skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I think you are arguing against a claim I didn't make. Your first half of the post about compiler classes and other tougher courses are giving me the perception that I somewhere claimed CS education isn't useful. I didn't make that claim. I was responding to the claim about CS and non-CS people taking different approaches to problem solving.

> But back to your comment: It's not that all code needs to be "clever."

By clever, I meant code that isn't routine. My definition of clever will include dynamic programming, reducing NP complete problems to known algorithms, writing a parser which takes xml as input and produces python dicts("writing a parser is simple" you say. But compared to the rest of the code in a typical project, it does count as clever)

> But sometimes the straightforward approach made by someone who is good, but self-taught, isn't as good as the equally straightforward approach by the self-taught AND CS-educated programmer.

It's not me who was making general claims. In my post, I did point out that about 20% of the time, CS background is very useful. The OP made the claim that CS and non-CS approach differs in general, which I don't think holds true.

> Real higher-level CS projects frequently involve interesting graphics research, which (also frequently) ends up working its way into commercial game development.

"Real higher level CS" -> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman

You don't get to choose what real CS research is.

CS researchers have a lot of commendable qualities, but that requires a different set of qualities than a regular software development project, and CS research doesn't hone their skills as far as regular software dev is concerned.

Look at the code from the academia. More often than not, either there is no code(hence the comment "doesn't exist") or it's spaghetti. I don't see how that helps you write code for the regular projects where you work with teams, code isn't thrown away and you are expected to maintain it. Now, I am not saying CS researchers can't work that way - I am saying what they do for research doesn't help.
This is dumb. I am missing the point here. Is the creator attempting to say all startups are over valued?
Where Did Help Go? Today's Software Assistance Is Lame
Thats a good idea!.Will think about this! For now you can save the search query 'python' in the saved searches page.
John at Customer.io here.

When a customer attempts to save a layout, we perform several validations including verifying valid liquid templating (http://liquidmarkup.org/) syntax and the presence of the "content" liquid tag.

If there are HTML tags between the "{{"'s, we'll present a user friendly error message.

Cheers!
I agree with his main point, that we should have an entirely separate "software engineering" major which would stress the process of software development and prepare students for being professional software developers. Then, computer science programs would mainly be for students who wanted to do research in computer science - much like the difference between various engineering disciplines and physics.

But he comes dangerously close to the "computer science is math" notion that assumes CS is just theory. It is not. I wrote an entire blog post in response to this (surprisingly common) sentiment: http://www.scott-a-s.com/cs-is-not-math/

HN discussion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3928276
I downloaded the todo app, modified it to skip signup and login, added my own keys to Todo and saved successfully. Changed the class name and saved successfully. For what kind of app would this be OK even if users were authenticated? Data coming from a client must have a predefined, server validated schema to be useful in any real world app and business logic cannot be in the hands of the user. Am I missing something?
Unfortunately I've played all of them except Pychonaughts.
Here's the thing ... we don't actually need 3rd party cookies. However, in most browsers you need to have 3rd party cookies enabled in order to read client local storage (not a cookie!) within an iframe that's in a different domain. We so this to digitally sign the API calls so that malicious 3rd party sites can neither spoof nor read the shared secret used for the digital signature.

So the irony is that we make our API calls digitally signed (more secure) but to do so from the context of a bookmarklet you have to enable 3rd party cookies because browsers bundle that switch to the capability that we really need (i.e., there is no "enable loading of cross domain iframes that can read client local storage securely" option because its unfortunately pairs with 3rd party cookies).
If you know anyone interested in writing or drawing for comics, let me know at felipellrocha (at) gmail (dot) com. :)
I mean the market segment doesn't care if you can play Quake on it.
Limbo for Linux! Totally buying it!
John Carmack recently used a camera to measure that it takes longer to paint the screen in response to user input, than send a packet accross the Atlantic:
http://superuser.com/questions/419070/transatlantic-ping-fas...

I came across the post when I was looking for USB HID latency (8ms).
You're assuming that NASA 'pays' for the flotilla the same way spacex pays for its gear. Think about it, SpaceX probably rents/leases the gear it needs for the time it needs and knows exactly what it costs.

Nasa can basically call the local navy detachment and ask them to swoop in. It's not clear that is accounted for in the NASA budget vs. the normal operating budget of that battle group.

Similarly, when NASA says something costs 20k to get to orbit, they're saying that because that's what they told someone it would cost when justifying the program. The real cost of things like a shuttle recovery are never as easy to track as one might think.
Please. Maps, Chrome and Gmail alone make what you said an absurdist lie. (I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and put AdSense/AdWords under "search" instead of calling them a separate product.)

Youtube and Blogger were acquisitions, but have done, y'know, pretty well under Google's roof. Android seems to be kinda successful for something that's a "mediocre copy at best".

And those are just the big products. They've had a ton of little successes too, like Earth, Docs, Sketchup, Voice...

And they've had a lot of products that look like clones (Drive, Groups). And they've had a lot of bona fide failures too.

But the point is that Google produces stuff. Facebook kinda doesn't. They improve their existing product and add features to it. Maybe that will change (c.f. Instagram), or maybe it won't. But right now I don't think you can say that Facebook has a culture of innovation in the same way that Google (or Apple, or hell, even Microsoft -- companies that ship new products regularly) does.
EE programmers are fun... just model it as a state machine! The best part about writing your code as a state machine is that you can then easily translate it into VHDL for implementation on an FPGA, or even into silicon.
Even if you own most of the games in this bundle, the soundtracks for Bastion and Sword & Sworcery are worth it alone.
Dustin Dias (Ender.js) and Hon Hoffman (Foursquare) on what to learn
The lunar lander did it that way – on the Moon. (There are other examples but that’s probably the most famous one and there were actual people in it.)

But no, no actual returning spaceship has landed on Earth that way. They all either did an atmospheric re-entry (capsules) or glided back (Space Shuttle). Soyuz uses rockets to slow itself down shortly before it lands, but that’s not controlled, more to slow the fall in the last second.
> You'd be surprised how may projects exist that are like this

Yes there are a lot of these Builder libraries/modules available in many languages:

* http://stackoverflow.com/questions/671572/cl-who-like-html-t...

* http://builder.rubyforge.org/

* http://groovy.codehaus.org/Builders

* http://erector.rubyforge.org/
I didn't think of that - that certainly would be a viable solution.
Comic Serif: http://idsgn.org/posts/comic-sans-comic-serif/
> Some approaches are NOT acceptable, it's not about optimizing prematurely, it's about coding obvious crap.

And yet we miss the simple, efficient answer?

isEven = 1
rowClasses[] = { 'odd', 'even' }
loop
isEven = 1 - isEven
rowClass = rowClasses[isEven]
endloop

It might only be an example but if you're going to complain about people's inefficient/wrong code, the least you can do is provide a good demonstration.
Haha everytime I buy this 99% goes to EFF
You could also forgo the effort and have a pizza delivered. You have a good point, though.
Parachutes are weather dependant - it's hard to land a big object on parachutes with a crosswind.

They may use parachutes at higher altitudes to slow the craft then thrusters at the final landing
Not really. Complexity theory deals with many different forms of computation, from Turing Machines to RAM models to circuits to quantum computers. These are all particular concrete artifacts that we use to study the fundamental notion of computation itself.

Saying that complexity theory studies "man-made things" is like saying that chemistry studies man-made molecules. It's technically true, but it confuses the methodology with the object of study: studying particular chemicals vs the underlying laws governing them or particular models vs the underlying laws of computation.
A hundred billion was way too much. As of right now, though, it's valued at $57.66 billion ($27 per share) and I'm starting to think it may be worth buying while the sentiment on it remains so negative.

Maybe not $27, maybe $25, or $20... there's gotta be some sort of floor on the value though.
Somewhat related: Indie Game Music Bundle 3 is happening now: http://www.gamemusicbundle.com

I'm only a few albums in, but there are definitely some gems. (Impeccable Micro and In Momentum are my current favourites.) The last bundle was absolutely fantastic (especially Impostor Nostalgia and vvvvvv).
.+1?

(I doubt that's a valid domain name, but I'd love to see them try)
I can imagine this blog post was very carefully written; Google subtly avoids mentioning that these "interruptions" are likely due to the massive censorship measures in place in China. Can anyone explain why seemingly innocuous terms like 江 (Jiāng) are being censored?
I have mixed feelings about this. I can see some value in some new TLDs. But the whole .xxx debacle (aka extortion scheme) left me hesitant to support willy-nilly creation of more TLDs. When the .xxx TLD was being introduced, mark owners had first dibs at paying a totally ridiculous price to make sure they owned the .xxx version of their domain for fear it would be misused by someone else and tarnish their name. A cynical person might think this is just a way to extort money from companies that want to protect their brand.
This does look neat. Now, if only they'd release a bundle that includes extra free time I can use to play the games in said bundle :)
All of the games in this bundle are worth my weight in gold, and I'm not exactly anorexic. To add to those you noted, Bastion is a wonderful ARPG featuring gorgeous graphics (it's 2D but it looks like an oil painting which moves), excellent gameplay and balance and an original and pitch-perfect narration following the player through his journey married to a high-quality soundtrack; Superbrothers: Sword & Sorcery EP is an excellent visual and aural experience sold as an point & click game; and psychonauts is a strange and weird and wonderful and out-of-this-world platform/adventure game, think of a game in the Beetlejuice universe except absolutely excellent and wonderfully droll.

Only thing there is to hate about this bundle is I already have every single game in it.

Now I'll have to buy bundles to gift them.

(actually I'm lying, I'm also buying one for the OSTs, since I only have bastion's)
Anecdotally, this is the first Humble Bundle I bought immediately after learning of it, rather than waiting to get around to it eventually.
I'm not sure if I would say it marks the start of a new era.
Sorry about the useless # in URL, but HN didn't let me post because of some two years old humble bundle having the same URL.

The two other games are Amnesia: the Dark Descent (which I didn't include in the title because I thought it was in a bundle already, but I confused it with Penumbra) and Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP (which I don't know much about), sorry about not including them.
You pay per volume not per joule so you should compare petrol MP$ to Diesel MP$
I actually love the semicolon when coding whichever language/script allows me to do.I do not mind it at all.
Hard to disagree with this statement:
most people read all their email

And:
most people miss most of their feeds/blog posts

Which is the incentive for true spam, but if you have something useful to tell your associates and customers, you aren't spam right?
You mean Pizza as a Service? Intriguing idea; let's get Y Combinator on the line.
Actually, I think this might piss off the government more.

Imagine Google could perfectly predict what would be censored before even querying. Now you can search for related, uncensored terms and find the information you want without having to play a costly guessing game where if you guess wrong, you temporarily lose access to information. This will make evading the censorship easier by lowering the costs of exploration.
You're a smart guy!
It was 1960. No digital cameras. The CCD wouldn't be invented for nine more years!
Try Helvetica is a blog that alters photos of handmade signs from Brazil shops to use Helvetica. Some results are surprisingly good.

http://tryhelvetica.tumblr.com/
Our Talk at Peter Thiel's Startup School
For 99% of code, worrying about the number of cycles in an operation is an utter waste of time. It just doesn't matter. Correctness and readability trump machine efficiency.

Do you work on real-time systems, embedded code, or something similar?
First, semantics are not needed in many cases, like protected control panels. 2nd, semantics can be wrapping data within table cells.

The original problem with tables was using them together with spacers to create layout, not much other uses.

There's no inherent problem with tables, it is perfect for tabular layout. Data grids are tabular, most forms are tabular.
Yeah sorry about that, I didn't think that through. Ill go ahead and include a screenshot for now. In the future we'll suppress that login popup for people coming from GitHub/Hacker News/Reddit, so you can get a feel for it without signing up.
"The aphorism 'you can't tell a book by its cover' originated in the times when books were sold in plain cardboard covers, to be bound by each purchaser according to his own taste. In those days, you couldn't tell a book by its cover. But publishing has advanced since then: present-day publishers work hard to make the cover something you can tell a book by."

--- http://paulgraham.com/javacover.html
> Person A spends four years getting a BS in CS at a top-tier school, learning about programming at least for a few hours a day on average,

Real world might be different, but I don't think a CS degree should be teaching programming at least for a few hours a day. IMO that would be a total waste. There are bazillion of things to learn - database concepts, discrete maths, networks, ai&ml, digital electronics, some basic circuit theory, operating systems...There is programming involved in almost all of the courses, but the purpose isn't to learn about programming. When I am learning about MVCC, I am least concerned about learning programming, but the MVCC concept itself.
Introducing Jnario - Executable Specifications for Java
Got me, should have read the comments first. I'll add this my slide deck for possible investors, should score me some funds.
People do say "can't", as in "can't [accurately] judge a book". This of course leads to the advice that one should not do so, but the phrasing with the word "can't" explains why.
I love it when it's optional like in Ruby. If I accidentally put it in, it's cool.
Yeah I have thought about this and will surely add it in the next version :)
I've done that. If the jobs are relatively equal in other aspects, it makes sense to look at the benefits. Also, I've found that the quality of benefits a company offers is a good indication of how well employees are treated. Generally, companies with awful benefits don't think very highly of their employees.
Hypermedia APIs: The New Wild West?
I've played through all of them. I bought the bundle just to have a second copy of Psychonauts.
Sorry, was this supposed to be a reply to a different comment?
For anyone who's interested in the Linux versions, Canonical also announced[1] today that HIB5 purchases will be redeemable via Ubuntu Software Centre.

[1]: http://blog.canonical.com/2012/05/31/humble-indie-bundle-5-c...
I don't know, but I can't take anything seriously when "you should" is in the title.
Value objects are strongly (and semantically) typed.
Paid Link Building, Google
You shouldn't judge a book by its spine. Those are usually optimized for bookstore clerks to organize the book into the right area, and might show not really be related to the content very much.
I still think that

>It would be better if Samsung and Google could low the price a little bit.

That is what I wrote months ago.

http://www.garron.me/linux/chrome-os-chromebook-ready-prime-...

The price is too high for what this thing is capable of.
I've spent most of my attention in my LDs on poking at the nature of the simulation rather than on trying things like those. But somewhat relevant to your question, in my experience, the passage of time can go rather strangely in dreams. As one example of weirdness, if I start to do something like count to twenty, it would be rather easy for me to start counting, then have the dream kind of, almost or perhaps entirely imperceptibly, "skip", and I'm saying twenty with plenty of memories that I did the counting if I try to remember the middle, but never having actually done so--in whatever best sense that phrase works for dreams--. That is to say, memories seem to me like just another sense channel that the dream world can fake in realistic or shoddy fidelity as the case may be.

So how would you know if you really thought through designing some software "beginning to end" so to speak, actually considering sub-cases, instead of having just skipped to feeling like you did all that when really your dreamworld is just elaborating its first guess at a design on the fly as you look at one facet or another. Now in some cases, that distinction might not matter, in which case I'd say a LD might be what you are looking for. In other cases, it will matter, and I'd say dream worlds can be tricky (another important way here is that one's "criticality" is not usually up to par in dreams, normally glaring problems, omissions, strangeness can just glide by one's attention; one is usually better at this in LD but not anything like infallibly so).

Now the interpersonal relationship thing... that I have more directly tested. And instead of sitting and trying to use dream-time to ponder the matter, LDing provides a different sort of possibly useful trick; calling up simulation(s) of the person in question and chatting with them while their dispositions are somewhat under your control. Unless one gets a/the trickster wearing a them-mask instead, which is always a worry for me, but maybe not for you.
We still need to raise $1,599 this month. In less than 24 hours
This is totally badass. Instead of a technical solution to a technical problem, Google is going with a political solution to a political problem.

There are a ton of technical ways Google could silently defend against this particular form of censorship (someone suggested reencoding the offending characters), thus starting a cat-and-mouse game with the censors. But that would (1) be an "act of war" in terms of blatantly attempting to pierce China's Great Firewall, giving China an incentive just to block Google wholesale; (2) not inform people that their searches were being censored; and (3) be a lot of work, with no likelihood that they could ever keep searches uncensored for very long.

By playing totally dumb, and saying "huh, we've noticed some kind of technical problem with your search, try phrasing it a different way," Google (1) takes no overt action to evade the censorship; yet (2) lets everyone know it's happening and subtly encourages them to try to evade it themselves; and (3) sets up a system that sees any censorship as damage and routes around it, which hopefully is an approach that's relatively difficult to counter without blocking the whole site, and is how the internet ought to work anyway.

In conclusion: from the little I know of what's going on here, this is a seriously clever move. Interested to see how China responds.
I don't like the introduction of new gTLDs for a number of reasons:

1) It seems like a very clever way to milk rightsholders for hundreds of thousands of dollars to protect their names

2) The root zone file will get pretty big

3) It's very expensive. Big companies will be able to afford their own TLDs, but smaller businesses, organisations and individuals won't. We might see .microsoft, but we might not see .linux

4) The G in gTLD loses its meaning. Top-level domains are no longer generic

5) The root names are now no longer neutral, they are corporate-influenced - and hence the root nameserves are also no longer neutral, they're storing the names of potentially hundreds of companies
What's next? Here's a list:

http://www.spacex.com/launch_manifest.php

Looks like they've got plenty to keep 'em busy for the next five years.
Two of them at least are fairly short: a run-through of Limbo takes about 3-4h tops, and you can go through Bastion in under 10 (although you'll need quite a bit more time to do everything and get all the achievements).

I've yet to finish the other 3 so I don't know how long they last.
There's some good stuff in TeX but it's been buried in an avalanche of shit from people who aren't Knuth. You can get TeX in a couple megabytes (http://www.kergis.com/en/kertex.html), but if you install something like pdfTeX or XeTeX or TeXlive, well I hope you've got a big hard drive.
and if the good ones are taken in the current TLDs, adding new TLDs to register them is only going to cause someone heart ache.
The MBA strikes me as the American capitalist counterpart to the Soviet apparatchik.
Yep - the web page is a client-side app, proactively warning the user about problems in the network
Yeah I agree. Its not that hard and with tools like http://domai.nr its easy!
Is it just me, or does Psychonaut appear to have some Burton-esque feeling to it as well? I've only seen the trailer.
Mostly because the US is very very diverse. If I move two counties over, my life expectancy goes up 5 years. It's probably fair to say 1% of the US is third world. At the very least, Alabama's immigrant ghettos are concretely third world. http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/456/r...
I prefer building in Markaby style. When I used to maintain a Radiant CMS site I'd sometimes need to generate content that I couldn't generate with the native tags. I'd end up having to teach Radius how to do something new. This interfered with "getting things done." Code doesn't get in your way.

Don't get me wrong. Markup/templating languages are great for 80% of what you use them for. And I especially like that they sandbox the average user from doing anything dangerous. I just felt like in the 20% scenarios, tweaking the markup language was a painful hoop through which to jump.
I believe that's kind of the point. Despite the fact that you hate email so much, there will be value to both parties if you do sign up. That's the only way to prove you're "wrong" about email. :)
Again, not space program and reasonable suspicion of spying.
At first, I was excited. Then I realized I owned all of them. ;)