skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
As a programmer who was a beginner not very long ago, I agree that Python is great for beginners and experts alike. Ruby is another decent candidate, for mostly the same reasons.

Java and C++, the languages you usually see in university courses and the work place, are just god-awful for beginners.

When I first started learning programming, I didn't really know what language I should study, so I flip-flopped between studying Java, C++, Python, and PHP, and learned them to widely varying degrees of proficiency. Then I picked up Javascript, then Ruby, then Objective-C, and now I think that's about all the OO languages I would have any reason to learn, and am now just starting to dabble in functional programming.

I think the only reason I didn't just stick with Python throughout the beginner phase, is that I didn't really get what Python was "for." I thought it was just for desktop scripting. I didn't know about its GUI toolkits, or that you could write web applications in it. I learned PHP because I could immediately see the end use of it in my browser, and had no idea I could have used Python for the same thing.

If I had to do it over, instead of studying such a smattering of languages, I probably would have started off with a crash-course in C and then quickly moved on to doing everything in Python (and Javascript).
Auctions are the most efficient way to do price discovery for unique or difficult to price assets. I'd sure rather be a "unique and difficult to price asset" than a commodity, cog, etc.
The problem with that corollary is that the modern equivalents of witches are doctors, but there isn't really any significant negative connotation there for the average person. It's more like technical expertise + shitty marketing.
I think the distinction is the windows/intel portion of the market. Of which macs aren't at all a member. Basically the 90's/2000's are over for the Windows/Intel "sure thing".

Given Microsoft is now also looking at arm, Intel is going to have a harder go at the Windows side of things. And if the rumored Apple arm laptops pan out, they've lost a very high end vendor as well. But I'm deviating from my reply, enough squirrel banter.
"So we went with posix kill and also had him pipe ps into grep"

http://devopsreactions.tumblr.com/post/39827269109/when-one-...

Hehehe
My 'favorite' part of the SC redesign is how I can't scroll downward ... only the top of the page is visible. I've run across no other page on the web like that. Digg it.
How Not to Talk to Your Kids
The inverse power of praise. (2007)
http://nymag.com/news/features/27840/index4.html
Looks more like Reddit than Hacker News:

Kevin T. about 7 hours ago
We have to go deeper.

Marian M. about 6 hours ago
That's what she said.

Tyler H. about 7 hours ago
YO DAWG - http://cdn.memegenerator.net/instances/400x/33729543.jpg

https://news.layervault.com/stories/608-designer-news-on-hac...

...

"We're keeping things small and invite-only to ensure quality."

https://news.layervault.com/signup

Heh. Was Hacker News ever invite-only?
Should age be included in a post's title? In most cases, the age can be disclosed in the comments without losing any information, and in the process removing any 'negative' connotations.

I posted something on the thread that started this whole dance a day or so ago, however it probably merits further expansion.

Most arguments that are 'pro' age disclosure boil down to "We should treat younger members of the community differently". This comes in many forms, like how we should be supportive, how we should mentor the next generation, and how teenagers are often insecure.

I agree with them, at least in general.

Arguments 'against' age disclosure have a few flavours; some say that we should treat posts based on merit, that we should not discriminate based on age, but mostly it comes down to "Posts with the age in the title are 'gaming' the system (purposefully or not)" and the meta-argument that such posts encourage talking about community instead of the post.

I agree with this side as well.

The thing is, placing your age in the title of your post is link-baity. It may be unintentional or it may be coolly calculated, but in most cases if you remove that piece of information the post title is entirely uninteresting.

So we have two types of posts to consider. The first are those posts where the age of the person involved contributes to how interesting the post is to HN. A completely fabricated example: "12 year-old entrepreneur youngest funded by YC".

The second type of post are those where the age of the person involved contributes to how the HN community responds to the post. A young developer's first app would fall into this category.

In the first case, I believe this is useful information to have in the post title. In the second this is useful information, however I do not believe it is useful in the post title. For these posts, I would much rather see the age included as a comment on the post.

In any post that use of age in the title gets called out for being 'link-baity', 'manipulative' or 'gaming the system' the main counterargument is that knowing the age helps the community know how to respond to the post. The age can be removed from the post title, and placed in the comments, addressing both major concerns.

[edit] improved summary.
"But I never see Microsoft fans attacking Android fans, or vice versa. And the rise of anti-Apple anger has risen dramatically as Apple has been so successful in recent years."

Seriously? Is he completely blind. The amount anger aimed at Google/Android from the Microsoft camp over the past year has been deafening. For me it's the other way around. I no longer see Microsoft fans attacking Apple (like they used to). Now, they almost always attack Android/Google.

One more thing. If Apple didn't start the fanboy culture, they certainly took it up a notch. Apple fanboys/girls have been filling the internet with crap for years. Now that Android has become so popular, a lot of people that used to feel marginalized have decided to jump on the bandwagon and they are taking every opportunity to vent.

Overall I find this all quite disturbing but not for the same reasons as the original author who quite honestly, comes across as a bit of an elitist. He does make some good points when he explains that these are different platforms with different pros/cons and everyone will never agree to use the same platform. However, it is evident that he just doesn't know anything about anything other than Apple. The new Microsoft products (Windows Phone 8, Windows RT, Windows 8 App Store) are not open platforms. They are indeed just as closed as iOS (and much more so than OSX).

In fact I wish that all of the fanboys/girls online would spend their time discussing the real differences between these companies and what the net effect is on users. Maybe then we could get some things fixed. For example I am an Android user and, though I REALLY LIKE Apple products, I will not purchase and use a device that I cannot gain root access to. The way I see it, if it's Apple's device to control, than I am merely renting it. On the other hand, one thing that Apple has impressed me with is how they have taken away control from the phone companies. This is where I wish Google would fight harder. I want to see a real Nexus device on every carrier. Anyway, I feel these are things that merit real discussion, consensus building, online petitions, etc....

...fanboy bickering is pointless and deconstructive. In the end we, as users, need to forget about being fanboys and learn to be activists.
This is inefficient on multiple levels. Please check out Vagrant.
It works from Europe
Richard Stallman is fluent in French and Spanish
I can't speak for best, but:

Ocaml is used and praised by Jane Street [1]

Python has a nice suite of financial tools available [2]

It may be that the best tool for analysis and for trading are different. For the former you want visualization tools and interactive exploration, but for the latter, you may need raw speed or relative safety of the code.

[1] https://ocaml.janestreet.com/?q=node/61
[2] http://wiki.quantsoftware.org/index.php?title=QuantSoftware_...
It's hard to say, as many of them may not be labeled as suicides but rather "end of life decisions." One could reasonably make the argument that choosing to forego a painful medical procedure to extend one's life a few weeks or months may be an indirect form of suicide. Many patients decide that they have had a long and happy life and that the additional torment of another treatment in exchange for a chance for a small extension of time in a seemingly low quality of life is not an acceptable tradeoff. In some cases patient may then be able to request assistance in ending their life or "pulling the plug."

Luckily none of my loved ones have been in such a position, but I think that one can have rational thoughts regarding such a situation, weigh the pros and cons, and decide that you are ready to go.
I can confirm this.

Those days when I would just sit in the corner of my room staring at a blank wall for ... the whole day ... not fun.

PS: I eventually got better and have remained such for years
I can't decide if I think you are exaggerating. I can't help but wonder, had my lowest moments been ten times worse, whether my body would have ceased to function right on the spot. I was pumped with the most adrenaline I've ever had in my life, and I was simultaneously the most depressed I had ever been in my life. I was bouncing off the walls with nervous energy, but all I wanted was to crawl into a hole. My chest was literally in pain, and I can't help but think of people who die mixing "uppers" and "downers". 10x that? Would I have just had a heart attack right there?
A few weeks ago I watched the pilot episode of Lewis, a British TV detective/crime drama that is set in the surroundings of Oxford university, UK. One of the characters in the episode was a PhD student in mathematics and the key to the mystery could be found in one of the papers for his PhD dissertation. The detectives found the paper in question on the character's computer and opened it up for the viewers to see. Lo and behold, the paper was clearly typeset in LaTeX. Someone apparently went out of their way to make this little detail look just right!

Maybe its just me, but it seems like movies are getting better and better in getting those tiny but ever so important technical details right.
Juegos gratis mr rager - minijuegos
Conoce más ahora señor Rager esta muy furioso con todos, así que sale a pasear pero con los puños como para luchar. Sólo para expertos
Actually, Now's time goes under Maps- at least the location services, which are the big draw. I have all of the tracking enabled, and maps uses between 20 and 30% of my overall.
Getting young people into science and technology is the single greatest professional duty any technologist has.

What? I don't understand this at all. The "single greatest professional duty any technologist" has is unique to that "technologist". If, for example, I'm a 23yo kid who just graduated uni and in my first job, do you think for a second that I give a #$(* about "getting young people into science and technology"? Of course not. I'm so busy trying to figure basic life out that I don't have time for that sort of thing.

If I'm a 33yo dad who wants to start my own business, I don't care one whit about 'getting young people into science and technology' b/c, between working 60 hours a week and changing my kids' diapers, I'm sleeping.

Good for teens - glad for them - but this statement is just silly.
really good online game
I picked Infinite Jest up again about a month ago and had been wading through a lot of articles on DFW as a way of trying to understand his suicide. So that was the context in which Aaron's death came to me. I also saw the connection in Quinn's post and it had me wondering. Thanks for completing the post.
>Speaking as someone who __has been__ suicidal

I've battled depression in the past, but I don't think I ever quite reached a suicidal state. The way I got out of my depression state, was to finally admit that I can't keep suffering in my current life situation anymore, and to get away from the things that were causing my anguish, anxiety, stress, and despair. I spent the next two months doing utterly nothing (well at least, nothing productive), slowly becoming healthy again.

You definitely had it much worse than me, and so I want to ask sincerely, what if anything, got you out of your depression/suicidal state of mind? Or alternately, what has helped you manage these urges and emotions?
Ditto, although I suspect it's less about the matching algorithm and more about

(1) a matching process that prevents spamming and forces (well, paradoxically it optionally forces) a back-and-forth interaction before dropping into the standard e-mail mode and

(2) a female-male ratio greater than 1 which further turns around the usual dynamic of overwhelmed women choosing between invisible men
Ask HN: Best articles on how to negotiate salary for Software Engineer position
the more i see people speak about databases this way, the more i learn to appreciate chris date

almost all the explanations i've seen of datomic explain the software architecture or component (check this for example http://www.datomic.com/overview.html)

the more important aspect of a db is the conceptual data model, the abstraction it offer , the one which you as a developer will use to describe , create and query data and information

the relational model is not about the components of a DBDMS, its not about indexes, and optimizer, its about describing your data as relations, using relational operators and is even more primarily about data integrity

if it is not an implementation of the relational model, what is the model its trying to implement, and why should we use this data model?
Then a better way to approach the situation is "I'm new, what do you think of ..." instead of "I'm X-teen, isn't what I did awesome!"
Cancer? I think a better comparison would be to murderers who have a natural proclivity to kill rather than just yell when they lose their temper.
Those are all very helpful comments. Thanks.
Why does everyone jump out of the woodwork to say this? Even if this was an accident, which I doubt, it's still gross incompetency. This wasn't caught inside the institution. Who knows what other complete lies they'll publish next?

This is an accident like photoshopping images. And worse, they let the criminals / cultists moderate the comments. This further hurts subscribers who would use the forums to discuss the validity of the content.

The scientology organization has killed those they disagreed with in recent history and church doctrine still specifically allows a number of horrible actions, many ultimately fatal. They're a terrorist organization.

Subscribers should be looking into legal options. They literally paid for spam, from a hate group.
It sounds like you're dealing with severe depression. I hope you're seeing someone you can talk to about these feelings. My email is alanctgardner@gmail.com if you do need someone to talk to.

I think he touches on a lot of the points you mentioned:

> every second feels like a minute

> you constantly obsess on what it was you did so wrong

> they felt you were a terrible disgrace

That sounds like deconstruction, negative affect, self-blame and 'falling short of standards'. It can be hard to quantify what you just instinctively feel by yourself. A lot of my time with my therapist is basically me rambling about an abstract feeling, and her relating and summing it up in one or two words. I think it helps me better understand what's going on, which can take some of the power away from the raw emotion.

Talking to someone about it is the best way to start getting better.
Dear HN: It seems like we are getting off topic
I have been coming to HN for what seems like a couple years and when I first started I feel like 70+ percent of the front page was truly stories about hackers/startups. Now it seems that any given moment that number has inverted and 30% or less of the front page is actually about the topic at hand.

If we don't keep it on topic then this might as well be reddit.com/r/ycombinator

Either we do a better job, everyone ignore me and go about your business or one of you who are bored with no ideas to work on, build us a good filter for the noise.
Looking for better ideas for displaying the books in my bookstore. Have a look?
If you're caught in the act, sure. But they called him about it well after the actual actions. That's solid evidence then that he left after entering and logically did not use the entering to commit a crime.
Commonly used for heterosexual couples in a long-term relationship that find the institution of marriage unnecessary/disagreeable, it is a shortening of "domestic partner".
Yeah, they came out of SW London halfway through 2012 if I'm thinking of the right group. There's a few different sites that seem to be converging around the same idea.
“If your system of finding worthy students or speakers to promote is to have them come to you and ask, but a solid body of research shows that women won’t do so, you’ve institutionalized a gap”

It's also a worthy goal to find out (1) why women don't ask and (2) work to encourage women to do that asking.

The more forward momentum is built, through efforts such as this, the less of a problem this is in the future.
My office uses this kind of process. Basically any member of the department has a veto on new hires, so they all get a one-on-one with the candidate. Usually during lunch one person does all the talking. If you want a break you should ask for one (although usually somebody on the schedule is working from home and that slot turns into a de facto break for the candidate).
The grandparent post is basing this off of what he imagines is a normal person's extremes. -- or perhaps the GP's own other experiences. I imagine your mileage will vary
> I think David Foster Wallace gives the most accurate comparison I've read

I first bought a David Foster Wallace book last spring, I was on a lunch break, had entered a book-store, when I read on one of his books' back-covers that it had been written by a brilliant guy who had committed suicide. I wasn't thinking about suicide back then, I think I never did, I was just going through depression and I wanted to genuinely see what made people more depressed than me go the whole way. Suffice is to say that I was feeling like I knew the guy when reading his words, especially when he wrote about depression, like I seem to know and be familiar with all the people who describe what depression feels like.

And to go back to Jeff Atwood's piece, until you haven't experienced depression you cannot really understand what goes through a person's mind in moments like those, and even less so are you entitled to "accuse" the said person for "calling it quits" or whatever. Like I said, I never thought about suicide, but even in my mild depression I sort of could see the black light at the end of the tunnel and people who used to be like me not that long ago just giving it up and deciding to let go.
Good call.

I live in the bay area, and originally got on board with an Android phone because AT&T's service in this area was terrible (and, at the time, iPhone meant AT&T). I did this knowing, at the time, that Android was an inferior product, carrier aside.

So I spent a good deal of time watching the iPhone, watching my Android, and watching Android catch up with the iPhone. When I recently bought another Android phone, it was a considered opinion that, for my needs, Android was now a superior product to iOS.

And, with that background, it's almost irresistible to tell people who've been living in iOS land and seem to think that the state of Android today is the same as the state of Android three-four years ago, about all the things that I've been watching happen in that time.
None of the random() functions in most JavaScript engines are cryptographically secure. There's proposed RNG that are, but only in Webkit.
Love the idea of a blog post that is a plug for your company. I am not being snide or sarcastic, I think it was a great approach.

Btw, played around with 7pmanywhere and it is a great idea and execution! Keep up the good work!
I'm pretty sure that you do not think the correct response to a title including an age is to rant at the poster, to be rude and aggressive.

It's possible to express dissatisfaction with a title and to encourage better posting habits without being a jerk. I agree with your summary.

The problem isn't with HN being jerks to young people. The problem is with HN being jerks to anyone.
More dishonest than pretending that an iPod shuffle, which has no screen (and at one time no buttons!) and is functionally tethered to a real PC, is some kind of entry-level computer/grand charitable effort by Apple to make a computer "for the rest of us"? Or that an iPod Touch, which is not significantly cheaper than many laptops, can substitute as a real computer for anybody with more than the most casual, consumption-driven computer needs? Calling it a "great device" for the things you listed is very, very generous. Acting as though a $300 laptop is not also a "great device" for those things is just ridiculous.
ML guy played an important role as chief scientist for Obama's 2012 campaign
The US is, from what I can see, very concerned about space junk (as well it should be). I'm sure anything that will be hanging around is going into very Low Earth Orbit where the atmosphere will very predictably pull it in and burn it up on a reasonable and completely passive-physics-driven schedule.
Presumably some grad students are the equivalent Shaq or Kevin Garnett, though.

After all, professors are all drawn from the ranks of former graduate students who finished their degrees...
That doesn't seem to be 'rage' to me:

Good to hear that an Android version is on the way
but why have iOS devices been prioritised yet again
by the BBC in the release of an app?

I'm getting really annoyed about the BBC's obsession
with Apple products that only account for around 20%
of the UK market.

Poor show BBC. For an organisation who are supposed
to be platform neutral ..., there seems to be a steady
and consistent bias shown towards Apple at the expense
of the other platforms.

or perhaps "really annoyed" is what passes for rage in the UK? ;)
I think the reason why Hacker News works is because the demographic are not all the same - there are all kinds of people that are active on the site, rather than simply "friends of x" and "friends of friends of x" which often leads to inane comments like the examples you listed.

I don't think one can engineer this collision of demographics, I doubt the design nor even content allows you to control it once the wheels are in motion.
It's pretty DRY as you'll only be writing media queries for the parts of the site that need to change. Many times you don't have to write MQ's for everything. Writing completely different sites like you mentioned earlier would be/has been a hassle to maintain as opposed to a site that was originally designed as responsive from the onset.

The use case that someone might come to your site on a tablet, laptop and/or phone is a pretty common use case nowadays. Designing and maintaining one site to cover all of those is the goal. Simple MQ's to shift to each one is much easier to maintain than an entire other codebase.
A analogy even more accurate to this case would be: "Let's suppose you let someone store their stuff at your house, and they have previously pointed out a problem with the lock. You come back home and find them picking on your door lock with a lock picking tool. You ask him "what are you doing?" and he says "I'm just checking the lock I said you should fix is safe. I do it for our security."