skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I fully agree. It takes a long time to get familiar enough with a language that you can really use it very well. It takes practical experience building real products to get enough of a feel of what the strengths and weaknesses really are. This precludes learning a very large amount of languages, even for someone who's a full-time programmer with some liberty to goof off.

Even if you know several of those languages, if you've coded in one for a while, the odds are good you won't remember the syntax intricacies, the gotchas, etc when moving to the next one, not to mention what the name and argument order of every function in the standard library is.

Blaming programmers for being too lazy to learn new languages is silly. We use languages to solve problems. Working in an unfamiliar language makes the problem harder to solve, not easier. Unless the new language is a much better fit to the problem at hand. That's why its handy to know a few with widely different characteristics.

If there's a language that can hit many positive characteristics at once, it's more useful to know well than one that doesn't. That isn't laziness. That's called being smart.
As with everything else in life, this is a compromise. It's a compromise of programming knowledge vs. the time to learn it and the time to keep learning. 10 programming languages, like others have mentioned seems exorbitant and you'll likely be spreading yourself thin. Knowing a functional language, an OOP language or two should be sufficient as your core languages. This isn't to say you shouldn't dabble in new languages and frameworks as they come out, but unless you're willing to cross bridges, the amount of time you'll spend learning the language, getting accustomed to new tools etc. will cost you more in time than is worth it to keep up to date with your core languages (especially if they're as fast-paced as Ruby).
I was imagining an alternative version in which Douglas later reveals that he was not participating at all in the conversation; his computer was covering for him. Good read; thanks for sharing.
A Stanford Student Asked For My Splash-Page Screenshots, I Gave Him This Instead
Kickstumbler: Discover projects on Kickstarter you'd never see otherwise.
Technology and the US Election
After the PR disasters surrounding SOPA and PIPA, most people don’t think of politicians as being particularly technologically aware, but if there’s one place where technology will be used to the full, it’s the US presidential election.
> If HTTP referrers never existed, the web would still be huge and would still be full of amazing content.

While we're at it, let's get rid of User-Agent. No sarcasm intended, I'm serious. It only does bad things.
I should note that the browser on Boot2Gecko is really not related to Firefox on Linux at all, outside of using the same Gecko renderer underneath. B2G -- unlike Firefox -- doesn't require X, doesn't support extensions, and the browser chrome and all that is actually just a web app itself. So sure, it shares a renderer, but it's like saying that ChromeOS is powered by Safari.

(Disclaimer: I work for Mozilla on Boot2Gecko.)
Great story about interfaces designed by people who don't use the software.

I've been encountering similar bad interfaces as I've been working volleyball tournaments mainly to learn how large scale tournaments are run and frankly the software out there works like something I might have built 15 years ago when I first learned MSAccess and VBA - that is to say, the interface is terribly clunky and not at all intuitive.

Though for niche products visible only to workers and admins, the 'vim principle' applies: software CAN afford to be (initially) intuitive, if it speeds up the workflow after a bit of training. Unfortunately, this current tournament software does not do that to the degree it should. There's no reason it can't be both efficient and highly intuitive based on what I've seen.

I aim to fix that!
Exactly, two things came to mind when I read that.

First: Sounds like a great place to work!

Second: What happend?
Motorola forces Apple to halt iCloud push services in Germany
So you're blaming the staff for an impractical UI?

You do realize that software should meet the business needs - not the business meeting the software needs?
> I've found it distressingly easy to kill changesets in Git unintentionally.

Mind if I ask how you manage to easily kill changesets in a 'distressingly easy' manner?

In my experience it is somewhat difficult inadvertently lose commits (especially to lose them for good) unless you go out of your way to do so.
Citigroup raises $1.9 bn with Indian sale
No, the article underscores that laissez-faire economic states allow illegal immigrants to work so that's where they migrate. You do see bizarre coalitions on immigration issues: right wing "open border" types allied with left wing "poor starving masses" champions. That reflects the Bush/Kennedy attempt at amnesty a few years ago. You see left wing labor advocates agreeing with right wing "lower legal immigration rates only" types to restrict the supply of labor and drive American wages up. You think a poor, liberal American black guy wants cheaper labor "taking his job"? I wouldn't describe his agenda as "right wing".
Have you worked with more than 5 developers on a rails project? I ask because all the problems I've had with dick typing appear around interfaces between code from 2 programmers, and 5 seems to be the threshold where communication starts to break down.
Of course, they are taking your jobs!
What Google’s Patents Reveal About Upcoming High-Tech Glasses
A la iTunes 9 -> 10.
That actually sounds like a really bad idea. No exercise, food delivered nearly to your mouth, sit for an hour, go back to work immediately after eating?

How about: walk 20 minutes to food, eat something different every day, relax for 20 minutes getting back to work, get fresh air.
Ahh, he obviously only thinks this because he hasn't learn Haskell yet ;-)
Unless the management bought a general scheduling system and not one specifically made for the restaurant business, then this is the fault of the software developers for building a system without doing the appropriate market research first.
Not my project but I thought it was cool.
Another fun example from the blog:

http://vardforbundetbloggen.se/gotlandsbloggen/files/2011/11...

The photo is from a health center and one panel is apparently to control the radio, the other one is an alarm system for the patients.
Success.

Wasn't it pg who said that in early-stage startups you attract people who want to build a great company, but in later stage companies you attract people who want to work for a great company?
Continuous Testing 2.0 is here
Continuous Testing 2.0 for Visual Studio has just been released. The new version includes lots of improvements and new features, notably Smart Test Run Prioritization and early abortion. Check it out!
The author takes the idea of "intellectual property" for granted. What about the problem of independent invention? The telegraph, telephone and lots of other major inventions had multiple pretenders to the throne of "inventor". I think that this fact make "IP" into something less than property.

The problems with this article extend further into its underpinnings than merely assuming a problem without explaining what the problem is.
Sure. This is the most informative public document I've found on the Google hiring process, it contains the 35% and 25% estimation:

http://www.qqtm.info/Interview/Google_Guide.pdf

The 0.5% (in fact less than 0.5%) comes from Google itself, from Don Dodge's blog:

http://dondodge.typepad.com/the_next_big_thing/2010/09/how-t...

I've researched this because I was on an onsite interview at Google on Tuesday and I am waiting for their answer right now...
That's the smartest part of the hack I guess - that the waiter actually invested time to test out his idea! Who knows probably the first marker he picked up didn't work the way he expected and he moved on to the next one till he found what worked.
Fake apologies in advance, this is a meta-comment. I'm throwing this out there, so HN, we need to have a talk.

This article is interesting to hackers, in the sense that Simpsons or Seinfeld or some popular t.v. show is interesting. So it doesn't violate the guidelines per se, unless you use the "intellectually gratifying" interpretation. Sure, nmap itself is interesting, so by proxy people can have their intellect gratified, but submit a link to the home page instead. Tack on a '?' if it's a dupe from a year ago that you really feel strongly deserves a repeat appearance. (nmap probably is.) Sure this submission is on the /classic page too so maybe I should shut up, but I've seen a huge increase in the number of submissions that aren't intellectually gratifying yet still receive a lot of upvotes.

Furthermore I've been pressing the 'flag' button a lot more and downvoting what I see as poor quality comments a lot more. I noticed a massive increase in this behavior after the SOPA incident when we inherited a ton of (presumably) Reddit users, whereas before sometimes there'd be a week of crap and sometimes a week of awesome, it was less predictable.

Feel free to downvote if you think I'm overreacting, just crazy, or it's just me who has noticed.
It's MUCH easier in the US.
Bloat is the one thing the monochrome color scheme emphasizes the most.
For all you non-swedish people out there: Jävla skitsystem is swedish for "fucking shit system".
Given how much the porn industry has given to the rest of the web in terms of leading the way in areas such as e-commerce, streaming and so on, it's nice that the non-porn industries can give a little back.
No, as I clearly said, I'm blaming the management for not clearly communicating to the staff why the new system will prove to be more efficient in the long run.
How to Do a Blog and Why You Need Protection - by Cif2Ninja
Translation: this is why I don't use vim.
It matters because extra tools cost money and get lost. If you work in a restaurant, you don't one a dedicated surgery kit just to indicate that someone showed up for their reservation.

A touch panel display that does everything, pinch in and out to modify details on specific tables, swipe to toggle between schedule mode and table view. Move people by holding on the table, then drag over. This is an easy app in the ipad age... I'd be surprised if it's not done already.
If I see a job posting with the exact same wording Today, I will apply for the job. So much better than the standard "looking for a (ruby|python|c|javascript) (rockstar|ninja)" than it makes me cry!
Also, they put a lot of people in cubicals now. The short kind, where it's impossible to get privacy, or quiet.
You seem to be implying that Chrome OS and B2G are really close, except B2G is missing a couple of things that Chrome has and is therefore "lower tech" or "simplified" but they simply have different design goals. Here's a list of APIs that B2G ships with that Chrome has no equivalent: https://wiki.mozilla.org/WebAPI
The story went off the rails for me when "Zach" said he couldn't hear himself nor feel himself move. Even in the midst of the most severe sensory deprivation, I continue to perceive "noise" in my sensory system: tinnitus, breathing, heartbeat, sub-resolution sparkles in my visual system (just close your eyes and pay attention), kinaesthetic sensations of enormous number and variety. As long as you're going to recreate memories indistinguishable from reality, you'll further need to create sensory input indistinguishable from reality. At which point you've simulated the entire encounterable universe and you indeed have something that I would call intelligent, despite its lack of carbon components in the mental mechanism. Each component technology might be interesting for its own sake, but aside from the philosophical point, what's the use? The carbon based versions are plentiful, and the construction process...
I think your recollection/search is incorrect. Qt Creator has a menu bar, navigation bar, and output selector etc. bar, all the height of a single line of text. There are no toolbars at all - none that can even be turned on. Much of the status and control interface is in a vertical bar on the left.
Rake for C++
But it isn't efficient. Its so inefficient that the staff have been reduced to using a marker on the screen. Its not a failure of management communication or proper training. It's a failure of the product.
Funny, I've mentioned "ease of use" and "rails" to a few rails friends, and most have said something along the lines of "Rails was never pitched as easy to use - I've no idea where people get the idea that Rails was intended to be easy to use!". It may be just them, but I've heard it from more than a few Rails people (though not universally).

Personally, it feels a bit revisionist, because I distinctly remember the Rails fans in 2006/2007 talking about how easy Rails made web development. But... perhaps my mind is playing tricks on me as I get older.
Squaring a Number in less than 3 seconds
Jammit is great, but I think he meant he built one for node.js.
Sooo... entrepreneurs should just make money appear?
Using jQueryMobile and Backbone.js for handling forms
But in the end it probably does both. I often find that when developing some system we end up with a less than optimal result due to all kinds of constraints. Sometimes there just isn't enough money to finish the project the way I wanted, or the existing ICT infrastructure isn't under my control and I and my clients have to make ends meet. Then the organisation starts growing around the solution like a leukocyte encapsulating a non-own-body cell and it becomes part of the organisation.
Perhaps they taped a sheet of acetate over the screen.
Resume writer
Professional resume writer is a instructed eventuality to invisibly get a accurately composed document in a scarce while totally.
Further playing to stereotypes, many of the 'social network' startups we've seen over the past several years have seems to come from college-age people (kids?!) and they all center on some variation of "how do I find out what my friends are doing/listeningto/watching/etc?"

These affairs often have "get a large audience" as a main goal, relying on network effects for hockey stick growth, and indeed, for the core value of the project.

Even when I was in college, knowing what my friends were doing was never really a main concern of mine, and it's certainly not one I have these days. Perhaps I've always been a bit more money-focused than some friends, but I have always been concerned with the monetization details of any project from day one.
MonoDevelop syntax highlighting style inspired by GitHub site
Photo Book App Launched on Facebook
Jeff has added a link. Thanks, Jeff!
> the test automation tools into Visual Studio were terrible

It went from "just plain bad" in VS2008 to "horribly awful" in VS2010. So awful that someone at MS named the process that manages the unit testing "QTAgent", so that when your machine slowed to a crawl and you opened the Task Manager to see what was wrong you'd see "QT" and conclude it was a background update issue with Apple QuickTime.
I assume you're referring to the Wired article, which makes for a fantastic read for those who haven't seen it.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/07/how-digital-detecti...
UK Court OKs Legal Claim to Be Served Via Facebook
The author conflates value with money all through this article - saying that if something doesn't make money it is worthless. This is simply ridiculous.

examples:

> How does the internet create and sustain value?

> ...at the end of the day, someone has to get paid

> Without the structure, the economic exchange will not get beyond the barter level.

> The industry has to begin to demonstrate what legislation it wants
And then you'd have to hope that the 1 in 1e100 chance doesn't come along where your passkey changes your hard drive into a Windows 95 computer filled with US nuclear secrets.
> people who don't use the software

It's far worse than that. Either they've never set foot in a busy restaurant, or they're insufferable, self-absorbed bores who don't take five seconds to look up at what's going on in the world around them.
Quick note on 1) but - if you want to be crash proof, you'll have to use background jobs anyway (or some kind of similar mechanism).

On 2) I use CoffeeScript and Ruby at once and that's not an issue for me.
Lessons from Canada's Silicon Valley diaspora
I admit my mind wandered from the immediate context of the article. Im just curious overall - like a draftsman using tools that suit the task, not hunting for an icon and using a mouse that is separate from the screen. Touch interfaces have come a long way indeed but fingers are still too fat for precision work. I was a big fan of this as well: http://www.wired.com/entertainment/music/news/2007/08/bjork_...
кухненско обзавеждане
Една добра домакиня се нуждае е добра кухня изберете вие как да изглежда вашата кухня до най малкия детайл,можете да изберете дръжки за шкафове смесители ,и какво ли още не разгледаите сайта и си харесайте перфектната кухня.
I tend to find that Go is so multi-paradigm that it fits all my use cases well. It's a perfect high and low level language, fits entirely in your head, has decent testing support, scales code-quantity wise very well and is very fast.

It traditionally replaces all the areas I'd use Python, C# and C beforehand.

I see less requirement for "picking a language for the job" thanks to this.

It only sucks as a shell scripting language for which I use sh.
I really hope this survives, IMO we need a truly free mobile OS since meeGo died.

Concerns about 'browser as an OS', web apps only, and carrier control are way premature-- wait until we have seen the thing. For me, the fact mozilla are behind it trumps these concerns-- i know it will be truly open and consumer oriented.

..

If i had to guess, i would say that it would ship with carrier modification, but that this could be easily reverted with a simple, freely available 'add-on' (think ad-block-- no rooting, jailbreaking etc required), and that gecko would provide the default UI[1], with the option for native web apps to share the same front-end, and the linux backend would be available too.

..

1. Since the web is the only 100% cross-platform environment, and all smartphones are going to have a browser rendering engine loaded a lot of the time, this makes a lot of sense to me.
Ancient Egyptions generated electricity in Pyramids
If you are going to stereotype and collect statistics, why make generalizations of all nationalities?

Why not break down the "work ethic" by country of origin, age, etc.

This whole study is ridiculous. I have a feeling it's not aimed at Canadian immigrants to the USA but instead Mexican.

If that's the case, why don't we help build up Mexican commerce by taking all the stuff we buy/build in China and build up Mexico instead? What if Mexico had the factories that we helped build in China? What if foxconn was in Mexico instead of China?

ps.

the labor-force participation rate of the foreign-born in 2010 was 67.9 percent, compared to the native-born rate of 64.1 percent

Isn't 3% considered a margin of error unless there is a massive amount of data?
Could you just tell me why Griswold's opinion on the benefits of illegal immigrants over [African-American implied] welfare recipients as they apply to the US economy is subject matter for Hacker News? Relevance?

Wait, don't bother. Econlib/Cato/Griswold/Koch sell kooky theories to the unintelligent to mask their war on poor people. I don't actually take them seriously.
Nokia becomes top Windows Phone vendor after just one quarter
is an incredibly dumb idea

Ouch.

It's another step away from general purpose computing

Not if the web platform itself is taking enormous strides towards general purpose computing, particularly in the mobile realm of B2G:

https://wiki.mozilla.org/WebAPI

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5#New_APIs

In fact, in my opinion the web stack is becoming The Greatest Programming Toolkit Ever Built:

http://blog.arturadib.com/the-greatest-programming-toolkit-e...

It works for incredibly simple things. But that's it.

Depends on what you mean by "incredibly simple". If you look at the most popular apps besides games, it's hard to imagine why they can't be implemented in HTML5.

As for games, stay tuned. Folks are working hard on it:

https://wiki.mozilla.org/Platform/AreWeFunYet

TL;DR: I disagree. The web stack is becoming the greatest general-purpose toolkit ever built. Already it's a great platform choice for building an entire "app" ecosystem on top of, and it's only getting better.

DISCLAIMER: Although I'm not in the B2G team, I work for Mozilla. However, the above is strictly my personal opinion.
What would you do with a conductive silver ink pen?
REST is over
Thanks; have clarified the Gecko/Firefox difference.
How We Made Our 2nd iPad Video, Still on the Cheap
Not the software development teams in Redmond, at least as of 2007, though some of the support and administrative services certainly were. The goal was to give all dev team members their own private office. Interns and the more junior people (in terms of number of years at MSFT) are "doubled up" if there are insufficient spaces, but it is generally considered a bad thing and something management tries to minimize.
My experience with generic "Don't put this chemical on that surface" issues has been that it usually takes quite a long time of heavy contact before there's a noticeable effect. I'm guessing an Italian restaurant with an identifiable "head waiter" can afford to replace a $200 monitor every few months.
I would like to know if it is possible in the future to write a 'native' app for this OS, and by that I mean one that is not encumbered by the speed limitations of Javascript.
If you need to program in C, use Go. For everything else, use Python.
> All that said, server-side ain't goin away, and Rails is still one of the best ways to develop server-side apps.

I'm not sure. You only need a server-side if you have users, there are a lot of apps that don't need users. For those that do there's no reason why your server-side code needs to sit next to your web server as it does today. What you need is a good API framework, which Ruby does well today, but perhaps should be its primary focus in the future.
Is it just me or the author of the article did everything he could to make Boot to Gecko look bad, even if we know very little from it yet.

Since when being fully open source and easy to hack is a bad thing? The argument of operators crippling the phone with their apps is another problem. And I don't think Mozilla would approve distributing an OS which seriously limits the user freedom.
Facebook Shakes Hardware World With Own Storage Gear
Wow, this took forever to click. I have never written sites that spanned several servers like that. Thanks!
The line in support of ACTA and SOPA has always been this: the Internet has a piracy problem. We're just trying to fix it. If you don't like our method, why don't you suggest an alternative?

I have a huge problem with that. Copyright infringement is already illegal. We already have the DMCA to enforce it. If ACTA and something like SOPA pass and piracy continues, then what? The problem hasn't gone anywhere, and the same people will be back with an even harsher "solution" and the same old argument. This argument, extrapolated, is a never-ending death spiral into Internet totalitarianism.
LibreOffice is also planning a cloud version, so it could well be them. Assuming they can provide a proper port (which i think was the plan?) then they are way ahead of google docs.
The Death Star would't be that expensive
True, I'm not sure it's important to make the distinction to end-users though.
Mobile subscriber leakage via HTTP headers in the wild