screen is about the best you'll ever find (LED backlighting), and the CPU core shutdown problem seems to be defeated fairly easily by simply selecting Optimization: Normal in the Energy Saver system preference panel. (I don't think this particular fix is well-known. It certainly solved the YouTube-video-causes-one-core-thermal-shutdown problem for me.)

So go with your heart and you won't be sorry. ;-)
A lot of people get hired in for emergencies. In such cases waiting for person to learn your offices language of choice isn't ideal.
EC2 now offering "High-CPU" VM (2-8 core) instances
Retail politics in business
Why has this article gathered so many points here? It was quite inane, no?
It was meant to be a lighted joke about how so many people are proposing ways to fix twitter it reminds me of slashdot a few years ago where people were trying to fix spam and they started responding to each suggestion with a list of flaws with Xs next to the ones that applied in that case. I'm not making a point about erlang, i dont really know anything about erlang, but maybe i touched a nerve so i apologise.
Isn't this more Valleywag than News.YC material?
Twitter, scaling and solving the wrong problem
The real beef here is:

http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/?p=1189

and the update

http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/?p=1198

The submitted article is just a "we're doomed" post.

What I find bizarre about some of these exploits is the amount of effort these people go to in order to steal World of Warcraft passwords. I mean, seriously. Wouldn't you think they'd go after something a little more valuable? "I risked being hunted down by Interpol, but the level 70 paladin was totally worth it".

EDIT: I'm aware that they're probably hijacking accounts so they can run bots/goldfarmers on those accounts without paying for them. (or having their credit cards blacklisted) That doesn't really make it any less bizarre or amazing to me.
I never use Ruby's case or switch or whatever-it's-called.

I could make up some mumbo-jumbo about case being a code smell and that it should actually be refactored to a method dispatch over polymorphic objects, but the truth is that I have no idea why I don't write case statements, I just don't.
to protect your reputation online, don't write careless comments on yc
I'd say Seth Godin puts on a better show than most people.
What to do After College
A "blubber"?
Writers very frequently use the dictionary. There is no problem with it, that's why we have dictionaries.
I think taking some time to sit down and _read_ some code is one of the best and least used techniques during an interview. I think it's more of an indicator for job performance than writing some green-field code. After all, on the job, more time is spent reading and understanding code than writing code with no preexisting context.
Ask HN: tips about VCs and angels
I am new to the startup thing and i am just starting to form some ideas and working on them.

If i succeed i am very likely to need funding and i dont know the best way to approach it.

Googling and clicking on the first link works obviosuly but where do I find the best and most trustworthy investors?

What kind of deals should I demand/expect?

At what stage is good to start seeking VC?

Or shouldn't i seek but let the VCs find me(i.e. launch product and if it is good people will come and VCs will come)?

What is normal, VCs approaching startups or startups approaching VCs?

Are there a lot of unsinister "sharks" in the business?

What else to think about?
A trivial coding problem is essential. I've seen people with 10 years of experience in XML#Java.NETEnterprise2012 who don't understand conditionals, loops, or boolean expressions.

For phone screens, I find Steve Yegge's guide a useful starting point: http://steve.yegge.googlepages.com/five-essential-phone-scre...

I'm not a fan of asking candidates to reverse a string or to implement atoi or a binary search, because those have corner cases which, under interview pressure, might be too much to ask for. I just ask for an implementation of a gcd (greatest common divisor) function, in any language. I always explain the problem in detail. Only one guy (a PhD in physics) ever gave me Euclid's algorithm (section 1.1 in Knuth's AOCP Volume 1), so I don't expect it. I do expect a trivial loop, and most candidates take 15-20 minutes to come up with it, and need lots of hints.

As far as I'm concerned, anyone who can't come up with a trivial loop (or recursive or tail recursive function) for something like this shouldn't be programming for a living. Maybe "developing enterprise solutions," but never programming.
I'd say get your own dedicated host with your own IP address, and use normal outgoing mail. (I use a colocated Xserve G5 with Postfix, which is a great system.)

As long as your SMTP server is reasonably secure (you can run simple blacklist tests on it from various sites), you shouldn't get caught by IP-based spam filters, and then it's just a question of whether your content looks spammy to your recipients' mail systems. That's unrelated to how you're delivering the email, so it's the same problem no matter what you're using to send.
My experience:

Successfully pasing a code challenge is not a good predictor of future success. However, failing to pass a code challenge is a very good predictor of future failure. Furthermore, making the test harder does not make it predict future success well.

Therefore, I belong to the "FizzBuzz" school: Make the test ridiculously simple. It should take no more than fifteen minutes to complete. If the person gets it obviously right, throw the result away and move on to more important quetsions. Do not try to deduce a lot of malarky about their programming style or ability from an obviously contrived problem.

For example, writing:

a = 5; b = 10

Does not mean they don't know Ruby well, and writing:

a, b = 5, 10

Does not mean they are a Ruby expert. And writing:

fsquare = lambda { |x| x * x }

Does not mean they are a closet Bipolar Lisp Programmer. If the program works, it's a pass, move on. If there is a syntax error or some such, who cares, move on.

But if they struggle... You need to investigate the reason for their difficulty with a simple problem.
"As far as I'm concerned, anyone who can't come up with a trivial loop (or recursive or tail recursive function) for something like this shouldn't be programming for a living. Maybe "developing enterprise solutions," but never programming."

Priceless, If you ever put this on a cafepress mug or tee shirt, you can count on selling me a dozen or so as office gifts. Thanks for the laugh.
Necessary but not sufficient.

I always give a fairly simple problem, pencil and paper, a soda, and leave them alone for 15 to 30 minutes. Before I leave the room, I make sure they clearly understand what's expected.

What they do isn't important. Our discussion about what they did is. I don't care what syntax or mannerisms they use; I do care if they understand what was needed and what they did well enough to explain what they did and why they did it.

Almost every time some good follow-up questions and segues ensue. What about this? What about that? I've learned more about people in the discussion after the problem than from anything else.
GWT for Java to AJAX compilation
Think about building your product, illustrating market potential, and how you are meeting an unmet need. Once you do this, you can worry about where to get funding and VC interaction. At such an early stage, you've got a better chance getting a small amount of money from an angel investor or group of angels than a large VC. Angels also enable you to retain more control and equity. Good luck.
Why Walter Bender Left One Laptop Per Child
Perceptions are very important. I perceive this post as uneducated and immature, just because of spelling and grammar. It may be completely inaccurate, but remember you are giving anyone a polaroid shot of everything about you.

It is a good question, but it has been addressed a few times on here.
I think sites that run some kind of an automatic ranking or otherwise a user-driven voting system are better protected from spam. To make it even better there should the second level with weighted users (user ranking in other words) to compensate massive automatic registrations of fake users.

I'm sure it is much easier for Flickr, for instance, to fight spam than for Cragislist, because Flickr has an excellent automatic ranking system of photos based on users' (implicit) votes plus users' weights. This at least prevents spam from slipping into the daily top-500, and the rest is not that important. They host all kinds of garbage anyway and that doesn't bother the community.

This is what makes spammers turn away from Flickr, I think. I have never seen any spam on Flickr's top-500 page (well, except those crappy images with anything-Apple insanely upvoted by a bunch of Apple fans).