skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
College is not the end all be-all experience. There are lots of other opportunities and learning on the job is one of them. You will almost certainly be at an income disparity without a degree for at least the beginning of your career.

That said, if you can't find an engaging and challenging experience learning about software in your college, either A) you are at a bad college and need to change or B) you haven't actively tried to take full advantage of the resources available to you.

When I was an undergraduate I took graduate courses, TA'd intro courses, worked on research projects, got published, etc, and I wasn't some uber student. I just was really interested in things and spent a lot of time asking professors and graduate students stuff. I had the opposite problem, there was so much I wanted to learn about and so little time to do it.
Go to college, build your network and be around like minded people, but take a leaf out of this first.

"50 Things" - http://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/50_things
Go to college, get your degree. Its shitty advice but you kinda have to do it.

As painful and stupid as it'll be you'll thank me. If you don't have a degree it'll be 1000x harder to get an employer to notice you. You'll either have to invest about 3-4 years of your life on a large software project that may work (and get you noticed), or a big rare certification with some company like IBM, Oracle, Red Hat, etc. that will take years of studying and several lower level certifications (and several thousand dollars to take the tests).

Otherwise your job prospects are meh.

In college just do what they tell you. You will learn things, but not as fast as from other sources. Some courses like OS theory, compiler theory, and data structures will introduce you to newer concepts, some you may have not know.

Don't stop coding, don't stop learning. But a degree is important in today's world.
Do you have a reference backing that? I've only found information contradicting that, eg: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/318803
Node?js
Go to college! If you find it too easy, it means you'll have time to work on your side projects. Or try to apply to a more prestigious institution.
> rational proposal for a solution would be for companies to put random funny things out more often

The best way would be if they put those funny things at random, i.e. not on a specified date known by everyone in advance.

But IMO the root of the problem is not the day, it's that 'being funny' is not a terminal goal for companies. They make jokes to drive sales/traffic, whereas humour is something that has to be done for its own sake.

This is the same difference I think makes SpaceX and Tesla so awesome compared to others - because going to space and electrifying transport for humanity's good are terminal goals for Musk, and not - like with most businesses - proxies for making money (i.e. a company would stop doing what it's doing and start selling useless widgets if it paid more).
"Usually ,in electronics products are priced around 3.5x of their components costs, with most of the cost difference going towards marketing and offline retailers"
- That's a tad inaccurate. The cost of components is just one cost the manufacturer has. You've forgotten all the other costs around labor, overhead, sales and marketing, storing and moving product. THEN that manufacturer needs to actually post a profit and thus sell the good at a higher price than the costs of its components and sales and marketing/G&A etc.

I think Google's online model only with no advertising would be a cheaper go to market than the traditional way. But no where near the degree you imply. To the point, that isn't responsible for the price difference alone. This phone was being subsidized.
Since you mentioned the slow-lane, I'd recommend checking out the Fastlane Forum.

http://www.thefastlaneforum.com/

The place for people like you is on your own...that forum will give you the support you need to learn, develop, and execute on what you really want to do.

There is so much stuff on there that I wish I would have known when I was 19.
IntelliJ Lite edition; in-app purchases, Gamification and sign-in
If you built a UEFI stick (basically drop the contents of a Windows 7 DVD onto a FAT32 (not NTFS) drive) then maybe. XBMC will run on this, but I'm not sure if it can decode 1080p H264.
My wife has this phone and it's a great phone (even if it wasn't a budget phone). Really the only thing wrong with it is the camera is slightly sub-par, although for people who use software like Instagram you wouldn't notice. It's no surprise at all that this is killing other phones.

My question: Is Googorola losing money on this phone?
Hitch by Wave: A Premium (Financial) Dating Service
You should finish college. Believe it or not you learn a lot on college, not only from teachers but from your classmates. It's a great experience and you have your whole life to work. Give college a chance, you won't regret it.
Thank you for your response! I have felt a bit that the college I'm at is not really good for me, and that's the reason why I went online and got as much resources as possible (MIT OpenCourseware, Coursera, Udacity, Stanford lectures available). Those guys really do teach stuff! But it is out of my reach to go to one of those colleges, sadly :/
Rando app alternative – PhotoSuerte
Interestingly my children (12 and 14) won't even look at an Android phone due to iMessage. So if Google/MOTO/Android are capturing males 16-24 that's a pretty dang smart strategy of creating power Google Now users who are heading into the prime of their earning capacity.
or use composer, and commit composer.lock to ensure when composer install is run you'll get the dependency versions that are meant to ship with the release.
This talks about the gap beyond the "Learn how to code" materials, but lighter weight than a computer science degree.

I personally managed to fill this knowledge gap with the MOOCs, in particularly Udacity/Coursera (Cryptographic, Basic data structures/algorithms, ML).

That, and just building lots of stuff and seeing all the places where problems can emerge.
Go to college, get your degree and invest your spare time for networking, personal projects or some open-source projects ;)

Try to learn few more languages an/or paradigms...
I'll probably be hung for this comment, but I'd still grab the Lumia 625 for the same price myself.

Sure the screen isn't as high res but you get 4G/LTE, an SD slot, guaranteed lifecycle, quality integration with just about every online service and completely 100% offline (unlike google) and free for life turn by turn navigation for vehicles, public transport, on foot and inside buildings.

Also if you've ever broken a Lumia, you'll know the bits are cheap to get and easy to replace without such things as heat guns and odd tools. A T4/T5/T6 torx set and you're sorted.

Smashed my 820 AMOLED screen a week ago and had bits in next day and it installed in 10 minutes.

Before anyone goes "apps apps apps", I only have two additional apps installed other than what shipped with it: an RPN calculator and Adobe Reader

Edit: pricing links as HN has decided I'm posting too fast:

https://www.o2.co.uk/shop/phones/moto/g/

https://www.o2.co.uk/shop/phones/nokia/lumia-625/

Lumia pricing goes really low. You can get SIM-free 820's for £169 and 520's for £69 if you keep an eye peeled on amazon.
I've seen sites (can't remember which ones off the top of my head) that do autodetect your credit card type while typing it in. I wasn't phased by it.
This phone has been a brilliant move. Having handled the phone, I can say I truely wouldn't miss anything at all if I were to rely on it (already owned a Nexus 4 though). It's not as future proof because it lacks NFC and 4G, but given that European 3G is usually pretty good and NFC really doesn't seem to be taking off those things don't matter that much.

The only thing I'm left wondering is why other Android manufacturers have not released a similar package. This phone obliterates its competition in its price range; only some of Nokia's Windows Phones provide decent alternatives.
This is most likely joke, but there is nothing more uncool that trying be cool very hard. Especially, these american style campaigns. So off-putting.
This. Every single holiday. Is The Same. Problem.
it focuses on individual productivity

This is one of those "beat the drum" issues on HN where we keep seeing article after article trying to drive the same one-sided point home. When I see this as the top article on HN, I just have to wonder if many of the people who come to HN are looking to disrupt the startup community.

I've worked in environments that run the gamut from individual offices, to cubes, to small working group rooms, to large open spaces. I've managed people in all of those environments as well, and I can tell you that openness leads to more synergy and more overall productivity. Maybe one or two in ten people have trouble working in that environment because they're too distracted. Sometimes you need to find hybrid arrangements to give people with trouble focusing a little more space -- but to just blanket claim that it's all about floorspace cost (as this article did) is akin to political advocacy.
April Fools' Day is amateur hour for people who aren't funny the other 364 days of the year. It's much like New Year's Eve for people who don't party or Valentine's Day for people who aren't romantic. They feel like they have to do this on this exact day, which of course leads to an embarrassing situation for everybody.
You could try branching out a bit in college - do stuff that's not your primary interest. If I could go back, I might consider studying economics in college. Programming is something that it sounds like you like anyway, so you'll be ok even if you don't study it.

You'll be able to find a programming job just fine even without college. It'll be harder, and you may have trouble in snooty environments that place a lot of emphasis on that, but .... they're assholes anyway and you're better off without them. There are certain jobs and things you probably won't be suited for without the necessary background and knowledge, some of which are actually cool things, so that might be something to consider. OTOH, if you're determined enough, you can probably go back and learn those things if you really want to.

I dropped out of college, and generally don't regret it, but there have been times when it has been a hindrance.
Freescale i.MX. Here's their git repository:

http://git.freescale.com/git/cgit.cgi/
How long have you used Linux for? I mean, have you ever tried Linux?
Don't forget to spend all day of the Super Bowl telling everyone on the Internet how you don't watch football.
That's certainly implied in the article. And would be a decent strategy as Motorola just needed to become relevant again and it's corporate master can justify subsidizing some handsets if it helps in the OS war against Apple. With Lenovo taking over though that will all be up for review.
As much as cherry-picking makes anyone wrong.
Replication is one of the main reasons some big project choose MySQL and the guy ignores that point and only mentions replication in passing. I am sure you can have as good a selection of reasons to avoid PostgreSQL or any other.
That does not really matter though. Some guy who never bothered to read MySQL documentation is now switching to PGSQL and will run it without bothering to read any documentation. It does not matter because his project is so trivial it would run on anything, but he is happy because he uses "the real database". So be it.
And the guys who really do know what's going on and run systems with hundreds of millions of users don't waste their time writing bullshit articles like this. Guy recomends MongoDB as an alternative, what can I say.
I'm not sure where you're physically located, but if you were a young cousin of mine on either the US or Japanese sides of the family, I'd tell you get the degree. If you feel that college is too easy mode for you, feel free to take more difficult or eclectic courses, or throw yourself into extracurriculars. (It's a great time to learn a foreign language.)

Why get the degree?

1) Because there is no circumstance where having an undergraduate degree makes you worse off than not having it.

2) Because now is the easiest and cheapest time in your life to check the degree box.

3) Because the opportunity to be a college student may, if you take advantage of it, give you the option to ease into parts of being an Honest to God Adult (TM) like, e.g., resolving conflicts with people who aren't family members or keeping a budget or juggling multiple priorities at once. It can be easier to get adjusted to this sort of stuff when you are not also getting adjusted to the wild world of working.

4) Many employers in our line of work do not strictly speaking require a degree. Unfortunately, you will occasionally in life be called to deal with people of good will who have irrational requirements. For example, governments and future mothers-in-law may have absolute requirements for college degrees. Check the box today, avoid a heck of a lot of stress in eight years.

You've got the rest of your life to work on the career thing. Trust me, it's plenty of time.

If you drop out, are you condemned to being a bum? Not in the least. Recommendations at this point would differ based on where you live, but they're probably going to sound like some variant of "Find a clueful company which has room for a young engineer to both learn from more experienced engineers and also meaningfully impact the organization. Work for them for 3-4 years then reassess."
Go to college.
This is the kind of post that usually attracts a LOT of replies, many of them quite good. But knowing that you're about to have a lot of reading to do, I'm going to try to keep this very short.

You alone are responsible for your career advancement. Don't expect a company to lay out a fulfilling career path for you. If you are unsatisfied, ask for more. If you can't get it at your current job, get a new one.

Dropping college won't automatically make you a bum, but finishing college will give you a way to prove to people that you aren't one.

Finally, some valuable reading:

http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html (Just don't assume that you have to be in a startup for it to work.)

http://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a-pro...

And the Derek Siver's piece mentioned elsewhere: http://sivers.org/kimo
I have this phone and I love it. It flies. It makes phones 3x the price look ridiculous.

It's also super tough. On YouTube, one guy ran over it with a car and submerged it in water and it recovered.

I'm intrigued by the specs of the 'flagship' phones but none of them make any sense next to the G, power-user or not. Unless you game...I have no idea how games run on this thing because I never play.
you are young, go to college and enjoy it as long as it lasts
Tolle anleitung zum nachölen
Mobile Tuesdays: Bill Siwicki talks m-Commerce | Warply
I'd say you can skip college if you are really specific about something that doesn't require a degree, or you are extremely good at forging your own path (starting a company, freelance work, or if you are really well networked). Otherwise, go to school.

I'd say go to school anyway, because I have more traditional beliefs about how college helps with personal development (especially if its liberal arts). The perspective you gain by studying subjects that are completely unrelated to your field will be invaluable in giving you an understanding of the world, especially once you realize that those fields aren't completely unrelated.

Plus college is just too much damn fun. Don't skip it.
The only thing that is much worse are spam emails claiming "Our prices are so low that they look like an April Fools joke, but we're serious!"
If you can, go study at college/uni ... It might not be optimal optimal for you, but neither are other options.
At 19 you have a lot to learn still. The advantages of finishing college are, among others:

1) The certainty that you followed, at least, a 'formal' training (in a very loose sense, I know), which gives you a sense of accomplishment.

2) Education, education, education. The mere fact of studying something you do not fancy is such a boon to your education that you have to go through it to understand it.

3) Future career searching (this is somewhat silly but it is a fact).

On the other hand, IF (big if) you DO (big do) have a plan (big plan) for your life already, do pursue it. But I (big I) would make sure that plan includes family, a way to earn money and contingency plans.

So, each way has its pros/cons but just 'dropping' because you do not like it is not quite rational, to me.

But these are just ideas on the spot.
Suffers from the same flaw as most critiques of open plan: it focuses on individual productivity while failing to understand how it contributes to team productivity.

For what it's worth, most of the open plan proponents have a similarly frustrating tendency to completely ignore the individual productivity trade-offs.
Can you use Lumia without MS account? I know you can do that with Android (for example using F-Driod repository instead of Google Play), and I'm pretty sure you can't do that with iPhone, but I don't know about Windows Phones.
I dropped out when I was 20. It was one of the best decisions of my life; I can't imagine an alternate life. When people ask me if it's okay to drop out, I tell them that it's a bad decision, in most cases.

Unlike others, I didn't drop out of an engineering course. I dropped out of an accounts course, to work on my web startup.

On the face of it, it sounds like a major risk. I think it was a very calculated, and risk-free decision. I had started working while I was still studying, and was making decent money when I dropped out; multiple times more money than what I would make by completing college and getting a job like my peers. Also, I hated accounts, and loved tech. The thought of spending your only life doing something you hate was unbearable.

So, you see, the decision was unanimous.

When people think about dropping out, it is usually because they think college is boring, or they like working over studying. This is what makes dropping out very risky.
I just don't read news on April 1. Sometimes is really hard to decide what is joke and what is true.
College is fun. Go there and make friends, if nothing else. Schools are one-size-fits-all everywhere, and you have to deal with it. I'm 21 and struggling to qualify for uni because of my state which is similar to yours. People that are eager to learn real-life stuff usually struggle throughout their education, as far as I can tell.
why_not_both.png ?

People should have private offices so they can be alone to think when they need, and also have bullpen areas where they can collaborate.
Email is similar, only it's not really practical to update everyone on your email address when you switch email providers.

Actually that's dead easy as long as you have ownership of the email-address used.

If you have an email-address ending in a domain you don't own, yes you are indeed fucked, because you were naive enough to associate your digital identity with an object you have no ownership rights to.

If you however use a email-provider to provide email for your own domain, you own the address and are free to move between providers at no cost what so ever. Like I did, when I got fed up with Google.

You're not locked in. You can have full freedom with a simple $10 domain. What are you waiting for?
I fully agree. Open Access journals are evil. Very nice analysis, has anyone been able to quantify the impact of the increased popularity of OA journals on the financial crisis?

Also we should take into account the energy saved by all the scientists not being able to download paywalled full pdfs, mother earth says thank you.
That doesn't match my own experiences - my wife cracked the screen on hers already.
I just use an email address on a domain I own and send/receive from/to that address from gmail.

That way if I change email provider it is transparent to people emailing me, and domain portability is a solved problem.

Could we not make this simple enough that everyone could do it?
The Emergence of the Universal Surveillance State
I've just bought this phone. Really does live up to its expectations. Yes, it could be thinner, it could have a better camera, it could have expandable memory, but it works, daily use is extremely pleasant, and I don't really feel like I'm missing out on any essential part of the experience. Basically it kills any sensation of needing to get an upgrade out of necessity.
Technical Feasibility of Building Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
The only reason not to finish college is if the opportunity cost is too high because you have something else going on. You can get by in this field without a degree, of course, but you will always be frustrated trying to get past HR. I have a college degree, but it's not in CS, and that's hard enough.

It doesn't sound like college is keeping you back from more valuable projects, you're just struggling to follow through. Finish the degree.
I agree with this. Seriously, it's just one day: Have some fun or let the others enjoy their fun..

I guess this is a first world problem
Apparently you haven't seen the Pixar buildings; it's pretty clear that little of their design was guided by financial constraints. They are about as far as it's possible to get away from typical cheap office construction.
Why an either-or of dropping out or not? Here are some other choices:

- Travel for a semester/year around the world

- Side projects apart from school; use those to choose to new classes

- Transfer to another school and/or country stretching into new opportunities

- Pick up a hobby outside of anything you've ever done before

- Volunteer at a hospital or in a research lab, both desperately need technical people

- Pursue a thesis of original research with a professor you admire

- Challenge yourself with subjects you've never learned before: calligraphy, art history, statistics, horseback riding, etc.

You have your whole life to work. But you also have many, many other choices. Being an adult means choosing your own happiness, not what others expect. The challenge is constantly finding a new muse to keep your interests fresh and exciting. You can change who you are many times over in the next decade or two.

College just helps to show you the range of possibilities for who you can become. That openness to reinvent yourself becomes much harder as you get older. Use the time you have to find new fountains of inspiration. Those you keep coming back to will linger longest.
Scirra wins Best Game Creator award
Worst article headline ever.
What good is math and why do we teach it?
Thank you for your response! I'm living in Eastern Europe, Romania; not exactly a tech hub, which is why the college level is so low :/ Most of what I've learned is from free available resources (books, lectures, you name it) Thanks for the points on why I should get the degree, they make sense!
The trouble I have with these arguments by programmers against open floor plans is I directly correlate the dramatic increase in popularity to the rise of programmer rather than non programmer led startups. If in fact it was counter productive wouldn't the (presumably smart) developer/leaders of these startups switch as soon as they got their first Series A check? Or is there a sense they can't because a) they feel stuck due to the cost of rent or b) some herd mentality that means they can't attack talent unless they have the open floor plan?