skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I think he's right.

In college, my CS 2 class was taught by a professor very different than the rest of the teachers there. He wanted all of your programming assignments on paper[1]. Then, you'd get it back with every possible bug marked in your program, and he very rarely missed any[2].

That was the first time in college I thought "I really need to learn how to do that!"

I went to a state school, so maybe all you guys with your degrees from fancy schools wouldn't be that impressed, but the difference between this professor and the rest there was gigantic. (He retired that year in a round of state-wide budget cuts, so that's the last class I had him.)

[1] A lot of the other teachers wanted you to hand in binaries so they can see it run. Sometimes with the code, sometimes not.

[2] I actually don't know of any case where he did, but I'm not saying "never."
here is a book that will school you: http://www.amazon.com/Types-Programming-Languages-Benjamin-P...

It is a great book, but a little dense. Its example language is a typed lambda calculus. This is both good and bad. The good: you can evaluate most expressions in your head or with a pencil. The bad: sometimes it is difficult to read without evaluating the expressions.

It is heavy on proofs and mathematics, but it does what it says: it introduces you to the basics of type theory as applied to programming languages.

Edit: an amazon reviewer pointed at http://www.amazon.com/Foundations-Object-Oriented-Languages-... as an alternative book. I haven't read it but it does look useful.
Early telegraphs didn't use a ground wire, the return path was literally the Earth. Modern systems with differential signals on a twisted pair are many orders of magnitude less affected.
On a side note, the banner for his site is interesting. One would guess that a person his notoriety does not need to explain who he is; Britney Spears does not describe herself as "performer Britney Spears", just the name is enough. I think that shows a string level of humbleness.
Nintendo Launches Wii U: Next Generation Gaming Console from Nintendo
He is right. Good writing is sussicint, concise, and says a lot with a little. Good programming is clear and does a lot with a little.
Something drivers want, like refreshments - water, non-alcoholic bear, iced tea.
Essays Samples
Writing essays may seem to be an impossible task for most students. However, as it is a compulsory task, they need to know how they can execute well written essays. Essays samples will help them to identify the important factors of an essay.
The game theory of discovery and the birth of the free-gap
So what's good example code?

Sadly (and tellingly) it's not necessarily the most successful code (success comes from meeting user needs, not from good code), but how else can you judge it, apart from reading it. This is made worse because it's hard to tell if code is necessarily complex without understanding the problem it solves, which may be complex. Further, if you don't yet know what good code is, how can you recognize it? Of course, if you are intelligent and reflective and try ideas out, you can learn from both code and bad - it's all raw material, grist for the mill.

IMHO the hard part of programming is understanding the problem to be solved. The solving is easy.
Gadgets: Buy a u-lock (harder to cut) rather than a chain, wire or some other configuration. Buy a cycle computer (shows you your speed, distance for your ride, etc) - the feedback is great. You'll know when you're pedaling slower than usual and also can keep track of how far you've been riding. Last of all, buy a pump for the tires. Keeping your tires properly inflated helps a lot.

Contrary to what has been suggested before, I would buy the lightest bike you can in your budget. A lighter bike will reduce the agony when you don't want to push yourself; and when you do want to push yourself, just go faster.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S25Zf8svHZQ
I'm a little suspect if this analogy goes beyond "theoretical understanding without practical experience is worthless". You could draw a similar analogy between architects who know everything about architecture but don't know how to design proper buildings because they have no experience. Or painter who knows everything about technique but can't paint a horse and so on.

It is easy to find differences between good writing and good code: Uniformity in code is good, while uniformity in prose is bad. In writing, a large vocabulary is an advantage, it's difficult to see if that is the case in language. In programming, proper abstractions are essential while I can't really see the equivalent of that in writing.

As far as analogies go, I can't see how this one is much better than others.
I agree that in scenes such as Times Square or Piccadilly Circus where there is a lot of advertisement real estate, this would be a more prominent solution, but for the vast majority of places (take for example a highway or some sort of country road?). A popup advertisement (I'm not in favor of them), as seen on YouTube or some Android Applications seem's more effective.
Right, but a compromise of your token for Google's services would not mean your token for your job was compromised as well. You could even generate a new key for each machine you connect to, if you were paranoid enough.
Link elements block DOM parsing too
Yep, fixed (Todos link), and fixed (Backbone explanation)! :)
Why folks get paid by the hour instead of by the job
If the US or Israel is responsible for Stuxnet, would that be considered an act of war towards Iran? I'm sadly not well-read in either stuxnet or the requirements for it to be considered a cyber-attack.
Beautiful Wallpapers, Images, Free Wallpapers for PC
Programming isn't about writing. It's about logic. It's a series of instructions for a computer to follow.

The old 'write down how to tie shoes' or 'write down how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich' projects show just how hard it can be to pin down exactly what needs to be done to do seemingly simple tasks.

The writing is merely how to you transmit the logic.
1.5 hours to 2.5 hours depending on the time I leave for me.

Worst thing with a long commute is it can put you in a bad mood for the entire day if the drive in is bad.
Apart from the usual "Oh no, we're playing God" kneejerk reactions, do we really know enough about genetic modifications to be making GM foods available?

We barely know enough about why our own medicine works (frequently only having a hazy idea, really), should we really be messing with systems so much more complex than we currently understand?
A paper that argues against any "fine tuning" of the universe to support life: http://search.arxiv.org:8081/paper.jsp?r=1101.2444&qid=n...

I'm not sure how arxiv.org work, but the paper is arXiv:1101.2444 just in case.
The large company I work for (~5000 people worldwide) doesn't appear to support any of this. Attempting to reach ipv6day.org gives the message "No DNS records."

Sites that already had IPv4 records work.
Locks you into the system owned by people who pay the copyright owners. It just so happens Apple has a big enough ecosystem that it's not too bad for it to be locked down (if it actually is, I doubt).
From what I've heard, professors in prestigious schools aren't any better at teaching. They're hired for their prestige and research ability.
I don't think this is missing from the article, it's actually what the author said. If you only learn the words and the grammar, without seeing how they are used to express things (and without trying to express things), you won't learn foreign language/programming.
Can I ask what you like about Vala? Its wikipedia page is pretty sparse, and I'd never heard of it until this post.
I really like this comment regarding C-oid languages vs. scripting languages: "Premature optimization is usually not worth it."
And in the end, the only meaningful benchmark for you is the one performed on your deployment environment and with your application.
These generic tests (if the conditions in which they were performed are clear) can only be used to skim through all the available options to identify those who clearly under-perform (agreed, identify why could be even more useful than the test itself).
Doh! Thanks, swapped now fixed :)
I don't trust "normal" pasteurized milk with steroids, so this can't be any worse.
ICloud: The Mother of All Halos
Oh come on. Programming is not writing. When you're reading a novel you don't have to worry about concurrent access to a resource, threads, asynchronous events, or even much less conditional branching. With all due respect, I think this is just an inane post. That said, I can't blame the guy for dropping software development and moving to Japan to teach ESL. I often entertain similar fantasies all the time - programming is a great way to have the zest for life sucked straight out of you

Edit: Would someone have the courtesy to mention why they are downvoting?
The writing is merely how to you transmit the logic.

The author of the post seems to me to be saying that, given that logic of a great number of programs can be pretty simple, the way you express the logic becomes more of a concern.

Take the following:

@post.comments

Compare it to:

$this->post->findDependentRowset('Comment');

Both mean the same thing, but the latter seems like the programming equivalent of purple prose by comparison.
That reminded of this quote (I forget who said it):

"Programs are written for humans to read, not for machines to execute"
I like the style of Epic Systems in Verona, WI. They have separate buildings connected by underground tunnels with geothermal heating/cooling for all of the buildings. Recently they started putting in solar and are working to increase that to the point of covering their energy needs. Parking is almost all underground with the ground around their campus designated as farmland so that nobody can build on it; they do run a farm on the land as well which I believe helps supply their cafeteria.

Every conference room has a theme and they allow self-guided tours. My favorite conference room is one where half of the room opens up to a pond that has a wooden walk way around it and a waterfall.

http://hq.construction.com/snapshots/0911_EpicSoftware.asp

http://www.jsonline.com/business/123206273.html
One workaround is to "mirror" the images: send the url of each texture image to your own server and download it back again. This does funnel a potentially large amount of traffic through a small number of machines though and loads the image from a new IP.
It's a nice theory but I disagree. Programming languages are really just a poor effort towards a mathematical notation.

There are those adept in theory that can't practice well, but that's because to practice the art means dealing with a plethora of hacks, exceptions and miscellaneous trivia completely unrelated to the core problem at hand.

Personally, I don't think the answer is becoming 'fluent' in handling the exceptions and idiosyncrasies of the chosen language, framework and platform. Rather we need to work on building a notation that provides better abstraction mechanisms.
All true facts unfortunately. To get better teachers you have to attend a "teaching" college/university. This name is detrimental, as most students would probably be happier at such a place. The "research" university really isn't for everyone but they get the most prestige and people think, oh I should go there learn from the "brightest mind in the field".
In some cases good writing says a lot with a little, but by no means is that always a requirement for good writing.
It just seems to me that companies like SugarSync (and maybe Dropbox - I don't use it) have been doing this for years. I'm confident that Apple will improve some of the media streaming experience, but their real genius is in marketing these products b/c this has existed for some time.
Most code sucks because we have the fluency equivalent of 3 year olds trying to write a novel.

Let's get a little more specific...

Most code sucks because the programmer:

- didn't name his variables what the really were
- didn't understand variable state
- didn't understand variable scope
- didn't understand the basic concepts of iteration
- didn't understand any of the algorithms he needed
- wrote the same lines of code multiple times
- didn't know enough about the language to find a better construct
- didn't understand concurrency
- didn't understand fundamental data base concepts
- refused to follow well worn standards
- didn't have any well worn standards to follow
- built code on top of hopelessly designed data structures
- didn't understand deeply enough what was going on under the hood
- built to requirements that changed too dramatically to recover from
- didn't even consider the concerns of the "next" programmer

But most of all:

- was just good enough to get "something" (no matter how bad) deployed on time
The "i" prefix gives the word a different meaning ;)
Started a spreadsheet with user IDs for all regions, in case anyone is interested (add your region if it's not there yet):

https://spreadsheets.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AlLWR_q...
> I actually don't know of any case where he did, but I'm not saying "never."

If he missed it, chances are, pretty much any student would have as well.
What is an opportunity blind spot?
And in programming you don't have to worry about capturing the audience, the development of the characters, the story arch, being clear but not being obvious, etc.

Both in programming and writing, the actual writing part is the easiest part. And while bad programmers can make a program work, and bad writers can tell a story, it takes good ones to do it coherently, efficiently and enjoyably.

It's not the exact same thing, which I don't think anyone is saying, but there are some similarities there, especially the aspect of writing readable code.
Sadly (and tellingly) it's not necessarily the most successful code (success comes from meeting user needs, not from good code), but how else can you judge it, apart from reading it.

Schools have suggested reading lists. Do they have the same for code reading?

Fortunately, on the Internet, we have experienced people to help us:
http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=%22good+cod...
"The social network said that it should have done more to notify members about the global launch."

NOOOOO. They just don't get it. It isn't about notification. It's about violating my privacy without asking permission first.

You can roll out any feature you want silently, so long as it is turned off by default!
The Hacking Education Contest
I have fully working IPv6 connectivity (10/10 by test-ipv6.com metrics), but ipv6day.org still fails for me. It seems that the problem is that there're no A/AAAA records:

$ host -t AAAA ipv6day.org
ipv6day.org has no AAAA record
$ host -t A ipv6day.org
ipv6day.org has no A record
$ host -t MX ipv6day.org
ipv6day.org mail is handled by 20 mail2.consulintel.es.
ipv6day.org mail is handled by 30 dns1.consulintel.com.
ipv6day.org mail is handled by 10 mail.consulintel.es.
$ host -t SOA ipv6day.org
ipv6day.org has SOA record ns1.euro6ix.com. dnsadmin.consulintel.es. 2010120100 86400 7200 2592000 172800
JavaScript Attack/Defend
I use password composer http://jlpoutre.home.xs4all.nl/BoT/Javascript/PasswordCompos... which hashes your password with website url. There is a convenient greasemonkey script that works on firefox and chrome.
Speaking of his ego. He must be pissed that he couldn't get that small patch of real estate in the lower left corner. The neighbours have made a powerful enemy ;]
His theory might be true if you were only talking about writing a program from scratch. But programming is a lot more than that, because except for the smallest, most trivial exercises, programming is a team sport. Which means you need to be able to understand somebody else's code, and you also need to be able to modify it in a way that makes sense.

You can have a program which is beautifully structured, and factored in an extremely clean way. But what happens when you have to modify it in response to a change in requirements? And what if you have external code that depends on the existing interfaces? At that point, the skills needed to be a good programmer are quite different from that of a writer.
Yumm! Economic efficiencies!
I don't have any specific artist or piece in mind. I always turn to SomaFM's Groove Salad if I want some nice relaxing music.
"Sorry" is pretty fascile when it's clear that their default philosophy is "Ask for forgiveness, not permission".

Of course, the incentives are so high for Facebook that it's hard to imagine this happening any other way. This fully leverages both of their most valuable assets - the most comprehensive social graph and the biggest collection of tagged photographs.
I agree as well. I've noticed that in ALL problems, once I establish a solid consistent language around the feature I'm building, the programming part is easy. This is true even on complex problems. Its very rare to have a problem I can talk about in detail that is not easily solvable.

I've also noticed that peers struggling with implementing solutions usually have an inconsistent language.
I expected the council to demand that he make at least part of the campus open to the public. You know, if they weren't being fangirls over Jobs.
> The native apps done by average developers also suck.

The difference is that they suck fast, instead of sucking slow.
Cloud hosted in a cloud shocker!
Here's a userscript to disable that theater view:

https://userscripts.org/scripts/show/97052
I assume you mean rBST/rBGH and not steroids. If not that's news to mean and I've love to see some reference material.

Additionally, what is your issue with pasteurized milk aside from making it taste worse, increasing it's shelf life, and most likely destroying some nutritional value?
> [suggested code reading lists]

That's a good idea, but I haven't heard of one. I think the best thing is just to read a lot of code, good and bad.

BTW did you check the result of that search?
I think posting it in bad faith would certainly qualify as a hoax, or something close to a hoax at least.
"There are 1.5 billion people in the world who don't get enough to eat," the director of the research project, Professor Li Ning said.

"It's our duty to develop science and technology, not to hold it back. We need to feed people first, before we consider ideals and convictions."
To have good taste is one thing (the ability to recognize good from bad) but to be able to produce good work is another. As many good writers (and the author of this post) suggest, the best way to get better at writing is to read good writing and to write more. This method (of observing masters at work and practicing the craft yourself) works for many disciplines. Should it be surprising that it applies to hacking as well?

The post reminded me of an Ira Glass interview where he comments on having good "taste" (5 min)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BI23U7U2aUY
which in turn reminds me of PGs essay "Great Hackers"
http://www.paulgraham.com/gh.html
Good stuff!!
Why I can’t convince executives to invest in UX (and neither can you)
The power of access - and why Tech-NGOs shouldn't get their hands dirty.
Space Shuttle Endeavour photographed as it docks with the ISS
Of course they don't, history is just intellectual propaganda :P
try www.ipv6day.org. `ipv6day.org` doesn't even have a regular A record.
I usually hope there were no pictures taken during THOSE evenings
Direct link to the NASA gallery: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/multimedia/e27depa... (delicious 6000*4000 photographs)
The point of his method is that it's a unique password which a human can recover just by looking at the url.

No batteries required.

I have a similar method, though less secure than his.
Dwolla Grid - Getting Started With OAuth
The Pentagon also has more height, with 4 stories above ground and at least 2 below. Don't know if Apple plans on having stories below ground, there was no mention during the presentation, but not doing so would account for more of the difference.
Why can't a hospital (a business) use enterprise deployment mechanisms for its core business deployments of iDevices? Rather than going through the "normal" AppStore?
I'm pretty sure that's what he meant.
That was at the beginning of SICP.
Can you introduce me to an angel?
And is not (good) writing also about logic - even though sometimes it's fuzzy or the (twisted) logic of human psychology?

Writing requires "logicking out" the likely responses of the reader - and the pseudologic of parsing by the human brain (see Dan Ariely's "Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces that Shape Our Decisions").
Microsoft in talks to develop own-brand Windows 8 tablet with TI
I don't understand how human milk produced by cows is better for feeding the world than cow milk produced by cows (will this no longer be a pleonasm now?).

And how would it help feed people who don't have enough to eat? I can't imagine this ever being produced cheaper than cow milk.
Yes the unpaid bills is the same, it's in the article. The problem with the courts is not, but it indeed happens.
[Android Word Game] Le God of Words Update 1.5
"It's good," said worker Jiang Yao. "It's better for you because it's genetically modified."

Flawless argument.
I use an app called Divvy. I don't think I could ever go back to life without it.
This is a decent analogy, but still I cringe whenever I hear someone comparing computer languages to spoken ones.

They are nothing alike, and I would be honestly surprised if we even used the same part of our brain for processing the grammars of human languages as we do for the rigid, formal computer ones.

If this were true, how come not all great programmers are great writers? Why don't more great programmers become fluent in other spoken languages?
I think this would be cheaper for Apple than constructing and maintaining its own data center.
I'm not a C++ programmer. Does anyone know how C++0x is coming along? Does it address some of his issues with C-like languages?
I find it fascinating that Python seems to be the only language which created a word to describe idiomatic code: pythonic.

Having learned Python as a first programming language I always try to gain an idiomatic understanding of the language which allows myself to think in Python.
BTW did you check the result of that search?

Haha, just skimmed through it, sorry. I remember threads on this topic, but it seems like HN search for this request failed to find them.
Twitter link-shortening
How is mathematical notation different from a written language like English? It conveys meaning using glyphs, uses nouns and verbs (and even adjectives). It expresses all sorts of ideas. One might even say that math's notation is a poor effort towards English.
Hallways, conference rooms, shops (there is a small mall in the Pentagon), more hallways, bunkers, monuments / military museums, and a bunch of other general use areas.
More accurately, their grant-winning ability, which is a function of prestige etc sure, but it's not why they're hired.
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Programming is a compressed form of serial semantic thinking. It requires the same brain structures as math and language, so it's similar to writing, except it's more specialized and more restrictive. It's also very effective
Babies drink human milk, which is typically harder to come by than cow milk.
Sometimes What's Normal is Pretty Absurd.
Your rejoinder to #1 is spot-on. Seeing Peter Shor comment on complexity theory or Peter Norvig talk about AI has made Stack Exchange one of my favorite knowledge sources.
Err what about Bradley Manning. It's not paranoia - it's factual. There are countless examples of it happening every year.