skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I agree. Going to college is not only about getting a degree. It's about learning what you want from life, learning social skills, going abroad for a year, work on different projects, try things out.

Consider it as a time to sharpen and shape your personality, not so much to gather lots of knowledge. You can do that, too, but it's not the only thing you'll learn in college.

Working for a company will be taking enough of your time later on.

I had a great time at university. I studied abroad for a year in the States (I'm German) and I started my business by accident. It was merely a side project, a hobby. Now, almost 8 years later, it's my main source of income and gives me all the freedom I want.

I didn't plan for it, it just happened, maybe because I was in an environment that allowed time to "play".
So not hardware coding by any means, but I use VirtualBox to build LibreOffice on Ubuntu.
For all our technology, the way we’re searching for MH370 is really old school
tl;dr? The article is too long. No chapter index either.
I hate how everything is moving to JS :) I wish somehow there were multiple languages targetting a common bytecode.. but that won't happen for some reason I can't understand because I stopped in the middle of the dragon book.
Wacko in the Morning – with Wacko Bob and more 04/01 by The Wacko Network
Facebook Exec Snarkily Confirms Brands' Big Fear: Their Content Isn't Important
I agree 100%. I have long considered April Fools Day as National Do-Not-Use-The-Internet Day, and I generally treat it as such.
Yes, I didn't say it was impossible to learn stuff on your own -- it's just not as easy as if you have scheduled time to do it (during school hours).

And if you are referring to me and my situation, I'm trying to learn as much as I can on my own. But it gets tougher the older one gets, and I have a hard time to find the time.
> To put it another way if Steve thought it was important to have that I suspect he would have found a different mechanism that the one above.

Maybe, but that particular mechanism was implemented. It actually received some negative feedback from a pregnant woman who felt she was forced to walk an undue amount to the bathroom.

The point of the parent was that the Pixar offices are designed around encouraging unplanned team member interaction. Their leadership believe this is crucial to encouraging creativity.
Email, because I don't feel Facebook/Google/Twitter gives me the ownership of my virtual identity.
The Lyme Vaccine: A Cautionary Tale
This is great to see! It's important to note that this isn't just yet another "X compiled to Y using Z", but a VM written from scratch natively in Javascript.

The result is a much smaller size, it's more understandable, hackable, extensible - all things that Lua's standard C implementation is great for. It's likely also easier to optimise this way.

I began on a similar project some years back, but as many spare-time projects go, never finished it: http://code.matthewwild.co.uk/ljs
I dropped out of college when I was 19 and worked a couple of sys admin and programming jobs for the next 3.5 years. After that I a) felt like I a had a much better idea about what I wanted to do and b) felt ready and interested in going to university, neither of which where true the first time around.

10 years later I haven't regretted either decision at all. I got much more out of university the second time around since I actually wanted to be there and the work experience I got working those years not only really helped me land my first couple of jobs, but provided invaluable experience that I still rely on. And while I never had much trouble finding jobs without a degree, the jobs I found with a degree are much more interesting and fun.

So my advice is that while university on the whole probably is a good idea, there is nothing that says you have to go to university right out of high school.

Another piece of advice is to remember that there are a lot of courses offered at universities and just because you love programming doesn't mean you have to study CS. I, for example, got my degree in mathematics with a side order of economics, and have found that the combination has opened up a whole avenue of opportunities I probably never would have had if I'd just stuck to programming, while still being able to use my programming skills. So take a step back and reflect over if perhaps there is some other area in addition to programming that you find fascinating and perhaps consider getting a degree in that, when you feel ready..
I'm at Imperial College London. It's great for me because the course is very hands-on (I'm in second year, and so far we've built a compiler and an operating system). If you're into the more theoretical stuff elsewhere might be better, but we're pretty highly ranked at the minute so it's a good degree. Lots of industry links too!
The problem is, and always will be, that the 9.2% cost difference is very visible whereas to non-technical people whereas the productivity differences aren't. And unfortunately more often than not it's the non-technical people making the decisions on office space...
I'd hate having everyone able to stare at my screen all the time. It'd make me feel uneasy and less productive for sure.
My favorite:

"But we never hear about the people who’ve been hurt – like all the students at places like Harvard and Stanford who no longer have better access to the scientific literature than hoi poloi at lesser institutions."
I didn't want to say this in my post, because honestly OP might have a great social life and just not be enjoying the school part (didn't want to assume). But yes; undergrad was boring as hell for me and I felt I didn't learn much, but it was very worthwhile because it was the most fun time of my life this far, even if for no other reason
"This is the day to be mandatorily funny. Go out there and do something funny. That's an order"
Sometimes you don't know what you want. I listen to broadcast radio because I'm then exposed to things I'm not used to and didn't realize I'd like or be interested in. Likewise, I'm now finding that I'm using topology in odd places, and I was never interested in that when I did my degree. It wasn't cute fun about twisting bits of paper, it was hard work and deeply unintuitive. But now it's turning up repeatedly as I compress images, compute optimal representations, and work out why the various bits of algorithms aren't working the way I thought they would.

My colleagues think I have superpowers because I have this bizarre collection of things apparently immediately "to hand." But I don't. I remember seeing them in passing, ignored because I didn't care, but now I know what I'm looking for and can find it.

The auto-didact route rarely gives you that. JIT learning tends to leave you without overview and with areas of ignorance you don't even know you have. If you knew you had them you'd fix it.

But you don't. And don't.
Monitoring, Defining the Requirements
Quick and painless PHPUnit testing setup
Rear Visibility Technology To Be Mandatory In Vehicles
If I've understood correctly, this relates to the German Tank Problem: using statistical analysis to estimate a count.

With German Tanks, you have limited data available to create an estimate from (a few serial numbers, in the canonical case). But in this case, you deliberately limit the data stored in order to keep it at a manageable level: hash to randomise and then store only summary stats.

Pretty cool. Actually very cool, I really like it.

However, are there any interesting use cases for this? It seems to me that it's not particularly useful until your list is long enough to make search/sort/storage difficult: that's rare even at web-scale, no?
Azure to App Engine isn't apples to apples. For example, you could write an app to run on Azure and be able to change platforms to chase better prices or capabilities later, rather than having to use App Engine at inflated prices forever after.
It would be nice to see other languages available as real languages, not compiled down to Javascript. I love me some javascript, but it would be nice to work in Python, in the browser.
Unit Testing Machine Learning Algorithms
Just imagine the irony when this game gets pirated.
I think you're right.

So this leads to an obvious question: how do we fix the dike?
I'm going to suggest you to do the opposite of what I did :)

Do not drop out unless it's for an opportunity you have right now, that can't be postponed or repeated and you're self-critical and objective enough to be realistic about that assessment. Everything else you can do just as well afterwards, without a sacrifice you'll regret.

Context: I formed a company during secondary school (age 16), completed my GCSEs, left to focus on my company which was purchased leaving me as CTO for a 3 year stretch. Dropping out for me was a hard choice, those three years were great, and despite ultimate failure of the company, I'd repeat the experience again in a flash. Those three years give me a CV that demonstrates a motivated, self-starter able to learn technology on the job.

That being said, I've dealt with hiring often enough that I've met way too many of my age group that dropped out without the self-motivation, skills or intelligence to make it work for them. They dropped out because it was the easy and lazy choice. They dropped out because they thought mastery of a single trending technology or process would drive the rest of their careers. They dropped out because delusions of competency reinforced the belief that in comparison to another person of equivalent skill, ability who completed their education, for some bizarre and irrational reason the Universe would weigh in on their side.
Do people not use IM/chat anymore? The problems with email you are describing are typically why I use chat.
I personally loved going to college. At ohio state there were 11,000 courses. one of the courses I liked the best was comparitive studies and lingustics. I would have never dived that deep into either of those subjects without college. In compartive studies I had to read a 200+ page book a week and give an indepth analysis of the book not just a summary. Also college shows people you can stick something out for longer than a minute. The point of college is the world outside of programming. The people you meet is the point of college, both intellectually and on a personal level.
It's a simple choice as long as you stay rational. People bullshit and fear as they don't see the picture themselves.

Entrepreneurship is not for everybody, if you go down that path, don't expect great council at every corner. In your lifetime, you will meet very few people who truly think like you.

Everybody pushes you to college because in their mind it's the only way. And that's ok, most people are weak. Now the rational bit.

If you want a 9 to 5 job, a wife and 2 kids and a ride into the sunset, go to college, internship, job, better job, retirement. There is nothing wrong with that, but some people want different things.

If you know programming good enough to make a living, take the job. College is great if you don't really know anything and you have to show a diploma or if your industry needs one(e.g. doctor), but otherwise almost worthless. Instead of a giant student loan, you can have capital for your first business.

If you want to be an entrepreneur and still go to college, do it but not for programming. Go to your exams, don't waste your time with classes. Instead work. Take a job, try and fail and you will learn more than anywhere else.

Your goal is to create a network and reputation, to learn about people. Keep the PR work with your family and friends, they don't have to know about this. Ace your exams, don't expect 100%, and keep everybody happy. As an entrepreneur this will be 50% of your job, keeping everybody else happy.

If you work, never, absolutely never let anybody underpay you because of your age. Never be taken for granted. Respect is earned by getting things done, just keep proving you have professional maturity well beyond the years in your birth certificate and you will earn respect. But never tolerate jokes or even hints about it. Never display ego, but never go the other way.

There is a place for people like you, it's entrepreneurship. If this is what you want, then man up, think rationally, manage everybody's expectations, but go with your gut. And remember, no one will every do anything for you and for your career. You have to get it done yourself.

I've been down the same road and I don't regret one bit. 15 hours of work a day are normal, but there's nothing else I'd rather be doing.
Averaging the results correctly must be an interesting problem in itself?

I believe that standard averages wouldn't necessarily give you the maximum likelihood.
Thank you! This is exactly my view on this! That's how I was raised too: "told that I absolutely have to go to college, get a job with great benefits, and climb the corporate ladder". I will think some more on this, thank you for your response!
Let me share some perspectives on the 'other side'.

1) I don't want people to be able to see me all the time. It's extremely nerve-racking and I feel like an animal in a zoo. And from my experience, people usually don't care whether I'm deep in some code or doing something less intense - they come over anyway. And people don't care whether their question is important enough to interrupt! As soon as someone taps my shoulder or calls my name, my concentration breaks completely and it takes me another half hour to get it back. Having offices makes people think harder and try to figure out the answer by themselves before going to someone else.

2) See above. The ratio of stupid questions that could have been resolved by Google or just another 2 minutes of thinking, to questions that ignited an interesting discussion is about 9 to 1.

3) How much work is going to get done by 'helping others'? 80-90% of a developer's work can be alone. Team productivity of course is important, but in development teams, this is really just the sum of individual developers' productivity.
Web Development with Python and Django – Learning by Doing
Why is it out of your reach? Because they are too expensive?

If you want to study at a better college, look for professors in your field, find someone that does something interesting, and ask them if they will take you as a student. If you are good, some institutions will actually pay you for studying there.

This is easiest if you already have at least a bachelors degree, and want to go to grad school. At least in Europe, most grad schools pay PhD students (in science/engineering), and if you are smart, it's not that hard to get accepted.
But it's not just about personal productivity, it's also about enjoying your work.

Spending a day in the noise, getting distracted, and simply unable to get your head down and finish the one task you're assigned to gets highly annoying and draining. Which has negative effects on that person and the team as a whole; poor mood (and attitude by extension), bad work, and a higher inclination to simply pack up and leave.

I work in a ~20 people open floor plan; fridays feel the most productive, because it's the quietest. Some colleagues feel hugely relieved after spending a day working from home and, by their own words, getting some work done for the first time in forever.

tl;dr we're individual people, not team productivity numbers.
Mark Zuckerberg Cuts His Salary to $1
It would be nice to see Lua embedded as an option within browsers, since it's such a small language and already designed to be embedded.
Greetings from Romania too. I'm 24 and I've been actively working as a programmer for the past ~3 years. I have graduated from ASE - Cybernetics (Bucharest) at the age of 22 and been working in the area since then. Despite the fact that I felt college wasn't teaching me so much as the real world, it surely shaped me and changed my view of things. The biggest gain for me probably was that college showed me how little do I know about programming in general and motivated me to keep learning every day.

While the college level is arguably lower than other parts of the world, you'll still get the chance to interact with smarter people and that can only help.

I've also had the chance to work with people without a CS degree (people around my age) and I think they are finding it harder to learn new concepts without a proper (academic) foundation.

Go for it, you will not regret the choice.
Social media. Useful for your product?
There are totally trends in management, however the "shift" to open floor plans is not the new trend its a return to the trend we had _before_ we went on the quiet isolation kick in the late 60's. I think now that we have actual data point of isolation vs open businesses are seeing tangible benefits from the open floor plan. There is still experimentation going on with how to strike a balance, but to say open floor plans are all bad ignores the fact that in practice they work better then most everything else we have tried.

The real thing people are finally paying attention to is that not all human workers are the same. Some people thrive in an open noisy collaborative environment, while some can't operate at all in that environment. It is the real task of management to manage the work environment of all your employees.
You should drink more water if you're only using the restroom once or twice in a typical work day.
Geez, isn't there anywhere closer to home that you can work to cut down that commute?
If you are saying "malicious requests only come from foreign countries" then of course that is silly.

But "for these businesses every connection from certain continents is an attack" is absolutely true.

I've worked with these businesses, worked with their CEO on their business needs, and seen their internet traffic. They, really, have absolutely no need to interact with Asia. They aren't hotshot SV companies trying to become the global leader of VR selfies, they are just boring[1] businesses sending plain old physical goods to customers within a thousand miles of them.

[1] Boring isn't a pejorative in my mind, but I know it is for some other people.
Email with a throwaway address. I don't use Facebook, I don't trust Twitter, I don't expose my Google account, and I don't trust a new product with my real email addresses.
Sent you an email. Check your inbox.
As someone observing from outside the US, this entire issue confuses me.

This CEO doesn't hate gay people. He's not homophobic. He simply is against gay marriage, a view shared both culturally and legally by much of the USA.

Don't large organizations value diversity? Are only certain "diversities" allowed? Why the intolerance for those who have different opinions?

EDIT: I'm reading the thoughful replies. It seems that those against this CEO consider gay marriage a civil right's issue. But much of the USA doesn't agree, neither culturally nor legally.

Should all high-ranking employees in the USA be vetted for appropriate (leftwing?) political views before being hired? That doesn't seem right.
This is pure hell for people who actually do work, and often repeated by managers who don't "get it." Silly questions are not the genesis of good ideas, they're a denial of service attack on good work.

Read Peopleware.
CocoaPods acquired!
Ye gods, another open floor plan rant. Never see enough of these any more.

Instead of point-by-point, I'm just going to offer one critique.

"...Programming is a very brain-intensive task..."

Sure thing, buddy. But guess what? You're not a machine for cranking out little bits and bytes. Instead, you're part of a team that's trying to provide value to a user. That means that most of your job, whether you like this or not, is human in nature. The computer part should just be a "gimme".

The physical space around a team should represent the mental space of the team. One hundred guys in a big cafeteria? Not so much. 40 guys in clusters of 3-6 with rolling whiteboards and allowances for breakout discussions? Much different.

There are things I would love in software development. I would love to sit on the beach fanning myself coding while money is deposited in my account. (Actually, I've done that.) I would love to work alone in my office in the wee hours of the morning in an awesome state of flow (did that many times too.)

But at some point you have to separate "things I want to do" from "things that optimize the value I provide". They aren't the same thing.

I'm all for private offices if it works for you and optimizes value. Same goes for distributed teams. Right now nobody has all the answers. On average, though, it looks like these things are counter-productive for projects that require creative new ways of thinking of things. I wish it weren't so, but it is.
Is Spree Commerce the future of E-Commerce?
The problems most people have with candidates not having a degree are: a) It's harder to prove they know their stuff b) there's an impression that they are bums and shied away from hard work, or somehow lacked the intelligence and drive

You can solve both of these issues by taking your career seriously. Getting your foot in the door is going to be harder at first because you're young and you have no degree, but it seems you've worked at multiple places already. Get references from them, have them talk to your future employer on the phone. This is the strongest vote of confidence one can get and definitely matters more than a degree.

Make sure each new job you take progresses in some way: More responsibility, higher rank, more / different tech, more complicated project. For each job, keep track of your accomplishments on the job as easy to digest one-liners. Put these in your resume. Your resume items and progression should tell a clear story that you're good (which is easy since you started so young) and you're getting even better.

In addition, show that you're not purely a cog. If you can reflect the fact that you also understand the business aspects and reason why you do things, that you can course-correct misguided top down policies from management, that you can serve not only as techie but also, say, marketer, that you can communicate with non-technicals, then that makes you doubly valuable.

Also, show that you have expertise. Go to conferences, be a regular in local user groups, speak in front of people, teach people.

Four years of progressing employment, combined with these bonuses should really negate the fact that you don't have a degree in terms of getting hired (I think degree is valuable for other reasons, but let's put that aside for now). The one exception is large employers like Google, MS, the Government, etc. which sometimes have hard HR requirements and just cannot comprehend bending them even if they like you. But anyway, I recommend that people with degrees try to do all this too. It really builds the idea of investing in you as a valuable asset and a person rather than buying a replaceable cog. Value-add matters.
The Quake3 Networking Model
The world is all about American Idol and Baby booboo. That is what is important. I'll keep my door shut.
Optimization Toolbox and HDF5 Interface for .NET: Looking for Beta Testers