skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I love my Android phone and I love developing for it but I sort of think that sometimes we have a little bit of Stockholm syndrome when I hear another Android developer say "fragmentation is great!." It really isn't, especially not with the differences between 2.3 and 3+, but I like being able to put my own apps on my phone without paying $99 a year, so I like my phone quite a bit.
HN: What do I need to learn?
Even if you generally trust Linus more than Jeff, on this particular issue people are criticizing Jeff for being too harsh on beginners. Linus is consistently a harsher critic than Jeff.
There wasn't time. If I had taken extra time, or if I had known my major earlier enough, I could have. However, the expectation was that I would not take an intro calc course.

I live in a state where there is a big educational disparity between urban and rural areas. Unfortunately, nobody cares. The best universities are geared to sync up with where the urban students get at the end of high school, instead of the rural ones (like me).

The point is, if some high schools start skewing their courses towards "more algebra, less calculus," those students may be at a disadvantage unless/until colleges catch onto the trend.
The fact you know about HN, and have even asked the question is I suspect the answer you need.

Yes, code something up. what is now decided - how you code it is a harder question.

Start small, rent a box from rackspace (10 dollars a month)
and put a simple django site up. Get comfortable with git.

Just try. If you Show HN in a month, you might find someone interested to help. StackOverflow is your friend.

Good luck. (Also see Ncombinator)
The SO article linked mentions http://railsinstaller.org/ near the bottom, I remember hearing good things about it, was I misled?
> comments that don't add to the discussion

Atwood: > don't advocate learning to code just for the sake of learning how to code.

Shaw: > Never listen to people who try to make beginners feel like losers

The OP here is non sequitur at best and strawman at worst. Certainly not a model for constructive contribution to a conversation.

The entire affair from here seems to be a nearly-pointless dramatic back-and-forth between loud people. I read HN for critical insight, not bickering.
Not a good choice for hunting. AK's have pretty terrible aim, sure you can throw them in mud or have rocks in the magazine and they will work but the accuracy is hardly worth it. I have an ak merely because it looks cool. If you must use a semi-automatic to go hunting get an ar-15.
Insanely cool!

Any resident Googlers out here: Who works on such projects? Is it a 20% project? Or there is some dedicated team to do stuff like this?

Edit: Downvotes? Really?
> People making those comments are not coming from a position of power (even if they are managers).

John Scalzi: "In the role playing game known as The Real World, 'Straight White Male' is the lowest difficulty setting there is." (http://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/05/15/straight-white-male-th...)
I think you're applying boolean logic where there is none.

I wouldn't say that people should always totally be logical. That's stupid because logic ignores context which is very relevant in the real world.

I would say that one of the skills it teaches is the ability to think more logically. I also actually don't think that's the best skill it teaches. I think it gives people a bunch of other skills, and that "logic" is kind of secondary to the others.
Disclaimer: I was so impressed with Learn Python the Hard Way that I bought the hardback in the hope that Shaw gets a beer out of it. I've made it to Ch 11 and will finish the course when I get my students through their maths exams.

PS: Zed, magstep3 in TeX, please, I need glasses as it is.

Is it possible that there are degrees of code writing?

I publish my humble Web site using some bash scripts I hacked up to generate pages from markdown text then to generate the index and lftp the lot up to my Web server space. That is coding, but it is not software engineering or industrial strength. The system probably only makes sense to me.

I bodge together R scripts that produce interactive 2d plots I can use in maths teaching. Again not engineering but useful.

I'd like to be able to hack up some small apps for Ubuntu, just silly front ends for things. The 'developer story' as Shuttleworth puts it is not too far ahead yet, so I'll have to get my head around Python/Glade. I'm reading my way through the Pyroom code and scratching my head a lot. I think that is getting closer to trade school coding but I'm no credible threat to a proper coder and have no intention of being.

Does HN collectively think there is a valid space for end user coding as in the BASIC days? If you want to get philosophical, is there space for bricollage as well as architecture?
Stay curious, learn anything.
GM to Stop Advertising on Facebook
How was this made? The browser scrollbar is even perfectly useable.
So what can Google do to reduce the problem?

What problem? The linked article could as easily have been called "The Diversity of Android". That title would have been more honest, if less likely to get linked.
The valve manifesto
Interesting that they don't seem to even mention the simplest possibility: Maybe most advertising isn't actually very influential, period.
I can't decide whether this is in explanation or apology for the fact that gmail is crazy slow.
This is a pretty fair point you make; I do commend them for going as far as they went with helping the customer.

That being said, I still don't believe that in this particular case (maybe they do in others) they live up to what they lead to expect of them.

So, agree to "slightly" disagree :)
Looks like about $200/mo for the 2GB RAM it takes to run a ~20 user server.
From Zero to Javascript Hacker in 60 Seconds
Why Should I Not Learn to Program?
Perhaps Jeff should have chosen a better title. Perhaps Jeff should have chosen a better example than of a man late in his career path holding a highly specialized job an ultra-majority of people will never hold.

I'm sure Bloomberg would have loved to know how to code back in his trading days. Of course Jeff can't see a reason a financial trader would want to trade.
Also on Reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/tokmh/interactive_p...
You're mixing things up, so I'd suggest going back to do more research. Honeycomb was tablet-only, it was never released for handsets. That's like complaining that only 7% (or whatever) of iOS users can run iPad apps, it's meaningless.

ICS uptake, however, has been ploddingly slow. It's finally breaking through now as the vendors clear out their holiday inventory and start pushing new models.
On consideration, it occurs to me that the original article may mean "extra over your maintenance calories".

In other words, suppose the obese guy needs 3500 calories a day to maintain his weight, and the skinny guy needs 2000. Then I guess it might be true that if the obese guy eats 3510 calories a day, he will gain weight faster than the skinny guy eating 2010. That seems counter-intuitive but at least plausible.
I'm curious though, what was the uptake on Ruby before Rails?

Prior to 2005, reasonable in Japan and poor in the West. Analogous to the position of Erlang, say, in 2012.

The influx of new users and attention after 2005 could have turned into a more mainstream success for the language and for years, I thought it would pan out, but I'm not sure it has.
>Sure, it is applied math, but it is not quantum physics.

Quantum physics, and all other forms of physics are applied math.
One difference between different linux distros and android is that, in the former case, end users recognize that software written for another distro may not work on their specific OS. In the latter case, however, end users (especially ones that aren't technical) think that they have the same OS (when in reality they all own phones with different levels of API support / compatibility) and are upset when a specific app does not work as expected on their device.
New fraud tools turn Pinterest scams into point-and-click exercise
The funny thing is, as far as I can tell, these are the only two widespread uses of BitTorrent.

1) Pirating movies, music, etc...

2) Downloading Linux distributions.
Actually the ultimate question has been answered, we know it is 42.

The problem is that we do not know what the ultimate question is.
Web developers have quite a bit of experience coping with shitty implementations as well. I prefer a shitty implementation now, that a perfect one sometime circa 2021.
Ask HN: About the cold war Going on Hackernews
Well this is really confusing for guys like us who have just began their careers as programmers.
The top posts on HN are all about whether "you should learn coding" and "you shouldnt learn coding because ... blah ... blah ...".
Its like a Cold war going on here on HN.
And I mean WTF !!
Everyone has his/her rights to share their views about a particular topic.
Why do you have to criticize someone for his/ her post (by creating a new post and criticizing them for their wrong views)
<p>And I just want to ask ! What exactly are these guys trying to prove from their posts (of you should/shouldnt learn coding) !!
"The news comes at a bad time for Facebook Inc."

In fact, at a time so bad that it seems unlikely this is a coincidence. I wonder who's trying to hurt Facebook's IPO?
If I had to explain the issue at stake here, I'd do it this way.

Imagine you go into a fast-food restaurant. "I'd like a burger," you say to the cashier. You get a burger. The next day, you go to a different restaurant. "I'd like a taco," you say. They bring you a taco.

Just then, a lawyer bursts in. "I'm sorry, but my client, the burger restaurant, has a copyright on that. No other restaurant is allowed to accept orders in the form of 'I'd like a(n) X'".

Would that be crazy?

APIs are the computer equivalent. If you go to a blog and request a page like 'someblog.com/posts', then you go to a movie theater's site and request a page like 'moviesite.com/movies', you wouldn't think of those two actions as having anything in common. Sure, both sites use a url like '/items' to serve up that kind of item. Why wouldn't they?

But if the courts rule that APIs can be copyrighted, the movie site might either have to license the right to have URLs like '/movies', or do something else.

What else? Whatever they can think of - and think of it first. Because the race will be on to copyright every imaginable scheme. '/show/me/movies' and '/movies=all' and '/3932939' will soon be taken. Even if they can come up with a new convention, they'll likely be in court for the right to use it.

Does that sound good for consumers - ostensibly the ones whom intellectual property laws should benefit? Does it sound good for new businesses who don't have legal departments?

Or would it be crazy?
You get used to anything. For instance, I find your 1st example much more readable, but I've been doing it for years.

Names tend to be pretty small anyway. Here are some random ones from the code I'm working on (Sococo Teamspace)

CreateVariant - a method

soLogWriteInfo - a method (I didn't write)

clHeadSSt - a circular list head for a stream
The levels of hardware failure tolerance are amazing. I believe that hot swap CPUs fit somewhere in that list, as does memory. (see the 'fault tolerance' section here: http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/z/advantages/resiliency/datadr...)
So because it's a "natural consequence" it's not an actual problem? Sorry.

Distribution on Linux can be a similar nightmare. Try downloading a source package to find that it requires version 2.3 of LibExample, and you have version 2.2, but the developers didn't know they needed 2.3 and the configure script doesn't detect the discrepancy, so you get some cryptic compilation error halfway through. Binary distribution on Linux is possible, the Xonotic folks did it, but it's a lot of work. Android development is more forgiving since the API as a whole is versioned, but portable programming is still more work.

Diversity of hardware and software isn't an inherent boon, it's just something that brings its own benefits and drawbacks.
NetSuite Moves to 'Commerce as a Service'
All things being equal a collocated team will always beat distributed ones -soory to be brutal but thats how it is.

Anyone who says otherwise is a sales man trying to flog video conferenceing gear or deluding themselves.

This is based on many years experience and the common factor for good projects was a team that meshed well and was in the same office.
In another reply you questioned people's level of English comprehension. Did you read anything but the headline of Jeff's post? If so, you are the one with the reading comprehension problem because your entire rant has nothing to do with any of the points Jeff was making in his post.

Of course that doesn't matter to you. You got to create a sensational headline and a fiery rant to please your fanboys.
The "calories in/calories out" argument is based on the assumption that the human body is a closed system. This is simply not the case, and touting it as a diet strategy is irresponsible. You might lose weight if you lower your caloric intake by only eating 1 McDonalds cheeseburger a day instead of 2, but in the end you are still eating crap food "product", and you won't be as healthy as you could be by focusing on the _quality_ of your food as opposed to the _quantity_.
Diversity is all well and nice, but how do developers possibly test against all those configurations? If you don't test - how do you ensure that as low as possible a percentage won't return your app, and ding your ratings simply because their phone has issues with your software?

Google needs to do more work to make software development and testing easier - as an end customer I don't want the pain of having to guess if the software I buy is or is not going to work.
In Praise of Pixels
+1 to teaching yourself to program. Here's one perspective on this: https://twitter.com/#!/FAKEGRIMLOCK/statuses/160523976773349...
But it IS a life skill. It's not comparable to reading or writing maybe, but it is comparable to financial planning. People don't learn to write budgets properly so they go broke. People don't know how computers work, even just the basics, but operate these machines every day as part of their work and their home life. Knowing how to use a command line to look for viruses, how to monitor your home network, or even what a bit of code looks like - enormously useful skills that make you a more savvy, thoughtful, and protected citizen.
Since dalvik is a vm, how likely would a go->dalvik bytecode compiler be?
No doubt, the hasLayout IE issue comes to mind whenever I think of implementation bugs. Implementation bugs are the worst.
More and more games are using it as a patching tool these days. Blizzard has been using BitTorrent to distribute patches for years with WoW.
I believe it is a vital skill, but that it's not being taught well enough so that's why people don't think it is. The same could be said about nearly everything we teach in K-12 at some point in the subject's history.

Also, it's not an attack, it's a counter-attack. People really need to get their order of events in the right order of events.
I think this is a bit of a straw man. Hasn't the FCC already made it clear that blocking entire protocols is illegal?

And, I don't know that I can recall many content folks arguing that BitTorrent as a whole should be blocked. My memory is that they complain that BitTorrent is heavily used for piracy (which is factually accurate), and propose ways to stop the piracy. For example SOPA did not target BitTorrent as a protocol or technology, but instead tried to shut down foreign websites that provide links to pirated content.
I noticed this same thing when viewing YouTube on my daughter's laptop. Oddly spammy ads where there normally were no ads.

I guess the new model for adware/malware is to try to integrate so seamlessly that a normal person doesn't even realize they are seeing someone else's ads.
See what you wrote though ? "As vendors .. start pushing new models".

There seems to be this acceptance on the Android platform that in order to get the latest OS you basically have to buy a new phone. It's quite extraordinary.
Yes, both search and ratings/reviews are high on the priority list.
My point is that this is ridiculous in the first place. There is no reason
to disallow people from running their own code on their own devices.

It's even worse like this. What they are doing is essentially making an undesirable
situtation, then capitializing on that by offering you a slightly less shitty
solution (which is still far from reasonable):

"Hey, you could buy a $100/y dev account, but we're so incredibly generous
that we'll allow you to run a few programs at a premium of $10!"

They are charging for something that should be one of the most essential
freedoms of a computing device. This is insane, no matter how you try
to sugar-coat and excuse it.
I never criticized Jeff for being harsh, I only used a logical fallacy (an inverse appeal to authority - what is this called?) to disclaim his opinions. In reality, I don't think that it's right to white-wash the issue and say that none of his opinions hold weight, that's simply not true. I do, however, think that his opinion is massively overrated since there is a correlation between being correct and having relevant experience in something. But that's just my opinion.

Not to mention that they are harsh in different ways. Jeff is advocating being harsh to people who don't know what they're doing and admit as much. Linus grills people who step into his kitchen and don't know how to hold a knife. Apples and oranges.
I stopped reading your article once I realized you gave the title precedence over the content.
The title was meant as an attention grabber, but the text does not suggest that NO ONE should learn to code. The text only disputes that EVERYONE should learn to code.
Do you have a better proposal?

The use cases it needs to address are mostly documented at [1] although there are some missing (people are currently putting together a wiki page [2]) e.g. in order for image prefetching to work the decision on which image to choose can't depend on layout (i.e. it can only depend on things that are likely to be known when the markup is first parsed and before any CSS is applied). There is further discussion at [3].

[1] http://www.w3.org/community/respimg/2012/04/16/summary-of-us...
[2] http://www.w3.org/wiki/Images
[3] http://lists.whatwg.org/htdig.cgi/whatwg-whatwg.org/2012-May...
Actually, a strawman argument is quoting things out of context to make your point.
This content on being a Wantrepreneur is good too: http://www.appsumo.com/wantrepreneurs-videos/ ... the main idea is to test if there is market for your idea before investing loads of time and money on a product.
Spec smell: explicit use of subject
Well, there's loosing weight and loosing body fat. Two very different things. Two visibly different things.
Zed I think your self-identity point is spot on. Time and time again we see that the greatest minds don't pigeon hole themselves into a single category. Paul Graham says it himself --

"What hackers and painters have in common is that they're both makers. Along with composers, architects, and writers, what hackers and painters are trying to do is make good things."

Anyone who is a maker should be interested in learning to code. I strongly believe that although programming is a specialized discipline now, in the coming years we will see that people who have skills in both coding and other fields will come out the furthest ahead.

Telling beginners not to learn how to code is like telling people they shouldn't learn how to paint or learn to play an instrument. Coding is a beautiful and fulfilling activity which no one should be barred from.
Indeed I have noticed this. I think it's great technology and more services should be using it. The Blizzard case is a great example of it being used pretty transparently/behind-the-scenes. I'd love to hear more non-transparent cases though. I genuinely cannot think of a time i've used it aside from stealing an album or grabbing debian.
It's used for a lot of legal videos as well, like Sita Sings the Blues http://www.sitasingstheblues.com/wiki/index.php?title=SitaSi... also Vodo uses BT to distribute their movies. http://vodo.net/ Revision3 used to run their own tracker with only their own videos listed, but there was some legal trouble so they shut it down. I'm seeding Geocities from http://archiveteam.org/index.php?title=GeoCities but that's pretty niche :) I'm also seeding a bunch of videos from a hacker conference (CC licensed).
Except that isn't a good analogy. It's much more like copyrighting the Burger King menu, which is the interface to ordering services from Burger King.

By the way, you can copyright restaurant menus.
Massive launches with online projects are a dangerous thing due to system faults when the gates open.
There are three states of being here, and you're confusing two of them. First, there is pre-you: the you before the cloning point. After that there is the original and the clone, both of which share the exact same pre-you experience. Just because you are pre-you doesn't mean you will be the original after the cloning point, since both the original and the clone branch from pre-you. If you are the copy, your experience is that you were pre-you first and then suddenly you woke up in a virtual world. This is illustrated simply by looking at the fork() command. You cannot make a fork() call and then have the code afterwards presuppose that it is the parent process without checking the return code. In the same way, you cannot be sure that you are the original after the cloning point unless you have solid evidence of it.

It would be an exact copy of your mind. Think about that. All of your experiences, memories, thought-patterns, etc., including all of your presuppositions that you will be the original. You sit there and smugly tell yourself that you will not be the clone. You couldn't possibly wake up as a clone, right? That the clone is going to be this "other" thing over there that has nothing to do with you. Guess what? The clone wakes up having had all of those exact same thoughts and experiences. The clone is you. I wouldn't recommend that anyone in this state of mind go through a cloning process because it would just end up with a confused, depressed and generally fucked up clone.
I don't think that's the case for everyone.

I work at a online advertising firm in DC specializing in political and non-profit work - mostly email list building, soliciting volunteers, awareness, etc campaign activities. We work with AOL, Yahoo, Google and Facebook, among many others.

I'm not a fan of FB's policies in general, but... We've found FB to be very effective - on a cost per acquisition basis, much more so than search advertising and on par with other vehicles.

Obviously, test to see what's effective for your needs, but I wouldn't rule out Facebook based on GM's experience. Cars are an unusually high involvement purchase, unlike most things people would be advertising.
> GM spends about $40 million a year on Facebook marketing, according to the Wall Street Journal, about $10 million of which is for paid advertisements. It will continue to post relevant content about the company and its brands on GM’s Facebook pages.

The best marketing on Facebook doesn't make Facebook any money.
The concept of the WordPress App Store does not align with the philosophy of the WordPress Foundation, so it's very unlikely.
Someday internet connection will be so fast, and computers will be so fast, and browsers will be so fast that apps and pages will merge into one web, where doing FaceTime in Facebook or playing Diablo in my browser will be a matter of clicking a link, something apps can't do right now. So in the end, browsers win.

I'll check back this post in 2020.
Thanks! The data is killer, btw.