skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Well I don't know if this answers your questions, but here's what I think.

"Working hard", by itself, isn't enough to get you rich, and it can often take you entirely in the wrong direction. You can work your ass off and read business books like "Good to Great" or techie books like "Programming Collective Intelligence" (which I bought and think is good), and 10 years later you can still be sitting on your couch, watching TV, thinking "I worked hard, why am I still not a rock star?" I can work my ass off and implement a new Web application in 3 hours, but if nobody uses it I'm still a failure, at least in an entrepreneurial sense.

For every effect there is a logical sequence of causes. If you want to launch a successful company, you have to follow a finite sequence of steps (think of idea, write good code, listen to user feedback, etc.). There is an infinite pool of actions that are NOT part of the sequence of steps that will not help you AT ALL towards starting a great company. The really challenging (yet necessary) part is figuring out what these useless activities are, and avoiding them.

Figure out what exactly is necessary and do those things. Don't BS yourself and think "if I just work hard at these X things that everyone else says are important, I will some day make it big."

But I think even if you've figured out exactly what you need to do, a lot of ENERGY and ACTION is needed. Nothing important gets done without a lot of action.

"Working hard" is a bad term, because it sort of implies having a miserable time. I love tennis. When I play tennis I'm running all over the court and diving to make tough shots. I'm exhausted after a match. But I don't consider this working hard, I consider it high-energy playing. I think it's important to not only choose an end result you want, but also to find a process/means for getting to that end result that is so enjoyable that it doesn't seem like working hard at all, but rather like a high-energy game of tennis.
Right. I think the poster is missing half of the equation. I know lots of people who work really hard at what they do. But what they do just keeps the afloat, so they can go back in the next day and work really hard again.

The other part of the equation is being smart, watching for better opportunities, working on things on the side, or even quitting your job and living off of ramen while founding the Taginatr2000.com.
Having worked in an enterprise environment in the last several years (and trying hard not to get sucked into the process), it sure seems to me that a lot of the problems with enterprise software are self inflicted wounds. In fact I think if their (our) IT groups actually solved the real problems themselves (the ones their business users cared about) rather than building framework on top of framework with bloated middlewear based on a dozen standardized acronyms, enterprise applications would be much leaner and cheaper.

I think there's a lot of reinvented wheels and overdesigned architecures in enterprise application build circles. Their users don't care about that.
Agreed. You would have to have to invest a considerable amount of time to beat the STL objects in terms of efficiency. I cant even think of a situation when you really could. Why try to reinvent the wheel? Seems like time wasted if you ask me.
"what you end up with is vast overspending to deliver very little value"

I agree completely, fortunately (or maybe unfortunately depending on your view), this waste employees lots of people who want just a "job and a paycheck please". I think in the coming year or two, there will be an awakening here. Agile Web 2.0 stuff will start to show business users the things they can do when "Enterprise Architects" get out of the way.

"Naturally, this kind of bullshit is a huge disincentive to innovation. If you actually had a good idea, there are so many obstacles to trying it and getting things done that the smart people end up grinded down and flee for greener more flexible pastures. "

No kidding. I learned my lesson on this over the last two years.

I actually think the change will come from the business users. There will be profoundly cheaper alternatives to traditional Enterprise applications in the coming years. I don't have faith in CEOs and CTOs to see this coming.
The battle between HD DVD and Blu-ray might screw both of them
Interesting the way hardware standards develop in the free market. I don't know a huge amount about this, but why wouldn't people just buy combination HD DVD/Blu-ray players? The small extra cost seems worth it to be able to forget about who's going to win.
Great article. Generalized personalization is going to be an increasingly big deal. In a few years, I think it'll be expected that almost any site you visit already knows who you are and what you're like.
"Quite frankly, even if the choice of C were to do nothing but keep the C++ programmers out, that in itself would be a huge reason to use C."

What's not hilarious about that?
Effort is important, but knowing where to make an effort makes all the difference.

Tapping with a hammer ....... $ 2.00
Knowing where to tap ........ $ 9998.00

http://fridayreflections.typepad.com/weblog/2007/08/knowing-...
Yes CPAN is perl's best kept secret. There's still nothing to touch it.
Whoa... that hammer quote is a stroke of brilliance.
I think you were downmodded not because your post was wrong, but because it's essentially noise (I didn't downmod you).
I made a modified feed that does. Subscribe to http://feeds.re.inklesspen.com/newsyc

No more than five minutes stale compared to the official feed.
Great, show me a real RSS client that uses those. So far, the only one I've heard about is rss2email, which seems like utter stupidity instead of a real client.
Now, why in the world would someone mod down my comment?

Honestly, folks...it isn't a criminal offense to disagree with Linus Torvalds. There are positive things to be said about C++.
The name made sense to me. I just feel your domain name is hindering word of mouth in noisy environments. That doesn't seem like it will matter much because you will do business directly with the bands. It could be better, though. Look at octopart and weebly; their names are easier to spread virally.
maybe this will help you

Stroustrup: Well, one day, when I was sitting in my office, I thought of this little scheme, which would redress the balance a little. I thought 'I wonder what would happen, if there were a language so complicated, so difficult to learn, that nobody would ever be able to swamp the market with programmers? Actually, I got some of the ideas from X10, you know, X windows. That was such a bitch of a graphics system, that it only just ran on those Sun 3/60 things. They had all the ingredients for what I wanted. A really ridiculously complex syntax, obscure functions, and pseudo-OO structure. Even now, nobody writes raw X-windows code. Motif is the only way to go if you want to retain your sanity.

[NJW Comment: That explains everything. Most of my thesis work was in raw X-windows. :)]

Interviewer: You're kidding...?

Stroustrup: Not a bit of it. In fact, there was another problem. Unix was written in 'C', which meant that any 'C' programmer could very easily become a systems programmer. Remember what a mainframe systems programmer used to earn?

Interviewer: You bet I do, that's what I used to do.

Stroustrup: OK, so this new language had to divorce itself from Unix, by hiding all the system calls that bound the two together so nicely. This would enable guys who only knew about DOS to earn a decent living too.

Interviewer: I don't believe you said that...

source: http://members.safe-t.net/jwalker/programming/interview.html
"I own every Bob Dylan album ever, but I buy a lot of it on iTunes, because I guess I'm just too lazy to rip it from the CD."

Ahh, the wonderful words of a billionaire.
How can Google beat Facebook with one checkbox?
Yeah I agree with Rick. In the information age, it's not really smart to be a car salesman of the startup world; especially when the number of new engineers is consecutively getting smaller every year in the US. It's a lot better to build reputation, credibility, and trust for the long term.

This is one of the main things that attracted me to Ycombinator (and probably every other hacker)...

I guess I can add Rick to my list
I fear it has been said a hundred times. But its still right:

Don't work hard, work smart!

If you don't use your brain to plan, replan and think again, even hard work will get you nowhere (or at random places).

Well, surely working hard and working smart can be combined. But there is a limit: I usually stop coding, after it takes me too long to find the right algos. Sure I can go on then with stupid things like taxes, telephone calls and so on. But if I do, I have to pay back for that the next morning.

So basically I would answer the original post with: think!, then work as hard as you can, but get your breaks. All has to be well balanced or you'll burn out. Best is, if you find things that relax and that you'll enjoy while doing more work (having beer with your co-founders ;o).
The arguments I hear most frequently are the same ones that Linus jumps on in this thread: the syntax is obtuse, the code isn't portable, and the language isn't truly high-level (i.e. it doesn't have built-in garbage collection).

The first argument is (sadly) true -- C++ is ugly and complicated. A lot of that comes from the need for backwards compatibility with C (which isn't going to win any language beauty pageants, either), but a lot more of it comes as a consequence of the syntactic flexibility of the language.

The second argument is mostly bunk. A decade ago, it was difficult to find a standards-compliant C++ compiler; today, it's fairly easy. Sure, there are dark corners of the language where certain compilers get funky, but that can be said of FORTRAN 77 compilers, too. In general, unless you're forced to work with a old compiler, or an old, unmaintained package, it isn't very difficult to write cross-platform C++ code.

The third argument is just a straw man. Anyone who has read Stroustrup's book on the design of C++ knows why garbage collection and other "high-level" features weren't incorporated into the standard -- they didn't want to force users to adopt particular programming models or designs. Stroustrup has insisted that C++ be a flexible tool for many different types of programs and programmers; that attitude leads, somewhat inevitably, to complexity. But it makes me sad that so many people are bashing on C++ for not being "more like" other languages, when its biggest strength is probably its ability to mimic many features of those same languages, while still allowing for great efficiency.
(you're probably just being sarcastic but) no offense, being a successful shyster takes a lot of hard work and planning too...

the only difference is that it's a lot more exciting for certain people/scum. which brings me to another point: hard work doesn't feel like hard work if it's your passion

"Tomorrow will be the most beautiful day of Raymond K. Hessel's life. His breakfast will taste better than any meal you and I have ever tasted."
Anyone see Linus's Google git presentation? That and reading various stuff like this shows he's a rude egomaniac.
Damn, I got 17 the exact average.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but if you tilt your head to the left by 90 degrees and look at a database sideways, don't all the rows turn into columns?

Edit: But seriously, does anyone know if this column-oriented stuff is really revolutionary, and if the article is correct in praising the technology?
>Until then, I'm just going to advertise online. Where should I advertise besides Google Adwords?

Besides Google Adwords for ads I really like Adbrite.com. Google, Overture, and other ads are just too expensive, the keywords are all bid up to outrageous prices.

On Adbrite you can buy ads on sites for a fixed period of time or you can pay per cpm. I pay about 1 to 3 cents per clickthrough and I have great signup rates from those visitors (high quality people not junk signups).

The Adbrite system is worth spending some time on to figure it out, once you do you will spend far less on advertising then anywhere else that I have experimented with. We may be targeting different markets in that you have a product and I have a service, but if you gave it a serious try I am certain it would work out well for you (and you can share some of that new money with me!).
Fantastic recommendation - I find Jim Collins' books very informative and practical; tons of great useful nuggets
> There are ways to get rich without working hard

"behind every great fortune lies a great crime"
--Balzac
> In 2000, Perl was, by far, the leading scripting language (and language for the web).

It still is (excepting PHP)

http://www.tiobe.com/tpci.htm
Do You Have The Mentality Of A Free Agent?
Do you think like you are the owner of the business?
> Empirically the answer seems to be that working hard is a necessary if not sufficient condition

I think the empirical evidence overwhelmingly indicates that connections are way more important than working hard. The majority of rich people got there mostly by knowing the right powerful and well positioned people. Modern tech is anomalous regarding the value of hard work and skill. It also accounts for a small fraction of the wealthy.

Carnegie wrote explicitly against hard work and in favor of the value of networks. I'm sure the other robber barons agreed.

Read "They Made America" and see page after page of brilliant inventors of the last 200 years who died broke, but whose inventions produced fortunes for other well positioned people.
> My question was, what is 'success'?

When women want you while before they never paid attention to you, your startup has been a success.
I know of one from India - watblog.com
If you had/are having fun and don't regret for a minute having left your day job to start your startup, then it's a success.
Of course, it's best to measure that at least a year into the thing.
This interview with him is more in-depth:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49540
his question is abstract, which is evidence of an individual unable to concentrate on a demanding task, "including" the one of understanding what you just said.
They say: One who works, has no time to make money.
And when will be Perl 6 ready?
i am sure there are better examples of automation

Ford would be one...

oh and an unlucky person considered uneducated doesn't mean is stupid
Dangerous Ideas: Sorry Paul Graham, I Think it Does Matter Where You Went to College
Best question, "are you fascinated with dates?" (Y) & "do you collect facts & information" (Y) ...32 ... so that means what? I'm always a bit sus of these tests anyway. Now to go add this to my blog post ...
The day before Arc comes out.
10. For a lot of the questions I wanted to answer "it depends". Social situations, for example, can be very fun or very boring, depending on my mood and the people involved.
That's pretty disturbing. But it tastes soooo good.

And actually, I think the blue fin tuna used in sushi is actually not from the "blue fin tuna" that you linked to. But I'm not entirely sure.
I simply attended a lot of hacker/tech networking events to meet other entrepreneurs hoping to find a co-founder. And in the process, I met a lot of other people, some of whom turned out to be investors or working for investors. I also met many good entrepreneurs with good ideas, but none (yet) with an idea that has good enough potential (in my opinion) to commit myself to for the next few years. I'm still searching, but until then, I will continue to experiment.
Me too - I feel so average.
CoScripter - script web operations in english
My understanding is that Bush is often on holiday. Not good for a startup.
strange these lessons never come from those who made up actually successful domain names..
Domain Specific Languages in Ruby: Building an Interpreter
I can't take tests like these without analyzing how each answer affects the outcome, and I don't trust my subconscious to keep its mitts off my answers when it knows how to game the test.

22
I read 'Good to Great' and wasn't impressed. It's not bad... but I wouldn't call it "great", either. He strikes me as some sort of "management guru", who is very unhackerish compared to other business books that actually introduce clever ideas.
Heh, that's a good one :D
This applies more to lisp than perl. More likely to be unemployed if you only know lisp. Not many companies use lisp. A lot of them use perl (though this is changing to ruby and python).
AWK is no where near as complicated as perl. It'll probably take someone 1/2 hour to figure it out.
PG wasn't putting anyone down, just saying that there's very little correlation between startup success and where someone went to school. That's a narrow enough statement, and he has enough data on it, that I think it's convincing.
John Nack on Adobe: "Photoshop Express" RIA sneak-peeked today
this is inspiring to read this article. I am reading the second article on this site. Good Job
Adobe's online image editor previewed
Possibly by Christmas. Many of us are already using it with Pugs.
That sounds pretty autistic to me...
to beat the STL objects in terms of efficiency

string s = "string literal";

vector<int> v = {1, 2, 3}; // C++0x feature

Any language with built-in string/array support will beat STL in initializing things, to start with. STL does dynamic allocation in these examples, in case you didn't know.
if I am not mistaken pg's point was that where you got your education doesn't contribute to the success of your company, not that if you are a Harvard student its meaningless like this guy sais!

Philip Greenspun made a similar point in a shorter fashion not many days ago,

"What about homework? Students would do homework either in the library or at home. In 1865 both places lacked television, video games, email, etc. In 2007, the students who do best may be the ones with the best study habits, not those who are the most able. Companies do not rely on lecture+homework for getting work done; they create an environment with limited distractions and keep workers there for most of each day."
(http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2007/08/23/improving-unde...)

, and overall it's a notion that meets acceptance from great hackers and successful people who recognize quality in people, because being early self-taughts gives them this inner understanding.

do these people actually read something before they reply to it?!

if we all look outside our windows we will see that not everyone wants to risk their ass for starting up. So, yes there is also need for colleges, a system to rank individuals abilities.
Why put the guy down? You can make 11 posts a day and still be doing a lot of things in the background. And I think "hard work" is a concept that could use some more study.
I got 14, and I'm the same way - I'm curious about gaming the test:-)
just from memory, they ask if you can remember long digit strings, and if you take time to return from distractions. being good at hacking involves both. is this a self-selecting pool of people with more autistic traits?

22
Search thousands of hot teens
we've got thousands of hot teens for you to search, check them out :)
Here's one that doesn't require Flash: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/9.12/aqtest.html . Unfortunately they've misconfigured their website, so you get the source of the results calculator rather than the result; but if you copy aqtest.html and aq.cgi to a handy local webserver (and change the perl path), it works out.

Not sure if it's the same test or not, of course! If it is, I scored 37.
Can't you just leave the questions blank, if you don't like them?
Well, SeekSift.com does (disclaimer: this is my current project), so feel free to give it a try.

If you click "Sources" -> "Add a Source Not on this List" -> "Search for Sources" and type "Hacker", you'll see the news.yc feed.
What I found curious about this test is that I think many of my answers have changed over time. I scored an 18 today, but I bet I would have scored somewhere in the high 20's when I was a kid.
"The student who got an 'A' on her Kant essay is, quite simply, someone who really understands Kant"

This is the point where my bull shit meter hit the red area and then went on to roll on the floor and laugh :)
Possibly; I didn't try it, though.
Seedcamp winners announced
App Platform for Future: BungeeLabs+Nirvanix+(webDB)
Interestingly, a few years ago I took the same test and scored 20 (vs. 37 just now)... on the other hand, I seem to come out with a different MBTI result every time I take that test too. Perhaps I have DID :)
Feds OK Fee for Priority Web Traffic
Multiply, social networking for 30-somethings, raises $16.6M
"I'm convinced that the real money comes from designing good systems."

This is also the thesis of "The E-Myth Revisited" by Michael E. Gerber, which I'd recommend given the above comment. It's an easy read that talks about developing systems not just for profit, but also in a way that is ethically sound to both you and your employees and your customers. The book speaks mostly about small retail franchices (an example of a hotel is also given), but it is easily applicable to other areas.
This guy not not only misunderstood what I was saying, but literally made up quotes; e.g. "obedience to authority."
I'm drafting my application now, but will probably not submit unless I have a solid prototype by the deadline.
Now that they've won some funding, they need to start in a new game and win the markets.
Wouldn't it have been easier to resubmit the application with all fields blanked out, except for one with the explanation?
I think it is interesting that some people cherish the Amazon recommendations above everything, whereas others are fundamentally unhappy with it. Unfortunately I belong in the later category. Sure, sometimes Amazon comes up with something interesting to me, but in general it does not. I wonder if I am just too weird for a recommender system to grasp, or if it hints at the system still being very imperfect.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XpnKHJAok8

I think he has a unique combination of mild autism, artistic stubborness and scandanavian directness. In the end he makes valid points and he sold me on trying git.

It is hard to tell if he's being serious or if he's just making socially retarded attempts at sarcasm.

Either way he's infinitely more charming than Mr. Zuckerburg...
The author was obviously looking for attention.Sadly, he got it.
Is the submarine at work again?

CPUs are also still running almost the same kind of instructions as conceived 30 years ago, but the internals have changed a lot. I suspect the same is true for databases - there must have been some technological progress, even if SQL itself hasn't changed.

And for CPUs, there are also special interest flavors (signal processors) that outperform the standard ones in special cases, but they don't make the "generic" CPUs superfluous.
50 screens? Merely completing it is a sufficient test. They should have just put all the questions on one page.

(If anyone wants to do that, I'll switch the link.)
35 .....interesting
> it provides built-in features appropriate to the needs of 2007 customers

I get that they're arguing that the database should fit the customer, but isn't that rather a drastic market size limit to impose on oneself?
Ditto. Can any subject require more subservience to a teacher than the 'Kantian interpretive' type he uses here?
Reminder: weekend of code starts tonight
Admittedly, I didn't pour much work into this, safe for starting a ning community (weekendofcode.ning.com). I was hoping for self-organisation, and it just seemed like a good idea at the time: work on a project with somebody over the weekend, to test the waters for co-founding a start-up. Just start a group on Ning for your project, or join an existing group, and start developing.
Is it just me or do all of them sound a bit pompous.
Maybe the problem is that they are trying to explain something in words which is better explained in a demo.