skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I disagree to some extent. Sure, some people would overarchitect because culture says so, but I think the more important thing is that Java doesn't give the developer "other choices"

Java doesn't force you to over-architect solutions. Wrapping everything in classes doesn't make your code over-architected by definition.

For Java, the culture is heavily towards writing "solutions" like the overengineered mess in TFA. For python, it's different. Same for Ruby or PHP or .NET or...

Note that for none of those languages are you "forced" to act like the culture says you probably will. Nothing in Ruby forces you to unit-test, for instance, but the culture leans so heavily that way that it's more shocking when you find a team not doing it.
Now only if Campfire would add this feature I could pin both these tabs.
Startup Quote: Jonathan Ive, senior vice president, Apple
A major complication that you do not address is how to do confidence testing on the results of your pricing difference. There is an important difference between "A did better than B but who knows why" and "We're confident that there is a real difference." Figuring that out is not easy.
It’s very easy to be different, but very difficult to be better.

- Jonathan Ive

http://startupquote.com/post/2941634287
The current common stance of linguists is that the SWH doesn't hold for human languages. I personally disagree, but I haven't done the formal experiments to confirm my informal belief.
Introducing Kindle Singles
Simplifying slideshare player
A pro version isn't the only way, you could launch:

* light version

* experiment with different sales and promo codes

* offer different rates for paying ahead a certain amount
you know what I trust?

a javascript tutorial that contains no javascript or styling. also, double plus true on the "property maps" thing.
Alternatively, use Readability, and continue to nag. If at any point Readability becomes necessary, it's a pretty good indication that the author should be made aware that their site is crap.
How Lisp macros differ from static code-generation and metaprogramming
"It's not a real programming language unless it's statically typed."

Then see what excuses come forth when you suggest Haskell.
Would it be possible to blend something like this into, say, GCC, so that when you compile your code, easily hardware accelerated sections (for whatever definition of that you like) can be generated into FPGA loadable files and used at runtime?
Very well done! Looks like a full script of our experiences with AdWords back when it was new and shiny.

So, Woot is actually serious about this? Glad to see someone put things as they are.
If there ever was a powerful argument for expressiveness in languages I think you've just made it in a very hard to refute way.
You can't turn content into users. You can, however, create content that attracts or keeps users.

As for the word 'User', it's more correct than the alternatives. 'Customers' are where you get your revenue from. Free and/or ad-supported? You users aren't your customers. Sure, they're 'people' too, but so is everyone who doesn't use your product.

And despite Ty's triple post about video, I think videos are almost always horrible. Don't do a video if you can't adequately show your product with it... And don't rely on JUST a video. You'll miss everyone who doesn't have 10 minutes of time to waste. (And for the love of money, don't make it longer than 10 minutes!)
"I agree that some programmers do, but I think you only pay attention to 'culture' if you don't really know what you're doing."

Or work with people who don't really know what they're doing. Or have to maintain or modify their code.
I have never cared about, or taken notice of any 'culture'. I agree that some programmers do, but I think you only pay attention to 'culture' if you don't really know what you're doing.

False. If I'm starting a company around a product built with Rails, it behooves me to stick to cultural norms (in Rails' case: TDD/BDD, Continuous Integration, so forth) because otherwise it's difficult to find good developers that will work on the product.

Our job as 'hackers' is to not do things the 'accepted way'. To think outside the box. To go against 'accepted wisdom'. That's kinda the point.

That's not the point, it's just usually a means to an end. As you say, doing effective work in a Java shop requires either writing better Java, or using a language like Clojure. But in some cases it's faster to go with accepted wisdom rather than combat it, even if we disagree. In some cases, shockingly, the accepted wisdom is beneficial.

Ignoring cultures around languages out of hand is arrogant, brash, and probably wrong. If after you've examined the culture you find you don't agree, that's completely different. You can only think outside the box once you've examined the box.
It's true that the "bad java programmers" version doesn't work for negative numbers, but that's actually much better than his version of gamma, which doesn't work for ANY numbers, since it has a bug:

Math.pow(z/Math.E, z)

should be:

Math.pow(tmp2/Math.E, z)

So from this I conclude that there are two types of java programmers: those that over-architect their solutions, and those that don't even both to test the code they put in blog posts ;-)
What's your source on a/b testing price on identical products being illegal?

I've never heard that and none of the links provided in the comments so far justify your claim. It is a pretty extreme assertion and you provided no links justifying it either.

I can see this rapidly turning into an urban myth, whispered wild eyed at 3am over ramen noodles as founders try and figure out a price for their product.
Because the tool has almost certainly been influenced by the culture in which it was created. And the tools that integrate well with that tool, and the people on the IRC channel where you will ask questions about that tool, and so on and so forth.
Thank you for reminding me. But Readability is not perfect. Less than an
hour after posting this comment I came across a site that could be improved
by Readability, except for the fact that Readability did not render the page
correctly (it did not show some information in lists).

I still believe that pointing out ways that authors can improve the usability of their web pages is useful feedback.
Emoticon Keyboard - How about a Programmer's keyboard :P
The first time I saw the GNU 'hello world' package it gave me exactly the same feeling.

The amount of superstructure piled on top of a simple thing in concept is making programming much less accessible than it needs to be. By the time you understand the scaffolding you've lost sight of the problem.

The clojure example elsewhere in this thread it a really nice breath of fresh air, unfortunately it still needs all of java to run, and the number of times I've run in to obscure classpath issues and runtime problems are large enough to remind me that clojure is not entirely free from this sort of heritage either. That does not reflect on the language, but clojure has enough java roots that some of the issues are quite familiar.
Thanks, Jacob!

They did not ask me to wear the hoodie, but I did ask if I'd be required to dress up and the producer said I should wear whatever I'm comfortable in. And then I told her that was a hoodie and a shirt, she got excited because "we always have old white guys in suits on."

Alas, I'm just a young-ish white male in a hoodie perpetuating a stereotype, but yes, I was certainly going to hustle the hipmunk logo as best as I could. There was potentially going to be a breadpig question, too, but alas, there wasn't enough time.
Q:How do you hire? A:I don’t look at résumés at all.
You can try a similar effect by downloading a torrent of images and opening the files while they're partially completed.
The design is terrific, kudos to the designer that put this up. It remains me to the Lost world fairs [1].

[1] http://lostworldsfairs.com/
Interesting. I agree with the SMS comments. I almost entirely SMS. Mostly only business and family on Talk.

Two years ago I did a "simple phone" concept. Mine was touched based. Never progressed it, to busy with other things. I find it funny that somebody did.

Here was my rough design. http://bit.ly/fTz643
I don't know if the other comment was edited, but he doesn't say anything about 'illegal'. People certainly found it distasteful though.
This just in: cloud services discover biff(1). Within a few years we should have an OS.

Sorry to be cynical, it pains me to see the whole state of computing thrown out the window everytime we reinvent new paradigms (none of which add substantial value).

Hint: we'll progress when we start building over old assets, not reinventing them at every "guerre de clocher".
General Assembly: New York's Urban Campus for Entrepreneurs
In fairness I think he literally wrote the code the way he claims he wrote it 'as a rant', so it's not surprising he didn't actually test it. If this was written off the cuff without testing it's actually pretty impressive.
That's the 100/yr agreement, right? I'm sure it's coming fairly soon, they're shipping install-on-chip now, and it would be fairly pointless to sell an OS upgrade on a medium they're phasing out.

I'd bet that Lion's shipped on a DVD with a chip option. Whatever's after Lion will most likely have digital distribution as an option, though.
The biggest complaint I have with many Java developers is that they develop a whole bunch of really bad habits. Specifications are unclear, or they think someday the code may need to be extended into a different direction. So they write a whole bunch of overblown architectural nonsense, sight unseen, thinking that the additional crap someday will help out and make things easier.

This is not fair; Java has moved beyond this. In modern best-practices Java it is no longer necessary or even possible to write big piles of gratuitous OO spaghetti. Today, experienced Java programmers build their applications on top of huge, industry-standard, highly polished piles of architectural bullshit, wrestling with which leaves them with no time to write any code of their own.
The concept is called "price discrimination". There is a great discussion going in this thread and I may be wrong at this. Even if it may not be illegal, it would leave a bad taste in your potential customers' mouth especially since there are better alternatives.
This is probably also a really clever use of captcha as a way to train their face-recognition algorithm.
You can read about 8 characters at a time, but since most SMS's are pretty short if you have good fingers and get used to the buttons it's not as bad as you might think (kind of like a pager). I know a guy that uses this phone as his primary. For composing, there's no T9, btw.
PRN Interactive...where else can you work with Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and Ryan Seacrest in the same week!
How do most folk deal with this? Just get 'better' at not making small mistakes?

Yeah, this is exactly what happens when you do a lot of programming. Apparently, writing code isn't like writing natural language, where some people are terrible spellers and just can't get better. I know lots of programmers who are terrible spellers, some who can't spell a word twice the same way to save their lives, and in code they are as good at getting function and variable names right as anyone else. (FWIW, I observe this working in statically checked, compiled languages. Bad spellers don't seem to go through more "fix typo, compile, fix typo, compile" cycles than good spellers. It might be different when you don't have the compiler's immediate feedback pricking you to make fewer mistakes.)

The only problem is when people create class, function, and variable names that contain misspellings. Then your brain has to fight with itself, leading to repeated errors.
I think he wasn't referring to my comment but to my post where I write: "It’s illegal and can lead to huge potential lawsuit."
Handling Deceased in a Social World
There are a lot instances of people claiming that republishing a legal threat they sent constitutes copyright infringement, but I can't find any instances of anyone successfully winning a copyright-infringement suit over it. There's a fairly strong fair-use argument, at least.
I think those qualify as spam.
One key perhaps is not to link to articles that say "Sorry, couldn't find what you were looking for!", but maybe that's just me. :)
In Haskell:

factorial n = product [1..n]

Also polymorphic to all of those types and results in 1 for negatives.

If you want the polymorphic "memoizing version":

factorials = scanl (*) 1 [0..]
factorial = (factorials !!)
"Tiger Mother" in America and "American Mom" in China? WSJ
"Pricing for physical goods is simple. For example, if you are manufacturing staplers, all you need to do is to calculate cost of production and distribution, slam 20% margin on it and there you have the price you can sell your shiny stapler machines for."

Not true. In fact, a lot of Maker businesses get hung up here. The pricing of physical goods depends on the market every bit as much as the pricing of software or web services. In fact, large companies rely on that all the time--case in point is P&Gs Swiffer Sweeper, that they charge much more than the manufacturing cost for the sweeper and for the refills.

Many small business owners I've run across actually feel guilty if they charge "too much" (say 100% markup) for their physical goods they are selling, even though their competitors sell at that price. The price elasticity of demand applies just as much for physical goods as it does for non-physical.
>Light water plants use water as a moderator and a coolant leak would relieve pressure making a steam explosion unlikely.

I mean, the pressure in the containment building. Isn't that the purpose of the containment walls, to withstand steam pressure from a coolant leak? Or am I misunderstanding things.

>Coolant leak and steam explosion are in conflict with one a other.

My mistake.
My grandparents wouldn't get this; too expensive.
"An USB"? Do you pronounce it uss-buh?
I've heard that one before and I've seen sites that do it but I have yet to find a place where there is actual evidence that it works, do you have a reference for that?

We're debating trying this and I'd like a bit more evidence that it really works and why it does.
I think the disagreement most people would have with this approach is that you're coming at it from the wrong side. It's money first and then "oh yeah, I'd better add some value."
What use is the social captcha if your friends list is public? Many people had this set because it was the new default when the settings switched some half-year ago. A lot of them probably don't even realize it.
I don´t know Clojure, but it looks like it will give a wrong answer for 0
I agree. Downloading Doubletwist does give you a bit of the Android Market, but nothing like the iTunes experience. The most surprising thing is how many of the big apps for iOS are on Android. Not all, but enough.

Unfortunately Google doesn't make access to the store as easy as it could.
Videos are great as a supplement but they should be kept to 1 minute. Mine is 1:30 and it's still longer than I'd like.
I think Seth Godin's book Permission Marketing covered this ground well.
Godin says that the highest level of permission is the "Intravenous Level" exemplified by services like spring water delivery. It takes building and continuously maintaining customer trust to retain this level of permission.

Book exerpt link:
http://books.google.com/books?id=qgtgVsBTVEcC&pg=PA100&#...
Poll: Valuation after incubator program
What kind of pre-money valuation do fellow HNers see after completing a program like YCombinator, TechStars, etc?
Project Kipling Data Journalism Tools Release 0.2.0 - Sentiment Analysis
I think that would be pretty bad, you'd have to get paper refills approx every 5 seconds (and there'd need to be room for that paper to be stored somewhere), and the text recognition would have to either be perfect or extremely cumbersome.
I agree. Exactly the reason, I have given up on anything but really good 3rd party apps, on Android. I have an iTouch which I use for simple apps. Android is for Gmail, GReader, Hacker News, Reddit and the browser. iTouch for everything else.
Oops, indeed. Hadn't seen who submitted the article.

I think he's right though that there needs to be some linkage to "what you can and can't do, legally".
Everything I've seen from Google is that they're agnostic on native vs web apps. They're happy as long as you're using Google services and looking at Google ads.
Yes, that's right I should have touched that point. I think the revenue for each variation can be approximated as normal curve and then a hypothesis test can be done to see if difference in mean is statistically significant.
This is not a bad plan, but there is a danger here.

If you find that "1 customer" (being a series of disparate customers) all ask for various minor tweaks to the way something works, then before you have half-a-dozen disparate forks in your logic you probably do want to pull that out and use a strategy pattern where applicable. It doesn't take many clever sidesteps in a clean algorithm to make a nightmarish scenario later on.
I guess Amazon has found a way to charge $3 for a short story.

Why not buy a copy of Analog Magazine, or McSweeney's, or any other good periodical with quality fiction, and get several short stories for the same price?
It reminds me of Rob Pike's "Notes on Programming in C", where Pike takes frequency into account as guideline, i.e. "A global variable rarely used may deserve a long name, maxphysaddr say" [http://doc.cat-v.org/bell_labs/pikestyle - Variable names paragraph - a nice and suggested read].
Interestingly, the factorial function is typically used as a trivial example case for introductions to learning a language. Used for the purpose of learning function calls and recursion and as such we tend to think of it in the simplest context.

From that context, the factory function makes this article a great example of over designing. And certainly in some senses the point of the article is quite accurate.

However, there exists another less common context for the factorial function--serious usage of the function. Not as an introductory example to the language, but as the basis of actual software that has purpose. In this context questions like memory usage, processing power, and even mathematical precision come in to play. Is BigInt large enough for the required use? Maybe you need to use a class based number type capable of having a limitless value. Perhaps you are targeting a distributed processing system, or a single super computer. Will your computing have memory limitations, processing limitations? Suddenly, when considering real applications for the factorial function, all those satirical over-design considerations are now principal necessities that you'd curse the programmer for not having implemented.

Ultimately, the key is scope. It's necessary to know the intended scope of the functionality you are coding. You need to consider who (will use code), how (the code will be used) and where (the code will be used [platform]). In Java, the big GET is the DRY philosophy. An immense library of code is available for your reuse. And it's certainly true when perusing the code base of those libraries you'll see a lot of what might seem like over-designing. However, when you consider the intended scope, it's rarely actually over-designed. Because frankly the scope of most code in the library boils down Everyone (who), Any purpose (what), Any platform (where). In such a scope, simple three liner utility functions seldom are sufficient or appropriate.
I was also going to post this. A must read for all programmers. You can overcomplicate things in any language.

"The Evolution of a Haskell programmer" is brilliant. Funny and insightful at the same time. Make sure to read the bottom part: "But seriously, folks, ..."
When I'm mating, USB is generally not involved.
Snap, Crackle and Pop
Unbelievable Apple accessories: Sometimes, Apple churns out tat like the rest
I user Gmail's "Priority In-box" feature and my priority section never has more than 5-10. Sometimes I let the other part get a little unruly when I am busy. I did use the option to add a section for "unread" messages before the rest of the mailbox.
The funny thing is that you could also write REDUCE and RANGE, with one line each.

In Scheme you could even write DEFN, again, one line.

[Edit:

Not RANGE you don't. Let's see how long it takes to get it under 5 lines]
< $500k
That's not price discrimination, that's discrimination, period, this article has nothing to do with that kind of discrimination so I don't understand why you're pulling it in.

And that is illegal anyway, as well it should be.

Selling the same product at different price points is done all the time (bulk discounts, account discounts and so on).

The issue here is not whether it is legal to sell the same product at different prices, the issue is whether or not it is legal to offer the same product to the same class of buyers at different prices at the same time.

And that is legal, even if not always in the best interest of the business:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_discrimination

I've done it, briefly, to test different price points and I made sure to refund those we tested at a higher level after the experiment was over.
The classpath is one of my favorite things about the JVM. In my experience, it's a great way to unambiguously specify what to load.

Just look at the horrible mess that is ASP.NET assembly loading: you've got the bin/ directory, Temporary ASP.NET Files, and the Global Assembly Cache all competing when you load libraries.
Remind HN: KC Meetup, Tonight 5:30pm, McCoys (Westport)
$500k
It doesn't make a lot of sense to put tabs between the variable and its value. Between the type and the variable name makes sense because how often do you try and look something up by type versus by variable name. But when you're looking for a particular variable, you tend to want to see its value right away.
Yeah that is silly, but there are pleanty of good programmer's keyboards:

* Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000

* IBM Model M

* Mac keyboards

* Logitech G15

* Das Keyboard

(the top picks for this stack overflow thread: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/687/keyboard-for-programm... )
$1mm
Setup threads:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2080049

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2046160
The BP oil spill was in part caused by computers using Windows NT 4. From 1996.
Another source: http://techrights.org/2010/07/23/blue-screen-of-death-and-bp/ Just posted as a reminder about the importance of updated systems.
$2mm
$3mm - $5mm
$5mm +
Haskell wins!
We bootstrapped after completing the program.
Open Hosting Launches New KVM Cloud Computing Platform
We were unable to raise money.
5 Steps to Building a Social Enterprise | Noobpreneur Business Blog
Ocaml. Haskell is like that guitarist bum friend who lives on other people's couches but somehow ends up at the Grammys every year.
Facebook already supports this (as another commenter says) but you can also send a text to FBOOK with the next "otp" to get a one-time password that expires after a few minutes.

If you're in a place where it's likely your computer could be compromised then this keeps your regular password secure.
Names are great places to put documentation. Documentation in comments isn't as likely to stay up-to-date.

If your names are merely for binding (e.g: f(x) = .. x ..) and don't contribute much, then getting rid of them can be helpful. In Haskell, you can use "points-free" style to get rid of names like that. For example, you can replace:

f x = 1 + 2 * x

With:

f = (1+) . (2*)
Nope. The result of (range 1 0) is an empty range, and when you apply * with no arguments you get 1.
37signals do not care about decentralisation. It is as simple as that.
It's great when it works as expected. Woe to you if your cron job happens to get started with a different CLASSPATH set compared to your regular log in (just one example).