skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
For spaghetti code problems the classic book is Refactoring. He has a whole chapter on "Code Smells" and most of the book is basically an extensive catalogue of techniques you can use to eliminate these.

More modern languages like Ruby will allow even cleaner ways of doing things than described in Refactoring (Java), but you can get a good sense for smells common to all languages.

Some other thoughts:

What science are you studying? There's often scope to do something computational for your thesis/project/dissertation - modelling some physical or biological process.

Other ideas:
Try and get an internship at a software company. Often a science degree is sufficient and you'll be able to learn about working in teams, using source control, and observe the kinds of things you like and dislike in a workplace.

You could also do a CS conversion course once you've finished this degree.
I see what you mean.

Having spent some formative years writing assembler in an interrupt-rich environment has tended to shape my idea of bare metal.
Don't bother with widgets unless you know what you're doing. Creating an entire new site feature takes effort, and that's what coding for Facebook is. Farmville did it, those damn quizzes do it, but I haven't seen more than three applications in the last six months.

What you do is make a fan page for your product, and put everything you've got there. Fan pages are beautifully integrated and give you a lot of control over your audience. I used a fan page of myself to address young campers at a summer program and they're still talking to one another over it.
I'll be curious to see how it shakes out for each of them. It seems to me, from my admittedly ignorant view, like opening the Russian front was to Germany for both HP and Cisco. I suspect it's going to hurt both of them in the end, maybe to a significant degree. HP isn't really the clear leader in their space, though, but Cisco has so little history and mindshare in the server space that it seems like a pretty evenly bad idea on both sides.

I don't know who will eat into Cisco market share when they make mistakes or spread themselves too thin, but I'm sure that Dell is ready to step in whenever HP makes mistakes or loses focus (as has been happening for years).

Anyway, I believe saying Cisco forced HP to do this isn't quite accurate. The other option for HP might have been to double down on their own strengths, and just kick ass while Cisco tries to figure out how to crack a market where they have no brand awareness (a Cisco is a router...everybody knows that...would you buy a roll of Kleenex paper towels?). Cisco could very easily spend themselves out of the running, since they'll have to spend a lot more on sales and brand awareness for their server line than HP will for the same impact. Even if Cisco is a better run company, which I do believe is true, they're signing on for an uphill battle.
> The single most powerful thing about key value stores / document-based DB's is their independence from SQL.

The most powerful thing about key/value stores is the scalability and other features; it's a significant loss that it doesn't have a powerful ad-hoc query language. Adding SQL doesn't hurt it's "independence" from SQL as it is merely an add on.
When was the last time you clicked on a category tab on any site?

I can't recall every doing it. I think psychologically we assign very specific use cases to our media. Go here for X. Go there for Y. Go there for Z.

If you go looking for X, it's either there or it's not. You're not going to click on a tab to try and see if that subsection has what you're looking for. You're going to hop to another site that's focused just on doing X.

</gross but perhaps helpful generalization>
I can appreciate this. I am a Lutheran pastor (as well as a CTO for a printing company) and while preaching one Sunday a few years ago, I flipped my page over and, to my horror, discovered that the second side was the same as the first. Needless to say, I did not have a duplexing printer at the time.

Though I had been using written-out manuscripts for a couple years, at that moment I was grateful for being forced by my profs (and I hated it at the time) to preach from an outline. I did that five years straight, week after week.

When I flipped the page, everybody knew something was wrong (I don't hide my reactions well), but at least I was able to recover: just try to recall the key points and keep on going.
Like I said, my boss has the same attitude as you and I understand it and comply with it. It's definitely not a bad rule for a lot of businesses.

But I'm not sure what "owning code" means these days.

Almost all the software I get paid to write is based on open source software. I assume competitors are constantly looking at the same OSS projects I am, and do know about the features (and flaws) within.

Perhaps this puts us at a competitive disadvantage, but if we had to write everything from scratch in secret so we could "own it" and make sure nobody ever saw it, we wouldn't have a product yet. Actually we wouldn't be in business at all.

Also, there's almost zero possibility with git of not having a recent copy of the code somewhere, whether github is accessible or not, as a few other posts have noted.
One of my cofounders, we met because we were at the same college (I was an undergrad; he was a grad student.)

We met again years later as part of the same research group; by this point he was a postdoc and I was doing a PhD. Finished that, moved departments, and that's how I met my other cofounder: we were part of a team working on the same research project.
I've thought of considering comment length in the sorting algorithm. There's definitely a correlation between length and quality.

Another possibility would be to look at the words people used. I'm pretty sure you could train a spam filter to recognize lame comments.
http://elev.at

Replaying Uncharted 2 at higher difficulty level.
There is a "Download Link" at the bottom.
He was one of my good friend's boyfriend's roommates. We met at a party on my good friend's boyfriend's best friend's birthday.

All clear now?
That's a good point. It probably means that people go to cnn.com to know what's going on, but don't see CNN as the best place to get in-depth or specialized content.
Bing and Wolfram Alpha BMI calculation
Do you get Wolfram Alfa BMI calculator when you search Bing for "bmi calculate" as claimed in MS blog http://www.bing.com/community/blogs/search/archive/2009/11/11/how-many-calories-in-a-burger-what-s-2-2-2-2-2-bing-and-wolfram-alpha-have-the-answers.aspx

I don't see it:

http://www.bing.com/search?q=bmi+calculate&go=&form=QBLH&qs=n
I held 3Com through a couple of years of steady decline back in the late '90s waiting for it to make a dent in Cisco. It never did, and I lost more on it that I've ever lost on any other stock. I don't have much confidence that HP management can alter that situation in any significant way. But then, I don't have much confidence in HP management since the Compaq merger, or even a few years before.
Live links

http://www.bing.com/community/blogs/search/archive/2009/11/1...

http://www.bing.com/search?q=bmi+calculate&go=&form=...
the kids might be more invested in it had they been more a part of the design and construction. granted, 3 and 5 are a bit young. ideally, you put together a totally scrappy, safe tree house when they're 3 and then when they're 10 and 12 you build the current version together.
That news was soooo leaked before hand.

Here's the stats on the option board today:

- 8085 calls traded, 6 puts traded

- 95% of those calls were bought on the ask

- Open interest for the entire board was 13k, so very unusual.

- Around noon, we had buys go at the offer (to open) for 3k Nov 5 calls and ~3k Dec 5 calls.

Nice chunk of change for an overnight trade.
I wouldn't say its assuming malice so much as assuming indifference
I'm not comfortable disclosing that. I'll only say it is a lot by both my standards when I was a freshman in high school and now where it exceeds my starting year salary offers.

Thanks.

Money wise, not much I suppose. I am currently budgeting myself 2k a month. I can live very light. However, given passed health issues, I am unwilling to spend savings passed a certain point. The amount I can risk is much lower than the amount I want to risk.

On the company idea, I am only giving up the idea of running it as a for-profit enterprise. I have a whole lot of ideas on fund-raising (not yet posted on my site) that I would like to test out of sheer intellectual curiosity. Fundify allows me to do that. If my ideas prove correct, I think the project, or at least the idea, will be self-sustaining.

Thanks for your feedback.
Nobody cares about your source code - most people struggle to understand their own.
What makes you think that's the recommended pronunciation?

Notably, the word 'bang' does not appear in the book, "Let's Go!", so it is unlikely to be the author's preferred pronunciation:

http://books.google.com/books?ei=50f7Ssn3LpOilQTelvTyDg&...
No, I mean readable. For example:

if (a > b) {
a = a + 5
b = b / 2
}

...is not considered readable brace-requiring language because it's appearance doesn't reflect what's executed.

Ie:

* Python and similar languages would execute the code consistently with how it looks. This is good.

* A brace-requiring language would execute the code in a way that is not consistent with how it looks. This is not good.

Scroll up: I didn't request any analysis, I made a suggestion. Someone posted a blank 'no', and I asked them for a more civil explanation of their views.
Here's the 7500x7500 image of it in Seadragon:
http://seadragon.com/view/fnr
Adobe to cut 680 more jobs as economic squeeze continues
Ask HN: Review my introduction to SQL for Excel users Tutorial
One thing to note: HP has been in the networking business for almost a decade. Most of 3com's products aren't necessarily new to HP but will instead augment the existing portfolio.
http://www.procurve.com/
Misunderstanding the Cloud
Healthy? You might be surprised: http://www.chipotlefan.com/index.php?id=nutrition_calculator

Depending on what you get, I suppose.
I don't know about that. I've got a small network of friends still in school doing two different startups, and I enjoy talking to him about how its going, even though they are currently much more successful than I am (I wimped out and took a 9-5 to pay off the student loans).
Funny, prior to the parent post (which was really bad) being deleted, I had plus 2 karma here. Now I have minus two. I wonder if people don't get that I'm replying to a deleted comment and not the submission.
Hi,

I've got an add-in for excel product that allows the use of SQL in Excel, so I have created a basic introduction to SQL tutorial.

I would appreciate any feedback you have.

It aims to be practical and doesn't worry too much about relational theory or the more intricate aspects of databases/sql.

Although I'm planning to get into the more complex uses of SQL in later tutorials.

Cheers
Sam H
My freshman year of college my cofounder and I were arch enemies in the web programming course at school. There was a competition around the final project and we were on opposing teams. I think it was mostly because we were jealous of each other's skills. That summer we both worked on research projects at school and became friends and caught the startup bug. At one point he mentioned that we should start a company together and I off-handedly agreed (I only vaguely remember this part although he's told me about it many times).

We tried various little side projects but never got very far during school. He graduated a year before me and got married and moved to San Francisco. Now that I've graduated and moved to San Francisco too we both live together in the same apartment with his wife, so in a way being cofounders is like being married for us :-)

Now we just have to find more time to hack on our stuff...
> you are not allowed to say something that
> you didn't write down on the wiki, unless
> it's a question.

Or presumably unless it's the answer to a question.

You also need a time embargo on updates to the wiki (or whatever) before the meeting, otherwise everyone spends the 5 minutes before the meeting typing furiously, and no one has the chance to read things.

Having said that, I'm pushing for something very like this. I'm frustrated with pointless, rambling meetings that appear to achieve nothing, so I'm insisting every meeting has an agenda, action points, reviews of previous action points, and a stated purpose in the form of a question to answer or decision to reach. My colleagues thought I was being totally anal, but I've gone around recently and asked their opinions about recent meetings and the point is made - they now believe the meetings are shorter, more useful, and achieve things.

It is, however, basically the much scorned traditional committee meeting rules. Evolution in action.
I'm not so sure that the Nintendo Wii should be considered as a good example for this sort of thing anymore.

They had won big with the Wii, turning profits on each console sold while the competition lost with each sale. But now they're facing the problem with the Wii being abandoned in households rather quickly and the decrease in software sales that brings.

DS aside, can Nintendo really be considered as a company that does few things well when the longevity of 1/2 their flagship lineup is in jeopardy?
I dare you to go to Pilsen and say that.
It's not 'peace' that you are paying for (with bloodshed and violence), it's interests of giga-million(?) corporations which might coincide with yours e.g. cheap oil/resources.

Everything else is propaganda and lies you've been telling yourself so you can sleep at night.
I figure it's ok to leave up the occasional commemorative post, when it's by an old and respected member of the community, so I didn't kill it. I think I'm going to have to though; the comments show HN users can't be trusted with this topic.
It's not as sharp and cool, but it's equally insightful, and it provides a lot more material with which to actually have a conversation, rather than just shoot back a counter-opinion.
Ask HN: Does it really make sense to contact bloggers a week before launch?
I mean sure if you are the next Google and are launching some enormous project with millions in funding, it might make sense. But if you are just another startup, is it realistic to think they'll be holding their breath for a week to write about your startup?
Adwords is a very powerful tool. I've been running PPC campaigns for years (I'm also Adwords certified by Google) and I'm always learning about new ways to do things with them. From market research and priming forum pumps to spinning bad press, they're a force to be reckoned with in the hands of an experienced user.
My cofounders were my best friends from uni. I met Scott during freshman year. At Oberlin, students have 5 weeks off in the middle of winter when we're expected to cook for ourselves. I probably would have eaten ramen all 35 days for breakfast, lunch and dinner, but we banded together and became expert hash brown cooks.

I met Nick and in sophomore year and we started a street art group. We did some pretty crazy stuff that made a lot of people smile. I actually met my girlfriend because of an art project we pulled off particularly well.

I introduced Nick and Scott during the end of junior year. Nick and I needed another house mate for our sweet off-campus diggs and so I suggested Scott. They got along well, so we dragged Scott with us. Nick and Scott actually were working on a recreational project for a while called Marblar, it was this horrible 3D game where you are a marble and you wander a crudely created world for several minutes before the psychics engine crashed.

When Nick came up with the idea for the company, he kind of roped me in, and it was pretty obvious Scott should join us.
Thanks for the book recommendation. I'm a biology undergrad. I'm glad you have mentioned attempting something computational for my thesis. I'll look into it; the prospect excites me. Same goes to the internship suggestion. Definitely something to think about.
McDonalds holds no stake at all in Chipotle. They did a ways back, but spun it off onto its own through an IPO and divested all shares.
It doesn't hurt to get in touch with them and let them know you are about to launch to give them some time before hand to prepare (if they are even interested in covering you). You can always follow up on launch day (unless they explicitly ask you not to). That being said, don't ask for a press embargo, they might write about your pre-launch thing if it sounds really exciting to them. If you absolutely can't stand that, wait until the day of.
Grew up together, fell out of touch, reconnected during college (NCSU) and became good friends again.

Later, after we'd both dropped out and were working shitty jobs (read: retail), we both decided that this wasn't going to be the way our stories played out, and decided to start a web design company. I quit my job almost immediately, and he did soon after. Three years later, still going strong.

Failure has never been an option, because if this doesn't work I'm back to square one, and I'm not going back. That urgency has forced us to rapidly evolve our business model and given us the strength to tighten our belt buckles through the thin times.

I wouldn't change any of it, but holy shit was it scary.
From a technical point of view, I agree that scalability is a killer feature. But from the point of someone learning about key/value stores, taking a entirely different approach is helpful. For me, it has been invaluable to detach my thought process from any concept of SQL and think different.
Can we squeeze bear/bare (the verbs) in there?
This is a good review of the language from someone who has had a chance to work with it, and is inside Google. He shows some quite nice examples of its use, and reports that it is exceedingly fast to compile and generates good code.

(This is the Good Math, Bad Math blog)
Thanks for the comment. I think I'm going to read some more into some more advanced material (Programming Ruby 1.9) and then get my teeth sunk into a project.
Thanks for the comments :)
Mark and I for Ramamia (side project)- Met on hacker news!

Me + Cofounder of unannounced startup- Worked together at first startup + met through mutual friend from college.
Please send an invite.

See http://mailhide.recaptcha.net/d?k=01NL3VPhKzy6IujMa32g4rcg==... to view my Email address (trying to stop spambots)
>> "But now they're facing the problem with the Wii being abandoned in households rather quickly and the decrease in software sales that brings."

First I've heard of it, can you point to anything to back that up?
I thought you were going to say that three FBI agents cuffed you in the middle of your talk and escorted you to a van.
haha. my cofounder and i are married. we met playing ultimate frisbee. we "adventured" more so than "dated," and were soon engaged. the startups came soon after. it was lucky that although we were so much in synch in spirit, our professional skills are complementary.
Spotify U.S Launch Delayed and MySpace May Move to Paid Model
Pretty sure the iPhone contracts aren't tied to a specific phone. I'm not in the US, but I'm pretty sure that you can't tie a GSM SIM Card to a phone. Take the Sim out and put it in a n97 and it should work.
I have a few close friends who attended Oberlin, and I was always impressed with the 5 week break in winter. IIRC, its not so much time off, but rather time you're expected to pursue something, anything. Is that correct?

I wish other colleges would follow their lead. It leads to some really amazing experiences.
Sure but lets put it in context of this article. If I were looking to open one fast food franchise, I'd much rather be in the In-N-Out, do one thing well camp then Taco Bell's give them anything world.

(this isn't to say Taco Bell's business is poor, I'd just rather do what In-N-Out does)
Another possibility would be to implement a waiting period before people have the opportunity to vote. This may help with the issue of newer members upvoting the one line witty comments. However, I am not sure if the short comments are necessarily negative. Should users be required to contribute exceptionally long and verbose posts without the benefit of shorter posts in between? From my own perspective, I tend to only skim over 'wall of text' comments if they do not engage my interests from the beginning so the intermingling of short comments with longer comments to me is not a bad thing. The voting up or down of comments from those that may be deemed inadequate to accurately judge the quality of the post (new members) seems to be more of an issue. These new users may vote based on their opinions (as I mentioned in another post) rather than on the quality of the arguments or information presented so a probation period may be the solution.
As part-owner of the code in question, this is what one little guy on my shoulders is saying, very loudly.

Taking the other side for a moment: Really, no code in hosted environments (which is what I presume you meant by "the cloud")? In a production environment, user data is way more important than deployed code (compromise that and you may be looking at jail time in some jurisdictions, nevermind ruinous consequences to the business' reputation)...is that encrypted before it hits the disk or something? Or, do you think that any code or data not stored on machines located on premise is tempting fate?
I like the format but I wish to see more.
High karma at the very least represents a stake in the site. Not every high-karma comment is worth anything, but virtually every high-karma user cares about the culture of HN.
How Much Linux Is in Android?
SourceForge changes its name to Geeknet
But it is how most people get an apple.
Yes, but it'll be good for everyone else, which more important.

One of the most positive things about free markets is that competition lowers prices.
When Rails Fails
It gives a readable account, but still needs some work. Compare the auto-generated article to ESPN's account: http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/recap?gameId=291011102

Also, how did the auto-generated article get quotes from players?
Looks like a patent for a novel user interface to sudo, not sudo itself.
I agree that fighting an invading enemy, on your own soil, as was the case for many willing and unwilling soldiers of WWI and WWII, was the right thing to do. I also appreciate that the armed forces must have a strict hierarchy that follows orders in order for the organization to function effectively.

I am worried though, that when an enemy is not so clear and obvious, this line of reasoning can be used by unscrupulous leaders to further their own goals. When the threat the "enemy" poses is so vague and unclear, as is the case for the conflicts that we (the US; I am an American and can only speak for the US), have been involved with since WWII, it becomes harder to swallow that all of the deaths our soldiers cause are anything but murder and volunteering to be placed in such a position is anything but honorable. Thus, the analogy of a mob boss and a thug.
Simply making a bot to submit articles based on the home pages of some technical news web sites through screenscaping the external link URLs would be sufficient to increase the Karma score to unnatural numbers. So, some solution may be needed to stop this.
Clearly he should have combined the two talks into one. "How to turn bold words into a startup," or something.