skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Huh, I majored in math, and I can't say that I understand what you mean.

In the lower division (first two years), there is often a separation of core classes between math majors and non-math majors. Calculus, for example, and linear algebra. They served as weeder courses for the math majors so that those who couldn't do good math wouldn't advance onto the upper division courses were they would continue to not do well. In addition, there was a somewhat misc. logic class for math majors that was very strict and served as a choke-point weeder class taken just before you would go onto upper division work.

For non-math majors, the Calculus classes were kind of weeder classes, but that wasn't their purpose. If you were an engineering, the engineers had their own real classes that were their own weeder classes. Etc.

But the two tracks disappeared after lower division. Once you were in 3rd year, there was largely only one set of classes. A couple of them had less rigorous counterparts for those only pursuing a teaching certification, but that was about it.

You are right that CS stands out. It's an unorganized field that is still trying to define itself. (Consider how young it is, relatively speaking.) Some schools want it to be mostly theory, others mostly software engineering, most are somewhere in between. There's disagreement over which languages to teach, how to teach them, etc. It's all somewhat awkward, and it needs to be reformed. I'm hoping that eventually we can split it into two separate fields, like CS theory and software engineering, and do a better job teaching both. (FWIW, I also majored in CS, so I saw both sides of the coin.)
I find this funny coming from someone whose handle is "lispm". You probably would have found McCarthy's original Lisp demo¹ unconvincing, too. Think about it.

¹ http://www.paulgraham.com/mcilroy.html
Knife-santoku - a knife replacement that helps you build processes around Chef
This is huge.

Why?

Because the auto industry was one of the earliest and remains one of the heaviest users on online advertising.

If any industry knows a thing or two about online advertising, and has been willing to experiment, it's the auto industry.

Facebook is in big trouble, as a "business".
The quality and layout of a keyboard can be just as important as any other defining feature of a laptop. You should not project your lack of preference in the matter on someone else and then call them hysterical.
3) Downlading World of Warraft
I used to work for them too. The atmosphere just got worse with every passing year. I don't think Ballmer's done anything to rejuvinate the culture. It just keeps getting more cutthroat and political.
Why?

Kinect and Xbox came to fruition under his leadership. And that division alone can become billion dollar business for MSFT. Agreed WP7 was late but MSFT takes pride in being late to any market. After all, they are last man standing in most of the markets. Zune failed but can't he have couple of failures? Btw, their core enterprises business is growing.
The Map that saved a hospital millions
This is really not my experience. My facebook ads are so relevant that they almost seem like a useful service at times. It knows a few of the things I'm interested in thanks to who I'm friends with or pages i've liked or whatever - so I see ads for RC planes, chess software, local restaurants... the ads seem both more relevant and less spammy than my google ads.
My friend made this to find cheap cereal on Amazon
I believe that Zed was striving for Zen in his post.

As a college student and someone who read LPTHW, I'm quite happy to see this entry. I have seen the negative attitudes of many self-ascribed "programmers" in the CS department at my University. I feel like a lot of this comes from the point that Zed was making - the old dogs are upset because new people are circumventing how they learned to code. It's strange that some people hold so dearly to their old methods of learning, but I do feel like one must let go of that way of thinking if they wish to be happy.

The new methods of learning are great and they usually don't cement anyone into thinking they're a "programmer." One of my best friends goes to RISD and he learned to code from LPTHW and he is one of the best coders I know (although I think his style is weird sometimes... but that's beside the point). What matters is he is making cool things and he is humble about it. People shouldn't be too attached to any one thing on this earth, it takes away from our complexity as humans. We have such boundless potential and I hate to see that get knocked down by people who are afraid of losing their identity as a "programmer." Those people are so much more than that too! Even if they read all of Knuth's literature and have built compilers, humans aren't robots, why should we act like them? We must let go of the identities that cause to inflict harm on people.

Zed has come across as rather harsh in some of his writing, but this post is very beautiful. I'm not saying that Jeff is a bad guy, I'm just glad that Zed wrote this post.

Hopefully in time we can all let go of the identity of being a programmer. Most of us use libraries built by other people that are so abstracted anybody could do it! And what's cool about the people who are building the gnarly libraries is they put it out for opensource - they want people to use it 8^)

Don't be concerned with the bullies, go out there and have fun!
That seems unlikely. For an accelerated tab you'll have the Tab process, the GPU process, and the Browser process. Even if you pegged all three (which is extremely unlikely considering the content), you'd still have a core to spare.

There's a point in there about the relative maturity of graphics code, but let's keep things honest (also, I think the Mac/Windows divide on Flash would be lessened if everyone had to use Flash on the other platform for a while. Imagine your CPU doing that on virtually every page that decides to embed a Flash ad and you'll get some idea of what it's like on a Mac).
>Also, their stock price has been basically flat for 10 years. That tells you what the market thinks of Microsoft.

If you consider MSFT stock price to have been flat over the last 10 years, then the market itself has essentially been flat over the last 10 years.

MSFT stock is up 20% over the last 10 years.

The S&P 500 is up 26% over the last 10 years.

That's not that big of a difference when considering (1) the immense volatility that we gone through over the last two boom and bust cycles and (2) some large portion of that 26% S&P 500 gain is Apple's 100x increase in split adjusted stock price.
Why do you say that? Granted I don't hang out with starving students, but the people I know on Facebook are quite capable of buying new cars. I don't know why you think moms aren't interested in GM cars. Around here GM trucks and cars are selling pretty well.

In any case a lot of people here, as another poster said, are confusing direct advertising with branding. I'm not in the market for a new car, but if I'm on Facebook, it's more than likely because I'm bored. If a car ad that looks good is on the page I'm on, I'm likely to click on it and look at the car. A year or two from now when I might be in the market, that make of car I keep seeing on FB is likely to be on my mind as a possible candidate.

And now that I think of it, I keep seeing brand new GM Yukons on the road and I like the way they look and they look like they are good tow vehicles. If I saw a Yukon ad on facebook, odds are I will click through.
You can't say OK until he stops saying stop.
Go back to Reddit, thanks.
Probably. I see people browsing/completing their tasks while having Facebook open in another tab pretty much all the time.
If Jeff's goal was to create a widespread dialog over a mostly unquestioned trend, he succeeded wildly.
I've often thought that Podcasts should be distributed over BitTorrent. Every so often Ira Glass comes on the This American Life podcast and mentions that it costs over $100K a year (or whatever) for just the bandwidth of hosting the podcast.

This isn't to say that you shouldn't give directly to support your favorite public radio shows and/or your local public radio station, naturally.
Protocols are processes and apis are descriptions therefore what? You do seem terribly confused.
>Jeff's article then proceeds to present a very reasonable argument to consider for why you might not want to code, specifically, there are many useful skills in the world and maybe there's one that would serve you better than coding.

Programming is a super-power, even if you only know a little bit. Knowing how to program gives you abilities to create unequaled in the history of the world. I think that the more people who know how to program, the better, even if they "suck" by comparison to a rock star programmer (or alternately a fat guy who knows C++ [1]).

Maybe 95% of people will never be lead programmer on a commercial product, but almost everyone ends up, e.g., searching Google -- and not being afraid of complex search results can mean the difference between digging through six pages of garbage and getting relevant results right away because you weren't afraid to use the minus operator or other more "advanced" search features.

And probably most people in the workplace have to deal with an Excel spreadsheet from time to time -- being willing to dig into creating more complex formulas because they aren't afraid of lists of functions with parameters would be an obvious side effect of knowing a bit of code.

Regardless, Zed is saying that no one should be telling you that you SHOULDN'T learn to program, period. And I agree.

[1] http://betabeat.com/2012/05/04/pro-tip-from-silicon-valley-s...
Which Redis types specifically?

Have you seen?: https://github.com/dpage/redis_fdw
I wouldn't say Facebook has a huge problem here - users spend much more time on Facebook than on Google (by design) and even if they don't intend to do anything other than "use Facebook", the ads are effective as a result of their high exposure.

That said, however, a very large group of users are there to play social games. With social game companies competing for ad space (for these often highly-profitable users), they're driving up the price of ads and making it less economical for other industries to advertise on Facebook.
It's not the terminology per se that is the issue, but insisting on correcting everyone who uses it.

In the minds of everyone who is not in the group that makes that distinction it sounds like you're trying to justify something. It's essentially identical to the argument college kids make to me all the time: "I'm not stealing anything, I'm pirating it." Of course you are, but if I explained this issue to, say, a Senator, they would say it's stealing. At that point, yes, correct said Senator, then you're in a real discussion about a real issue. Swooping in and correcting some guy who casually uses the term "stealing" on an Internet form just grates on me because you sound like those college kids trying to justify themselves.
Stop complaining. If you built your own company and were offered to be "acqui-hired" you most likely would take it! There are some businesses that are viable enough to stand on their own - but the majority of startups in our industry are BUILT to be acquired, what happens to them is really an exercise for evolution in the ecosystem we all participate in.

If my company were offered to be acqui-hired, I would take it (assuming the offer was reasonable!). You probably would too.
Most of the things zed said here I agree with. What I don't agree with is his attitude toward classic programming books like k&r and GoF. Those books are gold, and I'm sorry, but if you want to master something you need to study the classics. Ask any academic.

Lcthw is great for beginners but once you've read those you need to move on to the more serious stuff.
Please... read the original article.
Quora: 	 Did anyone decline an offer to work at Instagram?
I'm all for conversation, but is anyone else getting tired of this predictable circlejerk of

1) Industry guy A says this in a blog post!

2) Industry guy B doesn't agree! So he writes a blog post arguing the opposite point.

3) Industry guy C is above this argument, so he posts a blog espousing a deeper philosophy on the matter.

It seems noisy and totally counterproductive, and yet all 3 articles will inevitably show up on the front of HN. Hell, I'll even admit that I've bought into it a few times, but it's just getting a little old. It just smacks of a bunch of bloggers trying to leech off each others' hits.
I can't say I agree with this. With threading there are certainly extra things that always have to be in the back of your mind, however saying you have to specialize in only writing threading libs is a bit extreme.
Because a lot of us are bloggers, have companies with blogs, and/or have a vested interest in how people act on the web (because of our websites and stuff). This is an interesting piece of information about a controversy that surrounds an issue that affects us. The particulars don't but the concepts do, and the repercussions may.
Programming is not like carpentry or plumbing.

With only an intuition for basic mathematics, the ability to read, and maybe a layman's understanding of fundamental physics one can come to understand enough about carpentry and plumbing to solve their own problems.

The same isn't true for computers. We don't teach computation in schools. To learn programming you have to scratch your own itch or wait until you get to college (in most places). There's no intuition about computation, no fundamentals that are taught and widely adopted. The average person doesn't sit down at their computer and understands what is going on, even in some small intuitive way, when they save their spreadsheet or click on a link in their email that takes them to their banking site (and subsequently they cannot even put together why, months later, they are the victim of bank fraud). Without even a basic understanding of the fundamental principles of computation these people have no idea how this technology is affecting their lives.

I'm not saying that everyone needs to be a professional programmer any more than everyone needs to be a master carpenter. We don't teach math in early education in the hopes that every child becomes a mathematician. We do it because it gives them tools to navigate their world and overcome the challenges of modern life. So too must we teach them computation. We don't want them all to become programmers but it is useful to know so that they can have the intuition to solve their own problems and start using computers as tools.
While we're here, let me just say what I've been thinking for weeks: I hate all these apps and sites whose default behavior is to post which videos/articles a user has viewed without some sort of explicit, per-video or per-article intent to share on the users part. That, in and of itself, is shady. I will remember negatively every brand who has chosen to do this. It doesn't matter that the user installed an app that technically gives the them permission to do it. I'd venture to bet that every single time I've seen this sort of stuff in my timeline, it was totally unintentional.

The best paradigm is for people to specifically share when they want something shared. No one cares what someone is watching generally. Just because they watched it doesn't mean it's worth sharing. It's different when someone watches something and then "likes" it or chooses to share it with their friends.

Because of underhanded news sites and services like SocialCam, it's become my advice to everyone I talk to: "If you don't understand how the technology you're using works, don't do or read anything on the Internet you wouldn't mind everyone on Facebook knowing about." That's a sad place to be.
He's been trying to learn how to code, so we all just told him the best way is to build something you want. It turns out he built something a lot of us want. Cheap cereal. Needless to say I was pretty impressed with his first project.
Exactly! I just realized so when I wrote the "going further" part of the previous answer :-)
Embrace Freemium
I don't see any conflict between the notion that PHP is a turd of a language and that it's perfectly adequate for building something major. If you're willing to spend years holding your nose. Or if you have little aesthetic sense. Or aren't experienced with other languages and don't know any better.

As far as I'm concerned, PHP is the Bud Light of programming languages. Popular and perfectly adequate for a large audience, but definitely not a sign of taste and discernment.
Building Smart Conversion Metrics For Freemium Business Model
"If people think a company will pay out big dividends, then they bid up the price of the stock."

No not really and if they do then the price falls once the dividend is announced.

This is basic math:

Company is worth x dollars.

Company gives away y dollars.

Company is now worth x - y dollars.

Felix Salmon explains it well here:

http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2012/03/19/apples-sens...
You could say that providing subsidies that make unhealthy processed food artificially cheap tends to increase obesity. In fact, I think that that's the consensus view of experts on the issue.
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Is this a desktop only problem, or does it extend to console players too?
The highest-rated answer doens't explain anything... he just says that IBM's punch cards had 80 colums. What does that have to do with conventions for entering text in an editor?
Yes, I believe the original osx release more closely resembles Lion than Windows 2000 resembles Windows 7 (notwithstanding the architecture change).

It's an amazing achievement for apple, their api's and UI have matured quite impressively.
This is interesting. I only "liked" friend posts or pictures. May if I "like" more direct things like restaurants, brands, facebook may be able to provide me a better "ad" experience. But, its good to know that it works for some people.
When watching TV the intent is to watch TV, not purchase soap, a car, or a soft drink. It might be that Facebook's ads are simply the wrong type/style for the kind of interaction people use it for. It does seem like Facebook ads feel like Google search ads.
Moving images to CSS works in some cases, but the ability to specify an inline img in HTML is very useful in general. As a thought experiment, imagine replacing all <img> tags with CSS. That's essentially what this is doing.
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Dear Uncle Bob: Please, please show me the code
Instead of making a post like this, I would have actually written a blog post about it - that would have been more effective for this crowd. Just sayin' (I agree w/ you btw, but not with your medium).
sugary drinks. I've never known someone to drop these and not lose weight. It is SO EASY to consume an extra 500 calories a day of liquid sugar. It has close to zero satiety. A 500 calorie surplus is a pound of weight gain a week.
With some work, Go can already work with the NDK. The problem is that almost all the APIs are Java only. The only exceptions are things strictly necessary for writing games.
Also:

> That means we don’t need as much energy-intensive air-conditioning, and our employees get to wear shorts to work.

As someone who is in warm datacenters often, "get to" is a bit of a positive spin on it...
This man is absolutely right.

The stock market is rarely rational. This is exploited by value investors, like myself, who invest in companies that are undervalued for no reason.
For brand advertisers like GM, intent is supposed to matter less. The lack of intent was always a known factor, but I personally expected big brands to be comfortable with Facebook's lower click through rates. The fact that they're not is a huge red flag.
I'm sorry, that's not correct. You can copyright a play because it has a script; the public performance is a specific (copy)right granted on the script. You can also separately copyright a recording of a play.

The main thing is there has to be a specific thing that is copyable. Or more accurately, (U.S.) copyright protects against copying an original work of authorship fixed in tangible medium of expression.

A protocol is not a set of questions and answers, but a mechanism to generate responses. It's literally a machine. Its output changes with every input. Therefore, it's patentable, but is it copyrightable?

You can copyright the software underlying it. You can copyright a transcript of a session of the protocol. You can copyright a technical specification of the protocol.

But because a protocol fails several qualities of "an original work of authorship fixed in a tangible medium of expression", it is not copyrightable.

An interesting and overlapping area are generative works like board games. Take for instance Magic the Gathering or Settlers of Catan. Are they copyrightable?

The answer is more interesting than you might think.

A game is not copyrightable.

* http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl108.html
* http://boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/2700/intellectual-property...

However, the rules, board game, cards, etc. are copyrightable. Does that mean I could make a million billion dollars selling Pioneers of Penzance by directly knocking off Settlers of Catan? No! If the new rules, board, cards are substantially similar to Settlers of Catan, I'd be in trouble.
You can most definitely witness memory reordering on the PS3 when you have code on the PPU and SPUs operating on the same memory.
Fans prepare for Diablo III with beer, salad, sacrifice, and more
I have no doubt that there is a would-be authoritarian (or two) out there proposing precisely that.
> When watching TV the intent is to watch TV, not purchase soap, a car, or a soft drink.

The difference being that facebook doesn't make you watch a 10 second ad between each one of Dave's party photos.
Your salary numbers are very low.

I think you're claiming it's because of the peculiar type of job (DoD or DoD + clearance). This is not the explanation. I know several people who are doing DoD contract work for software development (cleared and not), in various places across the US, and their rates are perhaps 2x higher than what you're quoting.

And I'm astonished to read your claim elsewhere on this thread that you or people in your organization are not being reimbursed for travel for work. I've never heard of such a policy -- it may not even be lawful.

Sure, they will try to chip away at the edges (Was that cab ride necessary, given that you have a rental car? and, Your breakfast was included in the registration fee). But that's all second-order stuff.
Dan Martell: Why this relentless entrepreneur has turned his focus to mobile
The card puncher was the editor.
Again funny how people read different things from the same text :-) . That's not what I was trying to say. On the contrary to master a craft you will need to learn several different skills and a craft is something thing that you can learn, but more importantly must learn and study to master. I'm not saying this should be out of reach for most people as is any craft, if you want to learn something you should be able to and I applaud any afford to make it more affordable and easier . but contrary to reading and arithmetic etc it is not something you must learn to be a productive member to society. This is true not only for coding but for any craft, be it plumbing, sewing carpentry, Medical professions etc.
Most of my ads are software companies like Asana advertising jobs. Seems well-targeted to me.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3978473
I like Zed, and I like Jeff. I dislike Jeff's article, and really like what Zed is saying about not letting people tell you not to become a programmer (or whatever you want). Well said.

However, Zed did Jeff a real disservice - he put words into Jeff's mouth that he did not say. There are many people who do have that kind of resentment, and I see it all the time, but I can not see where he got that from Jeff's article (or any of Jeff's articles, in fact).