skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Funny. I had exactly the same thought.

I couldn't care less where my apps are physically running. For latency critical stuff there are CDNs and you can always buy satellite hosts anywhere. Sane billing (DevPay & FPS), now that's a different story...
Never really done pair programming, but I'm struck by how much it's culture-dependent, and how easily it can be undone by initial assumptions. "We'll save money on furniture." "That guy's good, but too expensive."
123456? That's amazing, I've got the same combination on my luggage!
Equally you could point to numerous systems not developed using any form of peer review and conclude the opposite. In the matter of fact there's probably more bad systems hacked together by solo programmers than there are written by communicative teams.
Pair programming is an attempt to take two good programmers and turn them into one great programmer. If you hire great programmers in the first place, it is unnecessary and wasteful.
1. Write a compiler

2. Compile a Linux kernel

3. Write a web server

4. Finish SICP

5. Work on a major (ok - at least widely appreciated) open-source project
> "When doctors screw up (massively) they get sued. When (permanently employed) programmers screw up they get let-go, and they go find a new job, usually with more responsibility and a pay raise. There are no ramifications for software malpractice."

Seems like a mindless rant to me. We can always keep modify software as we like. The same can't be said for a bridge or a human being on a operating theater. What an absurd comparison to make.
I too certainly got this holier-than-thou sense from reading the article, and I also felt that it missed the point.

Pair programming doesn't work for everyone not because of those pretty dumb reasons. Pair programming doesn't work for everyone because not everyone is the same in their thought processes. Personally, I'm a very outgoing guy and when working with a team on a problem I love to throw ideas around and, if I'm the more knowledgeable one of the group, teach. But I know for sure that some people would rather work alone on a problem, and if that's what gets a problem done quicker and more efficiently, power to that person!

I was hoping this article would dive into the more social aspects of pair programming, but nope. Instead it was "your hardware sucks" or "your company sucks".
Linode is fantastic. Their support and control panels are great. Anything not in their really cool guides, you can always jump into their IRC channel, which I've had really great results with.

I love my little VPS!
A tecnologia vai ALem da Imaginação
Tecnologia se desenvolve a cada minuto do tempo corrido no mesmo instante.
Something bothered me about this article: the author writes it as though the only people who haven't realized this fact are universal health care / health care reform proponents. As I recall, it was the opponents of health care reform who were vociferously complaining about government-imposed "rationing" not so long ago.

In a related vein, the author also mis-states the case for universal health care. I'm pretty sure that there are no serious proposals (feasible or otherwise) on the table that provide "the best health care possible whenever [anyone needs] it." Many (most? nearly all?) universal health care proponents would be happy to have a system that provides a reasonable level of care to anyone whenever necessary.
I'm completely and utterly unconvinced that two brilliant programmers can produce more than twice their usual individual output together, versus just consulting when they have an interesting question or a stumbling block.

If you got Linus Torvalds and Richard Stallman sharing one computer for their working lives, would they really have produced _more_ than on two computers? I seriously, seriously, doubt it.
Linode has had this for a while. Pro tip: Don't accidentally select a 32-bit kernel when you initially started with a 64-bit one :)
Runtime Support for Multicore Haskell
After watching a TED presentation on External motivation, which stated it did more harm than anything. I was nodding in full agreement and trying to think of one job where it was not true. The only job I came up with was sales, I was just not sure for this one. I would really like to see a one year after report on this, this should be telling. I think it will prove commissions are not working.

BTW the TED talk is http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html
Until one crappy website gets hacked and your "perfect" password is out there. NEVER use the same password for every site.
How One Woman Found a Workout She Loves and Lost 125 lbs
Pair programming works. However, I don't see the point in using it all the time - in some situations, it's only as effective as working solo. It really rocks for crisis situations (pair debugging) or new feature implementation quickly (all-night coding).

Flow is a very important part of pair programming.
Digitabilidade a um passo para o Futuro
Temos que acreditar que podemos fazer e criar o Futuro...
Pairing is a skill, like programming.

No matter how long you've been programming solo, you can't expect to sit down with a pair and have it "just work". Sure, it happens sometimes, but if it doesn't, you should practice it a bit before discounting the idea.

There are a few things the navigator can do to help out the driver while the driver is typing, but I hesitate to focus on them. In general, both programmers should be engaged. Learn to talk out ideas with your pair in short segments.

TDD helps. Test driving code naturally gives your pair many opportunities to inject their ideas without ruining your train of thought (ie: stop and discuss things at least after every test, preferably much more, but that comes with practice).
Komodo Island Tours 3 Days 2 Night
"password" is one of the most common passwords -- not on the list though.
China's Rich Youth Spark Bitter Divide
Tool of the Day: Hibernater: Save Everything With One Click
At the top of

http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/gp4/

you'll see an "UP-TO-DATE MEASUREMENTS" url

Do you think those labeled "22 Sep 2009" are more up to date than those labeled "mid 2008" or "late 2007"?
I think you mean this: http://ahprojects.com/exhibitions/anti-paparazzi
To answer some points in a single comment:

I believe the usage "C Intermediate Language" predates the usage "Common Intermediate Language." Regardless, I think it is a simpler, cleaner "thing" than LLVM, and serves as an interesting "compare and contrast" point when talking about compilers, intermediate languages, and program optimisation.

I see CIL and LLVM as having different purposes. I agree that if one is writing a compiler and looking for an intermediate language and surrounding tools, then probably the LLVM is a better vehicle than CIL, but if you're trying to simplify a huge C project, CIL is better than LLVM.

I've seen jey's profile and acknowledge that s/he knows more about this than I, but I still see CIL as a useful thing to know about, and possibly understand.
Let a hundred investment banks bloom
MuleSoft Releases Tcat Server with iBeans - Integrates Cloud and Data Services
Perhaps sales, and its reward structure, attracts a different kind of personality. I don't think I've ever met a salesperson I liked, whether in a sales or personal setting. The overwhelming impression is of manipulative bullies who use social norms of politeness and reciprocity to lever advantage out of people. Makes me sick.
I ended up buying on ebay after all of that. I just didn't want to pay $35 more because I took the time to investigate what, for me, is a sizeable and important purchase. Bought the camera on ebay for $916 and the mic for $123 - overall it was $100 savings not buying from Amazon
If you find one person being "passive" in a pair session, you can switch drivers, so the person at the keyboard and the person who wrote most of the code so far are different. Or you can try something like the TDD Game (or any other format where one person writes tests or tries to break the code as the other writes it): http://www.peterprovost.org/blog/post/The-Pair-Programming-T...
Widespread Internet Addiction - Teens
If Twitter did drop TechCrunch from the suggested users list at that point because of TechCrunch publishing internal Twitter documents obtained by a hacker then... I applaud ev and the Twitter team.
All this article points out is that being on the SUL is a significant source of followers. There's no surprise that being removed from the SUL would cause growth to stagnate.
Big topic, here's things i refer to repeatedly

http://yuiblog.com/blog/2008/09/26/oojs/

http://yuiblog.com/assets/pdf/oojs-ch-8.pdf

http://mashraqi.com/2008/07/high-performance-ajax-applicatio...

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/09/16/jquery-examples-a...

http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/the-seven-rules-of-unobtr...

http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/7rtxa/has_anyon...

http://code.google.com/p/jslibs/wiki/JavascriptTips
WOW! Ok - i know that is not a very thoughtful comment, but I am excited.

edit - my comment, not yours. Yours was thoughtful. In case that wasn't clear
I dated a girl whose brother came down with a high fever when he was young, and he became mentally retarded

Off-topic here, but I'm curious for my own family.

From what I've read on fever phobia, it seems like what most people consider a high fever really is normal and no reason to panic like we're used to doing[1]. In this girl's brother's case, I wonder how high that fever really was (and how old he was) in order for it to have affected him like that.

[1] Or have nurses on the 24/7 pediatrician line yell at you to rush to the nearest ER, only to get charged $400+ for Tylenol.
I think read something similar in Norm Brodsky's The Knack.

Joel has been talking about this for the longest time, http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000070.html

If I were to guess, I would say some of the top folks that want to make more money compared to what Red-gate is paying now and don't want to trade in the risk-reward factor will probably leave.
I these are all mundane things, are geeks supposed to so much without ambition that there is nothing truly grand or life changing on the list?
Some replies to your comment demonstrate exactly why I'm not a fan of forced pairing advocacy and the arguments they use. It borders on the religious: "I love pair programming. Try it, you will love it too"

When someone doesn't experience the unbridled joy of pair programming salvation, it is always something wrong with them, their task, or their partner. Essentially, "oh you weren't pairing correctly" -> "you didn't have enough faith".

Is there any possibility pair programming advocates can cede that developers can eschew pair programming and still produce quality code?
Consultants and Confused Apes: the importance of uncertainty
The rigidity of this approach surprises me. I certainly think pair programming has value. But I don't understand why this company would be so rigid in enforcing it as the only way to develop software.
There's something sad about the fact that there's a typo on the specs page:

http://www.sgi.com/pdfs/4177.pdf

"infrastruture"
Get a print and put it in your wallet. Show it to people like it's your kids or something.
I have similar experience with Firefox. But, I don't attribute that to upgrade. The crashes used to happen even before.
There is no nice way to put this, but if you are deploying PHP on Windows for anything other than some retarded legacy IT BS, you are mentally deficient. Straight up.

And comparing a compiled (kinda) language to a badly interpreted one is horse pucky.
that he's one of the few guys in Computer Science who comes up with something original AND builds a language that supports his ideas to see if they work in practice.

Not to discount Rich's work, but all of the ideas in Clojure have been well-known forever, and Haskell and ML implemented these ideas many, many years ago. Clojure lets you use these ideas with some Java libraries; that's its innovation.

Also, I don't really get the whole time analogy, but I can't help but think he wants Comonads, which Clojure does not have. (And due to its type system, will never be able to support well.)
You'll be glad to know I explain the differences in the Syntax in function chapter of the book.
http://learnyousomeerlang.com/syntax-in-functions#guards-gua...

Scroll down to the 'note' to see it. I don't explain 'and' vs 'andalso' though, but they are mentioned in an earlier chapter: 'and' will evaluate both its arguments, but 'andalso' will only do so when needed.

I still don't understand why Erlang doesn't allow the nesting of "," and ";" (which would make 'andalso' and 'orelse' useless in guards). There seems to be no plan to change that, even if big names [in the community] like Richard O'Keefe would like the same thing.
I can't imagine anyone thinking "I must 'Shrink a Website URL' before I die!"
That list seems more like things today's geek (Geek 2.0, as illustrated on that site) would brag about to his/her other friends while sitting in a coffee shop (via Twitter, of course).
Culture is the cause, though of course it's correlated with intelligence and income level, which is what confuses people.

Not all cultures are created equally. What your parents did in the home, and who your friends were matter much more than anything else.

Does a Jewish kid from a family of scientists and scholars have much in common with so-called "white trash"? They're both white, right?

Does the child of a black immigrant who comes from a culture of learning and achievement have much in common with some other random brown-skinned person? They're both brown, right?

The problem here isn't race. It's a loser culture.
Officials may soon ask banks to bail out the government
Illustrative Programming: I am a skeptic (and I am not alone)
I had a deja-vu when I read the comments of Neal Ford about Illustrative Programming.
This is really expressing what I was feeling when I was involved in MDSD attempts in recent projects.
Other types of employees find the source of their motivation in other things; some of us programmers are motivated by creating cool stuff, teachers are motivated by seeing the kids grow and becoming more educated, these are mostly internal motivations as opposed to external motivations such as commissions and bonuses. Maybe it's just because I don't really know the work of salespeople very well, but I can't really imagine them finding an internal source of motivation in their line of work.

The only thing I can possibly think of that might become a source of motivation for them is helping clients finding the right solution.
For Vim Users: swap Caps Lock and Esc
If vim is your choice of editor, you may feel that you need access ESC a lot of times, but it's far top left to reach, induced heavy inconveniences. So I thought mapping ESC to Caps Lock would be great, but I found a greater solution swapping Caps Lock and ESC at http://superuser.com/questions/16070/vim-command-to-map-capslock-to-escape/19518#19518

Check the link to get real. And it works at least for Ubuntu 9.04, I've no idea of others, though I think there must be an working around for them. Try, and enjoy!
See also: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=520751

Quite a lot of discussion there - worth reading to avoid saying the same things over and over.

See also: http://space.1337arts.com/

Pictures and videos.
Wow, way to be hostile. These two were raising valid points in which I agree with. The article really does seem to have an attitude to it. He could have raised his point with implying almost every time that "my company is better than everybody else" kind of tone. Bear in mind that I'm not against pair programming, in fact, I want to experience that some time in my career (unless narcolepsy kicks in after being passive for so long).
A Mess is not a Technical Debt.
The "won't ever do before I die" programmer list:

1) Prove P = NP

2) Build a quantum computer

3) Write a program that will pass the Turing test
Every employee in a company should be evaluated more on how the organization as a whole benefits from his/her contribution, sales are no exception.
They need to have an English section on their web site.
#2 I had a girlfriend who had a chain mail bikini made.
SUL is editorial. Techcrunch made a dicked move against twitter. There is no story here. If they wrote an article saying "twitter is bad" it would be far worse.
That was amazingly well done. I wish you'd have been around to teach my Secure OS class when we were taught AES implementations. ;)
Build your Twitter API app in Clojure
http://www.eribium.org/wp-content/uploads/2007/01/common_pas...

http://www.newscientist.com/blog/technology/2008/05/confess-...

http://geodsoft.com/howto/password/common.htm
Full-time pair programming keeps developers focused and coding, all day, every day, week-in, week-out.

Sounds like a recipe for burn-out to me. Maybe if you switch to 6 hour days, or 4 day weeks, it could be more sustainable.

I did like one thing he said though, which has nothing to do with pairing... he said they require developers to purchase their own laptops. Like a mechanic or carpenter provides his own tools. That makes some sense to me. Let people chose the tools that they are most familiar with and most productive using.
I think the sign that I've earned some technical person's respect is when they ask me "why don't you just learn how to code?"

Look, you have to be wired a certain way to be good at code. I'm pretty smart, but I could study and take classes and do whatever and I'd never be anything more than some Indian code monkey. (Hell, I struggle with basic/intermediate SQL SELECT statements.) I think writing code is much more like learning to hit a curveball than it is, say, learning Excel. At the end of the day, there's a certain innate aptitude for the task that goes into it.

Does it suck for someone like me who has the entrepreneurial bug and can't code? Hell yeah, it really sucks. But I'm really good at all the other stuff, and next time around, I know I'll be able to find a great technical co-founder. (Or she'll find me to do the icky business stuff.)
Maybe your iPhone OS doesn't have GC. His one has it. Another example of anecdotal evidence! ;-)

p.s. Sorry, I couldn't resist. It' just a joke. Please take it lightly.
I would be happy to have a multi-architecture, network transparent, modular graphic environment nicer than X.

Do you have one? I certainly don't.

It's easy to criticize the work of others. Doing it better is a whole different game.
"Price: Ask A Sales Rep"

In a past life, I was a full-time engineer at SGI. Have they learned nothing?
The geek thing that I (currently) fancy doing is build a OISC using relays for the logic, punched cards for the program and magnetic core memory.

Probably use the subneg instruction.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_instruction_set_computer
> How is this different than typical multi-variable regressions with control variables?

As different as astrology and astronomy. Multi-variable regressions with control variables are known to incapable of supporting causal inference. The network based techniques of Pearl et. al. do permit causal inferences. Notice though that the network based techniques will quite often rigorously prove that the data you have are inadequate to make a causal inference. They do this by discovering multiple causal networks, all consistent with the patterns of correlation and conditional correlation in the data, but with causal links going one way in one net work and the other way in another network.
Learning Clojure with Project Euler
The trick is to ask them to read something twice; if it comes out the same each time, they're really there. Otherwise you're experiencing sleep paralysis. Or they're just messing with you.
Linus Torvalds: 'Linux is bloated'
I wouldn't trust my apps to run on a Windows machine, period.

Running them under Cygwin, at least makes them easily portable to more refined environments.
There's probably more systems hacked together by solo programmers than there are written by communicative teams.
Google and Apple together at last
AT&T To Offer Micro Cell for iPhone 3G $150
HTTP proxies that modify content are legal. How is this not an HTTP proxy?
> "in no time"

> That'd be da bomb.

Actually, it would be a singularity.
Yeah, I had this experience at my last full-time gig; our IT director and the other IT person had no concept of the importance of resting your mind in the middle of the day (along with many other important things).

They would just go on for hours and hours and hours uninterrupted, doing incredibly stupid things. They even closed the blinds because they didn't want to see something outside and get distracted with it (this is how programmers wind up in their building's dungeons and basements, guys).

Guy fought with me a lot because he felt that I shouldn't take breaks as such even between tasks, he said I was being paid "for my highest potential", or something like that, and that taking breaks for 15-30 minutes was unacceptable. I find this ridiculous and crazy.

I also found the guy's post ridiculous and crazy. I now know I will never work for Hashrocket.
Poor Dave--he's obsessed with not being on that Suggested Users list.
VMWare did...
Wealthcare
Also I'd like to see some more details about their "multi machine loadbalancing". The blurb that I found on their site was so devoid of facts that I'm tempted to believe this is just a red herring (hosted HTTP loadbalancer or such?).
Great link, thanks!
Not the biggest complete-app example but certainly shows me how things could/should stick together.
Nice list, but you'd be surprised how little work it takes to build a functional web server. I know I was when a couple of friends and I wrote one in Haskell on a rainy day. We were just scratching an intellectual itch of course, so there was plenty of stuff it didn't do, but it served up HTML files and images just fine.
Are top CS theorists nice people?  Would they even talk with you?  (comment 25)
Perhaps one day someone will "properly tune the corresponding LISP code by introducing the proper type declarations..." for the benchmarks game programs -

http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/u32q/benchmark.php?test=al...
SGI still alive? Wow, blast from the past.

Sad to see where Cray came to die.
FWIW, I believe the comment you replied to was satire.
Tsk. Don't just downvote, say why you disagree.
reading this thread a few times helped

http://www.nabble.com/Reading%2C-Learning%2C-Confused-to1854...
Open Source can help India save $2 billion
After that reply, I find myself wondering if you actually know what the "Linux module system" is, because there is no difference between what you claim is an advantage and what Linux actually has.

Are you still having this debate with a purely academic definition of "monolithic" vs. "micro" kernels? Because neither of them exist anymore, and haven't for a long time; it's like CISC vs. RISC, in that arguing about it today is really missing the point since most everything is a mix. You need to address what Linux actually is, and what real microkernels exist, and what real performance they have, not regurgitate boring arguments from the 1980s that have simply been superceded (rather than one side "winning").

In fact, this goes for all you other commenters still having this argument. "Compare and contrast a microkernel running on CISC vs. a monolithic kernel running on RISC. Which will run best on a top-of-the-line Amiga, and how can this be best leveraged into flaming those who disagree with you?"
Not to speak for roc, but I believe the comment was intentionally written in the style of the original article, probably to mock it.
I was lampooning the arguments of the article.

I didn't think it was all that subtle, but either I was wrong or it just wasn't funny.
My apologies to anyone who misinterpreted it.
If it is indeed the case that many of them are dismissive to those who are not likely to be useful to them in research, is this logical behavior?

CS theory requires the highest IQ of any subfield of CS to succeed at the highest levels, so perhaps this behavior is reasonable.