skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Well, I think I was being a little elitist. I guess there's this tendency among people like me which goes like "I was forced to learn things the hard way and hence its good to learn things hard way".

But back when I started, I was just a cash strapped high school kid who happend to find a couple of PIC16F84s. And I had lots of fun building a simple parallel port programmer and playing with them.

My next pet project involves a beagle board and 4 AT2313s driving 4 brushless motors. Just waiting for my beagle board. The beagle board does have a couple of GPIOs and 3 PWMs, so blinking an led or driving a servo should be possible :)
I regard installing AIR for the first time one uses an AIR app akin to installing Flash Player the first time you hit up, say, YouTube on a new/clean machine. Can't see all tgat much friction there...
That, or you got a wife.

Wives seem remarkably efficient at curbing our deepest insanities.
Microsoft European Antitrust hearing cancelled--due to scheduling conflict?
It happens to us all I guess, sometimes it's too much coffee too early in the day or someone hits a soft spot.

It's easy to misinterpret what people say on the net.

FWIW I too had a very positive superficial read of Arc when it was first published and I'm neither a fanboy nor a Lisp newbie. Scheme is one of my true loves.
And the resistance to these ideas continues to this day, seemingly unabated. The consequences are all around us, in our mailboxes.
Ask YC: why doesn't Microsoft have a Windows App Store?
You could sell your apps through it. Or does that not make sense? And if not, why does the iPhone appstore make sense?
I still go back and forth on this idea--not that I have ever implemented completely any of my programs in a literate style. It is hard to argue with the quality of results that Knuth obtains (a small handful of bugs in TEX during its first 10 years of life).
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It also doesn't account for the makers labor. It's like saying "I made a web app in my spare time over 3 months while working at McSoftware Firm. So it cost $0 to make!"

No, it was subsidized.
A purpose-driven life indeed.
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"if anyone is doing FUD, it would be you"

It's FUD only if you deny the risk of Microsoft behaving badly. It's entirely possible Microsoft's legal staff is larger than the whole Mono developer base. Whether Microsoft crushes Mono is irrelevant to me - I have long migrated away from Windows and, while Gnome seems to use Mono a lot, I can also migrate away from that. It's my advice, however, to never, ever, under no circumstances, trust Microsoft to do the good thing. It's behaviour is highly predictable and I am yet to see a single sign it even can act like a good corporate citizen.

"The .NET compilers costs absolutely nothing and are part of the free (as in beer) .NET SDKs"

True. You can develop for Windows with .NET without Visual Studio.

"Even if Microsoft wanted to bail out at this point, it would be too late."

Microsoft can bail out any time it wants. All they need is to come out with a "new and improved" API and a "new and improved" Visual Studio that are both slightly forward-incompatible with what Mono needs. Windows developers will flock to the new platform while Mono developers will struggle to make Mono compatible again. And do so every time Microsoft wants to. Mono developers really work for Microsoft.

The scenario where Mono declares independent and follows a distinct path is as reasonable as expecting Mac developers to develop against GNUStep (which is really fine) instead of using Xcode. It won't happen and it won't be able to steer the reference for compatibility a bit. As ECMA-sanctioned (which is sort of meaningless) as they are, the real standard, the one the market follows, is the one dictated by Redmond.
How to program the Arduino without the IDE
You also seem to imply the #develop user base can be compared to the Visual Studio user base. I would like to check your numbers as I suspect the active user #develop-to-Visual Studio ratio is very close to zero. Were VS not a requirement, your number should be above, say, .3?
Hopefully it will be less of a piece of crap than the Blair Witch Project too.
Why You Should Not Choose Microsoft Automatic Update | TechJaws
They do, it's called the Windows Marketplace.

http://www.windowsmarketplace.com/

Edit: It looks like they closed it. :|
Experience Design [pdf]
It seems like adding features often reduces functionality or utility.
Well, not to put to fine a point on it, yes, I do think that charging money to make things easier is a good strategy for getting people to be my customers. This is partially informed by the fact that I charge money for software to make things easier.

People buy because the paid version is better than the free version for their purposes. If the paid version was not better than the free version, they would not buy. There is a famous pre-Internet A/B test on shareware: functional limitations beat "put out a coin cup and hope some money falls into it" by a mile.

See: http://hackvan.com/pub/stig/articles/why-do-people-register-...

Is that how you want your customers to look at your company?

My customers are distinguished from the poster by a few things. Principally, that they pay me money. (If my customers are looking at my company like it is a business which provides them value in return for being paid, then that is great -- we're all on the same page.)

The opinions of people who will not pay me money and are, in fact, hostile to the idea of paying money are of little concern to me. The free competitors are over yonder. They're worth what you pay for them. Enjoy.
Windows Marketplace? http://www.windowsmarketplace.com
"This Rails/Solr adapter is no longer supported, so I'm going to either move to a fully custom solution, or more likely shop around for a better supported Rails plugin. Recommendations are always welcome."

Since you asked, I'd recommend Sphinx, maybe with the Ultrasphinx rails plugin (haven't used it but seems popular). Yeah, it's based on a different engine, but I never liked the hassle of running Java apps anyway.
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The Future Internet is rip-off/black hat based
That's totally true. I guess the lesson is that it matters who acquires you. If you can't go for the public, cross your fingers and hope your parent company won't do anything evil.
I've recently signed up with Yodlee Moneycenter and become a big fan of these personal finance websites. Hopefully more services will soon become available to UK customers.
Is there any way to punish a company that violates its privacy agreement? In the hypothetical sense, not talking about this case in particular.
See the updated version with a newer JavascriptCore:
http://www.lassus.eu/2009/05/v8-and-javascriptcore-are-reall...
1) Requires creative thinking.
2) Microsoft can't make money off it.
3) You can't compete with Microsoft.
4) Microsoft isn't in the business of helping you make money.
Looks like they have abandoned that idea.

Edit: It no longer sells non-Microsoft software was what I meant.
That's exactly where I stopped reading. Someone who _wants_ to use Flash for programming has to have something very wrong in his or her head.
The iPhone app store is Apple's beachhead into mobile computing in general, the iPhone the first of many such mobile platforms. App store developers get rich, and Apple's platform becomes more popular and attractive to users. It has worked well so far.

Microsoft already owns the majority of the desktop space. Why would it need an App store? The returns on investment would be insufficient to justify any investment.
Because software distribution through physical retail channels was well established before the internet became mainstream.

And before Microsoft could get their head around the opps on the internet, Tucows, CNET, et al. had the leg up in online application distribution - though they left monetization up to the end developer.

Digital River used to be a digital download online marketplace, but they cut their "app store" out and now focus solely on e-commerce.
It would put other companies that sell software out of business. They really want people like Amazon to be on there side otherwise they might stop selling Windows software and start pushing Mac. In addition Microsoft probably wouldn't ship applications that they saw as serious competitors and would get a lot of legal hassle.

Apple's iPhone store only makes sense in the sense that it is simple for users to get software. In the long term I think it's anti-competitive and stupid, since there should be a Amazon store and various other stores that compete with each other. Currently applications on the iPhone are fairly small and low value - if they move the platform to big devices like a 10inch tablet, Apple TV with more sophisticated applications, then it will have to open up.
I think Mint is, hands down, the best personal money management site (although if anyone disagrees, I'm open to checking other sites out). The big thing, for me, is the emails and text message alerts, especially the ones that go out once you've reached your monthly budget on a certain type of spending. Huge help!
OpenBSD, Django and code written by Niels Provos.
Having grown up working on a wheat farm as a youngster, a significant fraction of my emotional energy was devoted to getting out of that. However, this is all relative. While we worked with our hands in the sense that the author means, we did it with machinery. My grandfather farmed using horses. I know he thought that working with horses was "closer to truth" than driving a tractor. I am sure that my Dad would not want to go back.

So we no longer gap our own spark plugs, fix our own broken rear springs, replace our own tires, weld our own truck beds. Has something gone out of the world? Yes. Is the answer to teach every city kid how to use a pair of pliers? Can't hurt, but that does not lead to an appreciation of the fullness of a life based manual labor.
Because, just like Mac users, Linux* users and users everywhere which has a full rich user-interface, not a minimal mobile interface, they like to be able to get applications from any source, not just one central location.

While the Apple AppStore no doubt is successful, Apple has most definitely proven just how bad that idea works out in practice, and how trying to control it effectively leads to inconsistent censorship leading developers to either hold back on ideas or spend programming effort which could have been spent making their applications better, to make sure it complies with the store-policies. I can just picture updates & security updates lagging behind 2 months because the application needs reapproval.

No thanks. I'll just google, download a setup.exe and run the app thank you very much.

Now you might argue "How would you know that this download is safe and properly QAed?". That could be a fair point. But given how badly Apple has handled the AppStore with its rather limited set of applications, imagine if Microsoft were all of a sudden tasked to deal with the entire back-catalog of Windows software out there.

Do you honestly believe that could be reasonably QAed without Microsoft spending millions, millions and more millions in the process? And if they didn't people wouldn't bother using the store, since "I find all the software I need with google, and nothing with this AppStore thing".

Microsoft is making a pretty good move doing nothing here.

* Yes I know about package-management, repositories, etc etc. That still doesn't cut the need to custom compile applications from various non-official sources every now and then.
1. AVG
2. Firefox(Chrome from now onwards)
3. VLC player
4. uTorrent
5. Nova PDF printer
6. Open Office
7. Free Download Manager
8. WinRar
Dealing with different password validation schemes in a single app
Neuropathy Microsite Launched As New Startup Project
Moblin 2.0 OS for your Netbook
Colleges Consider 3-Year Degrees To Save Undergrads Time, Money
Thanks, I didn't know this had a name. I've definitely had this from playing Tetris, but also from board games like Go and even jigsaw puzzles. I thought it was just a quirk of my silly brain.
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Since Apple has the only mobile platform where you can only get applications from one source (them), this is really simple.

For instance on my Windows mobile phone, using MSIE mobile (which sucks) I can go to opera.com, download a cab-file, install it and I'm good to go. Google maps? Just go to maps.google.com and it will offer you to download and install a native Google maps client.

If I want to, I can develop stuff myself, no signing or service-provider or Microsoft approval needed. What exactly are you implying here?
I think a free market approach, accidently perhaps, worked for Windows. I don't like the idea of a central authority sanctioning any apps. Apple store has problems of its own. I don't use any Apple products, but i hear people complaining everyday how a certain app was pulled or rejected but iFart made it. I don't side with monopoly on this issue.

The idea of a central update place for all your apps still sounds appealing(like Ubuntu) though.
"Where eBay had once turned shopping into a game, Mint had now turned saving into one."

A good lesson for any software.

If I write a comprehensive functional specification, a detailed email, or call a meeting to discuss requirements, my users don't care (and half of them never bother).

But if I give them something to play with, using their own data, they go nuts. Then they're pushing me to get their project moving along.
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"...if sterilization of the knife really helped, everybody would be able to operate and that would be totally intolerable."

Crazy. What?

Humans never cease to amaze me.
Non-geek Linux users do not custom compile stuff. They do download packages or binaries with installers, or perhaps add a repo, but then, as you point out, an MS app store would not rule out downloading or purchasing elsewhere.

I agree with your other points.

It would also be very difficult to set up the deals with enough other vendors for it to be worthwhile. I can imagine many of them not being happy relying on a single channel.

Also, the presence of software on CDs in shops is good marketing for MS - a major objection to MacOS and Linux is "I cannot buy software for it in the shops around here".

If they excluded open source, it would reduce what is available. If they include it, they would give a message that they do not want to about free (in both senses) software.
I still love you, Tracemonkey :(
If they decide to sue _users_ of Mono programs, they pretty much can

Now you are pretty much talking bullshit. If this is actually somehow allowed in the US, that is a failure in the US justice system and for the remaining 95% of the world unrelated to actual reality. With all this time spent trying to avoid lawsuits, I sometimes wonder how people in the US manage to be productive at all.

Anyway, your arguments seems to boil down to that any platform which isn't under 100% open source control is a risky investment and that it's not worth it. If that is your point of view, I can respect that, but at the same time you have to accept that puts you in a very narrow window with regard to what markets and platforms you can develop for.

To me, from my point of view, that's just too deep into Stallman-land and not a viable strategy in the real world.
My own code that's common throughout all of my software.

Report writers, data base update objects, data formatting routines, form processors, string & array handlers, special logic algorithms, and especially, code generators.

The more I read these, the better I know them.

The better I know them, the easier to improve and extend them.

The more I extend them, the better my software gets and the less of it I have to write to get anything done. Leverage.

I literally have a folder of all this stuff on my nightstand or in my backpack all the time.
Don't know about most humans but it's probably the base state for pre-agriculatural humanity, so any ancestry group without long experience of agriculture will probably have higher levels of ADD.
A great man that knows how to put current issues in historical perspective. Yet, his case here doesn't rest so well: software hacking without a plan has generated good software, after applying cleanup, refactoring, and what not.

A great read.
Finds like this keep me coming to HN. Thank you. I found an amazon link for the book it is extracted from:

http://www.amazon.com/Shop-Class-Soulcraft-Inquiry-Value/dp/...

I also recommend de Botton's The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work to those who enjoyed it. I read it in a single sitting.

http://www.amazon.com/Pleasures-Sorrows-Work-Alain-Botton/dp...

And blessedly, I didn't have to negotiate any subscribe forms at nytimes.com.
"MS should be scared spitless."

From 1997-2009, I called on about 100 customer sites.

From this small, but faily representative, sample, the percentage of corporate desktops does not appear to have changed much:

1997: Windows 99% Mac 1%

2009 Windows 99% Mac 1%

The only people using Macs are designers, engineers, and a few programmers. They insist on them for their specialties. Everyone else gets a PC with Windows.

In the corporate world, MS doesn't have anything to worry about (yet).
Thank you. I rewrote that paragraph.
Interesting bit of story with that:

Doug Bowman (@stop): "Proud of @google for trying a new logo system that @jeromyhenry and I designed and proposed well over a year ago: http://bit.ly/d1Sdc " (http://twitter.com/stop/status/1876443229)
Isn't the problem really that there are fixed costs associated with loans that are exaggerated on smaller ones when consider on a percentage basis? Looking at in terms of interest seems wrong, there should just be a fee.
Thanks for the useful perspective provided by that chart.

To set the scene for the original story: It's from abcnews (i.e., =/= in depth analysis); it cites a few examples; rather than documenting any extended period without a job it discusses graduates who did not have jobs already secured upon graduation; it quotes complaints that people were not able to get jobs of their first choice; it is from abcnews' business section: and so may be seeking to discuss the increasing difficulties of people with traditional business degrees looking for traditional business/money-management jobs at a time when banks are being shuttered.

Conclusion: headline and story are link-bait journalism (one "field" that may still have openings ;).
From the article: Four-year degrees were designed in large part to provide a broad-based education that teaches young people to analyze and think critically, considered vital preparation to participate in the civic life of American democracy.

From the undergraduate CS adviser at a major university (Paraphrased, this was a coffee hour conversation): I've actually never had a student come to me and tell me they wanted a broad education. Even very motivated students try to fill their gen-ed requirements with stuff they expect to be useful or easy.

There is a fundamental disconnect here. College employees want to sell one product but college students wish to buy another. College admins want to keep the money flowing.

I'd love it if new entrants take over the world here, but I don't see that happening. College is not a very competitive market.
"The service seems simple enough, though Patzer says there are five separate patents pending to the technology."

I wonder if this is defensive or if they plan to litigate their competitors.
college markets are kept uncompetitive by high barriers to entry. One is the chicken and egg problem of attracting decent professors. The other is huge subsidies to existing institutions that make the tuition costs of a start-up college uncompetitive.
Anti-ripp-off software is an emerging market.
I agree this is huge. I think a lot of people probably thought of this idea years ago (i know I thought of it), but figured that the logistics of sending out mass text messages would be too difficult.
ASK PG: Why can't you bury or downvote submissions?
It would be nice to have more than the flag option for submissions.
what a horrid caricature of SF. I suppose serious social commentary is beyond the fluff piece this was intended as.
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The appstore makes sense for Apple, because...

- quality control for end-users. Like when Nintendo started with the NES.

- cutting the middle-man out of app marketing - good for third-party developers.

Microsoft does not care for neither party. Microsofts strategy with DOS/Windows was always about tight-knit contracts with OEMs.
Fear not, young padawan! (I firmly believe that) An xbox mobile is coming...There is already an XNA marketplace which will segue nicely into this venture. Brush up on your C#.
I actually deleted mine when I first heard this story, then heard their denials, wasn't sure, and spent a period of time thinking "well, that was kind of dumb, look before you leap next time" because my account dated back to the audioscrobbler days and had a lot of data. Now I feel somewhat vindicated but even more disappointed.
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I'm surprised he shows a screenshot of the email. Is a screenshot at all better than a verbal account, given how easy to fake the screenshot in question would be?
college markets are kept uncompetitive by high barriers to entry.

Indeed. The United States looks bizarre to other countries because accreditation of colleges is done by associations of previously accredited colleges. You get to be in the club if the club admits you.

http://www.ed.gov/admins/finaid/accred/index.html

But the clubs make one of the requirements of membership a substantial capital expense for certain kinds of facilities, so a new market entrant has to start out with a substantial supply of cash at the beginning. For colleges tha initially have no endowment income, starting out while relying mainly on student tuition payments for revenue is quite risky.

http://www.maguireassoc.com/services/forecasting.html
What do you mean by "decent professors"? If you mean "quality teachers", then you'll have a very easy time of it. There is a huge oversupply of PhD's, and many are excellent teachers. You can get good teachers quite cheaply.

Accredition and reputation are the main barriers.
> Last.fm didn’t hand user data over to the RIAA. According to our source, it was their parent company, CBS, that did it.

So the original story was was admittedly wrong?
There is a huge oversupply of PhD's, and many are excellent teachers.

Agreeing with your first point that there are lots of Ph.D.s to go around to staff many colleges, how does one check your second point that a particular person is a good teacher? What is the best evidence for determining who is an effective teacher at the college level, and how is that evidence gathered at each college where Ph.D.s teach, and used at each college that has occasion to hire new faculty?
The disruption may indeed come, but only when 95% of all users are using an HTML 5 browswer. Happy waiting ;-)