skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I am more interested in writing good programs than "just getting something done". That means using tools with the appropriate level of expressiveness, of which Java and C are neither.

Ask me which of Common Lisp, Haskell, and Perl I prefer, then call me a "<language> programmer". Remember, in the other threads, I am advocating combinations of features that do not currently exist in any programming language. I may be a "<language> programmer", I guess, but that <language> does not actually exist. Meta...

(You are the one who thinks that every feature that Java has is essential for programming, and every feature it's missing is <some cynical weasel-words here>. That is indicative of seeing the world through Java-colored glasses.)
If you want a simple web form for the compiler; i made http://closureoptimizer.com/ this morning (DNS might still be working itself out)

EDIT: spelling ..
Dynamic typing is merely a mode of use of static typing. All you have to do is add one line of code to your Haskell program:

data Dyn = I Int | C Char | S [Char] | F (Dyn -> Dyn) | P (Dyn, Dyn)

Now you can do matching "by structure" in Haskell just as easily is you can in Erlang.
Pencils? Yes. Books? NO. Dirty looks for sure as library goes paper free.
I don't disagree with anything you've said, but the author of the post made the same point - languages don't die unless they are completely replaced. The author thinks that Java may live on for decades.

He has taken the unfortunate, but popular, definition of a dead programming language: one which has stopped evolving. Of course, such a language is no more dead than sharks.
Tool of the Day: Personalize your Users' Experience with BTBuckets
I think that has to do a lot with Java's heritage.

What they were shooting for seems to have been something that combines the syntax of C and some of C++ for easy access to a large pool of existing programmers but without those 'scary pointers', and the memory leak issues associated with bad programming habits in C and C++.
Aha, interesting. So they were worried about having a specific operator for heap allocation.

It doesn't sound like a particularly clever design decision, because even very early on Java had static "newInstance" methods which rather seem to defeat the point. But I can see the reasoning behind it now, even if that reasoning wasn't very well thought through.
There are a few great sites suggested here, especially http://www.tripeedo.com and http://www.whichbudget.com for airfare search. But I wish the entire last paragraph wasn't an advertisement for a scammy, pay-for-advice frequent flier site.
Modulation of LEDs on network gear was used too.
No, and I don't use AV on my Windows machine either. Never had a problem with either.
try http://news.ycombinator.com/newpoll
Come on. How often do you really need an equals method in your classes? It's not a big deal. (No, I'm not one of those people who insist on writing equals/hashcode/toString on everything even when it's not being used).

I wonder why I try to bring sanity to these sorts of discussions also :/
Your comments reveal a person who's never worked in a sizable programming team for any length of time, be it at a large firm, a large collaborative project, or what-have-you.

Funny, OP is 180 degrees from the truth and sadly, so are you.

OP's rules are nice (and cute) in theory, but it's my experience on large projects with many people in many environments that helps me see through OP's bullshit.

Hundreds of projects have shown me that the problem with most programmers is not ego, it's incompetence. I'd gladly take one primadonna over 10 drones into battle with me. In fact I have, and now it's the only way I'll take on major work any more.

Great work requires great competence, not pop psychology. If that competence comes with ego attached, fine, I can deal with that. What I won't deal with is crap produced by someone who cares about it but doesn't have the confidence or expertise to stand behind it.
I agree that his basic point is correct. If you spend time in any subculture that has some sort of skill stratification, you will notice that most of the people at the top lack an ego. It's typically the people that are trying to reach the top step that do.
FWIW, I've written far more non Java code than I've written Java code, so I wouldn't say I have "Java-colored glasses") ;)

I've also never said that Java is better than <insert other language here> without qualifying what it is better for.
Are you implying that Bootcamp is Apple's gaming strategy on the Mac?
thanks to the lack of a type system in Erlang.

Lack of a type system? What about Erlang's dynamic type system that can blow up in your face unexpectedly during execution?

I hate this stupid misnomer. Dynamically typed languages have HUGE type systems that provide lots of critical guarantees. You still get type safety and memory safety. You can still do non-conservative GC. You can still be certain that you're not going to misinterpret integer data as a string.

It's weakly typed assembly languages, like C, that are the best candidates for being accused of having a lack of type system.
Poll: [Mac users] Do you use an antivirus ?
SAAS FTL. We managed to avoid customer backlash by propping MSN Music open for an extra couple of years, but companies folding with user data is eventually going to sour public opinion of cloud services. It will probably take 5 to 10 years, so no worries.
I had a subscription to a magazine that went out of business. They sold the rest of my subscription to Maxim, and sent me a letter letting me know that I could get a check for the remainder of my money instead of getting Maxim. There were only a couple of issues left in the subscription anyway, so I figured it wasn't worth the trouble to get the check.

I read through the first issue of Maxim that showed up and realized that it was 1.) basically porn for kids too young to get actual porn and 2.) actually insulting to the reader. I'm not saying that the writing quality was so poor that it was an insult to the reader, I'm saying that the writers actually insult the reader by calling the reader a loser, telling the reader that his penis is tiny, and calling into question the reader's sexuality.

I don't know how they make any money by actually insulting the people that bother to buy the magazine. If I had to guess, I'd say that most of the people buying the magazine aren't doing it for the articles.
Interested that he's using explicit closed tags on eg <img /> which in html is not required. Perhaps "/" are pretty?

This is the same as in HTML4. However, due to the widespread attempts to use XHTML1, there are a significant number of pages using the trailing slash. Because of this, the trailing slash syntax has been permitted on void elements in HTML in order to ease migration from XHTML1 to HTML5. ( http://wiki.whatwg.org/wiki/FAQ#Should_I_close_empty_element... )
So, open source the code and make sure that the stuff that was built there stays alive. If you don't do that then anybody else trying to follow in your footsteps will have to deal with the 'remember what happened to zembly' stigma.

If you host something you'd better be prepared to be in for the long haul, and to have an 'end-of-life' policy in place before you even start.

In fact, people probably should not be using services that do not have an end-of-life policy.
Dup: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=933092

The difference being this URL has a stray space on the end.
It's my experience that most decent programmers, and even some crummy ones, think they are in the top 1%. It's a lot like poker - everyone thinks they're way above average at it.
domain specific languages == libraries.

You make some libraries, functions that do shit. Then call them. That way other people can still read the code, and help.

It's like GOSUB but better!
I really liked Microsoft's Windows Defender, and I was pleased to find out that they recently expanded it into a full (and free) AV suite: Security Essentials:

http://www.microsoft.com/Security_Essentials/

It runs unobtrusively in the background (only a tray icon), is simple to use, and doesn't install additional cruft (e.g., the AVG IE toolbar).
Since Java lacks generics, there are many kinds of code which require duplicate code in Java. Specifically, every place where you would use generics in another language (Templates in C++, or TypeClasses in Haskell, for instance).
You're correct, I did. I went back and caught up, but I think my point still stands.
And even if successful (in that the bridge does not immediately collapse), many bridges have been rendered inoperable due to misuse or neglect.

Anyways, other interesting links on the subject: http://blogs.msdn.com/dave_froslie/archive/2005/03/07/389113...

http://blogs.msdn.com/steverowe/archive/2005/02/28/381910.as...
Actually, it sounds like it's pretty good at catching non-viruses and non-trojans...
Good stuff in there, especially the 'ask only essential information'.

Wasn't there a bit posted here recently about the 'above the fold' placement being a myth ?

And don't place any credit card company logos on your pages without written permission from them, doing so without such permission can cause your merchant account to be yanked.
What is a "bot-like" user agent? Is there a list somewhere of user-agents excluded from advertising clickstreams?

The networks can detect fraudulent clicks easily, it's the site owners who will have their accounts frozen.
Can any one suggest a good white-listing software?

I see he recommends Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware: http://www.malwarebytes.org/mbam.php

However this looks like more of a scanner than a white-listing software. The other two he recommends look to be commercial only?

Any suggestions? Looking for Windows 7 64 bit capability.
Thanks
It's semantics: People who used to talk about "above the fold" were arguing that users would not scroll (and in some 90's web browsers they couldn't scroll).

Now when people talk about it, it's just referencing prominent placement on the site; there's no longer an assumption that users won't know to scroll down, just an assumption that important stuff should be seen first.
And I'll do the same in a few years time when this place is overrun with "Ruby is dead!", "Why Python is dead", "Is erlang the next COBOL" articles.
Well, it's certainly more cross-platform, and a CD can't pretend to be a keyboard.
Tokyo Tyrant: Is it Durable?
The argument has been proven many times that first to market success never compares to those who enter the market later.

Apple has modeled their entire business this way practically since the return of Steve Jobs, if no a little after.

iPod - not first to market (mp3 players already existed)
iPhone - not first to market (smartphones already existed)
iTunes - not the first to market (other miserable music services were already around, just didn't have great pay-for content and they were competing very heavily with piracy)
Retail - not the first to make a brand store, but first to be successful in tech to do this

I hate always referring to Apple in business discussion, but there aren't many out there that have done this repeatedly.

How about "social web"? Twitter and Facebook, definitely not the first to market.

I'm not sure how this article/post hit front page, as many have already stated here in the comments.
FTFA: Place product images above the page fold (don't require users to scroll your pages).
ESR: What an Ego!
Also be sure to checkout the awesome book they have got there - http://www.google.co.uk/intl/en/landing/conversion/ebook.htm...
Achieving and Measuring Product/Market Fit
That kinda reminds me how when you upgrade hardware for your webapp new features quickly crawl in that utilise the hardware. They might not be needed but they become possible so they come into existence.

To reduce amount of bureaucracy you'd have to pick some work-consuming area of the operation, make it obsolete by government act and fire all the people that were doing that work so they will not be available for other tasks inflating them.

To avoid their complaints you should still pay them salaries for few years but allow and encourage them to find themselves another job outside government sector.
Blu-ray discs get Managed Copy; hardware support nonexistent
Chinese IT firm opening in S.F.
I really hate articles like this.

It's not that I think they are false -- in all likelihood the article is representing the truth.

The problem is that many things in life require an educated guess. Worse yet, many things require some sort of committee. It's not black-and-white. And anytime there's an educated guess and a committee, there are going to be lots of opinions and lots of motives. It's very easy for anybody to walk out and write any kind of narrative they want about what happened.

Even with a "smoking gun" say some email that backs up exactly what the story-teller asserts, that still doesn't mean that the decision was made for the reasons the leaker says. Lots of committee members could have agreed with somebody who had a bad position for completely other reasons.

So it's murky at best. Murky stories have a tendency to appeal to our emotions. After all, the whole thing is subjective to begin with.

How much oil is left in reserves is not a known quantity by any stretch of the imagination. There have been a zillion books predicting reserves being greater or lesser.

Guessing that number is best left to speculators. This piece, for all its nice charts, doesn't have a lot of value.
It's as easy as: http://foundercollective.com/contact or tweeting @fcollective to get things started.
I don't on windows either.
Not to be snarky, by why do a mac, a PC and a web version even make sense ?

Isn't the whole point of the kindle that you can use it as a book ?
Posterous chooses The Rackspace Cloud over Amazon
What's the title of your book ?
There's heaps of other gaming devices too. The iphone is tiny compared to the number of mobile phones - with games like snake :)

For example 110 million s40 phones sold in 2008 only.

Many people have the apple reality distortion field activated... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality_distortion_field
I'm a CouchSurfer myself (in fact, I'm hosting a traveler right now) and I have to say a couple of things about his CouchSurfing advice.

1) Do not use CouchSurfing if you just want free accommodation. The author says this, but it needs to be emphasized. I've never met a CouchSurfer that likes hosting people who just want a place to crash. The goal of CouchSurfing is to meet people you otherwise wouldn't meet and learn about places and cultures in ways that are usually impossible. If you genuinely want to get an insider's view of a place and you want to connect with local people, then by all means CouchSurf, but otherwise stick with hostels.

2) CouchSurfing has a bootstrapping problem. Most hosts and travelers won't want to host you or be hosted by you unless you have a few friends and references on the site. But it's hard to get friends and references unless you stay with people or host people. There is a way to get around this, though: local meetups. Most reasonably sized cities have a group of CouchSurfers that have regular meetups, either weekly or monthly If you go to a few of these, you can get some friends and references on the site, and then it'll be much easier to find hosts and/or surfers.
There was another presentation at Defcon about attacking USB drivers with rogue devices. Basically, they programmed a USB-enabled microcontroller to present a malformed ID string and could use it to inject and run arbitrary code.

http://www.defcon.org/images/defcon-17/dc-17-presentations/d...

EDIT: sorry, that PDF is less informative than the talk was. He had a bunch of demonstration material that's not included here, apparently.
Google makes inroads into mobile advertising
Why are you taking this personally?

I will go out on a limb and say:

* The typical engineering/CS students I met at college had a noticeable lower emotional and social intelligence than the average student. Obviously there are exceptions. The kid with the best social skills could have been an electrical engineer, while the worst maybe was a finance major. But there was definitely a distinction.

And the effect feeds off of each other. Many people are under-socialized in high school but break out of their shell in college. I'd like to go out a limb again and say the opportunity for this is less for CS/engineering students.

I went to a large state university. Engineers/programmers at my school really tended to be exclusive. Like there was an engineering floor in my freshman dorm and they all kept to themselves. The few engineers I'd run into at parties would sometimes joke about not hanging out with his peers. I had a pretty diverse group of friends in college but very rarely ran into them outside of my math classes.

People learn their social and emotional intelligence from their peers. With CS/engineering groups, there's aren't many tribal leaders to learn from.

* It's pretty evident that Google execs are having trouble understanding how others perceive them:

Eric Schmidt recently suggested to a group of reporters that Google's culture was the strong hand that kept it from engaging in anticompetitive behavior: "If somehow we went into a room with the evil light, and we announced an evil strategy, we would be destroyed," he said. "There is a fundamental trust relationship between Google and its users." He shared similar comments, according to Wired, with Varney's predecessor at the Justice Department, who apparently was floored that "trust" was Schmidt's legal justification for pushing through the Yahoo/Google deal.

http://money.cnn.com/2009/10/21/technology/obama_google.fort...

BTW if you have a CS/engineer background and have good EQ/SQ, props to you! I truly believe people with a diverse skill set have a tremendous advantage. The people who rise to the top of Hollywood don't tend to be the pure artists but business/artist (or artist/business).
It seems to me you have the core of a doctoral thesis in literary criticism here (said as someone who knows absolutely nothing about literary criticism). In any case, it seems like someone should write a thesis on Shit My Dad Says.

(Maybe literary criticism is the wrong discipline? Is there something more applicable?)
You should read his personal note if you haven't:

http://www.admob.com/google
I leave my kindle at home most of the time. Sometimes, while at work, I wish I could take a look at a particular passage of a book. The iphone app is OK for waiting rooms, but is definitely not ideal for more than casual reading. Having a mac version would be very helpful for me.
But this should be a solved (or at least solveable problem). You have complete control over email in the enterprise b/c you control the mail server.

If you use a service like gmail then you can't even send certain attachments. I couldn't send .zip files the last I checked. Plus spam filtering has gotten better.

I think white-listing could go a very long way towards solving the problem.
It is not just a fashion war, it is about investment of resources. If I would like to program in LISP, but all the big shops insist on Java, I lose.

Static vs Dynamic: I guess both have pros and cons. But even for static types java seems to lose out now.
That's a terribly honest and critical viewpoint. I love it.
Poll: Should consent be legally required for cookies?
How do you feel about the law which is the subject of http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=931596
knowledge: I've only read than short comments about this proposal by people like the folks here at HN.
knowledge: I've only read comments about this proposal by people I generally trust on these sorts of things but I don't know if they've read any part of the proposal.
knowledge: I've not read any part of the proposal, but I was informed on it by someone I know personally who did.
knowledge: I have read a portion of the proposal quoted in an editorial.
knowledge: I have read a draft of the proposal, e.g. from
http://register.consilium.europa.eu/pdf/en/09/st03/st03674.en09.pdf
knowledge: I have read several drafts of this proposal and am personally familiar with this particular legislation.
income: I think this proposal would cause my *personal income to decrease*.
income: I don't think this proposal would have any effect on my personal income.
income: I think this proposal would cause my *personal income to increase*.
labor: This proposal will require me to *do significant additional work*.
labor: I don't think this proposal will affect the amount of work I do.
labor: This proposal will *reduce the work* I must do.
privacy: I think this proposal would cause my *personal privacy to decrease*.
privacy: I don't think this proposal would have any effect on my personal privacy.
privacy: I think this proposal would cause my *personal privacy to increase*.
opinion: I am *strongly against* this specific proposal.
opinion: I am *mildly against* this specific proposal.
opinion: I am not in favor or opposed to this specific proposal.
opinion: I am *mildly in favor* of this specific proposal.
opinion: I am *strongly in favor* of this specific proposal.
Yeah sure when you are on top but then there is the fall from grace. As you become less relevant or get superseded. That's when the ego comes out, tantrums, destructive behavior, etc.
Very well. See http://cs.gettysburg.edu/~tneller/resources/k12/index.html for a tutorial that demonstrates the use of the 'turtle' built in module in python. Turtle has a long history of being a simple graphical environment to introduce programming to young individuals, and that hasn't changed over the years. It would meet the original post author's requirements for graphing those simple functions.

Assuming you are targeting those -slightly- older, pyglet would offer an incredibly simple way to progress, but would require you download one library, which I feel is a very reasonable requirement.
And to think, this is by the same author who wrote A Passage to India, which is in the entirely different genre. It's amazing that someone who wasn't even a science fiction writer could have such skill at seeing the future.
The example is an example. For "not equals" you might as well just write not, then equals.

But amazingly, sometimes code more complicated than that needs to be reused

I wonder why I try to bring sanity to these sorts of discussions also :/

When did you do that? You seem to bring a lot of emotion, very few technical arguments, and a lot of words like "fashion".
S3 Storage Engine with Memcached in Drizzle
i went sans AV software when i installed windows 7. we are a long way from the days of windows 98.
Well, they aren't stupid for this reason. I'm just saying that it doesn't compute that "Apple hates gaming". They are pushing gaming rather much harder than any other smartphone platform right now.
Yeah I just tried it too (Ubuntu 9.10, wine 1.0.1) and had the same result -- app seems to work (i.e., I can click around, pull up my books, read them), but none of the UI text appears.

Is there a way to inspect what font/typeface the app is expecting to load?
why webkit and pyqt4? couldn't the same be possible using something simple like selenium-rc?
You can hardly use a browser, a cellphone, or a game console without relying on my code.

Any guesses? I'm pretty sure this phone doesn't use fetchmail.
As has todoist.com.