skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Ask HN: Online Resources for Beginner Hackers?
Hey guys,

my cousin is about to start his summer vacation and we were talking about stuff he could do over the break. He expressed an interest in computers and I figured I would help him get started with some basic programming. I wanted to compile a list of online sources where a newbie could get started. Here's what I have so far -

http://www.freenetpages.co.uk/hp/alan.gauld/ - intro to programming

http://w3schools.com/ - HTML, CSS, Browser/Server Scripting

http://www.cprogramming.com/ - C and C++

http://wiki.python.org/moin/BeginnersGuide - Python

http://rubylearning.com/satishtalim/tutorial.html - Ruby

http://docs.rinet.ru/P7/ - Perl

http://www.gigamonkeys.com/book/ - Lisp; also downloaded PG's 'On Lisp'

http://www.javabeginner.com/ - Java

Any other resources you think I should add?

what about reading up on hardware?

Any advice regarding how and in what order my nephew should get started would also be appreciated.

Thanks!!
That thread is infuriating. Ah, the collected wisdom of such "smart" people, overgeneralizing about the coding skills of everyone who has a particular degree -- that's a discussion with roughly the same level of intellectual merit as a gaggle of construction workers on lunch break, discussing which races are best suited to particular trades.
We do the "moving sketches around" way of collaborating, and it works, but it tends to be a bit slow. There are some ways to get around the slowness: plasq's skitch makes it easy to share the things on my screen with other people, for example, and sometimes we just skype psds to each other. And I'll certainly keep using those tools.

The iPhone mockup tool I've created is a very specific tool for a very specific issue I have: I'm thinking about the layout of an iPhone screen and I want to quickly throw some ideas at somebody who's far away, and let them give live input. I don't even think that the mockup tool is the best solution for that specific problem, it's just the first idea I came up with :-)

I find it useful, but I can totally see how it's not for everyone.
Granted. I was just responding to the claim that Jeff doesn't have copyright on his work - I'm not claiming that CNProg violated that copyright (I don't have any idea, one way or the other).
And even DNA evidence is not infallible. Recently there was a series of crimes all over Germany where DNA evidence pointed to a single woman involved in all of them.

It turned out she was just an employee at the plant where the q-tips were made. The q-tips get sterilized before being used, but this process only destroys proteins, most DNA survives.
'Killer' ideas don't necessarily have to be unique. Just better, so they disrupt the existing market enough to get ahead.

[edit - removed extra word]
Hi, I'm a short-sighted anti-intellectual software nerd.. who has done a lot of hiring and programming, management, and/or analysis work with the people hired for years thereafter.

IME, a PhD in the closest related subject to the job is a negative, but not a damning one. Some of these folks just seem to put their head down, ignore the things around them, and tend to take overly complex approaches to problems rather than tending to eliminating problems. I've guessed this comes from the mentality you have to be in to complete a PhD. That said.. I've known some pretty cool PhDs in the relevant subject too.

My favorite candidates are actually PhD /dropouts/. I've really enjoyed people who were smart enough to get a PhD, but found going into one deep topic for years in academia wasn't for them. Also, PhDs from a different area seem cool too. They're smart, and the mere fact they're applying to something outside of what they mastered proves they're not the sort I'm afraid of.
Enigma was really cracked in Poland years before WWII. Then after German invasion Polish mathematicians moves to France, then to Great Britain, and here continue work.

It always makes me sad when people forget about their ingenious work, and in Hollywood films it always looks like all that was done by English speaking people.

Sources: http://www.enigmahistory.org/enigma.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enigma_machine
While reading this it occurred to me that I couldn't identify the handwriting of even those closest to me, with the possible exception of my parents, since our written communication is almost always online.
Chinese clone of StackOverflow. Uses even the same design, built using django.
And yea, <a href="http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=zh-CN&... is the translated version</a>
I came across some of the uploaded videos on blip.tv
The (Lack of) Design Patterns in Python
Why not link to the actual TED talk? (http://www.ted.com/talks/david_merrill_demos_siftables_the_s...)

And this was on HN a few weeks ago...but it is kinda awesome.
Is it worth learning Latex just so that (some) people who see my resume will recognize that I took the time to learn Latex?
Something I've never understood: If immunization prevents you getting a disease, and you are immunized, why are you worried about catching the disease from people who aren't immunized?

I'm aware the the above may be an oversimplification and someone might have a good explanation - that would be most welcome.
They both have poor chances, but I'd say the CS major has a better chance, unless the history major has taken enough CS classes to be able to be useful to Google.
Batch Process Runner in bash shell - Forgotten Enhancements
Yeah, I was wondering about something like that too, but as they are putting constraints on the single bodies of mass I'm not sure that's sufficient.
awesome! i coincidentally self-imposed a no computer saturday yesterday. it was amazing. i highly recommend it; you'll know when you need it.

i'd been behind on a project and working long hours (self-imposed startup). the last three nights my eyeballs felt like they were going to explode--you know how you can get so tired that trying to sleep is perversely miserable?

i finally got to a stopping point--too tired to celebrate even emotionally--so when i woke up saturday i read, played piano, played frisbee and swam, and then went over to a friend's house for dinner. came home, played harmonica in bed, and was out like a lamp on lights-out day. the last thing i remember is mumbling how comfortable tired stretched out i was.

there's no point talking about, tho. you have to try it. i usually work through weekends, still taking break for frisbee and such, but sometimes i need more of a break to engage with the world and rejuvenate creative thinking.

btw, my inspiration was a recent discussion on hn regarding laptops v computer labs. i'd noticed my productivity/happiness parabola correlates with time-on-laptop, and then i need to get my brain out of a laptop usage rut. so great!

btbtw, i used laptop for piano sheet music, and while i checked email to make sure nothing critical had happened, after noting all was well i never looked back. the main goal was to restore balance after the extremes of the week, not impose an unrelenting extreme.
So you are saying that it's ok to pirate as long as you say "this was made by x, get the original here"? How about considering what the creator of said content wants?
Where Did All the Documentation Go?
and to think all this is supported by Adsense. Surely to hit them where it hurts is to get G to pull their ads from the site.
It works, but is more difficult to debug and, of course, to integrate with existing libraries.

I don't think many have taken this path - GWT has not exactly taken the developer community by storm. Even minimal approaches (e.g. QT extending C++ syntax to deal with signals and slots) is considered unacceptable by many.
I have nothing to add to the list, just make sure he is not bored by all the theory - let him build some very very simple apps // hmm I'm probably saying obvious stuff
I use currvita. It's a package and to be used with your favoured document class (e.g. letter or article).
No. But it's worth to learn LaTeX.
Reddit’s Ad Experiment Is Good News for Condé Nast
We would still have math. Or most of it.
It depends on what you're applying for. In that list of qualifications it didn't make much sense (i.e. where writing a compiler was considered a good thing), but say you're coming fresh out of a PhD and need a rank-and-file web devel position to pay the bills -- you might be looked over for being overqualified. I know some folks that don't list their PhD on the CVs if they're applying for positions where it'd make them massively overqualified.

Funny story -- my uncle has his PhD from one of the best conservatories in the US. After years of being a music professor and symphony librarian, he got tired of it and just wanted a non-brain-job working in a hardware store or the like. He couldn't get one until he removed all of his work experience for the last 20 years from his CV and just said that he'd worked odd jobs. Of course, once he did, he only lasted two weeks there because it was, in fact, boring him to tears. Seems the hiring wasn't so off after all.

That's an extreme example, but I think illustrates the phenomenon.
how can i take my ikatiam?someone thief it!
I can't stand reading articles about some technology I'm familiar with that are written for the average person, even if they're factually correct. It reminds me of this: http://xkcd.com/547/
Nit pick: JavaScript certainly isn't browser dependent, that just happens to be where it originated and the vast majority of usage takes place.
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Conficker C Computer Virus
Conficker aka Downadup, is a computer virus that will release its payload on April 1, 2009. This site contains Conficker info and removal instructions.
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Ignore your critics
Boost (http://www.boost.org/) could be the answer to many of the articles questions. The quality of the libraries is outstanding and documentation is comprehensive.
The magazine cover effect
As a hacker, I needed to read this. Marriage can be tough when you have your head in a macbook 16 hours a day.
Good, thoughtful piece. I have one hopeful thing to say: for good software, maybe the documentation is tending to get 'built-in' in the form of tooltips, "what's this" links, etc.

That was out of the question, due to resource limits, a couple of decades ago - you were fighting to fit just the bare functionality in the code, and shipping the explanatory details on paper.

Now, however, there's nothing really preventing help-on-demand, instead of stop-and-go-dig-it-up elsewhere. Except, of course, the expense ...
For those in need of inspiration have a look at Django's documentation: http://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/
This one is the first document any hacker newbie should read.

http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html
exactly. i couldn't get into this article because it all hinged on a single, un-qualified assertion. what kind of documentation for what kind of projects? i don't see "documentation" going away, but my personal perspective is obviously limited to my own realm of software.
To me its quite different to the RIAA's copyright dilemnas. I find the misappropriation of authorship to be much more offensive than acquisition without license.
MacRuby also goes LLVM
Just ordered it, thx!
Me too, I certainly appreciate the work/life balance this guy is talking about.
That's the kind of spirit I'm following and I'm glad some people aren't emphasizing the developer's myth of all nighters.
Learn How to Hack
Many of use want to to learn hacking, but don’t know where to start. I often get emails where people asking “how can I learn to be a hacker?”, “This is my msn xxxxx@hotmail.com , can you teach me hacking online?”, “How long will it take me to learn to hack?”…
The Perfect Server - OpenSUSE 11.1 [ISPConfig 3]
I imagine that explaining the emergent phenomenon is less lazy than blaming someone, though simply labeling it as such may not be.
Blogger who hasn't mastered a language complains that the language isn't right for problem X.

Not seeing a lot of useful information here. Not upvoted.

Take it as a rule-of-thumb that if you master a language you can see how it can solve every problem. In fact, the difficulty is realizing getting down off that high and realizing that everybody feels that way about every language.

So I would prefer to assume my own ignorance rather than make sweeping statements about a language. The odds usually work in my favor that way.
My favorite candidates are actually PhD /dropouts/. I've really enjoyed people who were smart enough to get a PhD, but found going into one deep topic for years in academia wasn't for them.

As one of 'em, I obviously agree, but what I found surprising is the number of 'normal' people who do too.

In academia, the very thought of leaving my PhD was unmentionable. I struggled for a long time coming to the final decision and was even referred to counselling to 'make sure' I was fully mentally stable (of course I wasn't! who is?).

Since leaving I've had nothing but thumbs-up from people about it, and that's been a real surprise. So +1 to dropping out!
Surely for female coders 'topless in facebook picture' is a +12, not a minus? ;)
"Some of these folks just seem to put their head down, ignore the things around them, and tend to take overly complex approaches to problems rather than tending to eliminating problems."

...which is a true statement for all coders, not just those people with a PhD. In fact, I think you'd be hard-pressed to come up with a description that is more generally applicable to the autistic world of the software nerd.

You can candy-coat it any way you like, but what you're doing here is making a generalization about a group of people based on their choice to pursue an advanced degree.
Mininova doesn't host or distribute the content.
I think you're looking at the problem backwards. Some parents feel safe not giving their children shots because everybody else's children had their shots, therefore the total number of disease carriers are low.

The article states that some elementary schools are reaching a 'critical mass' of students without vaccinations that will cause outbreaks. Since most of these students tend from wealthy, affluent families, the example in the story of contracting measles from a different country, importing it here, and spreading it to the other elementary schools is a danger to all those who have not had their shots.

To answer the above question: If you're immunized, there's nothing to worry about. The problem is if you're not immunized, and your child is in a 'critical mass' set, parents may have to rethink their beliefs as the immunizations do protect against deadly diseases.
How about poignantguide.net and http://learnyouahaskell.com/
and mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/

Though it looks like you will have to turn to the printed word for anything beyond language tutorials. I would suggest intro to algorithms and head first design patterns.

As far as hardware goes introduce him to an arduino or a pic and some parts and let him explore.
Moderation is the key.
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Five Easy Steps to Create Profitable Forex Trading Systems
Orgasm and childbirth
"In other words, completing a PhD shows you can get complicated stuff done. It does not show that you can get stuff done quickly."

By this logic, a masters or bachelors degree does not "show that you can get stuff done quickly" either, especially since most PhD students either have a masters degree already or they do the equivalent (of amsters degree) work before they start the work to "solve a single problem in excruciating detail".

If you are saying that the degree is unimportant either way and you make your decisions on hiring on the basis of other things(say open source contributions or industry work experience) that is self consistent.

Due Disclosure: I have no formal education of in Computer Science and no masters or PhD degrees of any kind. :-)
To be or not to be....or...to hire or not to hire an interior designer
"You can candy-coat it any way you like, but what you're doing here is making a generalization about a group of people based on their choice to pursue an advanced degree"

which is then one step away from generalizing about people on other attributes, like race or sex.
I love the idea, and i'm already working on a prototype!
Sounds like the evidence was fine; it was the interpretation of that evidence that needed adjustment.
I love the title code monkey, but I'm anything but a rank-and-file coder.

In the last 20 years, I've had the chance to manage about a dozen PhDs in various disciplines.

The ones who were not in computer-related disciplines (but were coding/managing anyway) were uniformly very good. Not knock-your-socks-off-great, but very good.

The ones that were from computer-related disciplines were usually condescending, non-responsive, and difficult to get along with. It seems that they were missing important social and interpersonal skills and felt they knew everything they needed to know. In fact, you might say they felt that they were way above what they should be doing.

I found them useless.

A few stories does not a rule make, but at the same time, I can't help but notice others in our field have similar opinions -- so there is probably a pattern here.

Note that others did not find them useless. On several occasions I was told we had to keep them -- in order to make our bids look better to win government contracts.
Who cares? "Steal what you love", right? They obviously couldn't use the English speaking site, and I doubt the real Stack Overflow has any plans to expand into the Chinese market.

I wouldn't be proud doing such a thing myself, but if such a site will help our Chinese friends learn to program better, good luck to it IMO.
Which is a good thing: we make generalizations because we don't have the cognitive ability to instantly assign a million variables to every stimulus. Generalization keeps us sane.

When it becomes a bad thing is when we allow these mental shortcuts to take the place of sound reasoning, as in when we are looking at job applicants.

Never think that stereotyping or generalizing is bad -- it's the way your brain works, and for good reason.
One distinction for me between copying an online article and copying music or a game, is that with the latter, people are pirating it because they'd can't otherwise access it. They'd have to pay or inconvenience themselves somehow, so they go for the free version.

A piece of online content, assuming it's free, is something anyone can effortlessly access from anywhere.

So they may as well go to the original source, reward the author for his work, and not support someone else who's being more parasitic.
Why MacRuby Matters (Present & Future)
Growing Blind
Here are we again.
When I originally installed, I thought the pictures only would be taken if I reported it stolen. Apparently not.
hey, fvwm with the right configuration is quite nice... It was my windows manager of choice before switching to os x 4 years ago (and I still miss it some times).

I used to run the gnome panel with it and found it much nicer than metacity+gnome...

But of course, fvwm is good only if well configured and I doubt they took the time to do that. And I do agree that most people will not see want to spend hours configuring it...
This was the first Cambrian House business model.

I saw two problems. First, you didn't know what to do with your metrics -- if changing a button from green to blue caused signups to go from 20/day to 25/day, which number indicates how much customer demand exists? Second, as pg pointed out, startups rarely get very far before figuring out there's actually a much better product for them to build that's about 70% different from their current one. At best, the site no longer is evidence of interest in the new product, you have to start it over. If you've taken pre-orders (the only way to reliably gauge interest) you may be committed to building what you sold.
Also see http://blog.headius.com/2009/03/on-benchmarking.html for the other side of this story
OnLive
As in limited PR/Marketing tickets. They want developers there.
?What happen in Lakemba, Parry Park ??
Parry Park @ 11:30pm 0n 28/03/09, Police Helicopter, Road closer of Punchbowl Rd?
"Which is a good thing"

If this was a response to "generalizing about people on other attributes, like race or sex.", I have to disagree with you, since the context of discussion here is about selecting someone for a job. I have yet to see a valid generalization about sex or race providing an indicator about programming ability.

"Never think that stereotyping or generalizing is bad -- it's the way your brain works,"

and unless overridden with logic, it is also the way prejudice (in this case racism and sexism ) operate.

Just so we don't go round and round, my opinion on generalization from examples: generalization is neither good nor bad by itself - it depends on the quality of the data and the inference mechanism - it could lead to good or bad depending on what it results in.

It is a facility of the brain certainly but being human means you are not blindly subject to your generalizations. All imho. Feel free to disgaree.
Exploring Fact City
Two reasons:

First, no vaccine is 100% effective. You can be vaccinated for something, yet still get the disease if you're exposed consistently, or with a great intensity. Thus, the goal of most vaccinations is to achieve "herd immunity", wherein enough people within a population are vaccinated that the chance of any person being exposed to a case of the disease is low enough that even an imperfect vaccine can be considered 100% effective.

If herd immunity is not achieved, then even the best vaccines will fail to protect some percentage of the population. Outbreaks will occur, and vaccinated people will succumb; in particular, people with weakened immune systems, the elderly, and pregnant women are susceptible to diseases, even when vaccinated.

Second, for some diseases -- such as chickenpox and rubella -- incomplete immunization of a population actually results in worse epidemics, because the incomplete immunization of a population tends to shift the cases of the disease to older people. And for diseases like chickenpox and rubella, childhood infection is relatively innocuous, whereas infection as an adult can kill you.

This latter concern isn't merely hypothetical -- there was a recent example of the consequences of incomplete vaccination in Greece, in the early 1990s. Because the Greeks had only inconsistently vaccinated for rubella starting in the 60s, there was a huge outbreak of adult rubella infections in 1993, and as a result of that, there was an epidemic of rubella-related spontaneous abortions and birth defects (a condition known as congential rubella syndrome, which is a hideous disease that the rubella vaccine was arguably intended to prevent). Had the immunization rate for rubella been high enough to achieve herd immunity, this never would have happened.
Yogi Berra wisdom for startups
"Capable of building real multiplayer games - RTS, FPS, racing, platformers, multiplayer Tower Defense, and more."

But Flash doesn't have UDP packets, right? Is it nowadays practical to do synchronous games without it?