skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
You've just hit the malaise called "the passage of time". Things change and things look different. This becomes upsetting if you stand still as you witness the passage of time. A lot of us have seen it in the music industry, remember the 90's where pop and porn pretty much became synonymous? Move sticks, find different communities. A change of scenery will help you find what you are looking for again.

Complaining about people talking business is in conflict with your IT department woes. If you run your own business you get to see the big picture.
The reason you'll see so much "business" in hacking is because people grow up and need jobs. For hackers the BEST jobs are startups OR starting your own company. Think about it, would a rebel just take some random job or forge their own path?
I had a "less is more" thought when I was debugging my girlfriend's HTC Touch Diamond last night. It's a Windows Mobile smartphone, and she deleted a program. Then she kept getting an error on startup telling her a component was missing and to reinstall the program. I ended up having to delete a shortcut from the Windows\Startup folder to fix it. Sometimes I wish phones just made calls!
Google Docs - Todos os itens
It's certainly true here in Europe, but we've had MMS for at least 5 years, so the previous iPhone model was a bit of an odd duck out for not having that feature.
So, you don't bank online or pay bills online? I know I do. This is taking X desktop application away from a CSR and providing this functionality directly to customers over the web. And pretty much any ordering system done on the web has replaced the traditional desktop application that a rep would have had to use previously as you called/faxed/mailed in your order.

Also, there's mail and Office-type apps that are solely web-based as well.

Further, (and this is just in my company so take it FWIW) but our ticekting system has moved to a web-based system. Same with our Leave/Absence tracking system (with a SAP backend). I could go on and on.
"There will always be a requirement for people to know the ins and outs of desktop programming."

Always is a very long time.
The problem is that businesses have to grow or they die, because they are competing with other businesses, and because they are heavily taxed and regulated. New features mean sales.

So it's mainly up to the consumers. As things are, if you want a simple product made with love, you generally have to pay a premium (e.g. solid wood furniture, swiss watch, etc.) Alternatively we could slow things down by all becoming late adopters.

On the positive side, feature creep drives progress. Most new features are rubbish, but every now and then one is found to be genuinely useful and it is quickly copied by everybody else.
Yeah, because StackOverflow.com is a shining example of Jeff's ineptitude.

Jeff declares bold, out-there statements probably more than his fair share, but he's sparking beneficial conversations that get people talking (even if it's about how wrong he is). You might think his conclusions are brash and useless, but he's contributing to the programming community more than he's hindering it. Personal putdowns aren't helping anybody, no matter how witty they are.
Good design is expensive.
Ask HN: What do you think makes a good teacher?
I just want to know what your opinions on this topic is. I have often heard that many hackers are good teachers so I believe that a good teacher should be passionate about his/her subject.
Really, you believe that? The two challenges that immediately come to mind are scaling and data mining, but there are a number of others. The use cases presented by the web have pushed distributed computing further than any other single thing in computing history. The web is just the interface the user interacts with... the stuff that's going on behind the scenes is still really interesting and very challenging. Building a web app requires both sides of the equation, it's not just writing some html.
And you usually have more than one proof for the more fundamental theorems.
And sometimes it's IE6. No, it won't work on other browsers. No, they won't update or re-write the software - it was a nightmare to get developed the first time around.
I have an addictive personality, which means I like doing everything too much: coding, writing, visiting interesting web sites, smoking, drinking, eating. Basically if it has any sort of positive feedback loop at all, I can make a bad habit out of it.

Fortunately I began suspecting this early in life, so I didn't end up a coke-head or worse. Instead I've learned to balance all of my bad habits in a way that continues to optimize productivity for me. So for example after smoking for five years in my early 20s, I quit cold turkey. As for eating, I'm learning to control my blood sugar levels. I'm finding there is a blood-sugar/caffeine/alcohol feedback system that I'm dismantling. But then there are big problems that I'm still working on, like procrastination and too much web reading (which are related!) I probably lose dozens of hours a week on these. Sometimes I make progress, such as no TV (except for movies) Still others seem intractable, like enjoying coding so much I keep over-coding things.

I think as you get older you begin to realize how screwed up you are -- if you are introspective at all, that is. Some folks aren't introspective at all, or if they are they aren't able to critically see what needs fixing. These are the ones to be pitied. But introspection always has kind of a sad quality to it. I know for me it was a lot more fun when I used to think I was bullet-proof.
That's easy for Apple to say ("Apple’s goal isn’t to make money. Our goal is to design and develop and bring to market good products"), because they are already a very successful company. Anything they sell will make money. As a struggling startup looking for investors, you don't have that luxury. You have to convince people that there is at least a possibility of profit down the line.
After seeing what google docs is capable of it is only a matter of time before even things like photoshop will be web oriented.

Just the other day I was looking for a visio replacement, on a hunch I asked here if somebody knew of a web based version of it and I got two viable suggestions. Now, 5 years ago that would have been laughed at with 'that will never happen'. Now it is there.

Give it another 5 years and who knows. Maybe the next iteration of the gimp is going to be a service, not a local program.

I hold absolutely nothing for impossible, I've been wrong too often in the past :)

note to my fanclub: instead of downmodding try to explain why you think this is wrong.

and have a look at this:

http://www.picnik.com/
good point. But say you have a photoshop webapp (with all the features the desktop version has). When you want to apply several filters, you are depending on the capabilities of the server and also on the current stressload of the servers.

Why? You can push pixels with flash and JavaScript right in the browser. I'm not saying that doing it is right (neither is the article), but you can do it.
I wholeheartedly disagree, mostly because there are a lot of people that think he's the next Fred Brooks. He's not. Far from it. He's teaching a new generation of developers these stupid axioms that make no sense. I didn't realize this until I had a few of the more nonsense ones parroted back at me during an interview once.
What Movies Get Wrong About Time Travel
The problem is that Windows Mobile just sucks.
When this series first came to PBS, I was 10 years old. It was easily the most wonderful thing I'd ever seen. Absolutely magical--if I can use such a word to define something so scientific.

I'm currently saving my pennies for that 7-disc set for sale on Amazon.
DjangoCon 2009 Speaker Schedule
listening is, I think, the most important.

My reasoning is simple. I had a lot of ok teachers who never listened to what the students had to say: the ones that could sit and discuss a subject with us might have had less technical knowledge but we definitely learned a lot more, as a class, with them. I wouldnt be surprised if they probably learnt stuff from us too.

Passion - yeh agreed. Though on the other hand the best teacher we had was borderline manic depressive but was great because he took nothing seriously (and got so bored of the work he taught us lots of cool things: so perhaps that counts as passion for some of the subject :D)
When 'cranking' on a project turns unhealthy...Erik Nilsson essay, part 2
In fact, this is a pretty curious article. Both the quote it reacts to and also the conclusions drawn from it are absolutely wrong (and I do think, this strong wording can be used in this context).

Web programming is difficult in a different way than say, compiler construction or kernel programming. Web programmers have to deal with malicious users, a potentially vulnerable gigantic stack of applications, sessions, databases, communication costs and whatsoever. One might say: Web programming is mad due to integration issues and malicious users.

On the contrary, take compiler construction. Compiler construction is hard, because language design is hard and because mathematical reasoning about programs and program transformations is hard. Generating code for a language is hard, too. Thus, one might say that compiler construction is hard due to mathematical issues and hard with respect to algorithms.

I do not think, I would be able to build a secure, good webapplication anywhere soon, despite having touched and worked with two large, strong complicated compilers. Thus, I think the difficulties are different.

On the other hand, 'all programming is web programming' is just ridiculous. I mean, one can easily drop a gigantic list of things: kernel programming (without kernels, NOTHING works), compiler construction (without compilers, we'd be in stone age), games (c'mon, totally disregarding egoshooters?), media codec implementors (videos, music, ...). None of these directly interface with the web, but all of them are important (at least kernel programmers and compiler constructors are crucial for usual boxes to somehow work). So, not all development is done for the web.

I just wonder when and especially why Atwoods posts go (rapidly) downhill like this.
Nothing is permanent. I still remember the time when I got one of my first jobs for something like $30/mo. only to have an access to personal computer. I remember the first i486 PCs running SCO Open Server (what a mess!) and Informix, I remember FreeBSD 1.x.x and so on.

It was the golden times. Everyone on that field was a hacker. There was no such thing as apt-get or yum which were downgraded sysadmin's level to almost zero. There were even no ./configure && make && make install mantra and you were required to understand what you were doing and why.

But today IT is a mainstream and even in decline. It lost its novelty and romance decade ago, and people involved in it nowadays are mere ordinary factory workers.

Of course, there are still great engineers and programmers (not coders) around, and some new fields like ARM-based consumer devices emerged, but I think there are no such feelings like when you saw first ZX Spectrum or Atary or heard its 8-bit sound.
It's pretty obvious that Apple continues to have a growth strategy. If you want dividends, the tobacco companies have some good ones I hear.
I think this is one of the reasons Apple makes hardware products that are so polished when they finally are released. It lets them try things until they get it right, and if they haven't gotten it right then usually they just keep on working towards it.

I just read the book about the making of the Segway "Code Named Ginger" and in it there is a Jobs quote where he says "Screw the lead times. You don't have a great product yet! I know burn rates are important, but you'll only get one shot at this, and if you blow it, it's over." http://hbswk.hbs.edu/archive/3533.html In my opinion this is how Apple operates for a lot of products where they are seen as innovative and the cash in the bank allows them to do this.
Did you read the article?

Then you would know that my "witty comment" was not about Jeff, but about Michael Braude, whose blog Jeff references. Michael also said:

So forgive me for being smarmy and offensive, but I have no interest in being a "web guy".

It wasn't intended as a personal putdown, but a measured response.
The way I see it, programming for the web is, for simple apps, the easiest way to build anything in any language that provides an interface and does something useful. It's also, in my opinion, the most difficult platform to develop more complex software for.

The statelessness of HTTP, and the long list of requisite skills (JS/HTML/CSS/SQL) needed to build something application-like are pretty serious. And that's before you even get into messaging, caching, and optimization. In the blog post the buffoon spends a paragraph decreeing the nightmares of web development, and the next calling those who want to develop for it "dumb." I'd say the opposite is true.

Alas, there is somewhere in the middle of the spectrum where it's pretty boring for someone who enjoys programming. But I think any technology can get boring when the job becomes more a task of memorizing an API and using it the way you're supposed to than actually hacking. While C is "hard core," doing something in C with X11 is an exercise in rote and memorization.

He goes on about his IDEs and debuggers. What's with the debuggers guy, too dumb to not make mistakes? What's he working with that he's so happy using, Squeak?

So yes - this guy is an idiot. If you're result oriented, the web is a great place to build an app because there are fantastic frameworks to create things quickly that anyone with a browser can use. And if you're hacking oriented, you can write your own framework.
Hammertime - Bloggers are the DJs and MCs of the News Media
"I truly think he should put web programming aside for a while, and realize someone has got to write the operating systems, web servers, middle wares, compilers, tools that make everything possible."

Sometimes on the StackOverflow podcast Joel refers to this whole area of programming as "systems programming," which I think is the correct term. Basically, it is building the things that other programmers use to build applications that normal people use. So, programming where the end user of your work is another programmer.

It would be nice if Joel reminds him of this whole area of programming again in the next podcast. It's clear in their podcasts that Joel has been around the block a few more times, and sometimes needs to fill in the larger perspective that Jeff lacks.
>"It's too easy now. You don't have to love hacking to build something with computers. You don't have to have passion to build, you just throw some parts together, copy and paste some graphics and change the colors in photoshop to match a named swatch you found at colourlovers.
It's kind of sad."

But this is what we've worked for all along. The inevitable result of "Don't Repeat Yourself" and open source. Isn't this what we wanted, to get to a point where programming is easy?
Is that a habit that can be broken?
Having coded in both django and rails, I cannot figure out why you would make that distinction. Every rails app I have ever coded has distinct user roles such as these and it's ridiculously easy to implement. easy to role your own, as well as many plugins which address these needs.
----
:admin_required => [:edit, :destroy] # eg, in controller

if has_role? "administrator" # eg, simple check
- passionate about his/her subject
- caring about the people he/she teaches to
hey Roberto, not to be a jerk but I've flagged your submission, have a look at this please:

http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
WP.me — url shortener from wordpress
I wouldn't mind seeing the author's code. I decided to use Clojure for a project, and while it has generally been a good experience, I do miss the ability to strategically apply CLOS in places.
Ditto. I've found keeping a pair of nailclippers in all of the locations where I sit regularly (work office, home office, next to my bed, etc.) helps a lot. Nail trimmings everywhere is my next challenge.
Without premature optimization, there isn't much of anything interesting going on. This program reads a key, copies the string up to the pointer, appends the character that was typed, and then prints that string to the screen.

Yeah, it's Haskell, but who cares? Of course it's easy to write simple programs in Haskell.

When you start using more exotic data structures, like ropes (or difference lists), that's where Haskell really shines, and would actually be interesting.

For me, the most interesting thing about this article is that it's on the Object Mentor website.
Today's basic is Python.

It's even more portable than Java (runs on ARM-based platforms).
Any idea why I would get docked for a comment like this? I thought this might be a solution that required the least amount of work with the greatest possible functionality. I'm not knocking the dock, I'd just like feedback for future posting etiquette. Thanks!
Depends also on where you teach - in front of a class? In a video lecture? One to one? It is certainly a skill to get a mob of teenagers listen to you for +30 minutes without anyone involved dying (in one way or the other).
I think a good teacher has the goal to make a student better than the teacher, in whatever ways the student will reach this stage.
Every time you notice that you are biting your nails or have the hands close to your mouth slap yourself in the face. Do it hard the first couple of times trying to surprise yourself. I ended years of nail biting doing this, in fact it works so well that I even wrote about it a couple months ago (in spanish: http://deadsunrise.net/post/10-Como%20dejar%20de%20comerse%2... )

You can do other things like screaming or standing up fast or some other unusual action, it will help you to identify the habit and stop it.
Magnus who ?

I'm sorry, maybe the guy has a legitimate claim but I'd never even heard of him.

He's doing a good job of advertising spotify though!
Drug Compound That Kills Cancer Stem Cells Identified
I don't think "sparking conversation" in and of itself is a good thing. Most conversation is mundane, boring, and a waste of time.

The problem with Atwood is that his popularity on the web is an example of the stupidification of web programming. People who build web apps flock to him because he has become successful on the web, not because what he says is true, enlightening, or even beneficial to their success as a hacker.

The web is popular for wannabe's because they get exposure. They think they are hackers, but really they are just factory line workers assembling someone else's code.

In most forums I frequent, the majority of questions are from people asking how to get some FOSS project to work, not how to code some particular algorithm or do something hard. They don't do any research. One of the questions on stack overflow right now is if it's possible to find where sql server database files are stored. Seriously? If you can't do something like that, why are you trying to build a web app?? It's one of the most basic things in sql server.

I think at the moment, we're in a web programming bubble, fueled not by the love of money, or the love of programming, but the love of popularity. This love is shared by many because we all want to be loved.
While I sometimes hated the teachers that operated this way in retrospect I think the ones with the highest expectations were the best teachers. I say that with one exception, if you're going to have high expectations you best not be dry/boring/lazy about teaching the subject at hand. The best teachers know their shit, but also have the empathy and personal skills to use well placed analogies to "bring it down to our level". Perhaps this boils down to just having a sense of humor.

Strict, High Standards, Understanding/Human.
Well then Apple isn't paying their designers enough...
No with a Photoshop-like web app the server is simply sending javascript to your computer where it runs in your browser. There may be some interesting things like identifying the location of your picture that happen server-side, but things like filter will usually run client side.
A good teacher provides the circumstances for students to teach themselves, and guides them in the right direction when they need it. I know I learn much better when I figure something out for myself than when someone just tells it to me straight.

The Socratic method was a good idea.
Harry Potter And The Half Blood Prince Video Game
In Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Voldemort is tightening his grip on both the Muggle and wizarding worlds and Hogwarts is no longer the safe haven it once was. Harry suspects that dangers may even lie within the castle, but Dumbledore is more intent upon preparing him for the final battle that he knows is fast approaching. Together they work to find the key to unlock Voldemort's defenses and, to this end, Dumbledore recruits his old friend and colleague, the well-connected and unsuspecting bon vivant Professor Horace Slughorn, whom he believes holds crucial information. Meanwhile, the students are under attack from a very different adversary as teenage hormones rage across the ramparts. Harry finds himself more and more drawn to Ginny, but so is Dean Thomas. And Lavender Brown has decided that Ron is the one for her, only she hadn't counted on Romilda Vane's chocolates! And then there's Hermione, simmering with jealously but determined not to show her feelings. As romance blossoms, one student remains aloof. He is determined to make his mark, albeit a dark one. Love is in the air, but tragedy lies ahead and Hogwarts may never be the same again.
In the game, players will return to Hogwarts to help Harry survive a fraught sixth year. They will also have a chance to engage in exciting wizard duels, mix and brew magical ingredients in Potions class and take to the air to lead the Gryffindor Quidditch team to victory. Players may even get sidetracked by Ron's romantic entanglements as they journey towards a dramatic climax and discover the identity of the Half-Blood Prince.
To me, the three basic ingredients to taco seasoning are:

1. Cumin

2. Chili powder

3. Tomato sauce

This recipe is missing 2 of the 3.
I bought a Jaguar XK because I love the car, the attention to detail and the style. Yes, I could have bought something much cheaper, probably just as reliable (or more so!) but I chose this route as it has a sense of style. If there's anything about business that I've learned it's that there are products for every niche, be it low cost food through to high priced watches.
Well one could lean on the anti-web/cloud-apps case a bit heavier taking into account the bits and pieces of paranoia that easily stem from a centrally-operated system, where admin is god, a big corp has your files etc. Capitalism goes BOFH I guess. Then again, centralization also evokes images of Brazil and the french Minitel system, which, all things considered, were quite cool (and the Minitel still holds some ground).

I suppose by talking of 'web programming' one immediatelly thinks of PHP, and thus the horror, but there are quite a few other things that are considered web programming and do not promote bad practices. Then again, if the Cloud is the wave of the future, we can but ride it out.
Your post is pretty close to where I am, 'cept I gave up smoking when I was 12 (I still fancy a ciggy occassionally!), apart from a few occassions since.

I was speculating whether or not computers make me overall less productive or not - I'm convinced they do. I need other people around to work with, then I can get "addicted" to helping and progressing the task rather than anything else.

Sadly I'm working largely autonomously despite efforts to change that.