skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Yeah, when you use sea salt, you're not using it everywhere, usually just at the end for presentation - otherwise it's just going to dissolve anyway, so there's no point in using it elsewhere.

And as you mentioned, getting enough iodine isn't that difficult, especially given the amount of salt in most of what we eat, and the ability to get enough with some yogurt, cheese, and eating fish regularly. Besides, if you think you aren't getting enough iodine, just start watching for a goiter! :)
Note that such front-ends are inherently leaky. If all they do is transform syntax, they're probably a bad idea.

Note that the point of using s-expressions as a front-end would be programmatic generation, not by-human editing. (Neither sexpressions nor xml is actually all that friendly for editing text.)

Do XML folks really think write front-ends for ease of editing?
Perfect. Just add daily editions of the new york times to the iTunes store. Maybe even have an audio version so one can listen to news stories. I love the audio books feature of iTunes, where I can download books to my iPods or iPhone. With the iTouch, one can get all the HD space of the iPhone without it being a phone, if one already has an iPhone and just needs more space. The whole iTunes/iPod/iPhone line is one of the greatest business models ever. No, I don't work for apple, so I have no stake in this, I just LOVE my iPhone!
Virtualization has come to mean the running of a virtual machine in a physical one and on that virtual machine running your OS of choice. However vietualization should be thought of a much more than that. Think of storage virtualization for instance. Here we have the opportunity of creating an unending variety of storage options (Stripping, Mirroring, migration, automatic backups, etc) that can happen transparently. Imagine Never having to worry about your data stability because of virtual storage. How about virtual device access? Nothing says that USBs could not be front ended and encapsulated by an virtualization application that can then broker that information to and external host ( even a virtual one). The field is very wide, to me the promise is in creating an abstract device with transparent access to a myriad of services (both virtual an physical).
Am I the only one that finds this: "...media-ownership rules that encourage more diversity" worrying? What does this mean exactly? Red flags always go up for me when the government steps in to influcence media ownership.
Geordi La Forge Talks Tech On Latest TWiT (Audio)
> lacking meaningful metrics for whether actual productivity has occurred.

I believe in the Pareto 80/20 rule and wonder some days whether I am falling into the other category (I don't believe it's static)

I was joking the other day with my co-worker about a new chat status message.

"Mike, Active, 15% brain activity"
I think there's a wee bit of differnece between creating a string with a whole page because you don't know that you can jump in and out of PHP mode and creating a string with a whole page in order to do regex'es on the string

:-)
Agreed! That's what I did, even though I started a little late:

After college in Colorado (love to ski) I worked for 5 years, then got an MBA from Georgetown and joined a pre-IPO venture finance startup specializing in media, communications, publishing, and technology. We IPOed in 2001, I left in 2003, and get into structured finance -- not the kind you read about in the papers these days, but the kind the invests directly in electrical generation and transmission cooperatives.

After a couple years of that I decided to make a huge change: Quit my job, move to Europe, travel, photo (http://sweden06.com), blog, and teach myself some web technologies.

Now, finally, after too much pre-research, I'm starting to tech myself programming (Ruby) so I can build (or at least demo) web apps (in Rails). I know it's a long road and I'm an older guy, but I also believe it's pretty much never too late for anybody, whether he or she is someone with one set of skills deciding to teach themselves another set of skills or even someone severely overweight deciding to take the first step on the long, not easy, path that leads to lower weight and improved health.

Of course, starting down these paths and staying on them and making material progress are two different things, the second part being the most important, IMHO. It’s like the difference between ideas and execution: We all have lots of “great” ideas, many of us the same ideas, it’s the execution that separates.

Ok, sorry this comment got so long, this thread and the communities comments just got me switched on. Cheers from Sweden, Chris
Solar panels (and windmills) aren't the cheapest way to generate electricity. While they have 0 fuel costs, they have both maintenance and fixed costs. And then there's that whole "night" and "no wind" thing.
In verse - by myself sometimes good old hard work Isn't enough [mixedink]
Writing a text editor is way harder than it looks so I wouldn't start with that.
Not voting for someone does not mean you have no confidence in her ability to act in a correct way. It means you preferred her less to others. There's a problem in the U.S. in which, once the presidential candidates are narrowed down to the final two, we become entrenched in this attitude of "you're either with us or against us".
> I also think Joel misses something

Just FYI. This was post on the "Joel on Sofware" discussion group but the author is Benji Smith.

http://benjismith.net/

I like his blog. He used to post a lot more but he's been busy with a new project. (and a HD crash as of this morning.)
Doing something like that is not a problem. Keeping it that way is the challenge. (At least for me)
But you want them to be able to manipulate the data from Excel.

There is a spreadsheet interface metaphor. Parts of it are quite useful. Other parts are less convenient given the ways that people program/use spreadsheets. Some of them are better addressed with parts of the database metaphor.
PHP (I assume we're still talking about PHP) has had output buffering for about a decade. So yeah that is a weird thing. ;)
> For the love of god, please don't start out with How To Design Programs.

Care to explain?
The Prescription for Self-Doubt: Watch This Video
I've seen this problem on several projects. I think the best fix is to use a schema-agnostic processor. With a schema-agnostic processor, you can work with content whether it validates or not. This is often handy, as it's easier to fix the invalid documents in the processing environment than outside of it. For example, inside the processing environment I can fix the problem by writing an XQuery.

Disclaimer: I work for Mark Logic, which sells a schema-agnostic XML content server.
I think the article is about ignorance, not stupidity. Ignorance is a lack of knowldedge, so it is important for research; research leads to new knowledge. Stupidity is a lack of mental ability, which will not help in research.
Even with headphones you're more likely to have a chat with someone who's a couple of desks away in an open plan office than someone who's in a separate office.
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html#basic_skills

Another classic.

That's the section on programming. But read the whole thing. The most important part is understanding the philosophy.
You can learn CS 101-type C pretty quickly by eliminating pointers/structs/etc., but you won't be able to read/alter any real-world open source C. If you learn Python or Ruby, for example, you can jump into github and see what people are doing right now.

If you're looking for an ancestor language, you'd be just as well off learning Smalltalk, which you can do real things with immediately (e.g. learn it in the browser with Seaside), and then apply those lessons to modern languages like Obj-C and Ruby.
No one gets it for the photography. They have black and white photos and drawings when needed to clarify things. It is well worth it.
In other words, by installing frameworks, you will be able to experience the power of frameworks?
I recommend the following books:

Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X: http://my.safaribooksonline.com/9780321562739

Programming in Objective-C 2.0, Second Edition: http://my.safaribooksonline.com/9780321605559

Ironically, while the first book has a more thorough discussion of Cocoa, the second book is the one with the iPhone section. Get both; they complement each other.
Video killed the radio stars: Possible Cosmic Radio Background Detected
(On the other hand, if people knew how hard it was to make a particular program before they started, we wouldn't have most of the software we have today.)
Have you tried assembling an Ikea flat-pack?
I sent them a Python file but it didn't show up.
Master Foo and the Nervous Novice
> But that suggests he's (at least somewhat) cynical about the military.

If you don't know that everyone in the military is cynical about the military, you know very little about military folks.

Projecting seems to be especially common among the "intellectual" class.
Top 25 Most Dangerous Programming Mistakes
Chronic sleep deprivation will ruin your health and your mental capacity. It is not something to be proud of. Numerous studies have proved this. Please consider changing.
There's very little fixed cost

I think that's a big mistake. Getting used to people at the company, learning about the industry, learning new technology, developing new skills in general -- all of these are investments with a long-term (multi-year) payoff.

I think one way you should reconsider your statement is to invert it: how will a company behave different if they can only make investments in their employees that pay off in one year? Two years? Ten years? Japanese companies (still) train people knowing that they can afford to take a loss on them for the first couple years, and recoup it later.
But if Microsoft was a (good) web company, wouldn't they dedicate serious resources to www.microsoft.com?
I like sharing an office with another developer working on the same project. Working by my self with the door closed is more productive, but less social. What I hate is sharing an office with someone that is working on some other project.
Even Jeff Atwood has a take on it http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001210.html (I posted that version because I suspect that it is all too easy to ignore such common issues in the race to get some code operational plus he gives some explanation of the key issues.)
Things I Learned the Hard Way: What’s Your Suggestion?
Paris Hilton's Web site being used in Web attack
Happiness 101
Dangerous coding errors revealed
I joined the group and would be interested in attending.
Perfect thing to show people, when they want to know if Java is a good fit for their problem. Even a Pointy Haired Boss, shown this, might understand why Rails or Django or something might be a better way to go than dealing with this.

EDIT: OK, so instead of Java, that should read "to know if enterprisey Java frameworks are a good fit for their problem." The irony is, that I just was IM'ing a friend about how this isn't the fault of Java the Language, but the "enterprise architecture" community that write Java frameworks like this.
Installing Ruby Enterprise Edition with Phusion Passenger
One of my friends is workingthrough SICP. (He left his job becauee he felt burnt out and wanted to do something different before he went back into a 9 to 5 job). He is posting the answers on his blog (http://lawfulsamurai.blogspot.com/search/label/SICP). This might be helpful to you
I only mention it because it's one of the apps I first wrote when learning.

You get to understand about UI, data structures etc etc
Even if you end up only implementing some pop down menus, it's still worth doing. By that time you may have decided to do something else anyway...

The key is choose anything and start building it.
I don't think the paper hypothesizes a long ring finger CAUSES traders to be better traders, does it?
If Rails were a toolbox, all of its tools would break under duress. Regarding Ruby:

"And furthermore, for me, programming languages and their runtimes are tools. I think they are for a lot of us. You wouldn’t continue to use a hammer whose head keeps flying off when you take a swift backswing, would you?"

Good read: http://cbcg.net/2007/04/22/python-up-ruby-down-if-that-runti...
Over-complexity is common in the Java space. I was aghast at using JMS. You make a Context so that you can tell it to make a ConnectionFactory, so that you can then ask that thing for a Connection, then you finally get to login. You can then instantiate Producers and Consumers and finally get messages.

Why do I need to have 5 different objects when one would do? Having 5 different objects did absolutely nothing for the client code except make it more complex. (And this actually complicates good coding for the user experience. When we notify the user of network problems, I have to add additional code to see if objects exist in the first place just to prevent exceptions.)

It would've made no difference if there was just one Object. (Except for shorter code.) I could use it to login to a server. I could use it to register interest in a topic then ask for messages on that topic. If I want to connect to a different server, then I could instantiate a second object. Why do I need 5 freaking instances to do the most basic thing possible?
Dubai's sand castles crumble amid credit crunch
VisiCalc: The 30th Anniversary
Nerd sex.
That's actually pretty ordinary (sick days run over into vacation; it's all PTO). Like most Americans here, I get six sick days and twelve days vacation annually.
Java is not the problem, the architecture is the problem. If you try hard enough, you can make something unwieldy and atrocious in ANY language. That's why enterprise architects get the big bucks.
Exactly. Laugh in the face of people who "know", and aim for the sky.

Write a new O/S. Write new firmware for something... The world is our oyster.
"minus maybe WebObjects"

What made WO great were the tools. There was still complexity there, but WOBuilder and EOModeler made the whole process very productive. You could think of your data model, your interface, and your business logic independently of each other, and then use the tools to hook them together in a way that made sense. Because of the way the tools were designed, they actually made using good design for your application easier than using bad design.

That's the main thing missing from all the frameworks I see today, integrated tools that automate the tedious parts and encourage good design practices.

To me, the WO tools go on the heap with the Lisp Machine, the Xerox Park Smalltalk environment and HyperCard, as old development technologies that are still ahead of today's state of the art.

EDIT: spelling correction
Silverlight being better than Flash doesn't logically conclude to making Silverlight a good idea and deserving of support. A lesser evil is still an evil.

I consider the fact that Flash is pretty terrible a feature, as at least is helps discourage people from only using it in places where it's absolutely essential. I firmly believe RIAs are a fundamentally bad idea and the quicker they are replaced with open standards the better.
Buckminster Fuller's Universe
Here's the dirty little secret that no one wants to talk about...

The purpose of "assisters" like frameworks and higher level languages is NOT to make good progammers more efficient.

It's to make mediocre programmers more likely to produce something of value and to make poor programmers capable of producing anything at all.

And if the bell curve tells us anything at all, it's that these "tools" target 90% of all programmers.

But think about it, my fellow top 10% (lol), do you really need all this stuff? If you're working alone or on a small team with a clear objective, haven't you always had everything you needed with low level tools? If you need any higher level tools or reuseable components, haven't you already been building these all along?

Sure it's fun to play with new things and learn from others, but when it comes time to really produce, don't we all know how to (and need to) roll with what we know?

The need for frameworks and high level languages only becomes apparent when we grow so large that we can't find enough senior hackers. Only when you dip down into the mediocre masses do you need this help.
Can you prove it? (Not using scripting, of course.)
Open-plan sucks, as anyone who's had issues with panic attacks can attest. Although there are situations that require it, there's no question that the bad outweighs the good for programmers.

I don't think that open-plan office layouts aid collaboration. It creates a lot of hostility and stress that don't need to exist.

Open-plan is the modern analogue of the assembly-line/factory work environment. I'd guess that the productivity loss for a programmer in that environment is 70-80 percent.
SICP is great for self-studying beginners if they have an IQ of 180. Otherwise they would probably be better off to start with HTDP, which is essentially SICP lite, and then move on to SICP.

I actually tried starting with SICP. I remember looking at the table of contents and wondering why they devoted the entire fifth chapter to cash registers.
My point wasn't that Obama can do no right, just that even though I don't agree with him on most issues, I thought that this was a good choice.
Lets assume that an identifier array that starts with the word "function" is a function declaration, and has the additional place arguments name, argList, and body. Now we get something like this:

[ "function", "byId", ["id"], [ "call", "document", "getElementById", ["id"] ] ]
I guess I need to clarify that I'd be fine with sharing an office with a friend or so. Just sharing with some random person you work with - meh.
I appreciate your anecdotal experience, but the article claims to be the result of an empirical study, so I'm going to weight their findings more heavily, unless someone can offer a reason to believe their methodology was poor.
Other people have most of the bases covered, but I don't think anybody's mentioned that you should learn to use a real text editor, like Emacs or vim. They have steep learning curves, but the time spent learning them pays itself off.
Once again, correlation != cause

There are pros and cons both ways. Sometimes you just gotta be alone and other times you gotta be together. Depends on what you're doing and who you're working with.

And the talk about viruses was hilarious. Perhaps they should turn off the AC and open a few windows on nice days. That probably has much more influence than where you place your internal walls.
Array index out of bounds? isn't it more like just getting weird data or a segfault or whatever else will make a newbie freak out? :)

C might not be mysterious for you (or me), but we possibly had a little more than 8 months.
There can be great value in personal interaction. I agree that big lectures like described should and will die off. However, the fastest way to learn anything is to have a series of conversations with an expert. (I guess that could still be reproduced by videochat or something...) I understand this has long been the model in many UK schools.

All that said, in a virtual age it is perfectly possible for someone to learn with out any physical school or personal interaction, just slower.
Or by using a framework, you will keep your code more consistent and within better practices.
That would be Smalltalk not SmallTalk, and some of us still use it, daily, for web apps. It might not be in wide use, but it isn't on the scrap heap.
Allez card catalog.
The more people talk about J2EE, the more I think it was invented to give programmers busywork and multiply their workload with no increase in productivity.
..and most posts on this story seem to assume that the paper claims a correlation between digit ratio and performance. It doesn't - assuming that there is, in fact, a correlation between digit ratio and testosterone levels, it probably implies nothing more than that high testosterone levels are necessary to impress the decision-makers in trading companies.

It's an interesting correlation, but it pretty much follows from

high testosterone levels -> low digit ratio

and

high testosterone levels -> high trader salary

It makes sense that small differences in some personal characteristic leads to large differences between the compensation of traders. The interesting question is whether slightly higher testosterone levels cause ten times better performance over time (or even enough of a performance improvement to justify a ten times greater salary). This seems like a ludicrous claim. But it's really funny if this is, in fact, what the market implicitly expects from its traders.
Yes, "duh", but:

Previous research has suggested that people who sleep seven to eight hours a night have the lowest rates of heart disease. However, there has been little direct evidence that getting a good night's sleep can help ward off a cold.

It's "obvious" that not getting enough sleep is bad for you, but without research like this, we don't know in what ways or to what degree. Otherwise, sleeping to prevent a cold is as "obviously" good for you as hanging garlic around your neck or taking large doses of vitamin C.
Ask HC: Pligg Feedback? My first install
http://www.rankible.com
what modules would you install? anything you would do differently?
That's surprising to me because long ring fingers also correlate with lower exam scores:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi...

Is aggression more important than brains for traders?
There is apparent homogeneity in the mass media, especially TV. This is a problem for those who want a vibrant and effective civil society.
Congratulations Joshua!
It seems nothing has changed on the web in 10 years. There has to be another business model!
I like blackboards --- but then I am a mathematician. I even brought blackboard foil to glue to the walls at home.
That's a ridiculous statement. Idiocy can be written in any language, including Java.
Agreed, look at the New York Times. It's currently on the verge of collapse and it's finally starting to realize this isn't the 1930's anymore and the web isn't just another place for people to read your newspaper. It appears they're beginning to get the point that it's the 21st century and you can do pretty much anything online.

It's a shame it's taken the New York Times to get to the brink of destruction, but I believe almost every newspaper company is going to get to that point before they realize they need to change... just I think most won't adapt fast enough.
... and also correlations to sexual orientation (no joke)

http://www.unl.edu/rhames/courses/readings/homofinger/homo_f...
this just derailed our whole office. i like that sweet cowboy one.
I agree completely. Web frameworks add a layer of code bureaucracy that really doesn't need to be there in most cases. Reading and setting browser cookies is not that hard. Creating and reading web forms and validating inputs is not hard. Creating a relational database schema and objects that store themselves in that schema is not hard. You can do all of this directly in mod_python, essentialy by buildng your own framework, so you really don't need Django (I'm know, I'm a heretic for saying so) But doing all of these things directly mod_python takes time to learn how to do it reliably and efficiently. So I understand Django's appeal to people who picked up a Python book and asked "How do I create an event calendar web site in five mouse clicks?" and didn't see a direct answer to that question so they went with a framework. Personally I'd rather not toil under the tyranny of someone else's framework, especially when they suggest you need to create Factory for a Consumer then connect it to an Active Bridge connector... no thanks, I'll just use "mod_python import Cookie" instead.
Userfly: Get Usability Insights with One Line of Code
Firefox to Mimic Chrome Tab Sorting
Mobile Gold