skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'm at an engineering-focused uni here in the UK (studying computing), and there are a LOT of Romanian guys in my year - all of them very, very good. The level of mathematics you guys get taught at high school far exceeds that of the UK, let alone the US.

You sound like the kind of person who probably sailed through high school and likely has great exam results from there. Combined with the fact that you've got tonnes of experience and have taught yourself, you'd have a great shot at studying somewhere abroad, if you think you'd like to do it. I learned a lot online and from working on open-source projects, but for me personally, formally studying computing has broadened my horizons massively and opened a huge number of doors.
> Maybe one or two in ten people have trouble working in that environment

In my experience they are the one or two that do all the heavy lifting.
I found college boring enough, I actually failed out once, and then kept pushing eventually just to get the piece of paper.

The key thing that made college worth it for me though was two things a) finding people of similar interests to work on cool things and b) figuring out how to work with others.
I don't think anyone is arguing that writing features isn't helping the company in general, and the individuals that asked for it - but that's not the only way developers can help other individuals within a company:

- Developers can ask other developers questions when they're stuck on a certain problem. In my experience, developers waste far more time when they're stuck on a problem then when they're interrupted.

- QA / PM / whoever is on your "team" can ask quick, simple questions, that are either too small for an e-mail, or would seriously slow them down if they had to write the e-mail, wait for a developer to check e-mail, write a response, etc. Again, in my experience, developers routinely underestimate how much inefficiency having QA / PM / whatever blocked while they wait for information from a developer generates.

E-mail has it's uses, and the fact that some questions are better suited to a quick face-to-face interruption doesn't mean that every question is, but there's definitely cases where it's not the right tool for the job.
The premise of this remarkable study is:

"The officeʹs primary (not only) value, we believe, is as a place for face‐to‐face interaction: a place to meet co‐workers and managers, to inspire, coach, be motivated, share information, debate goals and objectives, socialize, make friends, and so on. It is as much or more a social setting as it is a refuge or technical or information center."

The above doesn't sound to me anything like going to work for... you know, working. True so: work didn't even make it to the values list. Now I don't know about you folks but I certainly don't get any pay for socializing, as much as I'd love to. Cornell somehow confuses the office space with cafeteria. That, or it makes the case for an open-floor cafeteria, which I fully approve.
Yeah it would be like seeing a paper written by "Peter Potato" or something like that...
Wow, this is something that I haven't been thinking about! I will definitely ask about the possibility of starting with my masters, because that sounds like a real challenge! Thank you!
Hey, Robot: Which Cat Is Cuter?
I'm going to agree. Until last year, I had worked exclusively in open office plans. Some were good, some were pretty horrible. Not all open office plans are created equal, and this is a critical distinction.

In my experience, open office plans scale poorly. The only successful ones I have worked in had less than 10 employees. Co-locating teams that don't need to collaborate (e.g. engineering & marketing) is typically a bad idea.

More to the point, I've now worked in a private office for a year. It has its perks, but I find myself wishing for a small open office plan again. The cons of isolation outweigh the pros of occasional distraction, IMO.
At ~20 my boss at the startup where I worked summers suggested that if I joined full-time he'd hire me on at a very good salary. I stayed in school for no reason particularly better than "my parents would kill me."

In retrospect, I am tremendously glad I didn't drop out. I went on to grad school in a different field (where I met my wife!) and love the work I'm doing now. And while not having a college degree wouldn't have held me back in software, necessarily, I could never have entered the field I am in now without the degree.

To use a somewhat different example, my FIL worked his way up to a director-level IT job without any college degree, but now in his 50's he wants to move over to doing non-profit work and is absolutely feeling the lack of the credential.

The bottom line is that life is long and you're young. You can't know what you'll want to be doing 20 years from now, and there's a lot of value to keeping your options open at this age.
Ask HN: Pick a language.  What are some project ideas that show it off?
I realize that if I pick up a web framework, web projects are the obvious application space. But what about "raw" languages? If I want to see toy around with, say, haskell, what's a good application space to show off it's feature set/paradigm and build something that's not just a crappy "Hello World" application?<p>In other words, let's get a listing of project ideas (not startup ideas) per language that show off that language's strengths in a non-trivial but below expert-level way. Go!
Regarding to development it depends on your needs and how mixed is your development environment (is everyone on a Unix system, or you can have Linux/Mac/Windows)

If you are concerned about mixing you binary with source in a repo you can always use `npm install --ignore-scripts` this should download modules without building them and add them to your repo afterwards, followed by a `npm rebuild` and adding created files to `.gitignore`

For the pre-deploy preparation what I'm doing now is preparing everything in a separate location (pre-deploy path), pulling new code rebuilding it if necessary, running tests if all went ok the code is moved to the final deploy path.
I thought we were going to keep the April Fools pranks of HN.
Apple Acquires iFixit
> Because there is no circumstance where having an undergraduate degree makes you worse off than not having it.

Depending on where you live, one could make the argument that there is some opportunity cost associated with spending 4 years in school along with the debt that would possibly come with it.

I went the route of quitting school and becoming a developer full-time as I felt the experience was more valuable than sitting through pre-requisites I wouldn't ever use, the standard "Rocks for Jocks" geology courses for example, or sitting through a CS lecture and hearing things I learned as a young teenager.

At the end of the day, the OP has to weigh his options and determine what is best for him. However, as someone who took the option of not attaining a degree and instead went straight into my career: It is possible, it just isn't for everyone.
Part of what distribution-managed trust establishes is that it puts all distribution users (of that particular distribution) in the same boat. This is incredibly useful for verification purposes.

If I cared, I could even cross-verify across distributions by comparing their source tarballs.

> Or worse: if Debian is an example, they'll say "I don't understand this code, therefore it's not useful", comment it out, and ship horribly broken software to you.

The other point of view: they fix software so that it is useful, and I can easily have an integrated system. For the one problem you point out, there are hundreds (or probably even thousands) of useful integration patches that distribution users take advantage of every day, without even realizing it (and those suitable for upstream projects generally get pushed that way, too).

If you don't like distributions, then don't use them. And have fun with that.
This is really the best answer. Our office is open-plan as a rule, but there's plenty of "individually-sized" meeting rooms where you can work privately if you need to focus on something. It also serves as a good signal that you shouldn't be interrupted if you've taken one of those spots.

Obviously you need to have enough of these that there isn't competition for those rooms, but it can definitely work well.
Try another European university? Or maybe doing a year or two of Erasmus could help.
A trip down memory lane with Microsoft Word 1.1
It doesn't fit it at all Hershel. 35% makes a lot of sense relative to sales and marketing and channel costs. 3.5X the price of components with most of that being made up in marketing and offline retailer costs is a completely different statement.
It would seem to be easier to break the cycle on the marketer's side because you're viewing the problem at the choke point where marketers are ostensibly in control - but really it's a systemic problem with people that would have to be fixed. Fix a couple of marketers and a couple of other marketers step in to fill the void.

Plugging a couple of obvious holes in the dike does no good when the dike is fundamentally unsound.
In my view the people that recommend BSD/MIT or more permissive licenses tend to come from two camps: those that want to use the software themselves without having to share back anything or those that think that having a permissive license will get so many users that some benefit / coder sharing back will happen as a result.

I think the perceived drawback with AGPL is that you'll not have the community jump in as readily as with a more permissive license. And there is a lot of negative talk about the license as a result.

Google for example will talk about how AGPL is "more of a procedural issue than anything else" [1] whereas I believe that it is just in their interest to have permissive open source code that they can use and not share back anything. Very little of the Google infrastructure is shared, but there is no doubt that there is a lot of FOSS code in that infrastructure, or as a basis for the infrastructure, which obviously has moved on (and not been shared).

Google once banned AGPL projects from Google Code, but reversed that in Sept. 2010. Maybe the "threat" from AGPL in changing the culture around open licensing is now perceived so low that they aren't afraid of it anymore.

There are successful AGPL projects like MongoDB[2].

[1] http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/03/31/google_on_open_sourc...
[2] http://www.mongodb.org/about/licensing/

Yes, I do work on a bunch of AGPL licensed software which is used by governments, companies and NGOs.
If you're from Romania, did you consider taking a year to study abroad using the Erasmus program, to see how stuff is taught elsewhere ?
I was in your position a few years ago (living in Slovenia) - I've too learned programming at an early age, and although I didn't have industry experience, I didn't want to go study CS, because I had a feeling I wouldn't learn anything. Instead, I studied math, which was interesting, hard and very useful (can work in finance, understand statistics, get into AI/ML/big data, ...).

Also, just a few days ago I was thinking what I would change if I was 16 again - I would (1) start meditating - meditation has given me very good emotional control, which is one of the most useful things in life, (2) learn languages - Spanish, French, Russian, Japanese, Arabic, ... I had the most time in high school/college, and looking back, wasted most of it, when I could be learning at least one language a year (to a decent conversationalist level), and (3) get into computer security - it's a perfect job for a consultant, allows remote work, and seems to be becoming more and more relevant with each passing year (bonus: you know how to secure your own devices).

TL;DR: don't start working yet, after college you will be starved of free time, use it to better yourself.
You didn't talk about financing. Are you paying for college yourself? With loans? Or is someone else paying the bill?

If you are paying for college with loans; I would drop out. There is no need to go into massive debt without a specific purpose. I think college can be beneficial with a specific course of action. But--in the US--a lot of people go there to 'find themselves' whatever that means. If you want to drink alcohol and experiment with drugs and waste a bunch of years I'm sure you'll be able to find a way to do that without racking up huge college bills.

However, if you aren't taking on any of the expense of going to college, I would go. Learn as much as you can. Take different classes. Look for internships or jobs to get experience and education at the same time (and hopefully some money).
Thank you, I needed that.
I think some of the best and most productive days I have had have been where I have been in the same cramped office as the rest of my team and we were all working on different chunks of the same problem - "Bob - are you using a list or a dictionary to pass the foobars in?"

That's great for a single team all working on one thing - but I do not see the open plan office as a series of nicely appointed open plan offices for 4-8 people with sound-proofing.

I have worked in open plan offices with hundreds of people in the same open-plan - hearing birthdays, laughter, horror, lunchtimes and socialising that have nothing to do with me personally or professionally.

Cornell may have found that it is useful to know what the rest if your physically co-located team is working on - yes - but not hundreds of others that I need to filter out too.

If serendipity is valuable to you as a company, throw a Wednesday afternoon mixer and expect groups to form and make something new to try out. But give them team rooms for that wednesday.

I am a big fan of "team rooms", and a big big fan of remote working and always on video. But living in the middle of hundreds of others just teaches us to ignore everyone.
It's called selling out and it's socially accepted because it's a survival necessity for nearly everyone. There are principled communities where it matters, and then on the other side there are websites like this one dedicated to the idea of selling out. For everyone else their prepackaged rationalization is the Yuppie Nuremberg defense.
Because things that are difficult to decrypt eventually become less difficult to decrypt as computing power catches up with encryption complexity ... and a static datafile provides no protection against fast-as-you-can brute-force decryption attempts.
Not exactly ;-)

Many people used Hotmail (originally Hotmail) but many people also used Yahoo Mail (originally Rocketmail), which was generally as good or better.

Unfortunately for those people (eg me), Yahoo Mail is now unusably horrible while the new "Hotmail" is generally as good as Gmail and sometimes better. (The web interface is slower, but if you're concerned about speed then you're not using the web interface.)
Now we're talking.

I think you forgot about the guts. Instincts. Whatever happens at a subconscious level, yet influences our explicit thoughts. If you want to communicate effectively, mapping an idea to my head is not enough. You also have to keep my guts in check. For instance, if you're aggressive, it will be more difficult for me to hear you (my own aggressiveness here sure didn't help me get heard).

Regarding "intellectual property", there are two things: the standard definition, that most people know in their head. And I agree this one is accurate. But we also have the connotations, the various feeling "intellectual property" triggers in their guts. Those are not accurate. People understand the term well at an abstract level. But at a gut level, they don't.

That leaves them open for bogus arguments such as "we should protect property, including intellectual property". An effective con tool.

Try on the other hand to say "we should protect property, including intellectual monopoly". The type error is obvious, an the argument doesn't fly.

Two very different outcomes, yet the concept behind "intellectual property" and "intellectual monopoly" was the same all along. That's because of the guts. The two terms may in an abstract sense refer to the same concept, but they don't feel the same, and different feelings lead to different outcomes.

---

Now if you're in the middle of an actual debate, there will be no avoiding the term "intellectual property", for even if you're wise enough not to utter it, the other party will. At that point, your only recourse is to point out that intellectual property is not a form of property, but a form of monopoly (and maybe take a minute or two talking about state enforced exclusivity). At that point, I would stop using the term "intellectual property" altogether. If the other party continues with "intellectual property blah blah", I will paraphrase the argument with "you said that intellectual monopoly blah blah" before making my next point. If we come to that, I believe most intellectual monopoly advocates will start to insist that "intellectual property" actually is a form of property.

And we're back to arguing over definitions. The only reasonable middle ground I see is that we both stop using the terms "intellectual <whatever>", and start talking about copyright, patents, and trademarks directly (and possibly separately, for my current stance isn't the same on all three).

But that's for longer debates. If you only have the time for an elevator pitch, you may have to use the more heavily loaded terms to make your point quickly.
The answer to your question is really, "what do you want to do in life?"

(And the answer is still, probably, stay in college)

What's your end-goal -- where do you see yourself in 5, 10, 20 years? Do you want to be working at some high-ranking position at a company -- in other words, a well-paid employee? Then yes, you should most definitely go to college and get your degree. You'll find that, without your degree, being an employee is incredibly difficult -- people won't want to hire you and they'll pick others ahead of you. And if another 2008 recession hits, then you may very well be screwed.

Additionally, as others have said, if you want to be an employee, you're going to have to take your career into your own hands. Very few companies care to help their employees get ahead -- they view them as an asset, and they're trading money for the value of your work. You'll want to go out of your way to appeal to your boss, check for openings at higher positions, and apply quickly to move up. Bigger corporations tend to be worse about this; some startups and smaller businesses may be far more helpful to their employees, since the higher-ups know you on a personal level.

Pretty much the only lucrative option, if you don't want to go to college, is to become an entrepreneur and work for yourself (unless you're extremely good at selling yourself to potential employers, or you have amazing connections). If you want to go down this road, however, I'd honestly suggest that you stay in school for now and work on your business on the side, only quitting when the business can support you and you don't need the degree anymore. That's what many of the entrepreneurs of our day did -- Gates, etc.

I kind of felt the same about school -- it was way too easy. I didn't feel that I learned much, and I was honestly just there for the degree (and the beer, parties, and girls, haha), knowing that to get a decent job I'd need one. I also feel the same about jobs -- I'm currently working at a big company, and I just feel like a cog in the machine. It honestly feels like I'm back in high school -- easy work, learning nothing, showing up just for the paycheck. That's why I'm working to start my own business -- if I could do it all over again, I'd have tried to launch businesses while I was still in undergrad and had way too much time on my hands.... but hey, hindsight is 20/20.

Disclaimer: This is all based on my own opinion, experience, and observations, but I hope it's helpful. I wish when I was younger, someone had basically said this to me. When I graduated high school, I was told that I absolutely have to go to college, get a job with great benefits, and climb the corporate ladder -- it's only once i got there that I realized, hey, this sucks! There are other options, but you must realize that the degree is still actually very useful as a fallback (or, pretty much necessary if you want to work for someone else).
What exactly is stopping you to learn what you want? If you are really passionate about it, you find a way, even without college.
I'm actually considering that! Where exactly do you study? I feel like around here they teach us too much math, but no practical stuff and I would like to give it a shot and study abroad
I never once gave much thought to the idea that Apple would somehow shut out unsigned apps from its desktop computers, for the main reason that there would be too many existing apps that would suddenly lose functionality and cause a backlash.

With a port to ARM, though, Apple can simply say that the developers haven't ported their app to the new architecture yet, and that more apps will become available as developers catch up. Meanwhile, all those apps that currently require some kind of lower-level access could be banned.

On the other hand, I think that would be a huge boon for non-power users; it would be nearly impossible for malware to get onto the computer, and even annoyances like Adobe's and Microsoft's auto-updaters would finally get funneled though the App Store, which would prevent programs like that from constantly occupying memory/CPU/network.

For this to work, though, I think Apple would be wise to include some kind of developer mode feature (perhaps even forking over the $99/year fee) that would allow unsigned or potentially dangerous apps to run.

All of this (admittedly wild; sorry, coffee is kicking in) speculation definitely has me excited for the future of Apple, though! I haven't felt like that since Steve was around.
There were reasons why everyone started to gradually not include their whole articles in the feed, and they weren't named Google or Facebook.

I don't remember this ever really working properly, except maybe when it was called USENET.
Well, people think they cannot miss out and need to do it - because their competitor does it. You'll see the same with world cup advertisement in a few months. Most of it is crap, rising above the crowd is hard.

On the other hand, there are some clever things that sound like jokes, but are not: http://stroopwafel.me/

Well, I for my part have my share of fun.
If you care about this, then use an agent (eg. gpg-agent). With this general mechanism, you can arrange your own system, including something out-of-band if you wish.
I'm loving how everything is moving to JS :)

Can someone explain why I might want to use Lua in a browser over JS? Does it have a fundamental feature that JS does not have?

Cool name btw!
Which option do you choose to login
If you just found a new product that you want to try out, and you go to the login/signup page to find that you can signup using Facebook/Google/Twitter/Email, which option do you choose generally?

And why?
Do you have a blog or somewhere where I can get more information on your experience using the PRUs ?

Thanks !
Great advice.

I might add that another option would be to study something totally unrelated in college, to broaden your horizons. Literature, arts, architecture will teach you how to understand and enjoy culture, at a level that is difficult to acquire as an amateur. The old "study Latin and Greek to better understand life and humanity" thing is still valid.
Windows 7 outgains Windows 8.x in market share ; Windows XP still above 27%
Developing software is hard. Today – we're changing that
Actually yes, but it's the kind of subject that at my college is kept like taboo :/ I'm by far better off starting college again-ish at another college abroad