skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I use Joe's Own Editor. You must configure it to prevent it from making backup files (which are security risks) and to highlight based on your language, but overall, it is excellent in terms of its speed and intuitive interface.

I use putty for my SSH connections. It is a nice way to remotely access your server from a Windows client.

The programming language you use should fit the job so that is something that is specific to the project.

Using subversion for version control is really one of the best tools available. I would fear making changes in my code even if I had backups because changing it might break functionality, and I would spend a long time hunting for solutions of what I did. With any kind of version control system (and subversion is very easy to use), you can make changes without worry, and you can get old code you wanted to keep even though you were not using easily (because commented code is evil). It encourages you to clean your code, remove dead code, and to refactor your code because you know you can always go back.

You should learn vi in case you must use an archaic machine where you only have remote access and do not want to try installing new apps. (Some very old yet very stable telephone switches running with Solaris interfaces come to mind.)

Grooveshark for listening to music. The site is fantastic, and I do not need to waste time hunting for music that gets me in the mood to work.

Lastly, a notepad. I keep a notepad beside my bed. I find that it helps me sleep. I will be thinking of code, and one idea leads to another as I relax. So, instead of staying up for hours focusing on it (This has happened to me hundreds of times.), you can write it down. My brain then relaxes because it knows I do not need to remember it. Then, I can go to sleep. In the past, I would not be able to actually fall asleep unless I got up, coded what I was thinking about it, and then went back to sleep. Now I know I can put it off until tomorrow and actually get a good sleep for the night.
He owns lots of maturity-mismatched assets. He hasn't done much with gold. He's bought into lots of highly regulated companies. And he advocates punitively high income taxes on some activities, and high income taxes on most other activities.

So no, I don't think Buffett is a Rothbardian. He's similar only in the sense that he understands economics very well.
Emacs. Kudos to an univ professor who made jokes of anyone who was not using it. He used to say we'll be using emacs for decades if we really invest some time learning it. He was right.

A REPL for any language used atm. Cool if coupled with the above.

REPL/shell history with incremental search, like readline. This is the most powerful single feature I use. Hitting Ctrl-R and typing usually 2-3 keys gives me back the previously entered line I intended to find. If your REPL doesn't have it embedded, use rlwrap. Look at -H option to control where your history is saved exactly. Use big history size if you want to be reminded what you typed months ago - having 10/100k of history entries doesn't hurt really as it's still quick.

Tab completion is cool as well. For rlwrap you can pregenerate keywords for completions (eg. your favorite libraries) and it will add completions for terms entered during current session.

A good SCM for tracking changes even if working alone. I find centralized ones annoying; hopefully we've got Darcs & Git, both awesome.

Using multiple desktops/workspaces to try new ideas in a space which doesn't clutter your current visual, so you don't waste your time rearranging it.

Pen & paper. A habit of using it to get some distance. You can always scan a sheet of paper if needed. I know not every boss is going to accept such scan as a documentation ;), but preparing deliverable docs is something different than making useful notes to yourself.

Lack of running IMs, MUAs, popup calendars and other disturbances during coding. All that stuff can wait. The focus is everything.
One exception is when you do remote pair programming, then some VoIP app is handy. OTOH not many people work this way.

A sign of a good tool is when you still enjoy using it after, say, ten years. Most of the above apply here.

[edit: I meant MUAs not MTAs of course]
Maybe, but how will he know if he doesn't ask?

Or it might turn out that there is some third option between continuing the current drudgery or pushing everything into the pile on some new venture. Again, there's little to be lost and much to gain from starting the conversation.
The whole point of those early commits is that it's a joke! Just go read them. They are basically laying out the simple Hello, World! program and showing its evolution over time.

1972: Hello, World! is written in B
1974: Hello, World! is re-written for the new C language
1988: Hello, World! is written in ANSI C (two commits, go read them to see the diff)
2008: Go
Only if you define "spending" as "immediate spending on consumer goods." Saving is just that kind of spending, deferred -- in Buffett's case, deferring it increases the amount that's spent, since he compounds his net worth at an above-average rate. So take whatever numbers you'd use assuming my previous comment was correct, and bump them up drastically.
Hogwash!!! Many of those tags provide semantic meaning, like strong. Also, if what you need to create is a table of data, then what else would you use beside table.

This linkbait has cost the author more reputation than it was worth.
Is anyone interested in creating a team for Hackathon 09?
SCCS (Source Code Control System) was developed at Bell Labs in 1972.
I think a lot of engineering types are out in the cold on this one. what helped me was studying acting (the art of believably imitating social situations).

http://greenlightwiki.com/improv/Status

start reading Robin Hanson's blog Overcoming Bias, he's an economics professor who posts a lot about signaling.
I was surprised to see no one mentioning calendar/reminder tools. Maybe it's because this is Hacker News and more folks are focused on, well, hacking and therefore when they hear the term "productive" they think about being a more productive hacker - I don't know. I do know that I would be far less productive without a tool to set reminders - the idea of "Set it and forget it" leaves room in my brain for more. Oh sure I have lots of other tools for productivity including programming-related tools but the most productive tool I use is my calendar with reminders and tasks.
"Real-life Robinhood?" Really? I think its far more likely that he is a damn smart businessman. Consider this fact:
Buffet spoke out about keeping the Estate Tax, because, as he said, rich people need to pay more. In reality, the Estate Tax generates over $ 12 Billions dollars a year for big life insurance companies, which Buffet either owns stock in or controls.
If Buffet was a "real-life Robinhood" he would say repeal the Estate Tax (as it destroys jobs and small businesses) and make ME pay more directly.
Don't agree about the Estate Tax? Watch this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Urvkfi134Ew and tell me how you figure.
Off-topic but related: If you are studying engineering or medicine or any field where there will be a significant penalty in money or harm to others of mistakes, DON'T settle for an A. Learn (practice) to get the right answer when working problems. In the real world there are no answers in the back of the book, and even when someone else is backstopping your work they can miss mistakes, too. Take the time when doing a problem to make sure you understand it and if it's complicated don't try to keep track of everything in your head.
I agree. If you want something to stand out in a long paragraph, what would you use?

<span class="highlight">?

I'd much rather use <strong>.
It's like a bus, but with far greater fuel consumption, a far larger road footprint, and the bonus chance to have a multi-car accident due to a software hiccup.
It is free for the basic account. I'm pretty sure that includes the site blocking option.
I've seen different people react differently to having moved around a lot as a kid. Some react the way you do. Others like nothing better to just plot down and settle in some roots when they're adults.
I have kids, own a TV, but don't get anything more than the basic network channels. Specifically, no Disney, no Nickleodeon, Cartoon Network, etc. When visiting friends and family who do have those channels, I'm constantly reminded this is a good thing.

(Ironically, I think channels like Cartoon Network I would recommend more for adults, both for the creativity of some of the shows and for the nostalgia of the old stuff. But I don't think the irony of many of these cartoons translates for many children, who are still naive enough to take them at face value.)
VA Gov race - retrospective - which used social media effectively?
Do you think they need as much of the "things" as parents seem to feel obligated to provide for them now? There is no need for this false dichotomy of "things" or "complete lack of things".

As I've commented on here before, I and a lot of the people I know seem to have gone through childhoods where the parents believed this trade-off was really binary. I got it less than many people, but I still would have liked to see my parents, and their parents as well, not suffer through existence so much because of "needs" they thought we had. The only reason they thought we had those needs is because all the other parents in the neighborhood reinforced that children have those needs by catering to their own children thusly. It almost seems like the same force that drives parents to obsess about the safety of their children. They don't want to seem like the parent who cares the least.

The problem is that the goalposts you allude to in a higher-level comment are defined by this mechanism. I agree that goals will change -- any life change will result in resetting of goals --, but I think we absolutely suck as a collective on evaluating where those goals ought to reset to, and just let blind oneupmanship against other families guide us to local maxima.
No, I read it and thought it was much more reasonable than the Rails one with a similar title. The problem was that it was in response to the Rails article, which was of very low quality.
Wars are not just lost; they have to be won. Traditional accounts of the Cold War understandably focus on the United States and the Soviet Union. But that contest was a kind of global election, and the swing states were in Europe and East Asia.

Ok. I'm done.

No, not at all.

If you think the cold war was a kind of global election, you need to go back and study up some more. Somebody has convinced you that you know what you are talking about, and that person has, unfortunately, defrauded you.

I guess the rewriting and oversimplification of history will continue as long as there are writers. But it sure is a pain in the ass.
Burger Theory
I don't think anything is wrong with the <strong> tag. It is interesting that it is listed next to the <b>/<bold> tags, as <strong> is often suggested as a semantically correct alternative to those tags to denote the importance of a specific bit of text.

Perhaps the author feels that only <em> should be used to place "emphasis" on the text in question, and that it should also be used instead of <strong> as strong doesn't give as clear an impression of importance as <em>.

I think you are just fine using <strong> in places where it is appropriate.
We probably shouldn't take the headline at face value. What we're seeing are some playfully hacked initial fictitious commits ostensibly from Brian Kernighan intended to paint a picture of the spiritual lineage that the creators of go want to acknowledge.

(And, in my opinion, if there's anybody allowed to invoke the name of Brian Kernighan in this way, it would be Rob Pike and Ken Thompson).
So you just make things up as you go along? I don't know. I'd rather write markup that's documented and I know will work.
Who thinks they are going to fall as fast as they climbed?
For a service that relies on third party clients so much it seems like usage numbers (users, number of tweets) would be much more important than traffic numbers which probably miss much of that.
This is a good idea. I expect that reddit will make a lot of money from it.
Actually, the commas inside the quotation marks is an American English thing. Regardless of logic it's completely consistent with usage in the States. In the UK it's not.

That said, where to place the commas, full stops, and semi-colons is pretty tricky no matter what side of the Atlantic you're on.
I remember reading somewhere that if there are two roads and you can't choose between them, then they're both wrong.

It's also a form of creativity and problem solving to open up other options for yourself. The world is more pregnant with possibility than we imagine until we've seen other people get themselves out of a mess by opening up options.
It's harder to get a job at the Apple Store than it is to get into Harvard
There seems to be somewhat of a misunderstanding. I didn't say leave her because she might not want you to do the things you want to do. I said talk to her or leave her!

My opinion is that if he ponders such important matters and feels unable to talk about it with his spouse then it's not a relationship worth having. I would go so far as to say it would be unfair _not_ to quit a relationship if I felt unable to talk about things like this.

I stand by that in all its harshness.

However, it may be a mistake to talk about these things in a do this, do that kind of style. I know I'm not very diplomatic but I think he's smart enough to parse it and maybe dismiss it, and if I'm voted down so be it.
"Yet divided after Mao's death among competing visions of national development, the Chinese made a pivotal choice in 1978. They rejected the Soviet model, opting instead for market-oriented economic reform, but without political reform. (At about the same time, Hungary's Communist leader, János Kádár, with his similar market-opening program of 'goulash communism,' showed how such a model could work in Eastern Europe, too.)

"The Chinese were probably influenced less by the example of the United States itself than by U.S.-backed examples closer to home, such as Japan, South Korea, and--although they would not admit it--Taiwan."

Yes. The startling fact near the end of the 1970s is that the economic gap between China and Taiwan had become so large (because Taiwan was prospering while China was stagnating) that Taiwan's overall economic strength was becoming almost as great as that of all of China, even though China has SIXTY times the population. That much economic strength attracts the attention of a dissatisfied population in a poorer nearby country. ("Democracy Wall" writers in this transition period referred to the example of Taiwan as a basis for criticizing the Communist Party regime in China.) And that much economic strength provides more military options even to a country that is heavily outnumbered. (Meanwhile, China's army was humiliated during its brief incursion into Vietnam in 1979.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Vietnamese_War

So China had no choice but to loosen economic regulation and tacitly reject orthodox Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist-Maoist doctrine to catch up to Taiwan. And, yes, Korea's south prospering while the north stagnated was also a cautionary example to the rulers of China.
Yes, we should continue producing programming languages, but the danger with a programming language from Google is that they have such a reputation that other programming languages that might be superior could be overlooked in favor of the trendy option.
They won't see that value for very long if no one buys this. Which might well turn out to be the case, since it is a closed-source editor, and alternatives are many.
Those are obviously fake commits! Those were added by the Go language team as a joke. We must applaud their sense of humour :)
I like the open bid, split the pie approach. I suspect that it will go spectacularly wrong at least a few times before it converges on an optimal ruleset.

But I'm glad that reddit is continuing to innovate.
When what you're doing isn't working, try anything else.

Simplistic, but true nonetheless.

The sum of your life isn't working for you, so you should definitely act and change something. Don't think "I should be happy because I have these things or because others like me look happy." You're not happy. Change something. You have zero responsibilities beyond the well being of yourself and your family.

Change the job, deliberately, carefully, and as quickly as possible. Even if a heart-to-heart with your difficult boss improves that relationship, there's still the commute and your desire to spend more time with your kids.

A job is just a job, and they don't care (much) about you. You're more or less pluggable. Your kids are the world, and you're losing them everyday, even when you're with them 24/7. My son is eleven and I love him exactly the way he is today, but I ache from the fact that I will never again be able to talk to the four year old he once was. Max your time and quality with your kids, they're good for you and you're good for them.

If you have trouble figuring out what to do "from now on," then just try to figure out what you can do "for awhile." Give yourself some space and time to look around. You're smart enough and disciplined enough to write a book, so you can probably work remotely. Get a contract or permanent-but-remote job with someone on the other side of the country, or New Zealand, so that there's no question about the work from home thing. You don't have to save the world with your first change, you just have to push the world back a bit, so you can see what's possible.

Downshift. If you have more than 12 (or N) payments on a car, sell it and buy a good enough cheap car that serves your needs. If you're not commuting then you don't need much car. Get rid of cable/dish (but keep the broadband). Sell your house and buy a smaller one in an older neighborhood (assuming the economics work for that). Get rid of as much out-flow as possible, and save it instead.

Take a hard look at money expenses and psychic expenses, and realize that most of our "have tos" are merely "want tos." If you're doing something that sucks (like your job) because you "have to" live in a certain neighborhood or in a certain way, then think about what those supposed "have tos" are doing to you.

You do have to take care of yourself. As they say at the beginning of an airline flight, if you're traveling with children (which you are), in the event of an emergency place your own oxygen mask first, so that you are then able to help your kids with their oxygen. Point, don't suffer in a field of suck because you think it's good for your kids. Take care of your needs within the bounds of responsibility and propriety, and you'll be better able to take care of your kids.

Much good advice in the other comments. Look at it all with slightly unfocused eyes and see what it all suggests that will work for you. Talk to a trusted friend and a close relative. Don't feel obligated to take any specific advice.
jacquesm, I just wanted to say, every one of your comments on this thread has been awesome.
Fed blocks overdraft fees - Bernanke goes to bat for account holders
Very long article, but very interesting points. Worth a careful read if you've skipped it because of "tl;dr". The first article, "The Gervais Principle", is also very good.
I'm going to take the optimistic view here. Sure, Google has muscle. But so did IBM, and where is PL/I today?
The article is of course exaggerating, noone is forced to do extensive garbage sorting, so paying someone to do it makes absolutely no sense. A lot of people do it because they feel compelled to do "the right thing", others do some sort of best effort, and some ignore it completely.
Unless the dispute resolution is on good tracks to be solved, I don't find it funny because Google has the weight to squash anyone on its way, even unintentionally.

Go was a good name for a language invented at google but it is unfortunately not available. The name 'lango' suggested in a comment was, in my opinion, a brilliant alternative name proposal. And the most funny alternative name proposal was 'go2'.
Lets hope this shuts up all the annoying people that got nothing better to do than to whine about a similar name having been used by another language, now it is clear who was first ;)
By the way, if any of you want in on the beta, mention either YCombinator or Hacker News in your email to betaparty@reddit.com and we'll put you on the top of the beta list.
Marshall McLuhan on education (A changed environment requires a new education)
There's no evidence in the article of how Apple's hiring process actually works, so what is "selective" about it?

They received 10000 applications for one store, and hired 200, which still seems like tons of employees, to me. The only thing hard about getting the job is competition, which is just life.
That happens fairly often in general, but it's really not that big a deal. People misapply programming languages all the time, but it never seem to hamper innovation. Innovation tends to take place in the lesser adopted languages and eventually makes its way into the mainstream; Google putting this out won't really change anything in that respect.
[toobla] everyone loves
Basic Steps Towards Effective Prototyping
No, its not new, in fact Schneir lists examples that have been around for a very long time (restaurants in particular).

But it is taking on new aspects and new prominence in the IT field.

I do not think regulation will actually change much. Reputation will still be immensely important. Obviously it will remain significant in quality of service, and regulators can only establish a base minimum if they can do anything at all in terms of quality of service. Regulators can (and should) play a greater role on the security side, but even there they can only establish base minimums and many will fall below that anyway. Companies will always be able to exceed that minimum, and that will often be important, especially to those that really care about security.
I wouldn't want to cramp your style, but when I first saw Tetris at an arcade in the 1980's, I understood the goal and how he game was played in 20 seconds. Watching a video of your game... not really.
In my very first lecture in university the professor told the class that this is impossible. The only way to learn something is by doing. But not to despair, as even if you think you are no good at times, you will be 100x more productive by the end.
Except that the hg repo has been up for longer than the whole fuss about Go!
I've had an arduino kit sitting around for pretty much exactly this reason. Along with a ridiculously bright BlinkM MaxM RGB led, I want create some sort of ambient notification system. Stash it in the corner and have the LED change colors based on things like inbox count, or amount of website traffic or what have you.