skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
For what it's worth, here's how I now see it / it went for me.

I did the traditional education - college, University. But I was a young 18 and the three years I spent at University were really good to 'grow up'. I'm sure I could have (eventually?!) managed in the real world, but I spent three years finding out a bit more about myself, growing up, playing in bands, drinking, meeting girls, learning to take care of myself - etc.

That said, the CS degree I have hasn't really helped my career since that point except to open early / initial doors. I'm sure some foundations have probably helped with my work since then, but for the most part, everything since has been self taught / work experience.

So at that point, for me, the formal education was worthwhile to 'get me in'.

Jump forward nearly 15 years - (and like me) lots of my friends work for companies that do stuff on or with the Internet. Most of these guys never went to University and just started working at 18. (I dread to think how irrelevant some of the stuff you'd learn in year one of a three year 'Internet' degree would be by the time you looked for a job, BUT I guess the qualification would probably still open some doors for you.)

For them it was a case of moving to where the action is, showing you're prepared to learn and/or hustle, or have some personal work/freelance work to show to someone. And being confident. Lots of smiles and lots of confidence (which is totally fake-able). Many smaller companies will happily take a chance on you if you're hungry and they can pay you a basic wage.

From that point, it's pretty easy - just work hard. Provided you've held down a job (which isn't too tough if you're not an unpleasant person), by your late 20s, nobody gives a monkeys as to your education - all they see is you're capable of remaining employed, can do a job and have experience. So much so, I know many people (in their late 20s and early 30s) who no longer even bother putting 'education' on their CV.

Long and short, don't take your education too seriously. Keep doing your stuff on the side - and when and if you're ready for 'real life' work, be nice, have some confidence and hustle like crazy. And to make it easier still, up sticks and move to where the action is.

Good luck, you'll be fine.
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.

In my experience, synergy and productivity is far more closely tied to clarity of goals and effective leadership than floor plan. Open floor plan advocacy, when it involves dragging people out of the offices they are quite happy with, is often a sign of leadership with misplaced priorities.
Besides spending 15 minutes searching for pokemons and 5 minutes enjoying the htc gluuv joke, this is just a normal day for me.

I really don't see anything to be mad about.
Viewed that way, that lambda calculus expresses a particular (kind of tiny) feature in a PL, it's pretty boring. What you want to do is take note that lambda calculus, this single, tiny feature in a PL, is powerful enough to simulate every other feature in the PL.

The other nice thing is that if you do base your whole language on LC then you get really excellent variable scoping without further questions. That's something that a lot of languages still struggle with (js).
in hope to get some additional sales

That's a copout, like blaming the legitimately elected political leaders in a democracy.

_People_ do this to holidays and special events because they are easily impressed and inclined to follow social trends like lemmings.

If people weren't so impressed by lameness, then the advertisers and marketers would attempt other ways to gather eyeballs.

I shudder when I think of how unreadable I used to find Slashdot every April 1st (back when I was reading it).
“Another trait, it took me a while to notice. I noticed the following facts about people who work with the door open or the door closed. I notice that if you have the door to your office closed, you get more work done today and tomorrow, and you are more productive than most. But 10 years later somehow you don't know quite know what problems are worth working on; all the hard work you do is sort of tangential in importance. He who works with the door open gets all kinds of interruptions, but he also occasionally gets clues as to what the world is and what might be important. Now I cannot prove the cause and effect sequence because you might say, ``The closed door is symbolic of a closed mind.'' I don't know. But I can say there is a pretty good correlation between those who work with the doors open and those who ultimately do important things, although people who work with doors closed often work harder. Somehow they seem to work on slightly the wrong thing - not much, but enough that they miss fame.”

– Richard Hamming, “You and Your Research”
http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.html
I like open floor plans. I find I get more done in my open floor plan office then my closed off private office at my house. I hate how all these critiques are so absolute in that "Open Floor Plans are Bad". Open floor plans work, and they work well. Like Eric Schmidt if there was some secret benefit to having offices for everyone that could make workers so much more productive don't you think companies would jump at the productivity boost ?
IMO it's unlikely. It seems like Apple has to go through a lot to meet their own manufacturing needs, so ramping up production just for third parties would put even more strain on the already-large demand.

Plus, from a market standpoint, Cyclone was developed to meet Apple's own needs. To sell these chips would introduce a "demand" variable into the equation that I think would stifle development.

At any rate, this is a really interesting topic because I think that Apple's oft-critized isolation actually worked much to its own benefit here.
...they are great and I like what you can buy with them.

However...

They are a 'joke' in the broadest sense of the word, but not a joke. I am not 'fooled'.

A true April Fool's Day joke is about pulling the wool over someone's eyes in such a way that they really do not know if it is true or not.
At most organizations I've worked at that use an open floor plan for programmers, we pair-programmed aggressively. Subjectively, a good pair more than offsets the distractive drawbacks of an open floor plan. If instead you hand each programmer a pair of headphones as they walk in the door then yes, productivity's going to take a hit compared to closed offices. Working in isolation in an open floor plan is worse than working in isolation in offices.
Because home might be an even worse place to concentrate in than open-space office. I know it is for me, it's the only reason I actually come to work instead of doing it remotely (which costs me additional 2h/day of commute time).
Well, you locked yourself in. It's easy to buy your own domain name and use it with Google. Then you can switch to a different email system and take your address with you.

Even without giving up your Gmail address in the short term, you could move to Outlook.com, import all your Gmail, and use Outlook.com instead. You can also send Gmail from Outlook.com

Either way, you shouldn't have all your email in Gmail or any other service with no back-up. Set up email forwarding so copies of incoming emails are sent to a different address. Use Thurderbird (or whatever) so you have back-up copies on your hard drive.
"Sure PubMed Central – the free database of papers produced with funding from the National Institutes of Health – gets over 1,000,000 hits a day. But do you really believe numbers from the government? After all, these are the same people who are saying that 7,000,000 people have signed up for Obamacare."

Yes, I do believe they are reasonably accurate, the post is filled with these spurious arguments.

tldr; do not read. waste of time
Really? Most people go to the bathroom once or twice a day. The chances of you timing that to coincide with someone else for whom it's beneficial that you start to spontaneously chat seems kind of low. 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.
SVN source code will be managed using GIT
Speaking as a developer, I've worked for years both in open-plan spaces and in individual offices. My experience is that productivity is incomparably better in an individual office. There was no upside to open-plan; just constant interruption and frustration.
> The price is very convenient for anyone and there aren't any phones which match the hardware specifications of this one.

If you don't mind a (very) slightly slower processor, you can get any one of numerous models from various Chinese manufacturers with dual SIM, expandable storage, removable battery, etc. in the same price range.
That's amusing because I'm actually just fighting a "unicorn poop" proposal that puts a shit ton of sensitive financial data into the system you just described on a stack built by the lowest bidding hipsters the new TA could get in. This is to replace the 10 years investment in the existing 100% working and 5% capacity Oracle/J2EE/SOAP solution. "But but with Ruby we can rewrite this all in a couple of months" (all 2.8 million lines of quite efficient Java - of course!)

Agree with you entirely.
I agree, but that's the very definition of non practical. It doesn't work for 90% of the population. I feel like we should be searching, driving, for solutions that solve everyone's issue not use our issue. We are, for lack of a better word, the "digital 1%". Solutions for us don't necessarily work for everyone.
Hacky Easter Competition
White-hat hacking competition for fun and education.

http://hackyeaster.hacking-lab.com
Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag Lets You Be a Pirate
Why Facebook Probably Isn’t A Rift In The Oculus Vision
Boom! You nailed it. It's the social expectation to do something and BE something that is an excuse for people without those natural tendencies to act out.

Out of their comfort zone, feeling social force to try to be funny, they overextend themselves in obvious ways.
The "big boys" of embedded SoCs (Samsung, Atmel, NXP, Freescale) have been around a lot longer than RPi and are doing just fine.
Grandparent said:

Go was built with one purpose in mind; building web services.

App Engine is a web service. Whether you agree with that statement or not, it replies your question.
The Python usage isn't very instructive:

http://python-history.blogspot.com/2009/04/origins-of-python...

That's the Python language designer saying he wasn't a huge fan of the name when it was introduced, because it didn't quite live up to the expectations it set.

The usage of 'lambda' to construct anonymous functions is just a reference to Lambda calculus, the actual thing is a formal system of operating on those functions.
Wow. You think that time I spend coding features you asked for is not helping you?

Then at the end of the week, I am still giving an accounting of why a feature isn't finished on a schedule given by the same people who were interrupting the work I was doing to satisfy their stated priorities.

I'm amazed at how you totally ignore that this makes people miserable and contributes to bad management.

Why not learn to use email to ask a question?
Sounds like a panopticon to me.
My ideas:

1. For core teams, ditch the open floor plan and instead put teams into small (4-5 person max, with smaller options) private rooms that line the perimeter

2. Project rooms are not permanent. A team should expect to move around perhaps once every 3-4 months

3. Team leaders / managers would of course work in the same room as their team

4. In the center of the perimeter of team rooms could be a hacker workspace, shared areas, supplies, snacks, etc. With breakout meeting rooms around the space as well

5. executive leadership would work sitting with other specific staff (like finance, HR, office managers, etc) in an open floor plan-like area; most importantly, execs wouldn't have private offices because ideally they should be moving around meeting with the teams, jumping into conference rooms, jetting out of the office, etc.

6. this open area should be relatively quiet

7. people working in this open area should have ample access to private spaces for breakout meetings, private phone calls, reflection, relaxation, etc

Obviously these rules won't apply perfectly to every company and work type, but I'm just brainstorming
> April Fools' Day is amateur hour for people who aren't funny the other 364 days of the year.

I'm keeping this in my "quotable quotes" file - do you have a preferred attribution, or is "jedrek" sufficient?
Why the Asteroid Belt Doesn’t Threaten Spacecraft
It's been downhill since BBC aired the spaghetti tree.
I would suggest to take it easy : you're seem to be an intelligent and driven person, and that's good, but life is a marathon. You'll run out of time in the future ('cause work/kids/hobby/drugs/etc.) so enjoy the moment and take your time.

As for your professional life, in my opinion, don't rely on the company to find you a "career path". If a firm proposes you one, it's a path which is convenient to the company, no to you. Find your own path (that's also what college is useful for).
Major in something unrelated to CS that will challenge you.
Almost everyone misses fame, whether their door is open or closed.
It sounds like you're already ahead of the curve with your programming experience. Don't fall into the trap thinking that is all you'll need for a stable career for the rest of your life.

One issue that you alluded to, is that you've been somewhat taken advantage of (underpaid) for whatever reason (possibly youth and inexperience). This will continue to happen until you focus on the skills necessary to demand what you are worth (ie - strong verbal/written communication skills, research, negotiating, teamwork, etc). These are the kind of skills you learn indirectly in college.

Do you need college for all these things? Of course not. You can start a blog today and start working on your writing ability. Specifically focusing on teaching and conveying your ideas in a digestible way.

The cold hard truth of the working world is NO ONE IS RESPONSIBLE FOR YOUR ADVANCEMENT BUT YOURSELF. Its true that there are some companies that will help you along but they are only training you so that they can get the most out of their investment in you.
You need to use a Microsoft account to buy stuff on the WP Store but there is no obligation to use it for anything else, it can be tied to your existing email address and can be closed at any point without any problems.

I've never had to buy an app - the built in ones are awesome and the best others are free (Nokia HERE for example).

You can just chuck a SIM in it and skip the signup when you use it and live with the built in apps as well if you want. It doesn't nag you.
I don't know where you live, but I can tell you what you can do in America degree wise. There are options for accelerating university. Discussing your situation with your advisor may help you get some credits via a special test or the the CLEP and AP exams. There are actually a lot of resources for getting credits, you just need to ask your advisor for help. Maybe they will even accept coursera work. The flip side is that if you attend a tuition mill, they'll not let you speed up your education. If that's the problem I suggest you try to attend a better university.

You can then fast-track to a master's degree(your university may call it something different). This allows you to use grad level courses as courses for your BS. You will find the graduate level courses more challenging and they will test your ability to learn. If you are as smart as you say you are, you'll be able to graduate the program a year early, learn a lot and have an MS to boot.
Given you're Romanian, that means you can easily study in other European countries right? I know of great places in Germany, France, the UK and Finland to study - and there are definitely more.

Might be worth considering - get somewhere with a big tech scene, higher wages and more difficult courses.
Your English is fine, better than most Native speakers :)

One, make sure that you do to neglect Computer Science, you skills now put food on table but those long term computer Science skills make sure you have a career to pay for something long term like retirement and a house. But what is nice now at this time is there are places where you can get free online courses in computer science by the top schools.

Do not go through hr processes, connect to the people with
money as they will have no problem giving the shot once they see stuff you have built.

As far as career planning, many people approach this in different ways. the creator of Perl, the computer language came in to computer Science through human languages. It just depends on what interests you have and what area of computer science those interest lead you to.
We had proper threaded email - far better than Gmail has today -- in the 1980s. Look, for example, at email in Ameol, written for the CoSy-based Cix conferencing system.
NASA Releases Images of X-class Solar Flare
There are always financial concerns. Just because you have a huge budget doesn't mean you don't min-max where possible.
You'll find, if you put your head down and keep working, that it's over within 24 hours.

Unlike Halloween and Christmas, which keep pounding nails into my head from about a month or two before they occur to about two weeks after they're over.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kiySknl9zs0
Well, I guess we've reached the ultimate in meta: an internet rant about internet humor.

Next I guess somebody should parody this? Then a rant about the parody?

Seriously, the internet is full of annoying things, and April Fool's, where folks actually try to have fun with each other, is what's bugging you? I'd place "having to be upset about something 24/7" as much higher on the list than a bunch of bone-headed PR stuff.

I'm really happy HN is mostly humor-free. PG made a smart move there. But one day a year where companies compete to be funny? I can think of a million other things to fret about. Seriously. Trust me, somehow you'll live through it. A day without Erlang innards will leave you mostly scar-free.
For me, only about 25% of going to University was about education. It was about growing up and becoming independent from my parents, having fun and getting really drunk.

You will learn more from it than just the courses & modules you take so keep that in consideration.
AFAIK, motorola does make a small profit over the moto-g.They're not subsidizing it.

And online only without marketing can offer 35%+ decrease in price, which fits my comment.
Don't feel like you're missing out too much -- the engineering classes at e.g. top-flight universities in Japan and the United States are also typically not superior to free information floating around on the Internet.
On the Appreciation of Users
> constant interruption and frustration.

The point of the post you are replying to is that the "constant interruption and frustration" enables other developers to be more productive, raising the overall productivity of the team.

Also, you probably remember the times when you were interrupted and it was annoying strongly, but do you remember the times you interrupted someone else and saved valuable time?
I should state up front I know nothing about the certification process. I agree, there is a lot of benefit to having a working system, even if it means barrier to entry is high. It sounds from your comment like most of the cost is due to the regulatory structure, and not from the testing end, is that right? I'd love to see a cost breakdown of doing a certification. Someone else quoted $250-500/hr for testing. What goes in to that? Testing equipment? Facility build out? Testing technicians?
> If people weren't so impressed by lameness, then the advertisers and marketers would attempt other ways to gather eyeballs.

It's a feedback loop; one that is arguably easier to break on the marketer's side. OTOH posts such as OP's complaint are attempt to break that loop on the side of people by signalling that well, we're fed up with crap. I doubt any marketer will listen though.
I am agreed with what others have already said, there is a correlation between quality of the job and post high school education.

My advice would be to take advantage of all the things that you can do in college and that are harder to do outside. Remember that being in a college is more than lectures, you also have a lot of resources at hand that are very expensive outside.

The final note is that a comp sci degree (or analogous) is more than just programming, for instance if you would like to explore things like machine learning, physics simulation, and whatnot you would appreciate to have a solid math background (college level). It is up to you, you might be just fine without college like Gates and Zuckerberg, but there are also plenty of counterparts who were not that lucky without a college degree.
It's an april fools joke, laced with massive amounts of obvious sarcasm.
Thank you for the resources, just got a first look over them and they sure look interesting!
That link about the Cornell study is comically bad. Where are the raw data tables?

Doing a little background research it seems they were comparing open floor plans to cubicles. They didn't even consider the obvious alternatives to the panopticon, such as remote work or the tried-and-true office with a door.
So the reason businesses shifted to open floor plans when they didn't use them before was that they suddenly became optimal?

Or maybe there are fashions in management as there are in anything else.
Don't take advices from strangers on the internet.

> The big problem is that everyone is trying to make me feel bad about this

You are threatening their identity. A degree is consider the holy grail.
Is it PC-compatible enough to run DOS? If not, then probably Windows is entirely out of the question. Just because it's x86 doesn't mean it's PC-compatible.
This. Plus, even though it might feel like it doesn't give you enough - it will give you education in fields that you don't learn so easily at home.

I dropped out from a university program (non-US citizen, we don't have colleges as you guys do), because I felt it didn't give me enough compared to paid work. However, I regularly wish I stayed for my degree - not because I have a hard time finding employers, but because I actually feel like I'm missing some education. There are many courses which I would love to have read to the end, from mathematics to algorithm theory and finite automata.
Spending some time to actually raise the mood of your clients is a no-go place for you? I assume your preference is to work for a no-emotion company 100% dedicated to the product, and a casual chit-chat is a strong NO policy.

The question is whether a joke is funny and made you smile of course.
Ask HN: Which U.S. university provides the best tech-related opportunities?
I've been admitted to Harvard, Stanford, and MIT and need to choose among them. I plan to major in CS and am interested in bioinformatics as well. My long term goals include founding or joining a startup. I want to get a solid theoretical foundation as well as access to good entrepreneurship opportunities.
I find it hard to believe that you can't challenge yourself at college. Go learn something outside your comfort zone. Different cultures and places are different but college isn't so much about learning a job or vocation, it's about showing that you can learn and showing that you can complete things.