skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
What do you want to achieve when you learn how to program? Mobile dev, web dev?

I'm on a similar path. I've been learning to code now for like 3 years, never really having the time. Now that I'm out of a job, I've got some free time and I've always had some web projects I wanted to work on. So even though I've been trying to learn python for the past 3 years, I've recently started following the reddit learnjavascript course that started last week [1]

I figured that with JS, I can learn Node.js and have some frontend and backend knowledge as well. Maybe someone much more knowledgeable than me can chime in on my approach?

[1]-http://www.reddit.com/r/learnjavascript/comments/2c5aue/lear...
Occasionally I'll come across a github project, realize it is exactly what I've been looking for, and then see that it has thousands of stars and everyone already knows about it. This collection should give you a good place to start looking for useful and popular tools, especially if you're new to a language.
My approach to writing manageable scalable CSS ( I am a programmer) is to never write CSS files on my own. Use a framework like Zurb Foundation etc. and modify the underlying SASS files but never ever write actual CSS files. And scan my HTML for style tags to ensure that I never violate my own rule.
On Linux and Mac, any platform except .Net will work out of the box; so it doesn't affect your choice; but on Windows some platforms are easy to get a working dev environment and some cause a bit of pain.

If you know how stuff is supposed to work, then you can tolerate a few setup quirks, but if you're just starting then it's important to not lose all your steam on configuring the development workflow before you get to a running Hello World.
The Discrete 741
Whichever language you choose, pick a project you want to do with it. I find that having a goal, even a silly or small one, presses me through some of the more frustrating parts of learning a language and the time commitment it brings.
Isn't there a major shortage in general practitioners? I vaguely remember some doom/gloom story about how America was going to run out of regular doctors. Seems contradictory to your statement though.
Personally I think building this thing should be required in all EE curriculums :-) This is a very nicely done implementation of a very useful IC.
A solid idea! Will probably do that next time.
Extremity is definitely the single most important metric in a startup. Otherwise, it would just be boring.

And, I see new olympic disciplines: Extreme start-upping and extreme investing. Not for the faint of heart! (Extreme tech-reporting has been tried out but found to end with AOL)
It's not a strange reason. The ideologues in the GOP and some Democrats restrain the Federal Government from negotiating lower rates because these politicians fund-raise from companies that would have to lower their rates as a result of that negotiation.

And some of them are just crazy nuts who actually prefer that companies soak the government (tax-payer) for every cent they can.
Http://behindtheseen.tv/expendables-3-bts-plus-cast-got-shape/
Check out some of the exclusive behind the scenes footage from the Expendables 3 film, and find out how the stars got in shape for the franchise.
I think it's more interesting that these are installed in drugstores. Doctor's offices will get them eventually, sure, but there are more drugstores than MDs.
Apple iPhone 6 Leaked
and i understand they have mobile apps as well
Anti-Hacienda: Stealthy TCP handshake - port knocking
Mixer is more like Atlas(https://github.com/Qihoo360/Atlas) or Cobar(https://github.com/alibaba/cobar).

You can define some rules to route sql to different MySQL servers, maybe it is the main difference.

Mixer can not be used in production now, I have been improving it and try to use it in my company first.
The 10b valuation is nuts. That's more than LabCorp or Quest, two companies that already do lab actual lab tests on real instruments for hundreds of millions of people. Yes, it looks like you can get results online from Theranos, but you can do this for lots of labs, as well. Theranos' app is undoubtedly slicker...Silicon Valley can afford better software people than labs can. As for improvements in labs today.... Our financial structure is crazy. Fee for service drives more testing, when in fact the main problem in US medicine right now is that we do too much testing (overall...there are still some areas where we need to do more). The solution to test overutilization is not making tests cheaper so folks can get more tests at Walgreens. One answer could be the current ACO model (or it's logical extension, single payer or socialized medicine) in which the goal of care is the health of the patient, not the profit. Once hospitals and labs are payed by the person, not by the test, we're gonna find lots of surprising ways to stop letting folks get tests they don't need, since the answers to those tests will often be misleading, require expensive follow up, etc... To the folks on this discussion who think that they would prefer to be able to go and get frequent tests (or, god forbid, get frequent Lyme serologies, which borders on outright quackery), I would say this: you can't handle the truth. Really. There is a reason why we put doctors as gatekeepers between patients and medical services like MRIs, lab tests, and chemotherapy. It's called Bayes Theorem (it's on Wikipedia). If it's exceedingly unlikely that something is wrong with you before you get a test, then it's still exceedingly unlikely you have the condition even when you get a positive test for it. This breaks down when the doctor does a bad job, since it's the doctor's job to select tests only in those with higher pretest probabilities, but it is an inescapable issue. I realize also that suggesting that laypeople are too ignorant to take their own health into their own hands sounds not even a little elitist, but it is sorta true. One of the main concerns for healthy people should be staying OUT of the medical care system, because we hurt people sometimes, even when we help them. The lab is a gateway to the medical care system, so unless you want to go through the gate, stay away.
Old School – Deploy PHP application (mostly cPanel) via GitHub webhook
Par for the course with letting agents in the UK. I'm surprised they didn't begin evicting the renter. Using a property for work is often prohibited in the boilerplate rental agreements they charge £100 a time to change the name on.
You can see it right here on HN. Someone making cheaper blood tests? "They're planning eugenics to make us INVALIDs".
I'd lean slightly toward recommending Python to beginners, but don't get stuck on whatever you learn first. Try to learn at least one new language a year till you have several under your belt -- and even then, its not a bad idea to continue to do that.

And try to mix families -- each provides different insights. The first few might be something like:

1. One of Python or Ruby
2. JavaScript
3. One of Java or C#
4. Erlang
5. C/C++
6. One of Haskell, Scala, F#, or OCaml (but I'd lean heavily toward Haskell)

(Also, if you are going to use relational databases, learn SQL -- yes, there are frameworks that abstract it largely away for you, but you really want to understand what's going on behind the scenes. But that doesn't need to be in among the first things, unless heavily RDBMS-dependent stuff is going to be an initial focus...)
There's companies out there that already have this info. Checkout http://kwikeesystems.com .
Definitely NO. Assembly is okay as a second or third language, but not as the first one.

Python->C->ASM will have a much larger chance of success than ASM->C->Python; there's a good reason why college programs don't start with assembly first.
Call me old fashioned, but I'm going to suggest learning C. It's one of the smaller languages around so you'll be quickly able to get past the "learning the language syntax" stage and into the "learning to program" stage. It's also still one of the most widely used and supported languages out there. It's also closer to how computers actually work so you'll learn more of what is actually happening when the computer runs your code.

Pick up a copy of K&R [1], read enough to do a hello world and start playing.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_C_Programming_Language
The argument made in this article is somewhat... disingenuous. The author states, "science fiction has always built our culture powerful frameworks for thinking about the future." He argues that much of the "future" we now live in was predicted by science fiction of the past, and he portrays this fact in a positive light. But then he makes a logical about-face and warns that "the very real danger here is man's tendency to look to his illusion for inspiration"!

The problem is, his argument is that science fiction has always been a startlingly good predictor of the immediate future, but now that science fiction warns us of dangers and should perhaps inspire extreme caution—now that science fiction is saying something the author doesn't want to hear—we ought to ignore it as dangerous and silly imaginings.
How to Kick Ass in Competitive Machine Learning
We already monitor all sorts of anticoagulation. Fingerstick samples are particularly bad for this (even though there are current point of care devices that do this).
Customers – Out of Sight, But Still in Mind
Reminds me of the Bounty
I think Swift is a better ground for the fundamentals of programming than many others... but there are many other reasons to not choose such a young language.

http://tel.github.io/2014/07/26/types_of_data_in_swift/
Fastest US Startups – Top “Rocket Companies”
The Fastest growing US Startups of the last 2 months
Looks like it has potential and is exciting until you read the "Limitations" section
Like the Kudos circle on Svbtle?
XMPP's federation is great, but it's a real pitas to scale up a single domain (long-lived connections, implementations typically assuming one node, dialbacks). The gtalk team had a really hard time with it. Http is a lot easier to scale.
Facebook Cup 2015 Scheduled For January
Why do you want to learn to code is a detail you left out, that's very important.

It's like saying, I want to learn to drive: If you are going to be a trucker, that's going to mean something different from being a biker.

I'd recommend Python as a first language. It wasn't my first language, but it's general purpose enough that you can do a lot with it, and popular enough that you can interview/get work/meet other people who use it. Oh and it runs from the command line straight off, and you are going to want to learn a bit about the command line.
More info on HACIENDA, the Five Eyes program to port scan entire countries: http://www.heise.de/ct/artikel/NSA-GCHQ-The-HACIENDA-Program...
Sadly, if you look carefully at the pictures, it's pretty clear it's for a game...and I didn't even need to read that he mentioned that they were game ideas.

Goes to show how dumb people can be.
Cool, thanks! I'll have a look at that. Does the kivent.org stuff support Tiled?
Unbabel (YC W14) is looking for a junior developer in Portugal
C. It's low enough that you don't get to skip out on core concepts. I notice a lot of younger programmers who have only used high level languages use inappropriate data types because they do not understand the implications of their choices.

It's also high level enough that you won't waste time in minutia of just making something work.
javascript because

1) you can program anywhere,
2) it has incredible libraries for multimedia and interaction which makes it fun,
3) you can share the results with one click to anyone
4) it is a highly marketable skill

a lot of other people are recommending python which is fine if you are into the command line and file IO. if you prefer the web, then JS is the way to go.
Science mobile labs launches
Go learn the difference between rent seekers and the productive.
Caught that as well. Wouldn't say disingenuous though, as it felt more rushed than actually thought about. Also a really really shit title.
Those aren't blank checks though. The problem with the US system is that the government is backing loans with no regulation of what the universities charge, with the result that tuition costs have increased to the point where most middle-class people couldn't afford to send their kids to school if it wasn't for loans.

Government paying education costs and regulating the price can work. Government paying education costs and not regulating the price is just corporate welfare.
Agreed. JavaScript is super useful. But it straddles a couple of paradigms in a way that makes it hard for me to recommend as a first language.
I was pointing out that it's not externally controlled. If you want a full understanding of the algorithm, you'll probably need to read the paper. The supplementary material and the full paper go into this in detail. The supplementary material is a pdf, which I can email to you if you want to see it.
Wow, sounds like 1990 over again i.e. Steve Jackson Games.
No it's not. At all. I mean, a rational person might make the assumption that this guy is not actually whiteboarding an ICBM launch from a rented apartment. But there's nothing about it indicating to a non-technical person that it's a game.
A self-organizing thousand-robot swarm
Python + Django, Ruby + Rails, Javascript + Nodejs..

Most people are in love with Python, Not everyone. You may or may not love it, So try experimenting and choose the one.

Codecademy is good place to learn syntax and language basics, but books are the best choice to improve your skills.

Never stop learning, Try some Open Source Project, You'll learn much more..

Have Fun, Good Luck
Seemed like a big advert to me even without knowing all the things above but you certainly confirmed it.

The only thing interesting here is the amount of founding she has however the comparison with other start-ups and Steve Jobs is a very obvious marketing plot.
New Oral-B Bluetooth Connected Toothbrush
JavaScript. Why?

Extremely low barrier to entry: you already have everything you need.

Results are immediate: you don't have to wait around for an app approval process to share your stuff.

It sucks: teaching a healthy respect for learning a language well and finding all of the pitfalls. Every language has them. Best not to start out assuming they don't.
You can actually do this with gmail itself: johndoe+x@gmail.com is a valid alias for johndoe@gmail.com, for any value of x. So you can make up whatever set of custom addresses you want; they all go to the same account, and filtering/forwarding/etc. can be done with standard gmail filters (not sure about autoresponses; you'd probably need a third-party client for that).

Of course this plus-sign behavior is a pretty well-known fact about Gmail, so it'll be obvious that you're bucketing your email in this way. Anyone can easily read off the 'base' address johndoe@gmail.com, so you'd need to set it up so that mail to this address is heavily restricted and anyone wanting to actually reach you would have to use johndoe+secret@gmail.com or whatever. But I think this would basically also be true of any custom service you could invent having similar functionality.
What are the odds that someone leasing a house has control of an ICBM and is making plans to use it on his home whiteboard? People, especially stupid people, that can't mind their own business, are both dangerous and endlessly frustrating. Personally, I hope this guy tries to get the letting agent fired.
And yet the regimes that opposed Franco's outlasted Franco's. Who the "victors" are depends on the geographical context of the analysis and the time window.
Hardly, that is a personal project so wouldn't count as work. Renting a property for non-commercial use then running an office out of it is quite rightfully prohibited.
Actually, it's not clear at all. The only clue I found that it's only a virtual plan is one mention of "WebRTC" in the third image. Far from obvious for most non-programers.
Ah, letting agents.

I got evicted from a property years ago because they did a surprise inspection while I was out (which is, of course, totally illegal), and decided they'd found "mountains of cocaine" on the kitchen counters.

It was fucking Ajax kitchen cleaning powder. Still, they didn't care. The police (who they contacted) thought it was laughable, but couldn't do anything about the fact they were evicting me.
It's not open source, but https://www.hackerrank.com/ sounds exactly like what you're describing, in case you've been looking for something like that.
How about learning BASIC first?

You'll hear people say that exposure to BASIC will rot your mind... But most of today's best programmers started out with BASIC simply because that's what you got when you started up a 1976-86 vintage microcomputer or played with MS-DOS. Clearly they were not permanently damaged by it.

The good thing about learning BASIC is that you won't be accidentally comparing your work to that of professional programmers. If you start with JavaScript, you'll be exposed to amazing JS tricks anywhere you look. Any Google search or "View Source" will show you stuff that you'll be struggling to understand. That can be very discouraging.

Here's a totally retro web-based BASIC environment:

http://www.quitebasic.com/

There are of course much better modern BASICs around, e.g. Microsoft's Small Basic (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Small_Basic).
No thanks, a good bed and a good chair are sacred. With food, housing and all the basics covered, they should be pretty high priority. I don't understand how some people can buy a 500€ smartphone and then sleep in a shitty cheap bed.
This is very true as well. There is a lot happening outside of University that is easy to access. Or at least in London.

KCL has actually been a lot more accommodating since KCL Tech started to take off post-hackathon. We've got great plans in store for the coming year too. Do drop by and say hi! Looking forward to meeting at our events :)
What state did you live in? You've got tenant rights, and one of them is almost certainly "You can't be evicted for cleaning your apartment." Just a wild guess.
Career longevity, smaller organizational structures, no investors. As a litigator: confrontation.

I do miss the creative aspect of designing code, though.
The surprising democratizing power of McDonald’s Wi-Fi
Google's Underwater Cables Are Being Bitten By Sharks
"Mouse click"

That's the mouse that you put in the nose of a MIRV, and when it starts clicking its teeth because it's damnably chilly in space, it's time to re-enter. Right?
of course. But I only meet business guy who want a cto/or a dev.
And tech guy who are interested by startups have already their idea, or are more likely to follow extrovert business guy.
I disagree. The C syntax is small and pretty easy to learn but the a learner will be stumped when it comes to installing the compiler, dealing with cryptic compiler errors, pointers and weak typing.

I'd recommend Python as it's easy to setup on any platform, has a clean easy to read syntax (newbies don't need to worry about generators or decorators early on), has a REPL and has a ton of good free learning references [1].

[1] - http://learnpythonthehardway.org/book/
Not sure about Berlin, but in many places getting a taxi license (medallion) involves paying so much money that people use mortgage-like financing to get it. This denies taxi jobs to low income and unskilled people without good credit rating.

There is clearly a lot more than taxi colors that can be improved. Rating and reviews is one such example. Price and route transparency are another. User experience (for example through replacement of call centers with mobile apps) yet another.
Show HN: A browser tool to help learn/transcribe music from MP3's or YouTube
Sequel Pro: MySQL Database Management for Mac
Looks like they use a fairly simple edge-detection algorithm to make this happen. Pretty amazing how complex swarm behavior can emerge out of such basic instructions.
This is absurd. It sounds like the kind of thing you'd hear from Stalin, or something. The author is claiming that fiction should only celebrate the glorious future we are surely destined for, and never promote ideas which might inspire doubt or bad feelings about the grand project of technological progress.

All this moody, gritty ambivalence about what the future could become? That just encourages people to reflect and think about stuff, rather than working hard and uncritically towards a goal that - while we might not even understand it - is definitely awesome in every way.
There will be a thousand opinions. Ignore them.

The problem is that you're asking the wrong question. If you want to "get into" programming you need to do roughly two things to start.

1. Find a reason to care. This can be a pet project,
a particular question, an application domain, a
partner or team you'd like to work with, the desire
to understand someone's work you admire, etc.

2. Learn how to think formally as a programmer. This
is sort of like learning how to code, but it's
different from learning any one language.

The point is that as you discover greater passion for something in (1) you'll discover greater need for (2). Simultaneously, as you improve (2) you'll become more sensitive to (1).

The other point is that languages are dumb. There are lots of reasons to learn one or another, but by and large becoming an "X programmer" is a non-goal unless it is somehow required for (1). For instance, joining a team of Ruby programmers may require becoming a Ruby programmer yourself.

So, discarding the philosophy, what do I recommend?

Learn whatever language you can the most quickly. Then learn another. Python may already be installed on your computer, so you can get started quickly. The story is probably the same for C, Ruby, Java, and Perl. If you know how to launch web pages online then PHP is probably available.

Recognize that programming has a large comparative linguistics component. No single language will teach you (2) above, but solving many diverse problems in a single language might get you a lot of it. Studying many languages expands your familiarity with how to represent things and that can be a big boon to (2). Later on in your career, it's often very valuable to explore languages with vastly different background models and assumptions. Early on, I'm not convinced it's such a huge deal... so long as you don't get stuck with a single choice for too long.

And above all, have fun. CS/Programming/Software is a fascinating world for all kinds of reasons.
That is odd advice, the top programming languages currently used have been around for at least 19 years (python, ruby, javascript, php, java, c, objective c) and while there are new languages being developed I don't see languages like go, rust or swift pushing any of those languages out of the market.

If anything, programming languages are a long term investment and I think that learning a language that is in high demand isn't that bad of a decision, you could learn some obscure super expressive, highly functional, statically typed language, but there is large chance that you'll come in contact with javascript at one point in your career.