skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
For that reason alone, clever code is usually unmaintainable.

An entire application of "clever" for clever's sake is unmaintainable. This tricky sort of clever is sometimes exactly what's needed, but should be used sparingly, where it is most beneficial, and it should be well commented.

On the other hand, clever directed at the goal of readability and maintainability can be wonderfully maintainable. Clever for readability's sake should be throughout the whole application. Accomplishing this is an iterative task, ideally throughout the whole life of the application. This is one of the most important purposes of refactoring.

While it's much easier to brag about the 1st kind of clever and show it off to your coworkers, you'll benefit much more from the 2nd kind of clever.

A tip from my experience: Managerial emphasis on the 1st "clever" is sometimes accompanied by a culture of coder showmanship. Managerial emphasis on the 2nd kind of clever tends to be more focused on sustainable results.
Create a folder without a name
And you suppose making more money, or wanting to, is somehow evil?
It's just a variation of the same "bug" which has been there since the early days of Google Translate.
How Poor Execution And Practices Break The Web
so how is this different to jailbreaking an iPhone?
"It's unfortunate that this avenue isn't researched or condoned much."

Right now MAPS.org is doing an observational study of Pangaea Biomedics, one of the more famous ibogaine clinics in Mexico. Claire Wilkins (who runs it) gave a pretty amazing talk at Horizons this year, which you can watch here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0tt3mgT8gA
donated. next: hack my ps3.
Wind Of Change
Deploy Websites on Amazon S3 using Jekyll and Git
Did anyone actually read the article and his source?!? The article's author, Gregg Easterbrook, appears to have misread the NCAA report that supports his main thesis.

Here is the key statement from Easterbrook's article: "Recently the NCAA reported that only 14 Division I-A programs clear a profit, while no college or university in the United States has an athletic department that is financially self-sustaining. Nobody in Division I -- not Alabama, not Auburn, not Oklahoma, nobody -- has an athletic department that pays its own way. "

In this quote he makes reference to this NCAA report: http://www.ncaapublications.com/productdownloads/REV_EXP_201...

Apparently, he got that statement from the page 8 of the report, where there is a summary of findings. Here is the statement: "A total of 14 athletics programs in the FBS reported positive net revenues for the 2009 fiscal year, which represents a decrease from the 25 reported in 2008. The gap between the “profitable” programs and the remainder continued to grow, however a bit more slowly.
(3.5)"

Anyone notice the mistake he made?

Revenue is the _input_ side of the ledger.
Profit is the revenue minus expenses.

The claim in the NCAA report is that only 14 schools had a net increase in revenue (year over year).

It does not claim that only 14 schools were profitable!!!

This can be further confirmed by using the NCAA's own financial database:

http://www2.indystar.com/NCAA_financial_reports/

Univ of Mich had a net profit of $17mil
Univ of Texas had a net profit of $7mil
Auburn Uni. had a new profit of $121k
Univ of Alabama (Roll Tide) reported a neglible loss for 2010, but I suspect this is an anamoly (big capital improvement plans just completed--new stadium expansion etc.)

Note where most of the profit comes from: football! Also note that typically the men's programs (football and basketball) make huge profits which cover the losses for women's and other programs.
Apple to Bonobo – Retina is trademarked, change your app name
Start a blog.

My sister started a blog and after 3 years was making $200k/year. Not saying every blog or every topic will make this much, but it's certainly possible to make a good living as a blogger.
I find the thread starter and the highest ranking comments to be seriously deluded, and here's why:
I find that TDD almost 99% of the time speeds me up, lets me iterate and test my thesis much faster than without, and for this very reason, I almost always write my code with good test coverage.

The times I have omitted tests, I have always come to regret it, having to re-write the code from scratch for it to be up to par.

A few reasons for this:
- Yes, TDD is belated gratification - the first few cycles of write-deploy-open browser and test are quicker than writing a test. But as your functionality grows, instead of linearly incremental effort to write new test code, your manual regression testing grows exponentially.
- TDD actually HELPS dealing with change: when you refactor functionality, you have instant feedback as to what still works and what doesn't. Though features change the whole system and code base rarely do. See previous point.
- TDD helps writing minimal, flexible architectures that are adept at change, as systems are de-composed into, well, testable units!
- the "prototype" code almost always ends up being the production system. What is easier once that is the case without tests: trying to write tests for code that isn't very testable, rewrite the system, or just live with testing costs that are much higher than that of the competition?

I have actually seen startups slowly die due to the first two points that I raise.
But if you think it's still a good idea to skimp on testing for the sake of expedience, good luck to you, you're going to need it..
In many cases it wasn't really a voluntary choice to change lifestyle in order to make more money; a lot of the mass-urbanization periods happened when previous ways of making money collapsed. In the U.S., two big periods of rural flight were the late 19th century, when industrialization of farming lowered prices enough that family farmers were no longer competitive; and the 1930s, when the dust-bowl put another large cohort of family farmers out of business.

You could argue they ended up better off anyway, but it wasn't as if millions of people sat down and voluntarily decided, "well, I could stay and farm, but I'd rather go to the city and work in a factory". The collapse of family farming as a viable occupation sort of made the choice for them.
I'd say clever is defined by your audience. If you're writing something that others on your team would consider clever, then you're responsible for making sure they understand it. Even if that means losing whatever time you saved by writing something clever (the advantage is still creating a smarter team though).

Responsible developers write a lot less clever code because it means they feel obliged to comment the crap out of it and find the time to go through it with other team members.

Unfortunately there's a lot more clever code that only one person really gets. If you're too clever for your team, then quit slumming it and find a smarter team. You're going to be toxic to a team that isn't as clever as you are unless you assume the role of mentor and all of the responsibility that comes with it... and the required patience.
Are you really comparing a Nook to the iPad?
Here's one rule-of-thumb that just occurred to me. If there is "prior art" for code, the onus is on the person reading the code to show that it is "complex", "unmaintainable", or "clever." If there is no prior art for code, the onus is on the person writing the code to show that it is "simple," "maintainable," and "straightforward."

Taking parser combinators as an example, if you write some code with parser combinators, simply document your choice as usual and include a hyperlink to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parser_combinator.

If I read your code and think this is overëngineered, it's up to me to show a better way, I can't simply wave it off as being too hard. That doesn't mean it gets a free pass, it could be that parser combinators for a custom DSL are too complex, perhaps the same problem could have been solved with JSON or something, but the default should be to accept it since it's a technique that is explained "in the literature."

On the other hand, if I roll my own complex code and I can't point to a reference for the technique, then it's up to me to make the case that it's simpler than the alternative. For an example, Benjamin Stein and I wrote #andand for Ruby. It's related to the maybe or option monads, but it doesn't take the standard form so I can't really document it with a hyperlink. The onus is on me to show that in Ruby, #andand is simpler than testing for null, using the null object pattern, or organizing code such that there are no unexpected nulls.
Skipping College makes one a better entrepreneur
Writers will be fine. In fact it will make it easier for writers to make a living as more of the share of income goes towards entertainment. Copywriters can make a goldmine in the digital age.

Writers don't define civil society. Get off your high horse and start writing content people like. Look how much money 37 Signals makes from writing.
If you had read the article you would have noticed that using generics the way they were intended to solve this problem was what he was called out for by his manager.
In what way "computers adore XML"? Well, it can represent trees (and so can S-expressions), but its verboseness makes the files bigger, parsing more computation-intensive and memory consuming.
How Click2Flash adds that menu under Safari
> Well, I am professional and I see Miguel De Icaza as Microsoft zealot

"Microsoft zealot". Yes, you are very professional. As in, (possibly) paid for your programming work. Your statement above however, and especially the choice of words, is not a professional statement. It's an amateurish rambling fit for a spotty teenager that would get you fired from most professional environments.

Oh, and your handle: "gnufreex". Yes. Very professional. Then again, even contract killers are professionals...
I suppose, said or insinuated no such thing. What a childish comeback.

Of course it isn't evil. If you're starving then making money is not only not evil but a necessity. Beyond meeting your immediate needs, working endless hours at a repetitive, unhealthy job to support your family or further your children's future is commendable.

That does not mean worker conditions improved with industrialization as compared to working on your own farm or as a day laborer.
Try thinking of it like this ...

Every life has a beginning, a middle, and an end. Some lives are very short, a few are very long, and most somewhere in the middle of the curve (something the insurance companies call the actuarial).

Everyone wants to live as long as possible, but how you get from beginning to end varies widely. What works for me, may not work for you. Trying to impress one social groups idea of 'proper lifestyle' is what causes most of the problems in America (possibly elsewhere) today.

There are times, when a little bit of the problem, is a better cure than all the societal enforced behavioral change. For the most part, we really are smart people.
This keeps cropping up in various forms. There was the case that Google translated city names with completely different city names a while ago.

There is no conspiracy. Google uses alignment to grow their translation database. And then there is the "suggest a better translation" feature. Between these and Google's love for alogrithms, it's no wonder things sometimes go awry.
This has been on my mind also. Thanks for the comments and links - very helpful
Failure magazine: stories of "humankind's boldest missteps"
Looking at that thread, I think I understand what's going on, which was really not very clear from your intervention. I thought you were being petty about terminology.

I could not understand why you were bugging me for my use of the term good hackers, when the obvious main point to be made was, if yes or no the article was, in fact, HN material, which I felt and continue to feel it is.

Many of us haven't been around this site as long as some of the people raising their concerns in the thread you pointed me to. We don't know what it was like in the old days, our only compass for what makes a good HN post is the guidelines, which can be interpreted subjectively in many situations ([...]That includes more than hacking and startups[...], [...]anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity[...]). Some of the best articles that I've found on this site snuggly fit within those characteristics (e.g. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1978295). I believe the current one to have some of those same characteristics, because it highlights an out-of-the-box approach to a problem so very uncommon in the mainstream. 4 days ago I was chatting about homelessness with my business partner, and we were discussing hypothetical solutions to fix it, or at least make it less of a problem and reasons why they would or wouldn't work and some of our solutions were pretty much along those lines and also raised some ethical/moral questions. We're both programmers and though this is arguably not hacker material, we're also entrepreneurs and our ideas often stem from these little discussions that help us look beyond the status quo.

It seems from the thread that you posted that some old timers are trying to get HN to fit back into its old box. I'm still unsure if it would have much appeal to the kind of topics I'm referring to. If their veteran status grant them a say in the direction of HN, I can only suggest to push for clearer guidelines.

Btw, I cannot remove the good hackers from the original post to the thread, it appears that the "edit" timer has expired.
I think "killing" is probably an overstatement, but your idea has merit. Look at Apple's supposedly iron-clad Human Interface Guidelines, they were intended to create a similar kind of homogenised experience as well but Apple continuously challenges them because they're just too stifling.

Harmonisation and consistency is important, but there is such a thing as monotony.
Sometimes an ad hominem is all that fits.

(Because life is small and a lot of "arguments" one encounters are uninformed ramblings of idiots and/or people who don't know better, not worthy of a reply).

Put that in your logical fallacy pipe and smoke it.
Your response assumes that clever code exists to save time writing programs, and that for any problem there are a wide range of equally good solutions possible from "takes a long time to write but is easily readable and maintainable" to "quick to write but impossible to read and maintain by those who don't have doctorates in functional programming idioms."

I don't dispute the existence of code that is unnecessarily clever, but I suggest that sometimes what appears to be "clever" for a given audience is in actuality the local optimum. Attempting to optimize it for readability without further study will worsen the code in some way, such as conflating concerns that have been carefully separated or introducing dependencies.
There is a bit of a contradiction. It cannot be both great that Apple doesn't outsource its retailing and great that Apple outsources its components production. Economically, it should buy from the cheapest and most efficient source all it requires. If best buy are more efficient retailers, then Apple should use them; but I think there are some advertising advantages to their stores.
> Obviously you can't read

Please leave the childish insults at the door. Misunderstandings happen, but insulting someone for it is wrong.

> so I see no point in continuing this discussion.

If the only thing in your comment is an insult, a statement about ending the discussion, and karma, it's a poor comment and you should just not write it.

> downvote away if it makes you feel like a bigger man.

This comment should be down voted. It's a poor comment by any standard. It offers nothing to the conversation, is rude, and far below HN standards.

You're new here, so I just wanted to take the time to explain why these types of comments are bad for HN and to try and help you improve. I hope it does. =)
It's [deleted] now. What was it was that drew such well-worded ire?
الإستضافة الأسلامية
Unlikely, intuionist and classical logic are not fundamentally different. The only difference is that the law of excluded middle (A or (not A)) is an axiom (i.e. assumed to be true) in classical logic.
Thanks for the explanation. It makes a lot of sense that sourcing candidates is hard and that's where recruiters add value. I do it slightly ironic that you say that job boards are more or less useless and then you go on to say that it's recruiters that make them useless by clogging them up.

I sent you an email regarding your startup since it interests me on an academic level and I'd love to learn a little more.
It's not a good idea for the founders of the site to move to India. They will get bogged down with cross-cultural issues, the pressure they will bear would be intense, and they will only be able to observe a tiny part of indian dating culture.
Hahaha man, are you a comedian? I can't even downvote you. Why would you think I would care to? lol.
I donated because I absolutely despise Sony. After their root kits on their CD's, every Sony exec should have been brought up on criminal charges. Rooting that many machines is a crime that any one of us would be doing a long stint in prison for. The fact that they got slapped on the wrist made Sony my mortal enemy. I don't buy Sony, I try to not buy technology in which Sony gets a royalty and I always take the opportunity to donate to anything that is anti-Sony. Needless to say geohot should be happy with his donations today.
Wittgenstein reportedly (from Anscombe) used to say that the Tractatus was not all wrong: it was not like a bag of junk professing to be a clock, but like a clock that did not tell you the right time.

Which is perhaps more interesting than an ordinary clock anyway!

(and I might do part 2 later)
craigslist philipines is pretty active, you are almost certainly going to get a reply.

Another paid options include onlinejobs.ph

The lowest rate I managed to hire is USD2.5/hr.

My advice is to first have the scope of work type out clearly and the 'interview' challenge throughout first, this will really help you to filter out the good ones.
What's the blog? Care to share the URL?
استئناف العمل بتقديم الاستضافات المجانية وتعيين المشرفين
السلام عليكم

اخواني الكرام
ابتداء من اليوم 18-1-2010
يتم استئناف تقديم الاستضافات المجانية
الاسلامية - الفلسطينية - العراقية
بواقع واحد جيجا بايت لكل طلب
على ان يتم التقيد بكل الشروط الخاصة بذلك

كذلك يتم استئناف طلبات المشرفين لكل الاقسام
حتى يصل العدد الى عشرين مشرفا قديرا
ويجب الاطلاع كثيرا على شروط المشرفين

كافة البيانات السابقة والقوانين العامه والخاصة
تجدوها على صفحتنا الرئيسية
http://www.ih4all.com

دمتم بود
My task management solution is similarly minimal, consisting of just 2 bash functions that operate on a text file. The twist with mine is that I embed the list on my desktop to increase awareness of things left to do.

More here: http://blog.jerodsanto.net/2010/12/minimally-awesome-todos/
"if you are coding a medium to large application in Rails, you should have base coverage on every controller, period"

I actually find this to be a huge time sink for most projects. Usually in a rails app for a client's application there's only a few fancy controller methods that do anything outside of typical REST scaffolding (there's no way I'm testing all of the typical admin CRUD). Add in something like inherited_resources using thin controllers and you're wasting even more time. IMO only write tests for functionality that's non-standard, which is probably going to be a very small percentage of your controller code.

For client work I find that most of the complicated or non-standard functionality happens on the client side, and rarely on the rails side. Which means a huge portion of my tests would just be fluff (like commenting method names and params manually) if I were to test all of my controllers.
It's not a full member (it's an "associated state"), but I do hope it gives us some advantages.
Since that's rather tedious, here's the result:

Jews are not terrorists. Americans are terrorists. Arabs are Alarhabiyi

Could someone who knows Arabic provide a rough translation of the intermediate:

اليهود ليسوا إرهابيين. الأمريكيون الإرهابيين. العرب هم الارهابيي

And I'd be interested to know how negation is expressed in Arabic.
This is a very useful writeup.

But using S3 for static sites comes with a big caveat: You can't host root domains on it because you need to use a CNAME to point to S3. And a CNAME must be a subdomain; it can't be a root domain.

I set up a petition to Amazon to point out the problem:

http://act.ly/34u
Yeah, but then you will have to stop complaining and start doing something - and most people just aren't willing to go that far.
You're new here, so I just wanted to take the time to explain why these types of comments are bad for HN and to try and help you improve. I hope it does.

Yes we are nice to each other here, it is kind of the golden rule. There are plenty of sites for technical dogma battles and less than civil discourse. HN is not one of those sites. It is what makes it what it is, and we are kind of fanatics about it staying that way. There are too many of the other sites and HN is kind of different, we like it that way and want it to stay that way.
The "only" leadership required to use Little Boy and Fat Man was fighting our way across the world's biggest ocean to get into range to use them. To accomplish the same task, academics would have needed another couple of decades (and a boat-load of stolen German scientists) to invent the ICBM.

Nukes certainly ended the war earlier, and I believe they saved tens if not hundreds of thousands of lives on both sides, but they didn't create victory. Victory was already a foregone conclusion by the time we used them--they just accelerated it and lowered the cost dramatically.
I just set up something very similar last night, without git. I used http://s3tools.org/s3cmd in a simple bash script, which nicely replaced my previous rsync setup. Should be about $0.01 a month to run :)
Party Bus Toronto
Toronto Party Bus come in a range of classic and contemporary models each of which is meant to bring a certain kind of charm to the event.
In term of design and technology, my impression is that Jobs is a filter and a coach. This should be thinner! It needs rounded corners! etc.

He is able to coax the best out of design and technology folk and direct it towards a valuable end.
"It cannot be both great that Apple doesn't outsource its retailing and great that Apple outsources its components production."

Why not? Outsourcing isn't always good or always bad.

Economically, Apple should do the things it can do well (software, design, retail) and outsource the things it can't do any better than anyone else (component production, assembly).
I'm not sure where managers come into the discussion, but the second example is good, but even better like this:

arr.sum()
standard straw man - Care to name a system that isn't a straw man? Word is serious, capable software, and the de-facto standard for document preparation.
I actually know more people with Nooks than with Kindles. Most of them have color Nooks and most use them to read books and boot into Android to get a cheap, color, wifi-enabled tablet.
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Git? I guess at least it brings out the contrast more clearly than Stevenson's original title
It does seem you can handle them, but we .NET people are lazy (as in, Larry Wall lazy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Wall ).

I agree with the poster's reply to that: "Yes I agree that this is simple and fast, but.. What I really want is a 1-D list of my own object types." I get that when using XML web services with .NET (though mostly when consumed with other .NET or similar languages !!! which goes against it being an universal data transfer language )
Watch what happens to Qt to know whether Nokia still bets on a MeeGo future