skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Programmers, by contrast, have traditionally worked in their heads, first imagining the details of a program, then laboriously coding them.

I don't think this describes most real work done by programmers. Rather, what he says we should do,

To enable the programmer to achieve increasingly complex feats of creativity, the environment must get the programmer out of her head, by providing an external imagination where the programmer can always be reacting to a work-in-progress.

Is exactly what most programmers already do. We usually don't have a nice, interactive environment to do so; it's usually a combination of coding, inspecting results, thinking some more about new issues, coding, inspecting results, on up until the problem is solved.

In other words, I think that programmers do tend to solve problems by "pushing paint around." I rarely start with a full appreciation of the problem. But in order to gain that understanding, I have to start trying to solve it, which means starting to write some code, and usually looking at results. As I go through this process, the domain of the problem comes into focus, and I understand better how to solve it.

We already do what Bret is talking about, but not at the granularity he is talking about it. For beginners, I can understand why this difference is important. But I certainly solve problems by pushing paint around.

In general, I think this is a fantastic piece for teaching programming, but I don't think (so far) that all of it carries over to experienced programmers. The examples of having an autocomplete interface that immediately shows icons of the pictures they can draw is great for people just learning. But that's too fine-grained for experienced programmers. Chess masters don't need to be shown the legal moves on a board for a bishop; their understanding of the problem is so innate at that point that they no longer play the game in such elementary terms. Similarly, experienced programmers develop an intuition for what is possible in their programming environment, and will solve problems at a higher level than "I need to draw something." That is the reason we put up with existing programming environments.
Rust feels more like Perl 6 (always on the horizon) or Ada (the do everything language), while Go already is already specified, being improved, and out in production.
Not yet, send an email to contact@tent.is, and we'll get you sorted out.
My husband and I are expecting our first child very shortly. We were having a slightly worried conversation about how it would be teaching our son to drive, since we both grew up in the midwest where driving is a little more laidback. Then we remembered cars would drive themselves by then!
Ask HN: How does it feel to trend on Hacker News?
Does this glory last for a long time, or is it for just the days on which the news trends?

Looking forward to answers from people who have experienced the amazing moment and have seen some drastic changes in their Analytics count.
More renewable energy for Google data centers
which is especially important in the multicore world where heaps must be protected by a global lock

The article seems nice, but this is misleading at best, and flat out false at worst.

Concurrent memory allocation has been around for many years, and gasp is perfectly usable with C.
Ah, so I misunderstood that todo, but the issue still remains that scroll position is remembered when going to a new page.
How we invented 'hackademic' book publishing
GNOME 3.6 released
That would be amazing. The amount of non-recyclable plastic that I throw away every day is insane. I feel horrible for the environment.
TweetMeme shutting down October 1
It's called a "use" patent.

There are many different ways to patent a drug. Composition patents, formulation patents, use patents, etc.

The problem is that if you get a "use" patent, it only stops other company from promoting the drug for the use you patented. In the case of metformin, it's already available as a cheap generic.

So if a company were to conduct studies proving that it reduced the risk of cancer and got a patent on it, there is nothing to stop a doctor from prescribing the generic version.

So unless a company can find a way to recoup their R&D costs associated with running the trials, they won't bother.
Setting the same Accept header at every request is not difficult or error-prone.

But that aside, what happens when you store versioned resource URLs in the client, and then you want to upgrade your client to a new version of the API? Do you just lose all of your data from the old version, since you don't have a single URL for a resource?
Sidenote: Dan Ingalls seems to praise Victor's work on making programming easier: "How I think computers should work and why, said beautifully. Bret Victor - Inventing on Principle" https://twitter.com/daningalls/status/211630799550812160
You're probably right, but I'm not sure a debate over semantics is helpful. It certainly uses the same techniques as some genuine malware and (IMHO) most people would not consider it a fair and legitimate way to make money.
How the Evolution of Palettes Changed the World
> He was the one doctor who dampened the unity with subtle but consistent complaining about why the group couldn’t do some things and shouldn’t do others.

1. Saying why you shouldn't do something is not complaining. If done correctly, it helps you avoid really big errors.

2. Unity is often overrated. If a company is "united" in making poor business decisions that are bad for the long-term health of the company and this "brilliant" guy is being a "jerk" for suggesting they do something else. I find "unity" as a goal sounds really nice, but when that replaces actual discussion, you end up with a very dangerous organization susceptible to self-deception and self-harm that go full speed ahead because they're "united".

I really don't like this advice at all. I think it might work for the smart guy who underperforms, but for the example the author quoted, I think this is terrible, terrible advice.
Is Adblock Plus also malware, then? What about Greasemonkey?

The uncomfortable truth is that website operators do not have the right to control what sort of software users use to view their websites.
Sure, but you have to be careful of the gradual lockdown effect as more people get involved. The handling of non-public information is a cross-cutting concern. If everyone builds their software and security models around the assumption that all posts are visible to everyone (because it's the common case, and they decided, just as you're saying, that supporting the common case was the most important thing), then going back later after everyone's gotten attached to the software and trying to add private multicast without any leaks can be a nightmare. No one will be able to use it because their friends won't be able to use it unless every piece of software in between makes it work.

I'm tempted to compare to how deploying new transport protocols over IP is nearly impossible for consumer clients now, because everyone's built NATs that assume TCP and UDP, because those were the common cases and therefore the important ones and now anything else is instantly hosed. It's a bit of a bad example, though, because in the case of transports there are other reasons as well.
The only countries I've heard that have better Maps in iOS6 are North Korea and those that made up the Former Yugoslavia. The UK in particular seems a mess and the US seems to be the best supported by far in terms of location data.

What one's have you heard are better? China? The one that some blogger thought Google wasn't using the better data source that Apple used, except it turned out they were and it was basically placebo?
I don't know what an Appeals Court can do, and I would like to know.

It almost certainly could provide the relief the plaintiffs were asking for, right?

Can it:

* provide a writ of mandamus stopping the machines until the ordered report is provided?
* tell the TSA 19 months is too long, they have 90 more days to comply?

As it was, IIRC, the TSA said 19 months, the judge said 20 months!
I had not! That appears to work for now, though I'm not convinced it will continue working if Twitter continues going the way they are. For some reason that didn't appear in my search; thank you.
Well thank you for compiling all of this together because about to deploy a new version of my product that has a significant amount of fairly complex JS and I found it very frustrating to not have any goto resource in regards to structuring and optimizing the code. I'm going to try and incorporate some of your tips and will report back if you'd like
BMW http://www.autoexpress.co.uk/news/autoexpressnews/283429/dri...

Volvo http://www.psfk.com/2012/05/volvo-driverless-cars-on-public-...

Mercedes http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-j0jXEGbGs

GM http://www.slashgear.com/the-driverless-cars-that-want-to-ru...
The only real effect I see is I tend to pick up a few Twitter followers and I like to read the comments that result because they tend to be intelligent, insightful and often challenging.
Oh me too, but I wouldn't want people to think just creating a business that gives you a recurring income is a simple thing to do. Neither is playing poker for a regular income.
My note to Apple regarding their Review Process
This shouldn't be very hard and I plan on doing it once Google brings the sensors to mass production then I should be able to easily afford it. I already have the software too but I would much rather use Google's... Since mine is about five years old :p... I can't wait until I can get a Velodyne for <$20k
Yeah, absolutely. Go and Dart really both fit needs of working with large software and giant scales. As I think they've both said independently, conservative design was considered a design bonus. You can see why as it gets teams up-to-speed quickly, is less off-putting to project managers, and is more likely to benefit from experience surrounding how to write effective, readable code forms.

Stuff like Rust is awesome, but no-one yet knows what an Effective Rust book might look like, and you really need that sort of solidified design understanding to work. Code is write once, read hundreds of times, so that exciting wild west of "we don't have idioms yet" simply won't fly at a big company.
It lasts for a couple of hours (or a day if it's really popular).

What's much better than the (relatively short) visitors spike, is the discussion. If it's an article, the comments are often quite insigthful. If it's a Show HN post, the feedback is very constructive and can be quite helpful.
Yeah, server is limited to 20 users. "Massive" was more the wish than the reality.
So the blame for the product now solely resides with Apple and their decision to release a product prematurely.
Is your bank run by like a 90-year-old man?

Because I have a bank-issued credit card also, and I can log in and see my activity, even pending purchases that haven't cleared yet.
The parent is saying you can patent "using Metformin to prevent Cancer" separately than "using Metformin to help with diabetes."

I'm not 100% sure of this, but I'm pretty sure that this is the way the FDA approval process for drugs work. You can't just 'decide' to prescribe Metformin for cancer one day.

A single drug has to go through the approval process N separate times for N separate applications/diseases.
I agree there are drawbacks to stainless and that it would be difficult to design a cellphone or other RF device entirely or predominantly from it. However, the patent does show that they have gone so far as to research and patent a process for improving a material for use in their portable devices. This makes the apparent lack of care in choosing the anodized aluminum for the iPhone 5 surprising and disappointing.
> His various essays, talks, and so on are just alternative "projections" of this thesis. This is a sign of clear thinking.

See http://vimeo.com/36579366 for a well-known presentation about "inventing on principle". Fast forward to the 10:45 or 23:00 mark to see some interesting examples of this principle he follows.
I thought the TSA's argument as described at the end of the article was patently absurd ("ever-evolving threats"). Did they actually get away with saying that? If there is any decency in the world, that wouldn't stand with SCOTUS.
Why is the limit so small?

EDIT: Never mind, read another comment where you pointed out it was running on a server with few resources.
I agree. There is a lot of constructive criticism in the article, and I'm sure Khan Academy would love this kind of feedback to help improve the platform. Hell, even I learned a couple of syntax usages just watching videos of the learning interface!
Start Now And Never Quit Too Soon
I wish there could be synergy between google cars and tesla/solarcity grid.
Yes you can. This update was pushed a day ago.
http://bootsnipp.com/submit
> For something that is ready to enter manufacturing I think a pre-order model is appropriate.

Do you have proof this is the case?
Android isn't just about apps. From utilities like Google Now, to aesthetics like resizable widgets. The android experience isn't waiting for your carrier to update your phone when folks with nexus devices are getting updates a couple of days after the update is announced. S3 might be getting updates but I doubt US owners will see one this year.

Why can't we get iPhone-esque build quality of the One X with regular updates and purity of the nexus?

I say manufactures should leave the customizations to the users, focus on hardware, and getting timely updates to the phone.
On top of the route screen there's a panel with <-, X and route info, tap on that route info middle part
If adblock is legal, this is legal. Instead of ignoring ads, its simply replacing a websites ads' with their own.

Is it ethical? That is an entirely different question.
Formlabs Creates a Low-Cost, Light-Based 3-D Printer
One could automatically translate the Java API part of Android into Go? Also, it should be possible to write a VM for Go by extending Dalvik? I suspect that this territory is claimed by Dart, however.
If that counts as one of Twilio's cloud telecom apps, my grocery store owns still owns my last night's dinner.
I don't know if it is the language of the future, but Rust is definitely high on my "let's reprogram Singularity/Plan9/Friends"-and-actually-use-it list

I'd certainly join and attempt to help any project started in that direction, at least.
As someone who’s been blind since birth this is the most conflicted I’ve ever been about wanting to be an early adopter or beta tester.
It's never too early to start learning code...
Evanston is a suburb!
To clarify: it's not 250 unique sites, it's 250 pages per unique site. That is, news.ycombinator.com could have thousands of URLs. With the basic plan, we'd scan the first 250.

We offer a lot more than Nessus, in terms of doing a deep-dive on web application security. With that said, Nessus does a better job at network security, for example; this is something we're working on.
I was skeptical of buying into the light table idea until now. Now I see it for what it is: A programmable debugger with a dashboard for your software, as well as an editor, the latter part being less important. It's like if gdb had a baby with some visualization app.

The debugger already is omniscient in terms of what is going on within the program, but it's inept at showing it to you. It's too low-level in that it doesn't know what specific entities are important in your program. It knows addresses, variables, maybe objects. But you have a mental model and instead of trying to get your mental model into low level terms you can program it to have some notion of what to display.
I don't think it's like that. I think they're just developing it through usage.

And it's not like it's been ten years yet.
How do you implement closures entirely on the stack? What about the case when a function returns a closure into an external translation unit? How do you cover the bound parameters? You can't do call-time lambda lifting if the bound parameters are out of scope at the call site, you need to put something on the heap and GC it. Same with compile-time lambda lifting (producing a chain of bind1st stubs on the executable heap)
You're welcome. Take a look at the link (in the article) to Ken Collins’s "Secrets Of The Asset Pipeline" slide deck. It's got some great recommendations about organizing your JS code. Let me know how it goes (you can leave comments).
Ada is also in production for a few decades now.
Literate Programming in CoffeeScript
Bootsnipp.com creator here...
I really do not appreciate that somebody just ripped off my idea completely, the layout, the thumbnails styles, etc.

Maybe you can change it up a little? There is also Foundation by Zurb that does not have a site like bootsnipp, feel free to make that isntead =)
Well, that makes Mozilla's language goals a lot sexier to a lot of us i believe =P
Something bothers me about Bret's writings: He is very big picture (which isn't bad by any means), but then he often talks in absolutes without substantiating many of his claims. I suppose speaking in absolutes may be for rhetorical reasons, something wishy washy is probably less persuasive. He certainly has some good ideas and a talent for presenting them though.

>Programming is a way of thinking

If teaching programming is meant to teach a way of thinking, how do we ensure that it transfers to other areas? David Perkins discusses this in his book "Outsmarting IQ" (pg 224, http://books.google.com/books?id=kNbSvy4dQEUC&q=papert#v...). Latin was once thought to be a language that taught people how to think, but the studies didn't show any transfer between learning Latin and other skills. Obviously, programming isn't Latin, and I'm actually in support of the idea of teaching programming as a way to teach thinking skills, but any effort to do is going to have to address the problem of transfer. One way to potentially do this is motivation, I think Vygotsky advocated showing children why they could write (and how they might already be attempting to do so), which would then give them motivation to learn writing. They'd already understand a reason for using it...

> Alan Perlis wrote, "To understand a program, you must become both the machine and the program." This view is a mistake, and it is this widespread and virulent mistake that keeps programming a difficult and obscure art. A person is not a machine, and should not be forced to think like one.

There are cases where this is true, but putting it another way, "A teacher is not a student, and shouldn't be forced to think like one". Any time where a mind is trying to communicate some concept, there has to be some level of dialogue or shared context. One could argue that learning programming could help people understand that others may interpret what they say in a different way (and why that may occur). I think that is a pretty important concept.

Finally, the US military has funded a lot of research on intelligent tutoring systems. One of the things a lot of the successful programs have is a means of getting the user to think more like an expert. The tutor programs often do this in two ways: by prompting the trainee for a response and then getting them to compare to something an expert would do, and by providing feedback/hints (at the right level) as needed. Vygotsky discussed the latter in "Mind in Society", sometimes all a person needs is a little assistance at the right time, and then they'll understand why and how to do something. As far as computer based training systems, "Development of Professional Expertise" has some interesting papers, though it may not be the best source.
Very useful. I didn't think it was possible to make Dropbox better but... they did.
Do you see first time users being converted to dedicated users or are they mostly interested in just watching the new product trending?
IDEs are not as useful for dynamic languages such as JavaScript or Python as they are for strongly-typed languages like Java.

Imagine a piece of code like

function doSomething(callbackFunc) {
...
callBackFunc(a, b, c);
}

What context or popups can you display for the positional parameters of a function call that is only resolvable at runtime?
I both play poker and have had several business failures so I know what you're talking about. It's my personal opinion that both options are very difficult to rely upon for creating a decent, livable regular income.
I'd also say both paths give you plenty of skills you can use in other fields.

If I had to choose between the two I'd pick the business route for the reasons you've listed. But relying on one or the other to work out and pay your bills is "crazy"
Write A Template Compiler For Erlang
How to post your Tweets at a better time – TweetCaster and Buffer team up
Nice to see Javascript being used in the movie.
I can't wait until I can install AdBlock-AR and replace real ads with pictures of adorable kittens.
So when will someone make an environment like that? It sounds like a super good idea and it might even be a good business!
Fry: I can't swallow that.
Prof. Farnsworth: Good news! It's a suppository!
It was more difficult to go from 2.x to 4.0. In between was 3.0 which is essentially a tablet-only showcase OS - it didn't work on phones. That made 2011-2012 seem like an eternity for devices to get back into the upgrade cycle. And by the time devices could be upgraded it was clear most of them weren't powerful enough to make the leap.

It's very different now. If you buy a standard Android smart phone (not a low end / small screen device) it will be much faster and easier to receive updates.
Udacity: Sebastian Thrun to redesign STAT101 course after negative feedback
Challenging, in way of proposing another solutions to the problem you just solved, or asking for more features in the product?
sure, it can open them, but then it corrupts them when you save back and try to open with MSFT's office.

Even a simple pptx will change the bullets to some funky character, mess up the formatting.

It's not hyperbole, its actual real-world corporate experience. I tried recently to edit a pptx for a conference I am speaking at and as usual my linux/LO installation was unable to do so. I really wish it did work, but I just can't honestly say it ever does. try it for yourself, create a pptx in Office, add a couple slides, simple layout, nothing fancy, then save it, try opening it in LO and see what you have...
Three different types of pointers? Perhaps that is going a bit far?

> If you've a sharp eye, you're wondering what that "~" is that I snuck in on the type of the closure for the child task. That's actually a pointer type, of which Rust has three (none of which can be null, by the way):

> ~T is a unique pointer to a T. It points to memory allocated in the send heap, which means data inside of unique pointers can be sent between tasks. You can copy unique pointers, but only by deeply copying (otherwise they wouldn't be unique!) (and by default, they are "non-implicitly-copyable", so the compiler will issue warnings if you copy them without writing the "copy" keyword).

> @T is a managed pointer to a T. Currently, these are reference-counted and cycle-collected (they may be full-on GCed in the future). Copying one increments the reference count, so multiple managed pointers can point to the same data. These are allocated on a per-task private heap, and cannot be sent between tasks.

> &T is a borrowed pointer to a T. It can point to the inside of arbitrary data structures - on the stack, inside ~ or @ pointers, etc. Rust has a static analysis, called the "borrow checker", that ensures that borrowed pointers must not outlive the scope of the pointed-to data (i.e., it is impossible for rust programs to have a use-after-free).
Cheap wooden houses get blown away regardless of fab technique.
There already a few deprecated API, which so far have not be removed, but until when?