skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I agree with the article because the code many people consider beautiful does not mean easy maintainance.

We want clean and simple code, not anything with convoluted patterns.
"What's the alternative? What would the world be like if we only got the kind of news from Fox News and weblogs, and nothing from news teams like those of the NYT."

It would probably look a lot like news.google.com. I extensively customize my sources and I get a lot of Reuters, BBC, stuff like that. When I see infotainment articles, I filter it out at the source.
How a teenager rickrolled vine
I had a really great post for this topic about the utility of ugliness in language design. Ocaml provides imperative features but makes them ugly, subtly encouraging a functional approach in most cases. Clojure quite brilliantly makes OOP and heavy Java interop possible but very ugly (because the language's ultimate goal is platform-agnosticism) while making idiomatic Clojure beautiful. Making something ugly is often more powerful than saying "don't do that". So ugliness has a real value, and that's what I originally came here to talk about.

Then I read the OP, which had to go and ruin that by being wrong.

First of all, OOP is not "beautiful". Quite the opposite, I find Delegates and Factories and Visitors to be fucking atrocious from an aesthetic perspective. All that stuff is there to make business people think their metaphors apply to code and to give them a sense that they, the "big picture guys", have a chance at understanding what's going on. They don't.

I've taught. I've designed games. So I understand the importance of aesthetics in any replication process. Making something easy to learn, understand, replicate, use, et al actually comes down to aesthetics. Now, it's a specific kind of aesthetic sense you need. You spend more time on convergent creativity (trimming, simplifying) than on divergence (adornments, gargoyles, "neat" advanced features). You should, at least when you start, ship a simple product that people can use rather than a complex one that you (having grown up with the complexity as it emerged) find "beautiful". With that I agree. It's better to write straightforward "boring" code that works than to apply every programming trick in the book (self-modifying code! three-level syntax quoting!) If the dumb thing works, use it. Complexity will happen on its own, so don't go looking for more.

Not paying attention to code aesthetics and simplicity, however, is a recipe for disaster. If your code is going to be read by other people and you write ugly, unmaintainable code, then... well, good luck with that.

I don't really mind the substance of what the OP is saying (focus on solving problems rather than writing code) but the presentation is awful.
I made no claim otherwise about light or medium instances. I was merely pointing out that for many people Amazon is no longer a purely pay-per-hour or pay-for-what-you-use service. Many people overlook the wording change made for heavy reservations. The parent's refutation of the article isn't as cut and try as stated.
Go Obama! I'm glad someone with the reins of power has noticed that this blackmail is going on and wants to fix it.
Internet censorship in action: China's annual Internet spring cleaning
That book's good - but it's about people fleeing the northern part of the country, one of the industrial centers, neither at the border or near the capital in the south. It's quite a different situation there and probably far more representative of the country as a whole.
This x10.
Same thing happens here in the state where I live (São Paulo, Brazil). A similar box (it's actually a bag) is given to lower income expecting women, but only if they sign-up to the Mãe Paulistana program (São Paulo Mothers, loosely translated), which then has them going through all the prenatal and postnatal care that is the actual main focus of the program.
Depends on what you mean by "hosting". If all you need to do is serve content, CloudFront+S3 will suffice.
Show HN: Jottedly, track your job search in one place
I've been learning how to code, and I'm building Jottedly as a personal project to help people track their job search. Welcome any feedback! Thanks. -rob
This wraps up the 'real' situation perfectly. Well put, sir.
As a Turkish citizen, thank you for speaking the truth!
And don't let your kids at the sharpies.
What you're describing sounds more like the result of poor test coverage.

The OP was mostly referring to design patters and a semi-arbitrary measure of "beauty", not specifically advocating writing unmaintainable code.
This is fairly typical of government. Looking at how the government actually does its work is "bad". Passing a law to punish people in the courts or do some tax foolishness is considered ok. In this case, you are exactly right, looking at the input to the system and how it is dealt with there would be a better approach, but it goes against form.

Both sides do this a lot. Look at the whole focus of health care costs. No debate on why they are high and how to fix the inputs.

The patent troll debate is further hampered by reporters using the term willy-nilly instead of focusing on companies that actually have that business model.
There are several brands of dry-erase paint on the market. Where I work, it's on the conference room walls. They need to be repainted periodically as especially the red markers leave a residue behind that gradually builds up. And there's always some bozo with a sharpie.

Also, read the instructions carefully. Some of these contain isocyanates and need special handling.
Google researcher publishes exploit for Windows privilege escalation bug
We had a 2/3 ec2 1/3 rackspace split, and ended up moving largely off rackspace for operational reasons. I found the interface much more usable at AWS, whereas the one at Rackspace was a 'five clicks to do anything' webif, though apparently they've improved in recent months.

I'm not heavily experienced in cloud offerings, but it's far easier to manage the AWS stuff than the rackspace - the DNS management is quite flexible yet couldn't be simpler with AWS's 'Route 53', but with the part of Rackspace we were using it wasn't 'all in one place', which made it hard to peruse or alter.

I found support at both places to be upbeat and knowledgable, though I don't know about timeliness since I've only really lodged low-priority tickets. AWS does need more domain knowledge in order to understand its flexibility, and I've gotten a good workout from my $50/mo support add-on.
If the insurance company pays the remainder i.e. >60k why don't they offer you this deal:

- No out of pocket cost

- Free all expenses paid one week trip to England with your surgery

Would cost them the 3k pounds+2.5k$ of your share+maybe another 3k for a good trip..<10k total compared to 60k

I take it they simply can't get that 3k pounds deal as an insurance company.
Our interactive server-based app (TeamSpace) absolutely cannot run in AWS/EC2. The latency is the killer. Even when throughput is high, latency per message can be 100s of milliseconds in/out of a datacenter, which is on top of our app latency and our client latency, leading to a miserable experience.
From what I have seen, Seattle companies are big (amazon, Microsoft, f5, etc), consultancies (eg ioactive), in enterprise/vertical markets, and/or tend to retain staff pretty long term vs Bay Area companies, so don't need to hire as often.
Yes I understand that. I was just asking in terms of the features that it currently offers compared to XBMC?
what do you mean by that? Can you be more concrete?
It will probably appear in the July edition of the magazine, which might actually be out now. [month/year] editions rarely seem to track the actually calendar very tightly, just like you can buy the 2014 models of cars now.
Less registration raping
Also worth noting that it really, really stinks. Have a hotel booked if you're doing it at home.

We did the old Prismatic office with it a few years ago and had to evacuate for I think about 3 days (with the windows open & fans on the whole time). Crazy smelly.
You haven't got a co-founder then, you've got an employee.
Does this font render horribly for anyone else? On windows with chrome here.
Do the markers leave residue (as with most dry-erase boards)?
Show HN: jQuery plugin to integrate a Flickr PhotoStream set into your website
isn't Stockholm Syndrome caused by circumstances vs. having it ? I.e. in certain circumstances - like being dictator's direct employee - we all suffer from stockholm syndrome?
I would argue "beauty" in code is very strongly linked to maintainability.
that first one took me the longest.. i kept reading it as 'keep off the grass'. really confused me as to why that was there among all the other more pleasant signs..?

it was only after going through all the others that i got it. seems my brain is conditioned that in the presence of 'keep' and 'grass' i should remain off.
Earth Living is Tough for Astronaut Used to Space
How to Create Marketing Your Customers Love
To be honest, "company" is an association of shareholders. I don't think this definition covers or should cover employees.

Agree with your overall point though.
The problem for me is I would think it was a spoof by some (forgive the apparently hated word) hipster designer. I'd think something like "this was made to 'subvert' the whatever, but we're actually supposed to stay off the grass".
I'm kind of incredulous that this made the home page. It does not seem to add much value above the job listings themselves.

Breaking up the jobs by level and 'specialty' would be useful.
Absolutely correct. And what clean code leads to is more maintainable and more easily update-able code. Beauty or ugliness is absolutely not a feature. Its a sideline to what clean code is.

Maintainability is totally the high order bit here. And its totally worth getting it right (or at least approximately). Its the anti-thesis to ugly code.
> personally think that developers shouldn't care about code beauty, because that's not their job.

I believe anyone else on your team will waste a lot of time and effort figuring out the spaghetti code you wrote.

Think. Then code.
I would argue it's the same thing.
confusing clear code with pretty code is just as wrong as confusing good design with pretty colors

edit: reworded slightly
About Object Calisthenics
Tiny Tiny RSS (tt-rss, http://tt-rss.org/redmine/projects/tt-rss/wiki). I've loved it since I've installed it, and that's even without the iPhone integration enabled. I'm sure I'll love it more once I have that. I deleted the 'reader.google.com' from my Chrome auto complete, and replaced it with 'reader.mydomain.com' so my experience is maintained. :)
"read a balanced news report about nanotechnology"

I would enjoy being able to read the article. If its any good, it would not accurately reflect typical journalist science reporting where viewers are better off reading the comments. If the article is garbage, then it would not accurately reflect nanotechnology, in which case viewers are better off reading the comments. I think this is a pretty big hole in the study, unless the conclusion was determined before the study, in which case they did a pretty good job of manufacturing the selected result.
Why I moved my start-up to Canada
The article mentions design patterns, dependency injection, procedural programming, OOP, and all sorts of techniques that aren't categorically "beautiful" or "ugly", so it's really hard to know what point it's making, other than "don't spend time doing work that has no clear benefit."
SalesForce to acquire ExactTarget for $2.5B
In the UK, the kind of people who visit National Trust properties are the kind of people who carefully read all the signage and actually listen to the tour guide.

This idea is delightful.
i thought it was more of an issue

issue when you put them on line breaks.
I'm really not sure if PAP would have the support it does if people could freely criticize it.

Hence the new law.

Another interesting related effect has also to do with how Singaporeans see themselves in relation to creativity and spontaneity due to the way things are structured there.

Possible sample bias here, but a lot of the creative types I know plan to leave.
I agree with you disagreeing.

The article really blurs the line between mere code formatting, which can be completely automated to adhere to some guidelines, coding paradigms and software design/architecture.

I'd argue that, for a product that needs to extendible and maintainable, well thought-out software design is at least as important as working code. It takes a bit more planning up front, specifying the system to be developed in terms of well-understandable and well-documented patterns but this time (and hence money) is not lost. It pays back double during both the initial implementation and maintenance.

A well thought out software design takes a lot of tasks off the people who go to implement it. It clearly specifies which parts are to interact and how they can be expected to behave. Therefore it fosters modularity and independent development of modules, which speeds things up and makes maintenance and extending the product easier. And that is what we really want after all. We want to get code and therefore products out quickly, we want to avoid bugs, we want to make sense of the whole thing after a couple of months have passed in order to implement NewFeatureX™.

There are numerous approaches to this. Object-orientation is just one way to do it and sometimes it's not the best way. After all, all these paradigms and schools of thought are but tools to get the job done and as always, it's a good idea to chose the right tool for the job.

The other thing is actual code "beauty" (however one may define it), which ultimately means readabilty. This is important too but it highly depends on what people are used to. That's why there're often coding standards for a given project or a company. Everybody gets used to them and no one needs to rethink when reviewing the code of other developers. There's no better or worse there. The only thing of importance is that it shouldn't be possible to pinpoint who exactly wrote a certain piece of code by just looking at it. If it looks like you wrote it, you'll understand it that much easier because it takes all the burden of messing with strange-looking syntax away.

The "just-get-it-done" approach to software engineering just doesn't work for projects of a certain size. That's probably why we call it "engineering" in the first place.
I'm interested to hear the next shoehorned criticism based on the third word, 'cloud'.
Octopush - A real-time websocket push server
Diet specifically, even on HN.
That's exactly what I was trying to say: "beautiful code is a byproduct of clean code". Clean code is the important part. Thank you!
Justine Bateman goes from Family Ties to for loops
Roku does a great job of combining sources however it doesn't support DVR or local storage (i.e. Downloads)

Boxee also did a great job of combining sources and did a good job with local storage. It also didn't support DVR.

To be honest DVR is an animal that I've seen nobody crack successfully.
The content the BBC produces should be open and accessible to the British tax-paying public. Plain and simple.

Preferring to provide that content via locked down, proprietary solutions with DRM and god knows what over simple and open solutions would definitely go against that contract.
How does one define the difference between "Beautiful" and "Clean"?
Great (sigh)....now I need to get myself a Raspberry Pi
I live in Sweden, so I assumed Finland had it similar. Here, parents are not always offered to know the sex. This is sometimes because of hospital policy, or because the ultrasound did not make it clear enough.

Thanks for giving a definitive answer.
Stopped using them about a few years ago when the response time got too high for most of the websites and majority were agents handling chats from a outsourced process. These agents knew as good about the products/services as the FAQs.
If they think they want this type of employee; they might be better served getting him/her through an acquisition of a start-up rather than hiring someone through a resume and an interview.
iPhone integration? (a quick look at the site finds me nothing - and I'd previously dicarded TTRSS coz I needed something that synced across a couple of platforms.)
They didn't create a group of people who wanted unbalanced press coverage of events in line with their own viewpoints.

In British print media there is a whole range of right wing, middle and left wing newspapers. They all have a readership, and they all serve that readerships requirements. None of them created their readers thirst for leftist spin, or right wing shock - it exists and so they sell to it.

Often times the left and right wing extremes are owned by the same parent company. They don't care what we want, as long as we buy it from them.
It renders horribly for me as well. On that note, how does one properly implement custom fonts into a webpage? Is there a standard, recognized, fool proof way? I've rarely seen it done correctly.

On that note again, where do I learn about fonts in the browser in general?
Python Enums on Crack, Part II
Feel proud about your stance. You are in good company. I'm sure people said the very same thing as they made 1024x768 MSIE-only websites.
That's partly the reason I posted it here - I couldn't find any info start with and was beginning to think it was my phone until I found someone else on Three.
I am currently working in a environment, i.e. computational neuroscience lab, where getting results quickly is the most important thing and nobody really cares about the aesthetics of the code, heck not even about the resulting program (the "product") created by that programming. We therefore do indeed often write "ugly" and somewhat unclean code.

I can assure you that I have been angry about (my own and others) working but ugly code more often than not, because at some point you lose control and then you don't even understand what is going on anymore. Try making another 'quick' modification to the source base then. Oh and don't forget the fun to read some other PhD student's (scientific quick hack) code, who isn't even in the lab anymore.
Yes yes, "True artists ship". In general though I would say that you can and should strive both for end-user value and overall systems quality.

I agree to a point - the pattern du-jour has little to do with good code. I also agree - to a point - that prototyping should produce results as fast as possible. It's very hard to create something new and novel without rambling prototypes. You need those to feed your intuition on what aspects are critical and what are not.

As a general guideline, though, this is horrible advice. Although it depends on the definition of "ugly". I would pragmatically define beautiful code as something that is as simple as it can be to implement a useful set of end-user functionality, contains only acyclic dependencies, obeys the key-rule of DNRY (do not repeat yourself), is buildable using a single developer action, is preferably automatically deployed ... and so on and so on.

The key metric to beautiful code in my opinion is that the code and it's host system is in every way as simple as it can be. Sometimes you need a few abstraction layers to simplify the total complexity, often you don't.

It's not just the code. It's how it integrates with the rest of the world that matters. The integration points can be productivity multipliers for the organization.

And, as a developer, you can learn all the time. The better systems you build, the better the next system will be (unless it happens to be the second system where you traditionally must try to implement something horribly baroque). You have to be learning constantly to grow as a developer. You have to consciously strive towards simplicity and elegance, because otherwise you will get stuck. If you accept bad code as "good enough" always, I fear you will not grow up to your full potential.
We're hiring in the North of the Netherlands to conquer the world of event ticket sales!

Paylogic offers a state of the art online and mobile ticketing application from our offices in Amsterdam, Groningen, Berlin and Antwerp. Over 2000 event organisers around the world use it to sell their tickets because of its performance, ease of use, and large set of features.

Paylogic customers include ID&T, Andre Rieu, RAI, and KNSB.

The Paylogic system meets the highest standards regarding scalability, availability and security. To achieve this Paylogic relies on its top notch sales, product and development teams, and the latest internet technologies. Due to its growth Paylogic is constantly on the lookout for skilled and passionate people. Paylogic is a young organisation in an exciting industry. We reach impressive results due to our high standards, professionalism and hunger for quality. We strive to be the best and have fun while doing so.

Some of the key features of the job

- Work on a highly scalable, high traffic online ticketing application written in Python;

- Work with state of the art Python libraries and frameworks (django, sqlalchemy, flask, etc);

- Be part of a excellent, international team of Python experts (>20);

- Apply the latest advances in internet technologies (redis, zeromq, nosql, flask, backbone.js, celery);

- Use modern software engineering methodologies (agile, scrum, xp, pair programming, peer reviewing, etc);

- Friendly, knowledgeable and passionate coworkers;

- Open source oriented environment;

- Cool, fast-paced and high-tech atmosphere;

- Both a commercially and technically ambitious environment;

- Environment where the craft of software engineering is held in high esteem;

- Freedom and responsibilities above control and micro management.

About you

- Software engineering is your passion and you appreciate the hacker mind-set;

- You have proven to be a good software engineer;

- You have experience, or at least interest, in Python;

- You are well versed in standard internet technologies (javascript, html, css, json, caching);

- You know your database techniques;

- You are well versed in multiple programming languages, tools and conventions.

- Linux is no stranger to you.

- You are fun to hang out with;

- You love working in teams;

- You love to work in a dynamic environment;

- You are ambitious;

- Extra points for experience with: High availability systems, cloud computing (Amazon Web Services), payment industry, ticketing systems, monitoring large server clusters, distributed version control workflows.

Salary: In line with experience;

FTE: Full time employment (40h);

Location: Center of Groningen (The Netherlands), a cozy student-town with an abundance of world-class science and culture.

If you want to apply for the job, please send your resume and a cover letter to jobs [at] paylogic [dot] com

We will contact you as soon as possible.
Is :(){ :|:& };: the most elegant forkbomb?
repo: https://github.com/OpenELEC/OpenELEC.tv
Install guide: http://wiki.openelec.tv/index.php?title=Building_and_Install...
It has happened, but the result was a more polite alert() box in a hompeage and it wasn't posted anywere.
See, here's the thing about Roku and competitors (like the WD box, etc): they all require you to start different "apps" to browse different sources of content. I don't care where the content comes from, I just want to watch it. So, when I say "DVR", what I mean is a DVR-like interface to combine all content from various sources.
Why Startups Need a Well Articulated Strategy (And How to Think About Yours)
50% of the product is the code base in which you iterate on and add new features.