skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'm not even legally an adult, and I feel like things are moving too fast for me. At 17 years. I guess I shouldn't feel like that, but I can't help it.

I started with VB6 as a kid, 6 years ago. I moved onto C++, then learned about 3D graphics and game engines, then learned HTML, CSS, JavaScript, gotten into web development, learned Photoshop, some basic design, working with Linux, PHP, a little of C#. Recently tinkered with MongoDB. Now I'm learning Common Lisp, but I feel I've missed so much, and slowly losing pace.

All those frameworks, Angular, Ember, intimidate me. ZeroMQ. RabbitMQ. AWS, EC2. "Big data". Swift, Dart, even Python and Ruby. Responsive design. Scala. Backbone.js, underscore.js, Node, NPM. Neural networks. How do those things work?

I'm freaking out a little, not even sure if I should continue pursuing this. I so love coding and new challenges, but I just fear it's moving too fast for me and one day I simply won't be relevant anymore. I take a look at HN's front page, and I don't recognize so many technologies mentioned in the titles of articles.

And I'm feeling like one day it'll go over the top, I won't be able to keep up anymore (and I can barely keep up even now), and I'll just quit and go learn play drums. It would be heartbreaking for me, but I'm not even sure if computers are the right thing for me in the long term.

So I understand this post, from the bottom of my heart. And there's this anxiety creeping up about it. Who knows if I'll still be able to do this in 10 or 20 years? And finding another craft which I love so much is also a scary task. I think I might never do.
If I could recommend _just_one_ resource from that list, it would be http://www.tigerteam.dk/talks/IDDD-What-SOA-do-you-have-talk...
So I'm in the 40+ crowd, and things are different from when I was a 20-something. But learning new stuff isn't a problem. I pulled Angular into the new project I'm building at work. I've moved from C to C++ to Java to Python and am now playing with Racket (Python generators have nothing on define-syntax :).

My point is not to say I'm better than the author. I'm nothing special. My point is that there isn't a magical end-of-life for developers. Learning changes. Interests change. Priorities change. Nothing to be afraid of.

And there are positives: I'm much better at prioritizing. I don't waste my time on "the next hotness" just to watch it tank in obscurity three months later. I'm good at understanding what infrastructure is important and what isn't. My hunches have gotten better.

What scares me about this post has nothing to do with the author. I worry more about it propagating the myth that developers have a limited lifespan, that they expire. That's a falsehood that needs to die.
In 2000 I was sitting in the XML proseminar and I asked why? Why validation? Why xPointer?

I wrote my thesis (2005) about Semantic Web (RDF&OWL).
In 2012 the company of my professor ("Ontoprise") went bankrupt

I started working with "SOA" and ESBs in 2006 (just was the thing then).
In 2014 I open sourced the essence of SOA[1] (http://www.use-the-tree.com).
Ups, soooo easy...

But I think things get better (e.g. Hacker News tends to tear BS apart)

(I am prepared to be downvoted duck&cover,shiver)

[1] The essence of SOA? - Fast message transformation ofc (rest is not specific to connecting computer systems)... but that is easy. Sorry microservices?!
Very cool project. This pushes the bounds of what I expect, especially from php.
Again, it's fucking stupid to try to protect the airlines from Hollywood movie plots. First, they never seem to happen

I was in Europe on September 11, 2001. I turned on the TV after a busy day and at first thought it was showing a disaster movie, until I changed the channel and found the same thing.

More people died in bathtubs that year than on September 11th. If they wanted to save lives, we'd have a war on bathtubs, not a war on terrorism.

This is not correct. 1/10th as many people died in bathtubs, although a similar number died in all drowning accidents (some of which are the result of heart attacks or other incapacity suffered while in the water, making the exact cause of death hard to establish): http://danger.mongabay.com/injury_death.htm Of course, we don't have to look far to find things that are more deadly than terrorism in the aggregate - motor vehicle accidents, for example, do kill a lot more people than terrorism does.

But what your argument fails to address is that accidental deaths are highly distributed and largely uncorrelated while terrorist activity is concentrated and systematic. The qualitative differences are huge, just as there's a huge difference between being hit by a pound of sand (not painful unless some of it gets in your eyes or you inhale it) and being hit by a rock of the same weight (painful and with much greater potential to be fatal). As well as the immediate economic and personal losses, catastrophic events also tend to set big changes in motion. It's highly questionable, for example, whether we would have invaded Iraq absent 9-11 and it's equally unlikely that we would have invaded Afghanistan.

Of course that doesn't mean we should organize everything around the very low probability of terrorist attack or any other concentrated risk factor, but to ignore the multiplier effects of concentration is also facile.
What things are you aligning on different lines? Are you stuffing spaces between variables and assignment operators "a = 1"?

Don't do that. It looks ugly on my tab-indented, proportional font display.
This makes me wonder: what if terrorists start attacking the screening/security areas themselves?

They've already succeeded in making air travel vastly more painful than it has any real right to be.

I can only imagine the chaos if an extra, pre-security-area screening is introduced.
I really really need to see your private data. ..Fascist state par excellence. ..Unfortunately, it exports its "democracy" all around.
Hang on: In England sales tax - VAT - is a tax paid by the customer (although collected by the business). That is not Starbucks paying the tax, that's me as a customer paying the tax.

Similarly for income taxes - I pay those as an employee although it is collected by the company.

The company makes use of the UK infrastructure (roads; policing; education; etc) so they should consider paying a bit more tax.

It's worse where a company charges the customer full UK VAT at 20% but pays a lower rate to some other country. (Not sure if this does actually happen, but I've heard it does. And I'm not sure if it's an intended part of the laws or a loophole.)
Are you sure you aren't just trying to convince yourself that C++ is the right choice?
Yea it's normal for sure. But the strstd scale normalizes each lift for the ranges. My presses are only half way to novice, but my legs are just shy.
There are plenty examples in the bible of God doing something "wrong" in the short term.
You're practically making my argument for me. Pretty much every culture is more concerned with adorning its females than males. How can that be without an underlying, enduring reason? You keep pointing to the self-reinforcing cycle, but how does it start, the same way everywhere?

For similar reasons, yes, it seems clear that there is something about us that drives us to religion. I'm pretty sure I would believe that even if I wasn't already a Christian.
Is it ageism? Or is it just experience?

If you've been in the industry for 10+ years, there's a certain cynicism that occurs, when you're learning a new framework/language every 2 years that's just an incremental improvement on another language.

Just because a boss tells you to. "Oh learn this, it's gonna be the next big thing. It's gonna propel your career. Oh, you're done with that? Now, learn this new thing for your next project. 3 months later.. OK, forget that, we're switching frameworks. Learn this now."
I've been training for a 10K run in September for the past 4 or so months, and I have two more to go. I attended last year's event and it was quite nice, so in a sense it is mostly about speed this time around. I'm aiming towards sub-40 minute finish, though right now that seems too optimistic. Sub-45 minute would do too, a slight improvement from last year.

Apart from that I've been doing calisthenics/bodyweight training way too irregularly throughout this year. It's mostly been variations of basic push-ups/pull-ups, squats and some isometric holds. Different numbers of reps and sets with practically no consistency with sessions per week. Sometimes four times, sometimes once a month at worst.

Although I can see (and feel!) the progress, I haven't paid even nearly as much effort into these hobbies as I wish I had. At least I've stopped drinking alcohol almost completely, same with cutting using sugar to the bare minimum and same goes for various flavours in foods I make. Actually making my own food from as simple ingredients as possible has been a huge win for me. Nothing beats experimenting and being creative in kitchen!

I'm still trying to pick up some form of meditation though and get back to doing Dual-N-Back (N=2 for me :)), although this is more about health and fitness between one's ears than their body.
Bummer about the belly bloat side effect :(. And haven't heard about the hot peppers trick -- I'll look into it.

Generally, activities that increase heart rate more would help with fat burn. If your doctor permits, have you tried jogging instead of walking?

I've also noticed that changes in my diet and exercise habits cause my weight to shift by a pound or two here or there before hitting a new equilibrium. I have to constantly shock my body every 2-3 weeks with new regimens to keep progressing.
US bans uncharged cell phones, laptops from some flights
Not at all, actually. Douglas Adams dispensies with this notion in his 1998 Digital Biota 2 speech, in the paragraphs starting with "Where does the idea of God come from?" [1]

[1] http://www.biota.org/people/douglasadams/
Plant your tent and prepare your camp with #Hackers #Camp for this #Summer
We organize our 1st #Hackers #Camp July the 18 19 20 2014 in Corsica. Does the candidates will be ready in the next 11 days 6 hours? http://www.hackers.camp
Shorter version:

David Bowie
I used to have that passion, when I was young (I'm 29 now, so not very young for the tech world, although not old either). And to be honest, it was the 40+ work week what killed it. I never liked specialization, so to me it makes a lot of sense that, if you're already investing that much time in technology, you may spend the rest of the week doing a different thing. I'm getting a new degree (in principle, I don't plan to make a career change, I just want to do something different with my evenings). And this summer I'm learning a bit of Finnish on my own, because why not. Obviously, it's not like I ran out of curiosity, but rather, that I prefer to direct it to several different things than focusing on a single one.

If I devoted my free time to technology, I would be doing so just not to become obsolete, not out of genuine interest, and that would be too frustrating. I actually have some tech interests (Scala, Hadoop, any kind of complex algorithm, etc), but when I get home, there is so much I'd rather do, that I don't program at home any more, except on rare occasions.

There is a lot of pressure to spend all your waking time on technology and things related to your work or your career (I'd say this is part of the so-called "Californian ideology", maybe I'm wrong). But, in actuality, not that much people is so obsessed with learning the same area, and the competition to not get behind is mostly illusory (ageism is another different problem; and no amount of knowledge will free you from it). So my advice here is that, if you don't feel like devoting your life to a single thing, forget about your job the very moment you close your office's door, and enjoy any other of the million things life has to offer. And of course, if you are really that passionate, keep learning new programming languages or techniques on your free time (just be careful about burnout).

Final note: the most tech-passionate guy on my job is one of the oldest (36). It's not a matter of losing it over time, it's a simple matter of people's preferences (and in some cases evolution over time).
Oops, didn't mean to compare it to crime. Just relative in concept.
If you're sick of building CRUD web applications, it's probably a good idea to remind yourself that there are an infinite number of other things you can create with computers.
Hardly. Many people use Google search without being logged in at all. Chrome pioneered the Incognito mode. You can disable web search history (and I have). There's plenty of respect for your privacy there, you just have to indicate your preference.

Anyway. Personalisation improves search results somewhat. It does not improve them as much as, say, a good spelling corrector.

Source: I used to work at Google.
A statement so vague that it could be construed to mean anything. Every minute adjustment of TSA standard procedures is intended to 'enhance' their security regime.
The honesty is relatable, the fear is real. As someone who is working with/on some of the newfangled technologies it's as if my coworkers are constantly trying to put me out of touch!

I've seen a bunch of new and sweet technologies come out in the last 3 years that I've been doing web development. The thing that comforts me is that what I haven't seen is a diminished number of problems that need solving. In fact it's the opposite, the more things tech enables, the more problems people seem to have!

If you change your mindset from "what technologies do I need to know" to "what are the problems I can solve with technology" everything changes. There are thousands of organizations getting by on excel spreadsheets to model and manage billions of dollars. Do you need to know responsive-Angular-distributed-Go to tailor some software that solves real problems? no. Do you need it to be cool on HN? maybe.
Do you think culture is a factor in this behavior?

This tends to get rewarded in industry as well, hard work, lots of code, must be good.
I guess being a user acquisition consultant gives me a bit of an edge with lead acquisition. ;)

Whenever I talk to a new prospect (potential client), I ask them how they found my site and what caught their attention. The answer to the first question is usually my blog or an HN comment (just like this one!). The answer to the second question varies from "your site tells a good story" to something specific such as my ability to push code.
I agree completely, you sound exactly like the kind of person I am!

I just finished my computer engineering bachelors degree a month ago, I am 26 years old.
From all the people I know at school, only a small handful of them has ever done any kind of coding or any thing outside of the school curriculum (more than just reading a tutorial one night).

That is, for me at least, a frightening thought. You want to work has a developer but you do not spend any time outside work to learn?

Some of us are curious and try things out. I believe those that do are (mostly) the people that can be good developers. A situation that was particularly curious to me was when we had our first Programming 101 (Java) class the semester before Christmas, and then when the second class from around mid-February. In between that time, a huge amount of the class did not look at any Java, or do anything, or even try it out. So unsurprisingly, barely anyone remembered anything. There was just a complete lack of interest, and I can't figure out why they would choose this career path if they did not enjoy it and I do not understand how those people managed to pass classes, or how they are supposed to do good work later.

I have had a growing interest in computers since I was a child, and I think I have been coding since I was around 12-13 years old. During my time at university I have attempted to get people more interested in coding by suggesting they figure out some problem they want to solve, and then spend some time making something. I think I managed to get only a few of them to try anything, while the rest were questioning why they would want to do anything like that... I know quite a few of them have gotten jobs directly out of school, but I have no idea how.

Edit:

I do understand that not everyone has time to nerd out all the time, especially when you get older and have a family.
I also like to relax and recharge, so I try to keep busy doing other things like exercising. Sometimes I just get so sick of work, school and everything that I can't seem to write any code at home for personal projects. It is nice to be able to burn of that unspent energy mountain biking for example. And sometimes that just seems to shake loose a solution to a problem I have been having or give me inspiration to create something new.
ah yes, teagle hall IIRC. i don't recall anyone browsing documentation in the squat rack (on the admittedly rare occasion I went to the gym in college), but that was more than a decade ago so maybe this is part of the 'brogrammer' thing :)
The reason doesn't have to be biological, but rather could easily be about power -- these women do a better job at elaborating than I ever could:

http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/feminist-current/2014/03/fem...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ot8cBm0YmXo
> no one is able to work productively for 8 hours, that's a fact

How do you know this? Are you sure you aren't extrapolating your own energy levels and assuming everyone else feels as you do?

I know plenty of people with phenomenal drive, focus and energy who are extremely productive for much longer work days.

My own situation is a counterexample. I am at my desk at 6:30am most days, can easily work 14+ hour days virtually without a break, never sleep more than 5 hours a night, and can keep that up indefinitely. I also fit in 2-3 hours sport a day, which is also technically very demanding and needs full concentration. My body may get physically exhausted but somehow my brain just keeps going.

To be fair, the friends of mine who work such extreme hours are all passionate about their jobs, and are the ones in ultimate control of their working hours. They do it out of choice, not because their boss tells them to. If they didn't like their work, they'd find it hard to stay focused for 8 hours too.
I've always called the TSA Terminally Stupid Administration. Yet they continue to amaze.
20% of $500 an hour is a pretty solid salary. Especially if you are putting in 16 hour days. I would expect to give a little blood for that kind of money.
Congrats on the successful weight loss! Haven't tried Happy Scale, but do you think the diet is long-term sustainable?

I've been going low carbs for a while with good success, but the second I have momentary weakness and cave, I put on weight so fast.
Yes! I do want to keep working on this. I would like to build a small user base and get input on what could feature should be worked on next.

I have in mind user generated and share-able lists, and trending albums is also a very reasonable possibility. Also, the searches do not offer too many input parameters to the search so that is something I would like to fix.

Since you've posted that, I've changed how the search is done and it should be a lot more responsive now. I have access to Pitchfork's autocomplete API so I could use that to work around the problem possibly. Do you have any ideas about this?

Thank you for the thoughtful input.
React File Uploads
So I set X% to be whatever I need to minimise profit at my subsidiaries. Who are you to say X% is wrong? Did you build a successful coffee company?

Law is interpreted by the courts according to what it says, not according to what would be convenient at the time. This is why you hear about people getting off on a technicality. At least that's how it's supposed to work.

If you look at the right to be forgotten, the problem there is that the underlying law is so vague that basically anything can be read into it. So then judges end up legislating from the bench, which they aren't meant to do, that's why we have separation of powers.
Post Snowden, Google Users Change Habits
I've yet to see a "well constructed" HTML email that was sent by a human as part of an email conversation.

I've seen plenty of poorly constructed HTML emails sent by people who decided that since they can have twelve different fonts in five sentences, with italics, bold, outline, underline and strikethrough thrown in, they should do so. It's almost like they have set themselves a challenge to use every feature of their email client in every message.

Plain text, on the other hand, always looks sensible, well-formed and well constructed to me. This leaves it to the sender to write something worth the effort of reading.
I'm aiming to run every street in my city. I'm almost half way through, and I try to at least make progress on a street every time I'm out. I keep track of my progress here:
http://citystrides.com/users/1/cities/1

There was no way to track this, so I had to make it myself ... I decided along the way to make it so others could sign up as well. If you've got a RunKeeper, MapMyRun, or Strava account you can join in too at http://citystrides.com
Yes. Somehow "I am less motivated to work hard and learn new things in my 40s" turns into "Everyone is less motivated to work hard and learn new things in their 40s."

Yes, it very much is worded exactly like that. If you describe a starting state, and then a change of environment or inputs (getting older, which happens to all of us), and then hold the resulting state as the consequences of that change, you are generalizing, intentional or not. It is simply unavoidable. Sarcasm to this obvious reality isn't helpful.

To put it another way -- if a technology ignorant HR recruiter read that piece, they would absolutely think "older, established people are less valuable hires" than "this individual is a less valuable hire".

This, of course, could be the cycle turning in on itself, in much the same way that some minorities equate their condition to being a consequence of being a minority, rather than individual, more unique traits.
Good question.

Every company I worked for had to provide me with an office that was empty one day a week.

In most of the companies I worked for, employees who worked a minimum of 30 hours a week got full fringe benefits :-)
See also the UK service Pact: https://www.pactcoffee.com/ This is just another "me too" business, scoop a few beans into a brown paper bag and post it out with a huge margin.
I spent most of my childhood raised by a single mother below the poverty line thanks to a borderline-deadbeat dad, save for the period I lived with an abusive junkie stepfather. Today I help support disabled family members on my below-market salary.

Come call me a "self obsessed rich kid" to my face.
If a backhoe hitting a cable junction triggered an AWS failure, we wouldn't say that the cable junction is where AWS "really happens".

What if instead of a cable junction for AWS, it was more like a clock in a CPU? Then it is part of what "really happens," but only a part.
I've tested it a little and it seemed accurate enough. I have mostly been going off step count goals more than distance goals though.
This is a terrible way for things to be. Life is a finite resource. I'd rather spend my time doing things for myself, even if it means I'm not rich.
I'm a fan of the design, but lack of comments is a deal breaker for me.

I currently use this site for hn mobile: http://cheeaun.github.io/hackerweb/
Stop follow hacker news and you will rapidly recover from this illness.

Source: Me, someone that see COBOL all day and still live happily after that.
That is true, I used to lift weights in HS (17-18 yo, now 24).
I have followed the 2.5/5kg strictly, but stopped adding weight to squats until I improve form (I sometimes bend lower back to compensate).

I recommend the program because its really simple. I haven't tested it against other programs' results but this one seems effective.