skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The best place to be, will be in a position to leverage automation and artificial intelligence as a multiplier effect of your labor and income potential. Instead of competing with those things, instead of going against them.

The ability to run massive Internet services with very small teams, will continue to increase. The spoils will perpetually increase for those teams. Ride that trend, rather than having it ride you.
She did mean what she said, and when she says "we are all" in the very same paragraph she discusses cultural differences, she means every culture, not every individual. That's basic reading comprehension. She also doesn't need to change her stance. The genetic variation between racial groups are positively tiny compared to intra-group variation. It makes a lot of sense to say "we", as in all groups, are all the same, where as "we", as individuals, are not. The reason it makes sense to say that is that that's the truth, and I see no reason to assume a scientist wouldn't say the truth especially if you need to read her words with an autistic (and ill-intending) interpretation to understand them to say falsehood.

Another reason she doesn't need to change her stance is that while innate differences in intelligence between individuals are large compared to those between groups, there are also bigger, non-innate differences that have been shown to have a very significant effect on intelligence.
No.

- Risk of loosening of immigration restrictions

- Large and increasing supply of skilled workers from East and South-East Asia, who are willing to work for lower wages.

- Skill based work is hard to defend and retain in the presence of significant competition.

- Tech companies may create and make widely available training programs to become a software engineer, also increasing supply. (I don't understand why this hasn't become the main purpose of MOOCs).

Chamath Phalipapitya (sp?) called programming the "blue collar work of the 21st century".
> "The internet" has it's own culture, and the people running reddit right now (one of the places where this culture is the strongest, imo), seem to have no idea how to interface with it.

Some portions of the Internet have culture in much the same way that food you forget at the back of your fridge grows culture. And they should be treated much the same way.
Take a look at "Halt and Catch Fire" which is now in season 2. It is set in the 1980's but follows the birth and death of early computer companies and pioneers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halt_and_Catch_Fire_(TV_series...

Definitely darker with back stabbing, manipulation, egos, fortunes won and lost, etc.

http://www.amc.com/shows/halt-and-catch-fire
It looks like airbnb does a good job updating theirs, but I can sympathize with the parent comment.
I've found coding style guides that end up obtuse, easily outdated, and arbitrarily fit to the preferences of it's creators. They often stagnate and are blindly followed just for the sake of following. A lot of the best practices in the document are things that should be screened for at the hiring stage, and many of the others are heavily debatable preferences that are only going to make a developer with an opposing opinion feel needlessly boxed.

Not that they are a bad thing and airbnb's looks really solid to me, but writing a coding style guide means you now need to maintain and curate it periodically – a process that is easy to neglect.
Thanks to undefined behaviour, C compilers can assume that you get exactly two iterations for this kind of loop on ints.
Thanks, I was being mildly sarcastic in my post but having the math laid out is great.
I think it will be more than a few years. It's basically been like this for at least the last 30 years (as long as I've been in the industry). Demand outpaces supply.

Schools see programmers as a money making industry for them, so they mint new programmers as fast as they can (regardless of ability). People in other industries move over to programming because there is such a demand that you can even get a job without any qualifications. The end result is that even while demand is outstripping supply, the vast majority of the supply is under qualified to do the job. Employers burned by under qualified employees agree to spend more and more money to hopefully find the needles in the haystack. If they collude to agree not to pinch each other's needles they get their hands slapped ;-).

Even if there is a world-wide economic downturn (like we just experienced), it plays into the hands of high salaries because under performing companies dump under performing employees on the market making it even harder to sort the wheat from the chaff.

It's a bit like professional sports. There is an endless supply of people willing to play sports for a living. The competition to get the best of the best drives salaries up for everyone who gets a job. I was surprised to learn that one of the Japanese soccer players that I follow who has been sitting on the bench of a poorly performing 2nd division European team for 2 years is making more than $1 million a year.

However... although I don't see salaries going down for a very long time, I do see it getting progressively harder to get a job. Perhaps, as you say, like the lawyers. I think businesses are going to want to get value for their money and similar to the sports industry I can see a much more laissez faire attitude towards employees. Produce and you can stay (maybe). If we don't like you -- for any reason -- we'll dump you for the next guy.

Maybe I should become an agent...
Whichever side of the Pao debate you fall on, you have to admit that the CEO of a site that is of the size, scale, and simplicity of Reddit should understand the core functionality of the site.
One thing I find amusing about the whole history of social networks is that by far, 4chan has been the longest running consistent platform and with the least governance.

There is something to be learned there, not sure what it is though.

edit: Actually metafilter is older, but way less popular/influential.
You think that your email is secure and encrypted because you are using Mailpile. Instead, you management has hacked in a back door to spy on your communications.

I don't think a license can solve this problem. I doubt someone who's willing to spy on people is afraid of breaking an open source license.
2.2 seems completely arbitrary to me. If your functions are so big that you need block scope, you're doing it wrong IMO.
> To anyone even close to my age or older? Be very worried.

Huh? Why do you say this?
Law of Headlines says "no".

My experience also says no. The two issues I'm facing are:

1. Due to technology churn, after a couple years of experience, your experience loses its market value faster than you can get new experience.

2. At 40, I'm starting to feel age discrimination. When you go on an interview and everyone else is <25, you see that you "aren't a good cultural fit". Younger programmers have started talking down to me like my experience is irrelevant. Then they ask me to debug their code for them.

As a programmer, you can make good money from 25-35. After that, it's starting to look like it's over.
Programmers of the world,
you are at the forefront of job creation!
Marc Bodnick commented on why Victoria was fired:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CI9iYW7VAAAzzJN.png

I consider him to be a reputable source and the claims are very plausible. Out of touch management never know how out of touch they are.
DoorDash (YC S13) is hiring – Come build the future of on-demand delivery
If your public funding so far is only $120K how can you recruit guys who make that much in a year ;-)
The community would be in an uproar if such a sale happened. Reddit's only monetization schemes right now are 1) reddit gold 2) ads and 3) the gift shop. These are things that the community can completely boycott. Any sane person would know not to buy out something like reddit.
The world is increasingly dependent on lawyers, the demand for which increases with the size and complexity of the economy. More economic activity means more agreements to be negotiated, disputes to be resolved, and regulations to be enforced. Moreover, this is high-end legal work, and many new lawyers will enjoy long, lucrative careers. It's not clear to me that I should advise my children to embark on a short, low-pay, low-status career in legacy software maintenance.
Raw longitude is by far the largest approximation. It becomes really flawed near poles. But all my points are in mainland USA, and there we're pretty safe.

Anyway, I did say that I was using an approximation.
You are asking for https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolmogorov_complexity

It's uncomputable in general.
> How many developers are going to be finding much work over 45-50 unless they are already well positioned as an independent consultant or have a name brand?

Why exactly is this? And why would anyone go into a profession where they will be unable to find work when they are half way through, and at the peak of their powers? In every other intellectual enterprise--doctors and lawyers particularly--they hit their peak earning years just as software developers because (supposedly) unemployable.

This makes little to no sense. It isn't like good older developers become magically incapable of learning new langauges or frameworks. It isn't as if they become less reliable than a 20-something just out of school. It isn't as if they suddenly forget 25 years of history that lets them make more accurate effort estimates than anyone else.

So where does this perception that developers must be young come from, and why does anyone go into a profession that by definition (apparently) is going to require the to change feilds mid-career?
CSR Racing Hack Tool Android No Survey
Is this actually the origin of the fizz buzz? I was under the impression it had been around at least sense the 90s.
Ask HN: In a job offer, can you ask for equity at a previous valuation?
Hi HNers,
I have a question regarding startup equity. If I am offered a job from a startup that recently raised a huge round, can I negotiate for equity at a previous valuation? Or that is just same as asking for more equity?

thanks!
This is a great talk for anyone managing communities. Reddit's current situation does bear many resemblances, especially with kn0thing's "Thank you for the feedback. I hope you change your mind about reddit, but if not, you're entitled to your opinion." response.
I think this will change when there are so many programmers above 40 that companies can't afford to turn them down. Due to age pyramids I can't really imagine total age discrimination to persist in the future.
Depends on what rules you allow.

What you want to forbid is not so much mentioning specific numbers, but you want to only allow rules that have certain symmetries. Eg you can require tranlation invariance

rule(x, y, z) = rule(x+offset, y+offset, z+offset)

to restrict the set of rules.
I don't think what Reddit did is illegal, I'm lamenting that it isn't. Independent of skillsets, people should get treated with a minimum of respect.
Oh the schadenfreude

"I was subscriber to fatpeoplehate hate, so I did nothing; in fact I applauded it."
Don't think that's an option for Google docs - but feel free to take the data and share one.
I agree with your prerequisites. I think they can be achieved.
It's nothing compared to what Google, Facebook, AirBnB, Uber and literally every other website you visit or email you open does.

Craigslist may not track your actions, but it doesn't ever update it's UI/UX or add features so there's no reason for Craigslist to collect user behavior data.

Now I completely respect your personal choice, but for others who are more willing to try out something that can provide them real value, I think Nextdoor will win over Craigslist every time.
whether it was political or performance based, he did raise a rather rational point. If your company is unprofitable/showing weak earnings, it might not make sense to give away 10% of all of the money you take in over the fiscal year.
Why is it technically true?
I'm the youngest senior where I work at 36. Our leads are approaching or past 50. This may be a localized problem.
I basically agree with everything you've said here, so when I pose this question, just consider it food for thought:

Aren't reddit moderators the vocal minority? Indeed, they are the ones exercising a great deal of control over reddit and its community.

Critical mass is pretty ambiguous. Is it defined by people who run subreddits, people who visit them, people who vote on them, people who buy reddit gold?

I am still amazed that 4chan, with its insane volume, went so long with basically a small handful of moderators. It was possible because it was very hands off.

Even though reddit has a very open philosophy, moderators of subreddits are anything but hands off.
In the far future? No, of course not. It depends when computers can program themselves (aka hard AI or, if you will, the "singularity"), which is either 10 years, 20 years, or 100 years from now. It is difficult to predict when programming will end as a profession, but it will be one of the last ones to go if you even believe in the end of work.
You do realise that these moderators are unpaid and don't report to anyone, least of all the people using reddit.
Why is the Northwest so warm?
The alternative is that every coder has their own style and over time every file becomes random and wildly inconsistent. That doesn't sound good to me either.
This platform will surely help all people who feel uneasy in finding conferences.
Pdf Editor iPad
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I find it almost impossible to replace my x61 tablet. 4:3 aspect ratio, awesome keyboard, trackpoint, no trackpad. That is perfection right there. All they need to do is copy that design, but eliminate as much bezel as possible (so it'd be more of a 14" display with a 4:3 ratio).
Agreed. Interestingly, this is how gaining experience works – you become exposed to patterns by needing to search for them, and get feedback from interpreters, compilers, and code reviews from teammates on how well you have picked out the right approach. Presumably that process could be sped up with a more formal approach.
Who knows what the future will hold, but in the US, there are more new lawyers graduating each year than there are law jobs. Software has taken over many of the jobs the entry level lawyers used to perform.

Law (in the US) reacquires an extra, very expensive, 3 year degree, and many law school graduates are never able to find jobs as lawyers.

The market will probably eventually correct itself, but the days of law school as a sure-fire way to a high paying job are probably over.
I've seen this a couple of times already. It always shakes out, with the "real programmers" always having jobs and increasing salaries.
It's called NNTP and predates HTTP.
Yahoo Search Testing Google Powered Search Results
In this model, the dollar you capture 14 years from now is woth .95^14 dollars. For simplicity let's assume your stock is going to creat 1$ 1 year from now. How much is that worth today?

Well if you sold a bond today for 95cents with the agreement to give a dollar in 1 year then next years dollar is worth 95 cents. Well what if you sold 2 bonds this year and one next year, you effectivly move up the future cash flow for the next two years at a discount that keeps getting larger the further back in time you pull the money.
Just don't tell them explicitly about it. (That'd be taking away all the fun.)
Yes, there is a mix of pragmatic advice (with citations) along with stylistic opinions. I think the ES5 version is also quite good. Look at the number of forks, though. I might use this as the basis for a style guide for my organization. I think I'll probably fork it, though, and remove the opinionated bits. I did enjoy the writing style.
I see a lot of companies with websites that say they "value diversity" and yet have no one person in any team photo over the age of 40, which suggests their definition of "diversity" covers a singularly narrow range of characteristics.

This may contribute to the lack of women in software development: women tend not to be quite as stupid as men with regard to probability, and recognize that a profession where they are obsolete at 40 is not a good bet. Most of us won't make enough to retire on before 40, so only an idiot would go into the business if that really is what we face as we age.

"Software development: it's not a career, it's a lottery ticket!"
Note Ledge use
Looking forward for an app to launch.
I agree, lots of communities that peak and decline, also continue forward perpetually - such as FARK, Digg or Metafilter - with smaller dedicated user bases. That's the most likely outcome for Reddit. It's so relatively inexpensive to operate, it's unlikely to fold. More likely it'll be swapped around in acquisitions, spin-offs, etc. as different parents try their hands at getting the mojo back (the MySpace / Digg scenario).
All these factors don't matter if demand increases as it has done during the entire prior history of programming.
I'd trust the older guy.
If someone could figure out how to efficiently implement voting and moderation on Usenet, they'd have an excellent distributed replacement for reddit.
New Bubble Wrap Won't Burst
That's unintentionally hilarious.
Coding is a valuable skill because computers can do certain tasks far more efficiently than humans can, and in ways that add massive value to our lives. Every engineering industry I know has been transformed by tools created by programmers. Whether you are solving matrices or simulating aerodynamics, the cost of doing certain tasks and prototyping has reduced to almost zero thanks to computers.

And, as far as we can currently tell, there's a massive amount of untapped potential. Whether your programming trading engines or social media, the right program, even a small program, has massive transforming power.

Even more significant, if a programmer writes a piece of code that makes a 0.01% improvement to a product, it's virtually free to distribute that improvement to hundreds of millions of people . A programmer may not even need to be very good to add millions of dollars of value to a company if they are put in the right position.

As time goes forward, we are seeing substantial developments to the coding practice. Languages are getting better, compilers are getting better, theory is getting better, test suites are getting better. All of this results in programmers being that much more useful when put in the right situation. Iterating on programs is also very cheap. Rather than needing to build an entire new plane engine, you just recompile your code and throw it at the test suite again.

Will it stop? Probably not in the next few decades. As simulations and other tools get better, we may see other engineering industries catching up, but right now programming is unique in how accessible it is, how quickly you can iterate on a design, and how easily you can distribute improvements/products to millions and even billions of people.

Even if the supply of programmers expands dramatically, I can't imagine running out of things to throw them at. There's always another feature, or another product idea, or some other project that would take a substantial amount of programming resources to complete.

High salary programmers are here to stay. I don't know where the ceiling is, but as the tools continue to improve, so will the justification of the salary. Even if we are in a bubble right now, the bubble bursting will still leave programmers in a very comfortable position.
To use a car analogy you're suggesting "the automotive industry still finds designing a car difficult because look at Formula 1 racing!", while ignoring everything that makes designing and building cars much easier/quicker/safer/cheaper.

There'll always be edge cases where generalisations break down but looking at them doesn't give you any insight to the bigger picture.
And then people make lots of money maintaining COBOL and Java code. Or securing custom PHP applications...
I compare it to the engineer of the industrial revolution and it will continue to be the same until there is a fundamental shift in the way we transfer instructions to computers. The biggest threat to the profession of software development is AI, when something can infer what a non-technical person means it will spell the end of the dedicated developer. Then much like the telegraph operator, the profession will disappear almost over night. That being said, a lot of professions will be gone just as quickly.

Until them I would like to offer some perspective from someone who has been in the industry for some time and to have seen the tail end of the home computing revolution, the birth of the web and all the iterations till modern day.

I had this discussion with a buddy that left software dev after the .com bust and the first wave of offshoring development jobs. He, having come from manufacturing was certain that offshoring spelled the end for US developers.

Personally, I had a different outlook, one that we should all remember when we sit at the negotiation table and that is, it is estimated that 10-20% of the population is mentally competent enough to write software and I would say that is a pretty good estimation. Probably another 5-10% border on competency so at best 30% of the population even has the capacity to code. We know the old 1 in 10 rule, that for every 10 programmers you hire 1 will be really good. So that puts us at what 3% of the population being exceptionally good developers? Probably another 6% being above average. Probably in the range of 10-15% being competent and the remainder costing companies more money than they are worth in lost time from the good developers carrying them.

So if you think about it somewhere around 9% of the world population is truly capable of good software development. And that is why despite the .com bust, the waves of offshoring and whatever will come before AI, the developer is one of the few bastions of the American middle class. It is by it's nature self limiting as far as competition goes.
I agree. 'Cramped' there is more 'readable' to me. This is probably a matter of personal preference.
If you're saying some jobs that today require "Excel" will require "Excel with VBA", sure. But I'm skeptical that programming will become some sort of new literacy. It seems to me that programming has narrower applicability than, say, high school math. Still, most non-programmers seem to forget their high school math, and they get by just fine in careers where numeracy would be useful from time to time, but is just not essential. No one considers them illiterate.
Thanks for your perspective. It's interesting that there appears to be ambiguity in the terms and a diversity in what is being taught.
Not really. I just know that Amazon's lawyer team has more expertise in law than I do. They also run a relatively large business while I am working for a small company. If their legal team decided that protecting their IP is best done by not opening up the company to a lawsuit (have you seen what happened to VMware btw?) than I think it is a pretty safe policy to follow for us the smaller corporation with smaller legal team.

I measure freedom in the license context by how much I have to do using a certain licensed software.

MIT, BSDL, Apache, EPL -> nothing

AGPL -> I need to open up every single thing that touches the service that uses AGPL

Which one is more free? In my interpretation the former. Please convince me that AGPL is more free than the other licenses. On the top of all that jazz, I really dislike the GPL/Gnu agenda of defining freedom to me. Let me show you what is the definition of freedom:

"the power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants without hindrance or restraint."

Opening open source code that I have no intention to open up sounds pretty restraining to me and also it qualifies as hindrance...
Judging by my occasional reading of /r/bestofoutrageculture, overreacting is a thing for some time now.