skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Yes, you quite literally need one of these to communicate with Voyager:

http://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/files/images/browse/jpl9020ac.gif
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What if we simplify the tax code, and sentence millions of tax consultants to the unemployment roles? Is it that OK?
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I have a fake book which has a song finder. For a sequence of notes, just write down whether each note is higher, lower, or the same as the preceding note. There is a table at the end listing, for all such sequences, the songs that match the sequence. Works like a champ.
Wouldn't that be more like "insourcing"?
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Yes that is one way to look at it - but my initial focus was not on the server sided logic, but the persistent store, in this case, MongoDB.
Also H1B is a double edge sword. If coming via H1B is your only option, I would stick with well established and profitable companies that won't just change their minds on a whim.

With startups you take huge risk and expect huge rewards, and adding H1B to that mix doesn't help matter.
The very first CS class I took in college was based on SICP (taught in Scheme, for reference). By this point, I had already been programming for a while, but there were plenty of students with very limited exposure to programming as well.

One of the projects we had was writing a text-based RPG. This was to highlight the ideas behind OOP, which we learned after functional programming. Initially, the idea seemed to have merit--writing a game seemed to be a fun thing to do. However, I got quickly bogged down in boring detail; it turned out that writing a text based game has a lot of boring, repetitive work for each of the cool bits. It was the most tedious project in the class overall.

The final project we did was implementing a Logo interpreter. This was completely different--the ratio of cool and insightful stuff to boring fiddly bits was much, much better. Also, unlike the text-based game, even a barely working final result felt brilliant. Being able to program in a language I had just implemented was magical. Playing a text-based game with a working engine but a poor story line did not measure up.

So far, this has been my favorite course. However, I remember the text-based game as annoying and not particularly illuminating; it does not compare at all with the logo interpreter.

Overall, I think that too much of a text-based game is repetitive and boring, and it relies too much on non-programming bits (the dialog, the setting, the story) to be consistently inspiring to a new programmer.
Well, I have worked with many H-1B workers and while I've never directly known their salary I have always generally gotten the feeling that they are being paid less than their American counterparts in the same positions. Of course I can't prove this as people are generally hush hush about their salary / pay rate anyways so generally its something thats very hard to prove, just a general feeling I suppose from my own experience. Also, with most jobs I've had so far, I was the one who named the rate I was willing to work for (I'm learning this may not be the best idea, but that's something else entirely), at least some of the H-1B workers are probably naming their own rate and it could very well be less than what the average American developer of the same skil-level would name. In this case, they are willing to work for less which is undercutting overall wages in our industry and legally, I don't believe the employer would even be held liable. Anyone who has worked for companies where they employ H-1B people are free to draw their own opinions, I would just say that if you haven't, you shouldn't assume what the government, etc is saying is correct.

That said, if we "opened the floodgates" and let anyone who wanted come here, do you not think that wages would decrease for our (and other) industries? I think its pretty much a fact that it does decrease them to some extent (on average) but the question is really whether its a small amount or an amount that matters.
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How much of Google's total revenue comes from iPhone searches that Siri would possibly redirect? Let's not forget that Google gets revenue from a great number of advertising markets.

They bought DoubleClick, YouTube, they have their own AdWords program. There is also Google mobile ads for both mobile versions of websites as well as Android. Android itself represents something like 40% of the mobile market.

Even on the iPhone itself, what does Siri redirect away from google? Restaurant queries. Some question answering queries. Appointments, playing music, setting timers, sending emails, none of those are relevant to this argument. The remaining queries all still go to Google and google gets paid for these either from it's API usage or from later ad impressions.

This argument was poor and full of hyperbole when it first appeared in the scene and it surprises me to see it continuing to make the rounds.
"the industry would be at a complete standstill if software had been eligible for patent protection in the early days of the industry."

Not surprising, coming from Bill Gates. When he said this, Microsoft was in the middle of a lawsuit with Apple.

If software had been eligible for patent protection in the early days of the industry, Microsoft would not have been able to bring Windows to market. Apple sued them over it anyways, but their case wasn't as strong as it would've been.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_v._Microsoft
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I have both an iPhone 4s and a Nexus S. The first thing I did when I got the iPhone was to play with Siri for an hour.

Only tonight did I realize that Android also has voice recognition, and it's pretty good. But the threat of Siri is very real, mostly due to Apple's marketing.
They descended into an anarchy of self-indulgence ("bread and circus") just as they reached the escape velocity for their technology level. Eventually, their society collapsed from internal pressure to "make work" -- aka political drama.
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For completeness, SICP in .mobi format for Kindle: https://github.com/twcamper/sicp-kindle
For a slightly cheaper approach (assuming you already have an iPhone): I have been successfully and pleasantly using "Lose It!" [1] to track all of my food and exercise for about five months now. So far I've lost 20 lbs and 2% body fat. For sleep tracking, I am using Sleep Cycle [2] to measure sleep hours and (most importantly to me) wake me up at a good time. Nike+ [3] on my iPhone tracks my running times, route, distance, etc. Total cost $2.98 (plus an iPhone of course).

I've been amazed at how easy it's been to get into reasonable shape by changing only one thing: consistently collecting the right data.

[1] http://www.loseit.com/

[2] http://mdlabs.se/sleepcycle/

[3] http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/nike-gps/id387771637?mt=8
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You're right, those aren't good reasons for why C++ is awful. I think ERR i give up. You're right my whole rationale is pretty confusing. The class wasn't so bad in reality. We didn't really look deeply into the horrible "features" of C++.
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Unless Apple has it patented up the wazoo. Which they no doubt do.

(As an aside; I think this is a completely fair use of patents. You're creative, you make a new patent, you get to exclusively use that technology for the next X years to build market share)
I agree thats its a complex issue and I definitely am not for having no foreign-born workers, the outstanding ones contribute a lot and I am definitely in support of H-1B programs (or other programs) for entrepreneurs who come here to start a business.

Regarding the degree question, frankly I think this is ridiculous, so an American developer who proven work experience as a developer, without a Bachelor's degree, is automatically ranked lower than an H-1B worker who has a degree from a foreign institution? American employers aren't necessarily going to be aware of the quality / legitimacy of a degree from a foreign institution, hell, for all they know a degree from a college there could be roughly equivalent to a high school degree here, with a few college-level courses thrown in. I don't think I even know of a single person I work with who has a degree in computer science, plenty have degrees in another subject, but is this really making them better developers?

Overall, its a tough issue, I'm all for having some of the best and brightest from other places come here, those who can come here and be a net-positive, but, in my experience there are some who just come because they know its a ticket to a better way of life and they aren't necessarily passionate about what they do and generally don't have what I observe to be a strong work ethic. On the other hand, some do and I have no problem with them being here. Like any cross-section of people, no matter how "perfect" the system for their admission to the U.S. seems to be, it is going to end up with a wide range in skill-sets and therefore I feel it needs to at least be limited and watched closely as undoubtedly they are going to take away some jobs, from some American developers.
"First of all, with any piece of technology, you should, y’know, RTFM. EVERY company out there selling software solutions is going to exaggerate how awesome it is."

Ah, but it isn't the company that's exaggerating the wonders of MongoDB...
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tl;dr: If a book were going to teach somebody how to program then you wouldn't be asking this question. A book requires a self-motivated person to pick it up and read it. Assuming you're trying to teach somebody who didn't have the desire to learn on their own, then you're going to have to relate to them and explain it in a way that they'll understand. Getting them interested and excited about it usually seems to be the best kick-starter.

You know what? I've actually unintentionally taught several people the basics of programming. I work at a small company with other bright people who are not programmers by study, but have learned how to communicate programming with me. I truly believe that teaching somebody to program is as easy as figuring out how to best explain something sequential to them. Usually, I begin my stealth teachings under the guise of me just trying to help them communicate their program requirements or ideas to me. I quickly jump into the lower level explanations of things and somehow I manage to get them excited or interested enough that they actually feel like talking "programming" with me will be cool. I try to explain to them that programming is like giving the computer an ordered list of things to do, and it'll do them exactly in that order. As simple as 1, 2, 3. I then explain loops. I don't get into functions and classes because that's not necessarily important to them understanding the flow of logic. Most people seem to easily grasp the concepts of if-then, and loops ... this is all really simple stuff for most people to understand at a basic level. I don't even necessarily mean code, but more so logically what an if-else means. I find that most people generally give you the "yea yea I got it" type of response while explaining this. Once I get them to this point, they're where I wanted them to be. I then try to include them in scenarios where I'm debugging something. I don't deliberately ask them to help me do my job, but I more so start talking out loud and usually they'll come over to help brainstorm. I show them my code, and explain the logic flow (if-else, loops, etc). You'll be surprised at how easy it is for people to actually help out here. Sometimes it's the non-programmers who can give the most obvious advice. At this point in time, it's up to them. If they're interested enough they'll progress from them, otherwise it may just no be their thing. I work with 8 people, and I have actually had one guy learn Python and he now writes Python tools for us - he knew zero programming. I also got our accountant into programming because he would always ask me the status of projects, and slowly over time I got him speaking "programmer-speak" with me, and now he basically understands all my programming yammer. I realize that these guys are not writing the next Redis or Twitter, but they were non-technical guys who are now on their way to being on their way to writing those things. :)
Ok, I give up. The class was great! Sorry Mr Khan!

Really I just hate C++. The class was pretty good and bug hunting skills are not something to take for-granted. That's for sure!
> interaction with patient, which is the most important task

It's also the one radiologists and other medical professionals routinely fail at.

Sorry, but if your argument is "computers don't have a bedside manner", I have to call that a plus... for the computers.
> "American entrepreneurs do have a shot — if we have the courage to learn about markets half-way around the world"

I feel the same way, and it's a big reason I forced myself out of my comfort zone and moved to Asia. (Granted, to comfortable Singapore, but every month I go to a new country to learn about the culture and business environment there.)

There's really some amazing stuff going on over here. I'm going to spend the next 10 years writing about it in these books: http://woodegg.com/
Probably the best way, if you can afford the time, is to go live in one of these emerging market countries for a while.

However, after close to a year of living in Vietnam I haven't seen any obvious opportunities. People here will pay for hardware, but the idea of paying for software/music/movies/services etc is pretty foreign. For example, most people jailbreak their iPhone and get apps for free. Maybe the right kind of targeted advertising could work but you'd practically have to be native to be savvy enough to get that right.
A patent is a kind of monopoly.

ATT had a monopoly, and they were partitioned to break that monopoly.

If ATT had kept their monopoly they would not have had much pressure to compete through price or innovation. What might we not have today in the consumer telecom space if ATT had kept their monopoly. For example, would our phones still be wired to the wall and owned by ATT? Would new colors on princess phones be the extent of innovation?
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The pdf he links has more examples and greater depth about implementing diffusion ai. Recommended.

http://www.cs.colorado.edu/~ralex/papers/PDF/OOPSLA06antiobj...
I think the bigger problem for people with Growl is many apps installed it without telling you. This tends to put a bad taste in your mouth.
remind me on the arguments of which programming language is the best. There is no best technology. Different technologies are designed for different engineering problems. You can't really blame the technology when you are choosing the wrong tools for your problem.
Do you have any evidence that they have patents which would preclude other players (especially those with existing similar products like google/android and Microsoft/WP7)?
I have a better explanation. Wages have not even remotely kept pace with productivity, so most people do not see the benefits of increased overall productivity.

http://rationalrevolution.net/images/EPI_Productivity_vs_Com...
tl;dr - By doing a detailed analysis of his app, he was able to discover that a lot of what he was using App Engine for wasn't being used or could be made more efficient with relatively little effort.

Having worked on App Engine, I'm sure almost all (if not all) of the apps I've built ended up in this situation. Because it was "free" there wasn't a lot of reason to focus on being efficient (especially in terms of space). Getting an app to work and serve its purpose while maintaining a level of perceived performance was the top priority. Any work after that was usually not worth it because the apps tended to be small in scope and non-critical.

That said, it feels like if I were to build on App Engine again, it would require more development time to keep it free. With a couple of scripts to setup a free micro EC2 instance, that might make it easier to build those small apps there instead. Not sure if that's good or bad for App Engine, but I suspect bad.
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Whoever wrote that article has only used an iPhone and the web just for some time now. From my point of view Siri is just a toy, yes, is cool, funny, smart but again, is just a toy, I couldn't really use it in real situation, probably Siri could disrupt the GPS manufacturers market as the only place I feel confortable talking with a device is in the car.
I've been programming since I was a little kid, when those text adventure games first came out.

I remember programming my own text adventure with a text adventure toolkit, I can't remember the name exactly, it was an acronym, like AGP or AGT or something. That was really fun! But it didn't teach me programming.

Implementing your own text based game from scratch might teach you a bit about the language, but it won't teach you how to be a good programmer. In fact, if you are just starting out, I am willing to bet you will get stuck very early on, or you will find your solution works but doesn't scale, or it works but its terribly tedious to generate levels, etc, etc...

Really what you need is a properly tailored programming course on a 'good' learning language, like Pascal or Python.

Having said that, programming should be fun and I highly recommend choosing projects that are interesting to you to begin with. It does not matter if it already exists, try to program something you will actually use. If you do decide to program a text game, do research on the different ways you could do it. If there is something you don't understand in the solution you have chosen, research it (rinse, repeat).
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I totally disagree about how music is devalued and I share Trent Reznor's belief that paying what you want devalues music, whereas giving it away doesn't. I'm going to give you a quote from him instead of explaining it because my opinion lies off of personal experience whereas his lies off of professional experience when he worked with Saul William.

"This is where you offer tracks or albums for a user-determined price. I hate this concept, and here's why.
Some have argued that giving music away free devalues music. I disagree. Asking people what they think music is worth devalues music. Don't believe me? Write and record something you really believe is great and release it to the public as a "pay-what-you-think-it's-worth" model and then let's talk. Read a BB entry from a "fan" rationalizing why your whole album is worth 50 cents because he only likes 5 songs on it. Trust me on this one - you will be disappointed, disheartened and find yourself resenting a faction of your audience. This is your art! This is your life! It has a value and you the artist are not putting that power in the hands of the audience - doing so creates a dangerous perception issue. If the FEE you are charging is zero, you are not empowering the fan to say this is only worth an insultingly low monetary value. Don't be misled by Radiohead's In Rainbows stunt. That works one time for one band once - and you are not Radiohead." - Trent Reznor

http://forum.nin.com/bb/read.php?30,767183,767183#msg-767183
(Under update 3 in the first post)
This is very true. I know some lawyers who, when they graduated law school and joined their firm, were told by the partners to get a better car as quickly as they can afford it, preferably a BMW. Even if you already have a nice vehicle already, they want a luxury model.
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What is Hadoop, and why would I use it!?

What practical applications does it have?
For me, the post is very helpful---when MongoDB markets itself
MongoDB is a scalable, high-performance, open source, document-oriented database. Written in C++... http://www.mongodb.org/

I presume that anyone would post such content anonymously.
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You really have the wrong image of me. I'm not some highly paid Silicon Valley engineer, I'm a newspaper editor who happens to enjoy making software. Many of my friends work retail (e.g. cashiers) or just above (e.g. bartenders). Many people close to me have been homeless within the past several years. Believe me, I know how it is. I still think you're exaggerating the degree to which you are screwed if you don't have all the latest technology.
"software patents have largely been unenforced."

I don't think that's the case. However, it doesn't often come to ugly lawsuits because most of those software patents can be licensed. For instance, Apple licensed Amazon's 1-Click Purchasing patent. If it hadn't, Amazon would've likely sued over it. [1]

This method is working out great for Microsoft, which makes more money off Android than on its own mobile endeavors.

The big problem Android makers encounter with Apple is that it has no interest in licensing its software patents to them. Apple simply does not want them using any of its ideas.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1-Click
The majority of Siri is the result of publicly funded academic research. Granted, that has not stopped the patent system from granting narrowly defined patents in the past (e.g. the famous pinch to zoom).
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I wasn't trying to argue with you, rather I was trying to point out that some good can come from the C/C++ path. I've had a lot of people ask me which language to use as a starting point in programming, and not once have I said C/C++ -- maybe, upon reflection, I should have??
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Re-read your comment, it sounds like the type of statement that is just ripe for foot-in-mouth syndrome 5 years from now.
You can create an app over the course of a week that is then used by tens of thousands of people, so that is an example of a productivity multiplier.
Learning how to write code is actually fairly easy. Kids can do it. The hard part is to write code that doesn't make your co-workers hate your guts because they have to maintain it. I'd recommend getting a copy of McConnell's "Code Complete".
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My brother happens to be a Radiologist and I know that he is not concerned regarding the "outsourcing" of image diagnosis for two reasons. One being that there is an endless amount of work to be done as more people are able to afford healthcare. Automated diagnosis will help provide the service at a manageable cost to more people. But more importantly, the service provided is just a tool in overall healthcare. In this case the best a computer could do is come up with a list of diagnoses with a confidence coefficient based on different models. It will still be up to the Radiologist to make the final determination as to treatment.