skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Hacker News RSS Feed + Readability
How do you deal with excess verbosity in C#? I know this is a separate argument from the monkey patching issue but for me the conciseness and elegance of the Ruby syntax versus C# is the primary reason to choose Ruby.
Daring Fireball: Complex
I don't follow your reasoning here.

I would say software is far more of an individual activity than building widgets. On an assembly line one amazing worker can't boost the overall performance by much, but in software you can.

Boosting the group's activity does not make it a group activity, it shows the power of an individual programmer.

Also, look at the one employee that made Fog Creek over a million dollars from his job board concept. Some individual employees can have spectacular results.
For what it's worth, MS bought the companies that made a lot of the killer apps for SGI and ported them to Windows-only.

It wasn't pure suicide, Microsoft helped.
i think the homepage looks quite nice and professional.

one suggestion is to make it clear on the front-page what it is about / what you can do with it. I wouldn't find out even after reading the bottom texts on the front page.
Out of curiosity, what has your experience been like? Do you have any major gripes with the language or are you still on a Ruby honeymoon?
If the performance bonus isn't annual than it's no different than a salary. In terms of an employee asking for a raise, how is asking for a larger performance bonus any different than asking for a higher salary?

You've just categorized the money differently in your head at that point.
Not really, though it has been discussed.

From what I've read:

upvote comments: 10

downvoting and flagging: 51

make polls: <=150

change top bar color: 250

See http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=438936

To search yc vist http://searchyc.com/
GTA clone iPhone game, Payback, makes $400k in 1st 2 months
I think it was a bad thing to do to their users.. but I would guess that the publicity it generated was well worth it. Heck it got me interested!
Identi.ca acquires Twitter
I makes sense as long as you are not paying less than $90k/year senior level web developers. Does anyone know how much is a Fog Creek Software senior developer salary?
Damn, SGI is right there with Digital in the category of amazing companies that brought us amazing advances and didn't deserver the fate that befell them.

...looks like Sun might be the next member of that club...
Don't get me wrong, that's very impressive, but that's hardly a unique case. First person that comes to mind, again, is Mark Zuckerberg, who left Harvard. (Not to mention Bill Gates, who did the same a generation earlier.)
They make millions because the people determining their pay are CEOs of other corporations with a vested interest in keeping the average CEO salary as high as possible.
doctrine of the elect ... is a living, breathing human being who is guaranteed to gain salvation no matter what he or she does here on earth

http://wsu.edu/~dee/REFORM/CALVIN.HTM

http://www.hccentral.com/delect.html
Well, I'm glad the limit was 5. Extrapolating from this limited data set I was prepared to see Paul's next door neighbors as #9 and #10
This is very common in the US. Actually, at most places, the number of years you have worked is the major factor in determining your salary.
Answer: "Because we don't call it 'negotiating a raise', we call it 'applying this formula'."

Two immediate problems with the formula and one problem with the concept.

First, "scope", factor 2 in the formula, can be external to the employee. It's in Spolsky's interests to hire people who "could" manage multiple projects if given that responsibility, but the demand for those people inside Fog Creek will tend to be lower than the demand for lower-scoped responsibilities. His formula thus does one of two things: it incentivizes him to hire less talented people --- even when he may want a buffer of talent inside the company --- or it creates a totally subjective ranking system where 10 people are qualified to lead a project, but only the "favorite" does.

Second, "skills", factor 3 in the formula, is also subjective. That he's coded it in a chart doesn't change the fact that the "skills" spectrum is basically the line over which every salary negotiation is fought anyways.

Which leads to the general critique of this, that coding and regimenting salary negotiation does nothing except code and regiment salary negotiation. OK, so Fog Creek is transparent about the behavior they want to incentivize. But so what? The real world still creeps in and subverts this system:

* "I'm capable of leading this project, but I'm never getting a lead role because 5 people with seniority are always going to take the next available slots."

* "I was given this task to complete, but it was poorly specified, and so my output didn't contribute to company success."

* "You'd be ranking me at a higher skills level if you put me on a project that would give me exposure to new technology."

* "You'd be ranking me at a higher scope of responsibility if you'd just recognize that my team lead is a moron."

All the same pathologies seem to remain intact in this system.

Curious as to what I'm missing.
If the performance bonus isn't annual than it's no different than a salary.

Of course it is, in that it's the result of an outcome and isn't guaranteed.

There is no company in the world that would mind you asking for a larger bonus. After a certain level however, you need to qualify the value you bring to earn that bonus. If I said to my employer: "If I bring in 200 new users this year, will you give me X more (where X is a percentage of the revenue generated by 200 users) in bonus?"; No competent manager would deny you this.
Not sure it's 37s's fault that the behavior observed here is really easy to characterize.
It felt as if someone had flipped on a light switch inside my head.

So TJ Rogers is pg's pg.
"Getting to Yes" http://www.amazon.com/Getting-Yes-Negotiating-Agreement-With...
Flagging might need 51, but downvoting needs more. I don't know how much.
http://www.google.com/search?q=doctrine+of+the+elect+puritan

"The Doctrine of the Elect better known as predestination or foreordination is the belief that when a person is born or at any time later in their life, they might be chosen by God to become one of the Elect, which is one of the people who would receive divine salvation."
April Fools is over in 90% of the world as I write this. You missed the boat.
I suppose I can see the distinction in that this allows a company to tailor how much each person makes dependent on their performance in a given time frame.

That said I certainly wouldn't want to work for that company. Basically what they're saying is "we don't trust you the employee to continue to perform optimally so we're going to make you prove yourself each and every (whatever the time period is) to get a bonus" while the employee has to wonder how much their pay check will be every month (or whatever)

That seems more cruel than anything
In summary, egos have been hurt and this has caused much whining.
There are lots of things you can do to get publicity that ultimately hurt your company. Maxim's like this have parts of truth but you can't throw all logic aside and just do things to generate publicity.

Facebook could delete everyone's profile and generate tons of publicity. They'd probably also go out of business.
Does Bono really qualify as an "Entrepreneur"? I mean, by the time he started in one/red campaign, he was already wealthy. Doesn't seem like there's much risk-taking involved on his part.

(sorry for the bad original title, btw)
This system can only work if there are non-monetary benefits to working for the company, like a stimulating work environment or increasing independence with increased demonstrated skill...

...my guess is that's why Joel gets away with it!
Really cool to see app developers willing to share some of this information with people. Really helps future devs in how they price, promote, and build their apps.
Hopefully a user of C# will chime in -- I've spent very little time with it, and only recently evaluated C#'s extension mechanism for the purpose of comparing it against other language's implementations.

That said, elegant and concise syntax does not require eschewing an internally consistent, fully specified type system -- the two are not incompatible, as demonstrated (subjectively) -- by many existing FP languages. I argue that elegance/conciseness requires either FP language features and advanced type system, or abandonment of rigorous typing.
Which version of C# are you thinking of?

In C# 3, the verbosity level is much less than in C# 2, where it's slightly less than C# 1.

I don't see where Ruby syntax is particularly more concise than C# 3's.

Well, let me clarify "particularly". I don't find myself feeling like I'm suffering under C#'s syntax, relative to Haskell's. It has about the same amount of syntactic overhead: writing types for method parameters, and when defining data structures. Occasionally I have to explicitly write a type parameter to a function.
Well he pretty much single-handedly (as I understand it from lore) talked major carriers into supporting Loopt on their phones.

Considering how carriers normally treat new technology, this shows considerable force of will. To even get them to listen to you would be impressive. The fact that they agreed, more so.
Specifically, you have to avoid saying things like this:

"I have to be honest: All of these charges of extortion are distressing for someone who has worked so hard to try and encourage open and honest communication between companies and customers. I know that the pile-on effect is in effect here, but to hear it told in these comments, we’re evil people who are trying to exploit people in the worst way. We’ve always been simply trying to help improve the way companies do their customer service and make it more human. We apparently need to be better at explaining the way it works, I suppose.

"And now, I’ll step aside and dodge the bottle I see sailing through the air in my direction."

http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1650-get-satisfaction-or-...

It's the attempts to evoke pity for them and cast any criticism as mindless persecution by people who aren't smart enough to get them that create more hostility. When you're in the wrong, it's just not time to go on about how you feel hurt by people being critical of you.

More appropriate would be, "We work very hard at trying to encourage open and honest communication between companies and customers. For that reason, I find it very distressing that our efforts could strike people as evil or extortionate. That is not in any way our intent, and we are looking at ways to better explain how what we do works."
I'm sorry Tom, but in 95% of for-profit enterprise, you are continually measured against the bottom line, and your performance is constantly evaluated.

Most companies do this via your salary in a secretive ranking ladder - which is exactly what Joel is speaking against.

I think you agree with him much more than you you think you do. :-)
I'm not totally sure how accurate this is anyway. I think the administrators increase karma thresholds sometimes to account for karma inflation.
You have to consider what being more productive translates to. In this case, since we are talking about software, lets assume that being more productive means that you can implement more features of a similar complexity at the same level of quality compared to the guy sitting next to you. Assuming everything else equal between you two, you would expect that you would be paid more. In Joel's model, the only way for this to be accounted for is scope. Since you can produce more features you are now responsible for more features. Assuming that this increase of scope is enough to move you up to the next grade, you would have a higher salary. Otherwise, it could be accounted for with your bonus.

But what if you could implement twice as much features, but you required additional over site to manage those features. You have just created additional work for someone else. Before your additional productivity can be utilized, someone else has to help you convert it to something more usable. Depending how needed that other person is, your increase in productivity could result in a net lose of productivity for the team as a whole.

When talking about productivity, you need to be specific in what you mean, because productivity is hard to measure and quantify.
This is a very well laid out entry. I wonder if you can apply similar principles to designing the homepage of a social application, where the user does not necessarily buy something, but still needs to be convinced about trying the product.
"TJ Rodgers
Cypress Semiconductors

Rodgers may be the best writer among Silicon Valley CEOs. The first essay of his that I read was so electrifying that I remember exactly where I was when I read it."

So what was the essay? This is tantalizing . . .
google buys Morton Salt, salt 2.0 on the way?
Improve HN: Home link on error pages
I sometimes get an "Expired link" error. Alright. But then I have to go back to the cached page I came from, klick at the top (or ctrl+f5) to get back to the start page. Not good. I'd suggest putting a link to / on error pages.
Ask HN: How do I startup if I'm not a developer?
Some friends and I have an idea for a web startup that we really believe in, but we have no way to execute because we definitely need at least one real developer. What would you propose we do? I'm experienced with PHP (but not frameworks: I'm horrible with MVC) and design. We have another good designer onboard. And the third leg is the business leg, the guy who gets us incorporated and pitches our idea to our customers.

We have no real, hardcore developer though.

I know the easy thing to say would be "just learn to code!" And yes, that's our current approach. But is there a better way? It's going to take a lot more time than we'd like to become proficient enough at either Django or Rails (which is what we're looking at) or even Cake, CodeIgniter, or Symphony (all of which are last resort, more for speed since I'm good with PHP right now and just need to learn more in the OOP/MVC area).

Is it possible to outsource our product (rentacoder, getafreelancer, etc)? The lingering question with this is, how do we call it our product if we had no hand in building it, or that's not even really the biggest problem -- without giving our hired coder equal equity stake in our startup? What's to stop the coder from just taking the finished product and running?

Is there a way to protect the code as proprietary intellectual property of the company?
Yeah I looked at the headline and the url next to it and did a doubletake. When I see enfranchisedmind.com I immediately think: OCaml!
...just a few weeks ago CK12 and the State of Virginia launched the first ever open Text Book...

Really? What about all the stuff on Wikibooks? (http://en.wikibooks.org)
97 Yr Old Physician's Formula For Life
"Take it or leave it" is the best price that you're going to get from a given party. It's unclear why one would prefer a lesser price.

It's also unclear why taking a "take it or leave it" offer vs some other metric implies "don't know value" or "looking to coast".

Then again, I'm pretty sure that a significant number of employees at non-prifits aren't volunteering, so if a non-profit wants to keep them, it has to be competitive wrt their compensation.

While some/many employees at a non-profit may be volunteering,
I designed everything there except for the app icons.

The incomparable Jordan Langille of onetoad.com did the app icons.
You nailed it. That was just about what I wanted to say, but couldn't.

In any case, last time I checked, they had most of HN fooled with their douchery too, which is quite surprising.

Seriously.. If their "wording" was explicitly meant to state that the "space" was not officially sanctioned by 37signals, well then, why not just freaking go ahead and explicitly state exactly that?

It's obvious that GS is a shady company, and after Jason's blog post, what exactly do people think they'd do?

"Why yes, we are full of shit. You got us."?
Hindsight is 20/20, of course, but were I SGI, back when PCs had just started getting to the point of running true 3D games, I would have had the company enter the graphics-card market. The SGI name could have easily carried a premium price-tag, and could have provided a compelling upgrade line for customers when PCs just didn't cut the mustard any longer.

This would have also let SGI position themselves to sell Maya across-the-board, giving them yet another solid revenue stream, and could have also let them jump into the console market, becoming the graphics vendor that powered the PlayStation, Sega Genesis, and so on.
I think it's this: PG is convinced Sam will succeed no matter what.
Are there any categories besides right and wrong? I'd imagine that the success of some predictions is open to interpretation and/or ambiguous enough to defy easy categorization. A perfect example would be "Podcasting will be a factor in the 2006 congressional elections in the US." How much counts as "a factor?" Any amount > 0? How can we be sure one way or the other about this one, without some extensive analysis?

At the very least, I think some explanation of how the determination is made should be required.
I'm quite sure that the bonus at fog creek is not based on performance... It is based on profit (he does say that he has a profit sharing plan) but joel is against giving bonuses as incentive...
see http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000070.html

Compared to the situation at my old company where salary was determined by how well you negociated, I'm quite sure I prefer joel's version. And when reading the ladder http://joelonsoftware.com/articles/ladder.html, it's clear enough so that any disagreement are probably going to be minor (since he's using the average of skill and scope in a lot of cases a one point difference in the skill or scope won't make any difference to the level)
Was Jobs more important to Apple's success than Woz?
You pay a contractor in cash, not equity. Henry Ford wasn't on the assembly line and he did just fine.
I went to a Fog Creek open house year before last with this pay-scale transparency in mind (Joel had talked about it in an article about 6 months beforehand) and nobody I spoke to had any idea what I was talking about.

It was pretty disappointing.
Title should be: 'Emacs took longer than a day to learn'. It's well written but doesn't have much to do with Lisp.
> That said, the licensing with GCC sounds very complex and burdensome too.

It's not really, it's just your standard GPL. The exception simply means that they don't try and make the GPL cover everything the compiler outputs and links into executables.
I just read that today. It's fantastic. I submitted it thinking there must be some number of people (ducks) who haven't read it. I would have done better to just upvote you.

I like the formatting here better: http://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/politics/english/e_polit...
Only by tradition, and in my experience the philosophy department only teaches the class that serves to introduce formal logic to all undergrads. Philosophers deal with words. They like to discuss the various ways a verbal problem might be reduced to logic, and they might be interested in what can be said (in terms they already use) about a system of logic, but that's the limit of their interest. If you take a graduate-level math class in logic (or metamathematics or foundations or whatever your local math department calls it) or even if you just take an upper-division set theory class, you'll learn more about mathematical logic than anyone in the philosophy department wants to know.
It'll be really impressive if that results in revenue.
Great summary-

I fondly recall my indigo2 workstation + 19 inch monitor, that weighed like a 100 lbs and was about 2ft. deep :)

As time went on, our graveyard of SGI machines in the company attic grew and grew...

OpenGL - wondrous technology back then and even now - Im getting nostalgic remembering the OpenGL vs. DirectX wars/discussions we had in the office.
Conficker worm reaches go time, to no effect
Juglir - Native iPhone app, multiple accounts on multiple social networks
Very cool human-centered application that allows you to send updates to multiple accounts on multiple social networks.
If they think they should be rated higher, then they should give the reasons why.
If those reasons are valid, then the employer can change the rating. If the employer is unwilling to change it for irrational reasons, that means that the rating system is not objective and the system is undermined and has lost its meaning. This becomes a separate problem entirely.

If the reasons for valuing themselves more are not valid or applicable to the company, then the employee is over valuing themselves in this context. If the employee is not willing to accept this, then they have the option of declining the offer and moving on.
Another Dry Quarter For Venture Exits
Perhaps the people you mentioned (Bill and Mark) would be on your top 5 list. Here are the other lists from the article, many of which include Gates:

http://www.inc.com/magazine/20090401/that-certain-something_...

It's the equivalent of listing the "5 albums that influenced you the most". There are many answers, no one is saying that Sam has done something that has never been done before.
Register.com DNS goes offline
> But "young ultrasuccessful founder" is not a rare thing. Being a billionaire before 25 has happened again and again.

What exactly do you consider 'rare?' According to Forbes, there were 691 billionaires in the world (of all ages) in 2005. In a world with about 7B people, the probability that you be in that group is

691/7000000000 = 9.87142... e-8 %

Sam is no billionaire, AFAIK, but he shares the qualities of approximately 0.0000001% of the world's most financially successful population. On top of that, he's in his early 20's. The number is even smaller if you include the handful of members in this demographic. Quite a good justification to be on that list, IMO.
It would improve PR for them.
Who is keeping count, here? That's three major DNS provider attacks in a week or so.

EasyDNS

UltraDNS

Register.com

I was thinking just this morning to diversify and get a second DNS host.
They are all books, but not text books approved for classroom teaching yet. This is the first open textbook approved by a US state.
Michael Abrash: A First Look at the Larrabee New Instructions (LRBni)
I have this mental list of "things I would love to see and am too lazy to actually implement right now and maybe someone else will come up with the same idea and spare me the work".

And now I can cross another item off of that list.
Ruby isn't a very good Smalltalk, nor is it a good Lisp.
Sure they do. Instead of spending their money, they spend their time, and the two are interchangeable.
Addendum: SlideShare learns the hard way that the Internet is Serious Business™
"I always walk away wondering if they're laughing at me behind my back"

They're probably not laughing at you. They are either confused because the foreigner got a decent price out of them, or grateful you didn't hold on for a lower rate. It's the ones that don't haggle that they're laughing at...
Aside from most people being bad judges of their own sense of humor, it strikes me that many of these jokes land in the subtle-middle-mediocre swamp. If you're going to do one of these pranks, you've got to go to extremes. Way over the top, huge amounts of self-deprecation (witness aspects of Qualcomm's WolfPidgeon bit), etc.

Slideshare's mistake was two zeros. They should have put on an absurd number of zeros, and made the counter go up while the victim watched, by a lot. Maybe break as it passed a bajillion and shatter as the numbers fall off the page. Now it might be that this isn't that funny either, but at least it's pushing hard on people's expectations and a bit absurd. It certainly would have been self-evident as a prank, which is a pretty important component of any April 1 joke that affects you personally.