skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
You read about these teenager because they are interesting to read about.

Who wants to read about a 50-60 yo professional CEO who just sold his Nth company doing some boring-as-ass Java enterprise thing? No one. Not in the TC crowd. There's nothing to fantasize about.
And now it is subject to DMCA ... cool ...
Can confirm, depresses, late-20s developer, bootstrapping, and with my self-worth too closely tied to what I output.

I used to run for meditation, but with having a baby at home I've let it slip, my family bring me a lot of peace and feeling of well being, and belonging, but running for meditation desperately needs to become a part of my life again.

The note about "preparing to be happy without actually being happy" struck me too, I'm always working, growing, fighting for the next thing, and I never take time to appreciate my successes, we're meeting with some fundraisers for the company we bootstrapped later today, and if we're successful, I'm taking a week off to spend with my family, not see the internet, and appreciate that shortly before turning 30, I might have bootstrapped my own company far enough to take a serious investor round.. why at 29.5 yrs old is that important… I don't know… imposed ageism I speculate.
PHP developers are much much more qualified than Python/Ruby/Java devs for the same price in my area. You can hire PHP dev who can TDD for $10/hour. Or you can have a Ruby junior who brags about Ruby and cannot ship things
I'm still woefully ignorant about world economics. Could someone do me a favour and answer a few basic questions about this:

1. Is the trade surplus mainly affected by private enterprise? If that's the case, what control does the German government have over it if the businessmen running the companies would rather save than spend? (Interest rates are already incredibly low.)

2. I'm personally conservative with money, and never like to get into debt, so from a this naive point of view, I would be very happy to know my country has a large buffer to weather out any oncoming storms. Assuming that Germany's position (saving) is bad for the world economy, but good for Germany, what would make the Germans change their behaviour?

3. What books would you recommend for a complete newcomer to learn about macro economics?
As someone who wants to try a new language every month this is awesome!

It is literally every language I ever tried, and then some, this certainly lowers the bar for me to try some more.
I'm 48. More productive in the past ten years than ever before. I used to feel the way you do, in my twenties. A lot of it was just jockeying for position among a group of high-achiever friends--trying to be the alpha in a group of alphas--and some of it was having been the big fish in the small pond of my immediate peers and finally being thrown into the big pond.

But none of that really matters. Don't plan for the next three years. Life is long, plan for that.

Many of the people I worked with in the '90s achieved a sort of fame like the fame the people you see achieve today. But when their achievements were superceded, they didn't go and do new amazing things. Instead they didn't do much at all, or did things that were completely tangential to their skill set, things they couldn't really excel at.

Part of the reason was that, having worked their way to huge XP, they couldn't start at 0 when they needed to restart the game. So they just didn't play. But we all start back at 0 when we do something new. We progress faster the second and further times around. We talk about learning from failure and doing better the second time around. These people couldn't learn from success.

So now I admire most the people who can achieve thing after thing, even if each of those things is not fame-worthy, not so much the people who have done a single thing, even if that thing gets a TechCrunch headline. The turtle, not the hare. I think the turtles do more good over their lifetimes than the hares, and that people who continue to be productive year in and year out are much, much happier.

My fears now are a different sort: do I still have time to accomplish the things I want to accomplish? Then I remind myself that I still have another 30 or 40 years of work left, as much in front of me as behind me. I encourage you to think that way: you have another 60 years of work left...what can you do over the course of 60 years? Pick a long-term goal (interstellar flight, artificial intelligence, peace on earth, whatever), break it into manageable projects, then start.
Now, I wonder what people could be doing 10, 20 years from now on today's hardware

Probably a lot less tricks up the sleeve are possible (especially with 3D accelerators and dependency on a lot of proprietary AND very complex software)

Or maybe just drop to the framebuffer and push pixels like it has always been done
I'm partial to Bhuyian's article: http://www.buzzfeed.com/johanabhuiyan/lots-of-ubers.

Dunno whether BuzzFeed is still blacklisted by pg, so haven't bothered submitting anything in ages.
It gave first class treatment to C++ and I doubt you could implement cleanly features like fork() or signal handling in its thread model.

Sadly the "The Be Book" is not clear on what was supported, and I don't remember it any longer.
A lot of people seem to be haunted by what they imagine people are thinking of them.

Surely everyone around me is reading these articles as well, and looking at me, and thinking "ah, he's not bad, but obviously not in that class"... right? Or old habits left over from a parent who was constantly comparing your "trajectory" in school to classmates, older siblings, whatever. It's not actually meaningful, though; that sort of thing is a manipulation intended to help you, but if it's making you miserable, work on discarding it.

To the OP -- try to look directly at what's worrying you. Write it down, if that helps. Zoom out, zoom in, ask "how do I know that", walk through actual worst-case scenarios in detail, and try to see if it's actually useful to worry about it.

Worry can be a motivator, but it's not a good one, and it drains you at the same time as it pushes.
Tevatron Reveals Higgs Boson Properties 4 Years After Shutting Down
A few points I haven't seen while scrolling through the comments:

1. Impact of Achievements does not relate to time as much as we think. Someone can start with 50 and make more impact than the most talented programmer made in 30 years of hard work. Maybe you need 2-3 years to get up to speed, but for longer time periods there are too many other factors involved. So if you are really as good as you think (most programmers do, but we can't all be better than all the others) taking your time and working on something that is interesting to work on might be more interesting than a comparison with a guy 10 years younger.

2. Start small. That is even more true for side projects. Do a very tiny thing. Then you can finish it. And if you have more motivation add a second small thing to it. This way even if you lose some motivation you still have something to show for it.

3. Code on something you need. I'm certainly a below average coder, but my best side project is something that started without planning because I wanted to automate a tedious task of mine. I'm working on it from time to time for years now and gradually it becomes more and more useful and nice to use. It's not on Github. It might not help anybody else. But I'm really proud of it, and it really helps me a lot on an almost daily basis.

4. That also means the code itself has no value, but what the program helps you do has value. If you don't code something that does something useful, than your project is meaningless. And by far the easiest person to please is yourself.

5. The most valuable programmers and the ones who have achieved something in the eyes of the public are not the same. Your mother might think Steve Jobs must have been a much better programmer than you. But he's not even a programmer at all. Public recognition is not what we think it is as 20 somethings.
If I remember correctly, NeXT was largely bought for Steve Jobs rather than NeXTSTEP. Also the iPod and the iPhone (or rather the iPad, as that was what Apple were originally working on before they miniaturised it and released it as a smart phone) was Jobs' concept. Obviously prior art existed, but the digital music player and tablet markets were pretty underwhelming to the average layman before Apple released their products.

So I don't think Apple's business would have exploded like it if they bought Be Inc. However Be's core business was multimedia (like Apple's was per-OS X) and that industry has since felt a little neglected by Apple as they seem to be concentrating more on gadgets than power users. So if I had to speculate, I'd say Be Inc / Apple's business would have grown with the media industry and stayed more faithful to their core users.

I also think Apple would have consumed more of Linux's market share than it has done now because an Apple owned BeOS would still have retained, at least, partial POSIX compatibility meaning the leap from UNIX / Linux would be equivalent as it is now, but there would have been less fanboyism which was largely drummed up by Jobs to increase sales. I think, perversely, that has put many new users off from migrating to Apple from the FOSS community who want to use an open API without the corporate BS.

Lastly, I think Macs might have become the de facto standard web developers machine. Partly because of being more true to it's core multimedia business (and the web now being as much a multimedia platform as any other these days), partly because of it's POSIX compatibility meaning it would be trivial to run the same Linux / OS X develop tools, partly because of it taking business from Linux (see above), partly because I think Apple would have continued to allow 3rd party manufacturers to build Apple-compatible machine (IIRC that was one of the first things Jobs terminated when he rejoined Apple), and partly because Windows users would feel less threatened making the switch (BeOS always felt a less significant paradigm shift from Windows than OS 9 / OS X did).

So in short, I think OS X would have had a greater market share if Apple bought Be Inc, but I think Apple would have been less successful as a company since their biggest market at the moment is consumer gadgets (specifically the iPhone).

This is all just guesswork, obviously. But sometimes it's fun to speculate.
Agreed. Every programming language/library/framework/etc will have ugly warts.

You shouldn't primarily evaluate a product based on the number/severity of ugly warts -- but rather on how much problems you will have from the warts, if you follow your coding standards and best practices.

(That said, I've never used PHP. E.g. the naming in the standard lib seems hard to not suffer from, but it ought not to be a major problem.)
Very much so. I've only explored small areas - generally the 'old' (tourist-friendly) areas of Seville, but all the cycling lanes felt safe, welcoming, thoughtfully designed, and well laid out.

But also, Seville has one of those easily under-estimated features that engenders a great cycling experience, and consequently good chance of success with such a plan - it's relatively flat. Amsterdam enjoys a similar benefit, though I can't speak for Copenhagen on this aspect (those were the two extant 'cycling capitals' mentioned in the article).
This is going to sound cheesy, but you need to find an internal peace with yourself, and realise that you are enough.

Once you get there, what you'll actually feel is that it doesn't really matter (there are more vital/core important things in life) and then, ironically enough... you'll work better.

I felt the same way. My problem was I pressured myself so much I never finished a single thing.
I guess you have to somewhat break free from yourself.
Brilliant. Thanks.

This is really easy to say and hard to do, if you've been pushed, prodded, poked into some direction or the other, by well meaning adults/role-models.

Being able to hear your inner motivations is very close to listening to your own thoughts == form of mindfulness.

Very very powerful idea, very very hard to stick to, in our present society of instant-everything, and addictive news cycles.
That can't be right. The value of the euro is depressed, to Germany's advantage, by the other euro members. How is that not going to affect the success of the German economy?

I am reading Varoufakis' Minotaur book at the moment. I am about halfway in and I haven't yet gone 'hang on a sec, that can't be right!'. So he's got that going for him.
It was a seriously accurate bug report. If only all users were so thoughtful.
I'm exactly of the same age of you. But I'm not american nor graduated at a top-10 university. I actually graduated at an above average university in my country.

I was born in a very poor area of a country called Brazil. I probably make now as much as my whole street. I can't compare myself with somebody richer, or that had better education at home and school.

I feel very successful and one in a million. Today I work in Germany and my parents are very proud of me.

I think you have to first understand HOW DID YOU START, then WHY YOU ARE WHERE YOU ARE. Maybe you don't find computing interesting as somebody of 17 years old that is a 'genius'. You have a different life from them but that doesn't make you better or worse, you are just looking at a very blind angle, which is age.

I feel that it's ok if you just do your job, maybe write some software every once in a while at your home and enjoy life: marry someone, try to respect others(this is harder and more important than being the best on your field), play video games, listen to music, cook something, learn another skill...

Actually, the more I reach closer to the top, the less I want it. I don't want to deal with the people from the top, they usually lack a lot of things like respect, they are usually very egocentric and so on, which is something that doesn't inspire me at all.

You need to have a broader view of what a people do instead of looking just at the age. Maybe by doing that all that bad feelings you have will go away. I also have it but you need to learn to tame this monster. What if you let it take over you and then you become this guy that writes articles and is all famous and important but have a very negative impact in the world and the lives of people that are close to him?

Take it easy.
For me that is the most important factor, because it directly influences the amount of code produced. Less code means less bugs and less code to read/understand when getting back into a codebase.
Listen, I'm 25. We are not old. To combat those feelings, I remember two things.

1. I'm 25. I still have like... 60 years left. That's a long time.

2. "There were never any good old days, they are today, they are tomorrow" - that's a line from a Gogol Bordello song that's always resonated with me and helps me put that feeling of having wasted my life so far into perspective.

(Song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9aZwFQbeD1k)
Don't get me wrong, but that is easy to say when you are you ;)

Most folks need that paycheck and don't live in the magical Bay Area where they find jobs laying in the street when they go for a stroll.

I personally would think about moving to a different company if that was the case, but I wouldn't make a fuss about it as I wouldn't know what the future lies ahead of me and who I'll meet in future companies (burning bridges and all that)
On OS X the window manager is built-in and not really customizable. That's also the reason why you need extra tools on OS X to get something like i3 or xmonad.
I had a working pal that was amazing, great family, the world was his property at 20 something. He got cancer and soon he was dead(nine months).

Thinking about death is a great thing to identify what is important in life. Also traveling. In India I saw a bus filled of kids that had been mutilated ON PURPOSE for asking money to tourist.

I mean today there are kids in India whose eyes are being burned, or bones being crushed, so someone else could profit from it. This puts all your problems in perspective.

At the end of your life if you look back what would you be proud of? Of a beautiful website?. Fancy projects? glory? money? I don't think so.

There is a reason for procastination. Your subconscious is a great BS detector.

Read or listen "the Now habit" audiobook to understand it from experts in the area.

Nobody can do everything. There are things that you hate to do and some you love, and the solution is not you forcing yourself to do what you abhor. The solution is to find someone who loves doing what you hate.

Companies naturally do mix different people so they complement each other, the sum is much bigger than its parts. This is the problem of indies, going alone could meant paralysis because you hate so much a (small) part of your journey that blocks you.

The reason you hate to do something is normally your personality type. There is a reason there are different personality types: all of them are better for different things.

People tend to rationalize their own personality as the best and undervalue all others. E.g If you are chaotic, fast problem solver you could despise perfectionist low paced problem solvers. Big error.

I bet there are things on your work that you better would love not to do. Get rid of them getting someone to do it as fast as you can. You won't need tv when your job is the best thing you can do at any given moment.
FBI to WordPress users: patch now before ISIL defaces you
why if your doing real Agile DSDM/RAD all of the stake holders should be in (or represented at) the daily meeting!

I prefer to have wash up meetings at the end of the day so you do not waste time in the morning hanging about for people to turn up
An other neat one is "sand won't save you this time", from the delightful "Ignition!" via the Things I Won't Work With series (well worth reading in and of itself, even for non-chemists): http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2008/02/26/sand_wont_sa...
Notes on Scalable Blockchain Protocols – Public Review
Yes, definitely this! If you're in your 20's and feeling like your "whole life" is wasted/lame/you're a loser .. well, have kids. It'll change your whole outlook, hopefully before you hit 30. Kids are awesome. They teach you that, at 20-something, you're not actually that experienced. You don't actually have a lot of time on the Earth. 20-something year olds - you're still kids. There's 3 or 4 more decades ahead of you, to do stuff - real stuff, not just "my whole life" sort of thinking .. if you're in your 20's your whole life is still way, way ahead of you. Don't neglect that. Have kids, it'll help along the way as you hit 35 .. 45 .. 55 .. 65 ..
Well, in this case you deserve rebuke, as the current policies are horrible for the world and really bad for the Germans.

Trade imbalances are simply not sustainable, regardless of direction.
Non-gregorian calendars are in use today. e.g. the website for Thai Railways ( http://www.railway.co.th/home/ ) uses the year 2558
The really funny thing is, that the Idea of the Euro was never well beloved by the german government prior tho 1990. But then, the French demanded (out of historical fear) some reassurings for allwing the German reunification and preventing a dominant Germany in Europe again. That plan has hugely backfired, boosting the struggling german economy after the very costly reunification in the beginning of the 20th century.

In fact, French fear (or envy?) of the Deutsche Mark in the 80s and 90s lead to a legenday discussion between a german and a french state official:
"We have to talk about the threat of german nuclear weapons, too!"
"But we germans have no nuclear weapons!"
"Yes you have. You just call it Deutsche Mark!"
There's a lot to economics, one book that I think is really insightful and quite easy to read is Economics in One Lesson. It's main function is to highlight second order effects, or unintended consequences, of legislation on activity.

http://www.amazon.com/Economics-One-Lesson-Shortest-Understa...
Absolytely a good reading. Sometimes this kind of readings can help in a complete different problem. Sometime happens you are dealing with another problem, then you remember this story, and you figure out what's wrong because there're some similarities. I remember to have fixed a problem with Postgresql remembering a story about Unicode and Postfix, different domain, but similar problem.
Well the idea is from before electric lighting was even a thing, so who really knows? I do wonder if the Russians have it right in their recent abolishment of the system.
Big deal. It is not as if it is something hard to DIY if you are committed to breaking the law.

I think that is the stuff that both sides of second amendment shouting match fail to get - inventing deadly stuff is easy.
I'm 37. When someone says they are 26 and 'getting older' it is very irritating to me.

Not every kid is lucky enough to have a rich uncle or show up at the top of the App store. Its just the lucky or privileged or self-identified entrepeneurs few that you see in the news. And it is partially slanted towards articles about young people because that is a more interesting article.

I mentioned 'self-identified entrepeneur' because I think identity has a role to play in this. The person that you really believe you are subconsciously influences your behavior to reinforce that outcome.

So if deep down you think you are a great UI designer and an important app or open source developer, you are likely to put yourself in that position and do things that perpetuate it. For example, you might sleep the couch of a wealthy friend (accelerator) and spend all of your waking hours on your website and startup rather than working a corporate job.

Anyway I think that we create our own cages. Some of them are very easy to fall into, like taking a regular job or watching TV after coming home from work. But if you have a self-image which creates a strong subconscious belief in a different lifestyle, that can help you make choices that will move in that direction.

People accomplish things by dedicating time and effort to them. Its not easy to become famous or make a superior website or project.
Can't answer for parent, but Steve Jobs is a good enough reason.
I agree with this. Being an older Dad is extra tiring! I wish I had the energy I had ten years ago.
5 Steps to Datafy Your Business and Be Successful
The DEA collected call metadata way before the NSA did
Iran is using the Islamic calender. Just look at their railways website http://www.rai.ir/index.aspx Or the website for the airport in Tehran ( http://ikia.airport.ir/ ), which uses persian dates for the weather forcase and gregorian for flight details.

Thai Railways is using the Buddhist calendar http://www.railway.co.th/home/
And one of the connections is Ramanujan's letters. Both the FIRST letter that he wrote to Hardy, and the LAST letter he wrote on his death-bed talking about 'mock-theta functions' that are now called mock-modular functions.

> Ken Ono, of Emory University in Atlanta, Ga. “Without either letter, we couldn’t write this story.”

Weird, and fascinating!
I'm not sure whether I'm replying to heavy sarcasm or not, but the Cambridge Computer Lab has exactly this as an organised thing for many years: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mu232/random/teaclub.html

It's a lot easier to be collegiate in a college.
10$?
and you want a "good" developer?
good developer in my area start at 30+ euro
The version control hoster that we use has an integrated ticketing/bug tracking solution, which lets you easily reference tickets in your commits to do this sort of task updating.

We don't make huge use of it, since we've only got about four developers, so communication is pretty easy, but it can be helpful.