Why Ken Jennings's 'Jeopardy' Streak Is Nearly Impossible to Break - <AUTHOR> http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/ken-jenningss-jeopardy-streak-is-safe-for-the-rest-of-time/ <comment><USER2> > So we (or, more precisely, FiveThirtyEight's lead lifestyle writer Walt > Hickey) ran a simulation that flipped a weighted coin with a 97.9 percent > chance of landing on a Jennings win. Every time it did, we "flipped the > coin" again. We did 1 million of these simulations.

This is just a binomial distribution. Did they seriously estimate the answer instead of solving it analytically?

<comment><USER3> Given that we stop after the first failure technically this should be a negative binomial distribution ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_binomial_distribution](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_binomial_distribution)) with p = 0.979 and r = 1. The mean is p / (1-p) = 46.62. Also there is a p ^ 75 = 0.204 chance that someone of same skill will achieve a better score.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It never occurred to me that optimized buzzer timing was such a big part of Watson's dominance. Kinda takes some of the romance out of it.

<comment><USER5> Something I never liked about jeopardy is that you can't buzz in at any time.

I played on a trivia team at the high school level, and most questions were structured like:

"This American architect, born in 1867, is known for works such as the Robie House, the Guggenheim Museum, and Fallingwater."

So they typically feed you information from least to most well known, and you can buzz in at any time. This rewards players who know the most trivia. Everyone who played knows Frank Lloyd Wright did Fallingwater, but a very good player would know his approximate date of birth and would buzz in immediately on hearing 1867.

I understand that this might make Jeopardy less fun for the audience, but I feel it would be a better test of trivia instead of buzzer timing.

<comment><USER6> They made it that way on purpose, so it's more entertaining for the audience. If you could buzz in early, the players would almost always buzz in before Alex Trebek finished reading the question, which makes it less interesting for the audience.

With the wait-to-buzz-in rule, the audience gets an chance to understand and maybe think of the answer before the contestants speak.

<comment><USER7> You could allow contestants to buzz in as soon as possible, but have the system wait until Alex has finished reading the answer (remember, it's Jeopardy! so the contestant gives the question ;-P) before it indicates which player buzzed in first. Yes, there might be an audible clicking sound in the background while he's talking, but it would make the game more about speed of recall rather than hand-eye coordination.

<comment><USER8> I think that would just encourage contestants to buzz in immediately, since I imagine that the risk of penalty of not knowing a question pales in comparison to the reward of getting to answer for a strong contestant. You effectively eliminate the only downside of buzzing early since contestants would get to hear the entire question regardless.

<comment><USER9> The traditional College Bowl <TM> / Quizbowl <not-TM> technique is (a) to assign a 50% penalty to the early buzz with an incorrect answer, and (b) since it's game with teams and has two teams, the rest of your team is disqualified from answering the question, leaving the opposite team with lots of time to think about it (and subsequently secure access to the 3x bonus question following every toss-up question.)

Which is lots of fun and very competitive, but a little bit less tele-savvy.

<comment><USER10> Ack, we ran up against a "celebrity" reader in the final rounds of a Quizbowl tournament who didn't stop reading reliably when the other team buzzed in. I don't know how, but the other team was really good at taking advantage of this, buzzing in before the reader had given enough information to answer the question, and then answering after he'd finished the sentence. Our team got steamrolled.

<comment><USER5> In Highschool Quizbowl, I'd take advantage of the fact that most untrained readers have a hard time stopping mid-syllable, or even mid-word, so any time there was a question that hinged on a single word, such as a world capital question, I'd buzz in on the first letter of the word, and they'd usually get out 2 syllables before stopping, providing enough information.

Q: What is the capital of L-(BUZZ)-ithu-- [stops reading].

A. Vilnius.

But if they had had really good reaction time and stopped on L--, I'd have been hosed. Latvia, Lithuania, Liechtenstein, Libya, Liberia, etc...

<comment><USER10> The team that beat us was doing more

Q: What is the capital of (BUZZ) Lithuania?

A: Vilnius.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > _Here's how we figured this out. We assumed that Jennings headed into Final > Jeopardy with at most one other player in contention to win. Then we assumed > that in order for Jennings to lose, this sequence of events has to happen: > The game must not be locked up, Jennings must get the Final Jeopardy > question wrong, and the other contender must get it right. We used his stats > across all 75 of his games, not just his 74 wins, to better reflect his > overall skills. The probability he doesn't have the game locked up is 13.3 > percent, the probability he gets Final Jeopardy wrong is 32 percent, and the > probability the other contender gets it right is 49 percent. When we combine > these probabilities, we see that Jennings only has about a 2.1 percent > chance of losing._

This is incorrect and overstates his dominance because (1) it assumes Jennings will be ahead, something that won't always happen against Rutter/Jennings/Collins/Chu/Craig level players and (2) the lock up and opponent knowing Final Jeopardy conditions are not independent.

Pretty sloppy basic probability by 538 and make me think I'm not missing much by not subscribing (they didn't offer full RSS last I checked).

<comment><USER12> When you say that they're not independent, do you mean that the probability that the person knows the Final Jeopardy question is higher because they've managed to keep Ken Jennings from running away with it (i.e. they're better than the average person Jennings has faced)?

Just checking my understanding.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm convinced that not only do we stand on the shoulders of giants, but we live among giants. What Ken Jennings accomplished is remarkable by any interpretation. How he did so probably even he can't explain.

</comment><comment><USER14> Unless you're a computer.

</comment><comment><USER15> Ken Jennings' 74 win streak is because...?

A. He cheated B. He's lucky C. He's a genius D. It's written

<comment><USER16> Seems harsh that so many people downvoted this, I dig the Slumdog Millionaire reference!

<comment><USER17> I believe that is because many people don't want comment section in Hacker News turn into the one in Reddit, which consist of mostly jokes, pop culture references...things that doesn't really contribute to the discussion.

<comment><USER16> Got it, thanks!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Robot Hotel Loses Love for Robots - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/robot-hotel-loses-love-for-robots-11547484628 <comment><USER2> Meh paywall here a tldr:

2015 opens the robot hotel in japan with 50 robots (in response to jp worker shortage)

Because of the good reception they add more (useless) robots - many don't work

Now they realise the robots who should reduce work, made work and half the robot staff.

Example was churi a doll in the room that woke up a snorer and frustrated guests because they expect alexa like capabilities.

[https://www.efe.com/efe/english/technology/strange-robot- hot...](https://www.efe.com/efe/english/technology/strange-robot-hotel-in- japan-loses-love-for-robots/50000267-3866728) (without paywall)

<comment><USER3> I really think HN needs to start highlighting paywalled posts.

<comment><USER4> 95% of paywalled posts are from a small number of domains (wsj, nyt, etc), and domains are shown. I'm not a fan of paywalled links on an open discussion forum, but HN has decided to allow them quite purposefully.

However, I think if the comment section could generate more abstracts, we'd all be better off.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Stupid wsj links</comment>


Dickheads (2015) - <AUTHOR> https://thebaffler.com/salvos/dickheads <comment><USER2> With this kind of analysis I can make the wearing of a t-shirt, jeans and trainers all about the penis too.

If you're obsessed with how clothes represent genitals and sexuality, you're going to find all clothes represent genitals and sexuality to some degree. Why that collar around the neck? Why that hoodie concealing the precise shape of the torso? Why the bright white of those Jordan Airs?

I wear a tie occasionally, with a three piece suit, because if I don't, I can't get access to the nice bits of the racecourses I visit across the UK (when such things were of course allowed).

Wearing a tie today is not about penises, it's not about power, it's about conformity. It's about not standing out, merging into the crowd, becoming a little more anonymous. Walk around the City of London on a busy workday (except in 2020), and the men merge into one, hardly distinguishable in their uniforms.

The tie looks like a penis the way a trouser leg does. It embodies power the way a hoodie does. Women wear them in some contexts (restaurant waitresses, front of house staff in theatres, etc.), and not to show off their non- existent penis.

[edit:] As an aside it also serves a practical purpose of hiding the button line of a shirt, and if you miss your mouth when eating your lunch it is easily replaceable. Despite the detractor's wails it is not an entirely useless piece of cloth if you're eating soup in a formal setting [/edit]

People mostly wear them because it's expected of them and to conform, and this article while having all the hallmarks of an intelligent and thoughtful piece is just a love letter to the author's internal anxieties. If you share those anxieties, perhaps talk to a therapist.

<comment><USER3> You actually do not answer the main question. The fact that you personally ware a tie to conform to the norm does not explain how the norm came to be. Instead you talk in random directions, ending with a nice athominem attack against the author.

Some notes:

waitresses and front house staff are not in position of power, and it actually aligns with the thesis of the author which mentions that ties are sexualizing women.

You say that the tie hides the buttons of the shirt, but there is already such a solution for trousers and why not reuse the concept?

You say that ties are good when eating soup. However, they are not all that effective in their current form, not used for this purpose for the last few hundred years, and there is no sense carying it around through the entire day the way cutlery is not part of the men's office dress code as well.

Where I'd agree with you is in doubting the mental jump necessary to discover sexual symbolism in something which might be just a counterweight to otherwise boring exterior.

<comment><USER4> Don't some conforming uniformed people in the City carry around a pink newspaper to advertise their caste?

Waitresses and front house staff are wearing echoes of what the patrons of an establishment used to wear before the last clothing shift. After the next, will they all be in hoodies?

(I'm still waiting for the sexual interpretation of t-shirt and trainers? Hmm ... trainers do share gum soles with bordello creepers...)

Bonus track: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=et281UHNoOU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=et281UHNoOU)

Bonus codepoint: U+130BA

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > If hiding something is a way of declaring it a form of power, then hiding > the male genitals is a way of declaring masculinity itself a form of power.

This really was the high of the article for me. Exactly what combination would be needed for the author to declare that male clothing is neutral on masculine power?

Genitals exposed -> Aggressive declaration of masculine power. Genitals hidden -> Passive aggressive declaration of masculine power.

I'm going to guess that genitals hinted-at-but-in-a-careful-balanced-way is going to be calculatedly aggressive declaration of male power. The author makes some excellent points about status and clothing, but the throwaway lines on the patriarchy are wonderfully monomaniacal.

<comment><USER4> By application of rules 34 and 63, I expect somewhere someone's written an exploration of floral country matters[1] in women's clothing?

Soviet schoolgirls wore white floral bantiki in their hair:

[https://imgprx.livejournal.net/0af2ae4db14dd86858b9319de7e6b...](https://imgprx.livejournal.net/0af2ae4db14dd86858b9319de7e6bdcc8dc4508c/8s_owNHQo4PKtHc- rKkJI89ZV7pppIg2vsGMpDFVw62KwJ_jVjo8Ut7D_DuSOS6wrBy0g6GzjXteTQIUOJXAX5Pi1fIONTEpkOaBx4tHnB8) (note the social distancing sign!)

and at some point I learned of a russian berry or floret with a spherical form that was white while immature but turned red when ripe, which had made me wonder about traditional peasant costume colour codings.

[1] and their promises of sweet nothings? (for which "hunter green" floral dresses might be recommended: as with slobber from fifteen hand hunters, it's a colour well suited to hiding grass stains.) Compare [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24130589](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24130589)

Bonus track: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EnoqvRGc7pk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EnoqvRGc7pk) (I hadn't thought before about confetti drops in the context of cottonwood fluff.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think this kind of Freudian viewpoint about the purpose of all sorts of things began to fall out of fashion at the turn of the century (with the dying off of committed Freudians from the last century), and it sounds sort of ludicrous now - much like if someone started spouting off theories based on phrenology.

It reminds me of some book I was reading in the 80s that started off in the intro with the theory that rockets were shaped the way they were because men were obsessed with their penises and as such spaceflight was metaphorically mankind's rape of the cosmos (threw the book away as too ludicrously stupid to continue with so don't remember anything past that).

<comment><USER6> I am of course still somewhat sympathetic to a little less obsessive view that ties may function as phallic symbols, given that there is a difference between design and engineering - a rocket is shaped the way it is because of its engineering purpose, but a tie seems to have no purpose other than design (although I suppose the cravat and pre-modern ties had other purposes.)

\- I didn't think this observation should be an edit on the original comment.

on edit: changed per-modern to pre-modern.

<comment><USER4> The hunting stock (a more direct descendant of the cravat?) is said to have emergency uses (sling, tourniquet, etc.). That noted, I've practically used my belt numerous times, but never my neckwear.

Well, hardly ever. At "The Oasis" (an infamous fictional dive), men's gimme caps slowly slide backwards on their heads until everyone knows the evening has sufficiently advanced to sing songs. At black tie affairs the growing prevalence of rakishly worn unknotted bow ties provides exactly the same signal.

Bonus track: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1OqqFecdj4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1OqqFecdj4)

(can confirm: I've returned goats to the neighbours)

<comment><USER7> > Well, hardly ever. At "The Oasis" (an infamous fictional dive), men's gimme > caps slowly slide backwards on their heads until everyone knows the evening > has sufficiently advanced to sing songs. At black tie affairs the growing > prevalence of rakishly worn unknotted bow ties provides exactly the same > signal.

I'm sorry, but I don't really understand anything at all in that paragraph. That's not a criticism of your way of writing, I'm not a native speaker, I'm just completely lost here.

What's a dive? What are gimme caps? is the singing songs part literal or is an euphemism, and if it's the former why do people need to signal discreetly that they're ready to sing? What's a black tie fair?

<comment><USER6> a dive is a place of low repute where hard liquor is available, I don't know what a gimme cap is - some sort of cap I suppose - and as the men at this dive get progressively more drunk they sort of lose control of their caps which slide backwards, of course they are not using it to signal they are ready to sing, it is amusing, observing these people with their caps all back you might think they had given the signal they were ready to sing as they all start singing, but instead they are singing for the same reason their caps are back - because they are drunk.

A black tie affair is a very fancy party of some sort, where people must dress up to attend, but as they get drunk at this fancy place their bow ties become unknotted and they show they are ready to sing, just as the people with the pushed back caps at the much less fancy dive do.

<comment><USER4> Exactly. Sorry, here are the references:

The Oasis & black-tie affair: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0_der_5hRM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0_der_5hRM)

Gimme ("give me") cap: [https://merriam- webster.com/assets/mw/images/gallery/gal-wap...](https://merriam- webster.com/assets/mw/images/gallery/gal-wap-slideshow- firstname.lastname@example.com) they're given away free (like facebook) because they advertise

black tie (here, a "smoking"): [https://i1.wp.com/www.menstylefashion.com/wp- content/uploads...](https://i1.wp.com/www.menstylefashion.com/wp- content/uploads/2019/05/brad-pitt-lea-de-caprio.jpg?fit=750%2C422&ssl=1)

what, never?: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBK39BKWuQg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBK39BKWuQg)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > The fly (which is invisible) is a bourgeois innovation, much unlike earlier > aristocratic styles, such as the European codpiece, that often drew explicit > attention to the genital region. This is the one part of the male body whose > contours are entirely effaced. If hiding something is a way of declaring it > a form of power, then hiding the male genitals is a way of declaring > masculinity itself a form of power

[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f9/After_Ha...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f9/After_Hans_Holbein_the_Younger_- _Portrait_of_Henry_VIII_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg)

tangential recommendation: if you might enjoy somewhat dark historical fiction & the politics of working with and around the above aristocratic codpiece- wearer, with frequently witty banter, Hilary Mantel's Thomas Cromwell trilogy may be for you: [https://www.goodreads.com/series/75450-thomas-cromwell- trilo...](https://www.goodreads.com/series/75450-thomas-cromwell-trilogy)

</comment><comment><USER9> The tie as we know it, was a streamlined version of the cravat. Which was popularised in Europe during The Thirty Years War (1618–1648), by Croatian mercenaries.

That knowledge has always pleased me, when I've had to wear a tie. That it's descended from these swashbuckling, brightly attired, mercs.

<comment><USER4> To be fair, many high-status male attire items have descended from swashbuckling, brightly attired, mercs.

\- clean-shaven, short-haired? originally for the advantage in hand-to-hand combat.[1]

\- trousers? originally worn (in the mediterranean context) by dope smoking barbarian cavalrymen.

[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/15/Sc...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/15/Scythian_comb.jpg/270px- Scythian_comb.jpg)

\- puffy renaissance hips? originally from the padding worn under the faulds/culet[2]. (anticipating the rise of plate carrier lower class cosplay in 2020?)

[https://i.pinimg.com/originals/b5/e3/af/b5e3afaa3d4b6510263c...](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/b5/e3/af/b5e3afaa3d4b6510263c8533b18a53d8.png)

[1] did Kadyrov go from short beard to long beard for religious reasons, or because he's now secure enough as a Border March Lord that he can play statesman instead of soldier? or something else?

[2] "Yours, if you talk of tales, and so farewell."

<comment><USER9> Great info! I'll be mentally playing action movie montage music when I suit up for my meetings, get my hair-cut, or put on comically large hipped renassance pants, going forward.

<comment><USER4> Compare the "arming formula" of a Homeric ἀριστεία.

I understand donning hockey pants helps wheel snipes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> For me, wearing a tie is about beautiful symmetry: when the tie is exactly centered with a neat knoth, a series of elegant angles are created under the wearer's face. There is something very architectural about that.

By the way, a women wearing a neck tie to complete her business suit can be very attractive for me (a powerful encroachment on "male" attire), so the tie really can be universal.

I really don't understand the angst. Wear whatever the hell you want.

</comment><comment><USER8> Missed that this was another David Graeber piece. What a loss.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24365811](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24365811)

</comment><comment><USER11> This is one of the first pieces of long form editorial on fashion I have ever enjoyed. Great writing.

</comment><comment><USER12> A person who wants to look powerful can wear a tie.

A person who's actually powerful wears whatever the fuck they want.

<comment><USER13> Too true! Doing whatever you want is the ultimate symbol of power. I've been reading about Mohammed bin Salman a lot lately, I think he is pretty much the picture of power both in the means to do anything and the restraint not too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> He should do something on the "Silicon Valley Tuxedo" aka blue jeans, loafers, a sports coat, stripey or tattersall button down collar shirt open at the neck.

Also; something needs to be done about fleece vests.

</comment><comment><USER15> I think if you make a load of simplified sweeping generalisations about clothing and it's symbolic role in our culture you can come to some pretty banal yet fashionable conclusions. Oh look mens clothes are about power, womens clothes are like they are due to men exerting sexual power over women. Women don't have agency in our history, men are trying to show off their penises as an expression of power. Its all so predictable and boring. The dickhead joke is pretty good though.

</comment><comment><USER16> And every skyscraper is capitalism flashing its big dick in your face.

</comment><comment><USER17> Why is this on HN?

<comment><USER18> It builds an interesting argument. It takes dick jokes and makes them quality humor.

<comment><USER19> I read the full article and this doesn't seem to have any focus. It vaguely mentions some interesting tid bits but doesn't articulate on them or back them up properly.

<comment><USER18> To me the appeal is similar to, dunno, maybe a basketball trick? The technique is interesting, not the end result and not adherence to the official rules of the game.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Let's get rid of ties! I have always hated them and thought they were moronic.

<comment><USER21> Only if we can replace ties with at least 7 pieces of flair.

<comment><USER22> 15 is the minimum... [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ChQK8j6so8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ChQK8j6so8)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This was a fun and beguiling little read.

I noticed more ideological leaks forming in the article the further I read. Of course Foucault is always the great give away. The trite little attacks on men at the end seal the deal.

<comment><USER23> What attacks on men?

<comment><USER9> Roenxi has already made a better point of it than I could elsewhere in this thread [0]. So please see his comment.

But here's another little snipe:

> ...some idea that women produce naturally (they bear children) and that men > produce culturally (they create society). Stated outright, this is an > obvious lie—pretty much everywhere you go you can find women doing most of > the work of producing society too.

It's a small thing, that makes me feel petulant to make a scene about, once it's isolated; but there are a few of them, along with Roenxi's point, that add up to inform the view of the article as a whole.

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24381674](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24381674)</comment></comment></comment>


Ibuffer-git: See your files' git status in Ibuffer - <AUTHOR> http://jrockway.github.com/ibuffer-git/ There was an HN article a few days ago complaining about this not existing.  Now it exists. <comment><USER2> That's very useful. I've got it installed already.

Here's a small patch to it to make it work without your dotemacs: <http://github.com/avar/ibuffer-git/commit/59674f>

And here's what I had to do to get it working with my dotemacs which uses autoloads instead of loading everything at startup: <http://github.com/avar/dotemacs/commit/9bd611>

One day I'll figure out how eproject works, and customize-variable, and everything else I haven't looked at in Emacs yet :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Nice. Just FYI, eproject shouldn't be required for this; the functionalities are orthogonal.

And BTW, I just start my emacs when I login with "emacs --daemon". A few seconds of latency at startup is better than the latency whenever I first use something. And it's easier to program for :)

<comment><USER2> It's required for using your ibuffer-format which references eproject. I couldn't be bothered to customize it to something different.

I should probably learn to use eproject anyway.

<comment><AUTHOR> Fair enough. I also agree on the second point :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> An article posted here a few days ago suggested that it would be a good idea to integrate things like open files, project, version control status, etc., so here is one more piece of that puzzle.

(For project support in emacs, try eproject; <http://github.com/jrockway/eproject>)

</comment><comment><USER3> What this really needs is a way of performing git operations on the files in the iBuffer, then it would be a nice replacement for the various git modes for emacs.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think Magit works pretty well for this. I will think about it some more; Ibuffer is probably not the right place for everything, but something more coherent could be good.

<comment><USER3> Magit is pretty good, but it's quite nice to have things based on common bits.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I use magit right now, but one thing about using emacs and the commandline that bugged me when I tried it was that when changing branches, I would be prompted for what to do with each open file that had changed. Is there a good workflow solution for this?

<comment><USER2> Yes. You create a stash with your changes, or commit them before switching branches.

<comment><USER4> Well, I mean with files that are open and unmodified. If I change to a different branch to work on something else, emacs will prompt me for what to do with each open file that is different between branches.

<comment><USER2> Ah, I don't know if magit has that feature. It's relatively easy conceptually though.

You'd write a hook for magit that on branch change would check what buffers were open to files within the repository and refresh their contents.

Maybe something like that exists already. I just press "r" to refresh the file from the filesystem when editing the individual files in this case.

<comment><USER4> magit _does_ have that feature (automatically reload files etc after changing branches.) What I want is that feature outside of magit (or other VCS integration) somehow.

<comment><USER5> try enabling the auto-revert-mode minor mode.

[http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Rev...](http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Reverting.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is very nice. Does anyone know of a similar emacs extension for mercurial?

<comment><AUTHOR> Should be a matter of changing 2 lines of code; one to run the status command, one to parse the output.</comment></comment>


EPIC - FOIA Documents Reveal DHS Monitoring Political Dissent on Social Networks - <AUTHOR> http://epic.org/2012/01/epic---foia-documents-reveal-h.html

<comment><USER2> From the Times article, it doesn't sound like this was about monitoring "political dissent" but rather about seeing how the public felt about things.

If I post something on my blog expressing my opinion on some issue, or I tweet about it, or otherwise broadcast it to the world, I'm happy if it is read by people who are in a position to decide that issue and might influence them to make the decision I want.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> A good friend did the research and filed for the documents... it's going to be in the NY Times today too: [http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/14/us/federal- security-progra...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/14/us/federal-security- program-monitored-public-opinion.html?_r=3)</comment>


The Like Button Ruined the Internet - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/03/how-the-like-button-ruined-the-internet/519795/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> Up- and downvotes did some damage, too.

I'm convinced that the best way to encourage creative and engaging content is anonymity. Let the content compete on its own merits, not the popularity of the username posting it.</comment>


At which point do you quit? (dumb your idea) - <AUTHOR>

Is there a point at which you feel as if you needed to quit? I am working on two projects and at times I want to quit one and focus on the other, but I do not know which one to pick. Anyways most of the time I am very very confident that I will "make something people want", but there is that 5% of doubt that hovers. When do you  know you need to dumb one idea and focus on something else? <comment><USER2> When To Dump That Great Idea: [http://www.forbes.com/2007/07/06/apple-amazon- myspace-ent-ma...](http://www.forbes.com/2007/07/06/apple-amazon-myspace-ent- manage-cx_ws_0709dump.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> Do you have any users, yet? If so, pick that one. If not pick the one that excites your friends and family.</comment>


Ask HN: Where to go to learn Modern C? - <AUTHOR> I am very comfortable in high level languages (C# for example), but would like to learn more C or C++.
Should I even bother with C? I'm planning to be a full stack web dev for at least the start of my career.
Where should I start? Preferably free resources would be nice, although I'm sure my library has most of the books that could be recommended.
Should I just kind of start on this list and go from there?
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/562303/the-definitive-c-book-guide-and-list <comment><USER2> I've been writing C on and off for 27 years or so and I still enjoyed this book from the list on your stackoverflow link:

21st Century C - Ben Klemens [http://www.amazon.com/dp/1449327141/?tag=stackoverfl08-20](http://www.amazon.com/dp/1449327141/?tag=stackoverfl08-20)

You asked about "Modern C" and that caught my eye. Most instructional resources on C focus on facts about C without putting them into perspective as to which C era they belong to. "21st Century C" takes an explicitly modern perspective, is opinionated as to which aspects of C you can postpone or ignore, and provides updates for people (like me) who have mostly been familiar with K&R or C89. I found it a really fun read and would definitely recommend it as #1 for your question about "Modern C".

As to if you should learn C, I am super opinionated but I think C still has a lot of value, even for someone who doesn't describe themselves as "full- stack". The reasons are obvious: the kernel is written in C, libc is written in C, the webserver serving your web application is almost definitely written in C, but if it isn't, the compiler that compiles the language it is written in is almost definitely written in C (hats off to Golang for getting off their C compiler). Despite its flaws, I love C.

</comment><comment><USER3> K&R is an easy read and it will give you the basics if you want to go further. Just realize that modern production C is different and don't copy-paste this code into real things (they are glossing over a lot of details -- especially with regards to safety).

Next, I'd try "C the Hard Way" which is just as beginner, but is an attempt to make C programs safer (and expose you to some of the glossed over details)

<comment><AUTHOR> I've heard a few bad things about "Learn C the Hard Way", but I have heard good things about K&R so I'm gonna see if that book is at my library (it absolutely should be).

Another idea I had was maybe to just program in Rust. I'm not sure :)

<comment><USER3> It's really a shame that this book gets a bad rap. It's mostly because of a chapter it used to have critiquing K&R (which I thought made a good point) and possibly the online persona of the author (again, I don't agree, but I can see why others might have a problem)

In any case -- it's a great book for beginners, freely available online, and you'll know in 5 minutes whether you like the style or not.

<comment><USER4> I am, by no means, an expert in C, actually I'm a beginner. When I started reading K&R I was aware of the time it was written and how it follows certain premises. When I saw several arguments with Zed Shaw going on here, most of the time I've got the image of someone that wouldn't like to accept he was wrong in some ways. I'm not trying to take the value out of his work, I think Learn C The Hard Way is a great way to learn C, but as you said, his online persona didn't help much.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> [https://matt.sh/howto-c](https://matt.sh/howto-c)

</comment><comment><USER6> learning C the hard way is good. stay away from udemy for many reasons. they have been trending here with many bad news recently and are shady</comment>


The First Zombie-Proof House - <AUTHOR> http://all-that-is-interesting.com/post/4956385434/the-first-zombie-proof-house <comment><USER2> Unless you close that up every night, I think I know exactly how zombies would be getting in there... Zombies smell and seek out hubris, they seek it like brains.</comment>


How to Survive When Money Is Worthless [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/06/27/world/americas/venezuela-money-how-to-survive.html <comment><USER4> For more of a guide to surviving collapses, this essay about the 2001 Argentine Financial crisis is pure gold. I have printed several copies and read it about once a year:

[http://ferfal.blogspot.com/2008/10/thoughts-on-urban- surviva...](http://ferfal.blogspot.com/2008/10/thoughts-on-urban- survival-2005.html)

<comment><USER5> Sorry to be the negative one but, as someone who lived through the 2001 economic crisis, I have no idea what this guy is talking about.

He seems to write a lot of survivalist tips, so I would keep that in mind - from a survivalist perspective, all society is at the point of collapse.

<comment><USER6> Do you mean to say it was better than he depicts it to be? or is it something else?

<comment><USER5> Yes, I think he's cherry-picking some specific situations to make it seem much more tragic that it was.

For instance,

> Some ate whatever they could; they hunted birds or ate street dogs and cats, > others starved. When it comes to food, cities suck in a crisis.

Sure, _some_ did. They even showed up on the news due to how weird even the idea of eating birds was. But that's the 0.001% - the average citizen reduced their expenses, moved back with their parents, asked their relatives for help, and/or started using the food banks.

> in 2001 half the country went without power for 3 days. Buenos Aires was one > big dark grave.

That's straight up BS - there were widespread power outages, but they lasted typically hours, not days. And even though specific neighborhoods had days without power, to call it "a big dark grave" is too much.

> There are absolutely NO kids playing on the sidewalks at all, at any time of > the day

There are no kids playing nowadays either, but that's because they are at school (the average school day is longer than it used to be), playing with their cellphones, or (at the time) playing Counter Strike in cyber-cafes with dedicated LANs.

And so on. It also doesn't help that he paints the entire country based on Buenos Aires, a city that has a _very_ strong cultural division to the rest of the country.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I found this maddening to watch from a technical perspective - it was beautifully produced, subtitles, video and audio - but it didn't work right in my browser! (latest chrome on win10)

\- the audio and subtitles didn't sync

\- if I touched the scroll wheel on my mouse it would rapidly generate events that caused the 'next' action

\- if I click on next after the audio was complete on one page there was no audio on the next page - just the subtitles.

..so I struggled through it and wondered how this was tested before they pushed it out.

finally, getting to the end - I didn't see anything that actually discussed how people are actually surviving!?

I lived in the USSR in the early 90s while crazy inflation was starting to happen; here are a few strategies people used in those days (in fact I and my family used too). Note that inflation got even crazier after I left - and I'm not sure what other things people did to handle that; but I suspect friends/family/connections continue to be extremely important.

\- they kept dollars or other western currency and traded for rubles as close to purchases as possible

\- everyone would use private connections with others get access to goods that we're not readily available. didn't seem to be at lot of bartering here - <USER2> taking very good care of those connections and reciprocating whenever possible.

\- people would grow food at their datcha - and share with their friends and sometimes sell it at local open market / bazaar.

\- finally, you take on any work - and I mean _any_ work - to get a bit of extra cash - especially in foreign currency. You're not like "I'm a doctor, I've above doing ______" if someone will pay you to do ______; and you can do it - you probably will.

<comment><USER8> For what is worth, it worked flawlessly for me (FF on Linux).

<comment><USER7> yeah - I'm sure it must work for most - but it was goofey for me and I didn't have the patience to open up inspector and start digging.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> For all the negative comments about the presentation, which I might normally agree with, I liked this format this time. It took a while to load (thank you multi-threading).

I got through it because I treated it like an interactive video with subtitles, which is better than a video. I liked the sound - which, in my iPhone, was muted at the started as my phone was muted, so I didn't even realise there was audio. I liked that I could go forwards and backwards. I liked that I could just read. It fit well on my phone, I don't know what it looks like on desktop.

Now, getting to the content itself, I found it to be very sad, especially at how the spirit to protest was killed.

<comment><USER10> I actually found this to be worth the time. I haven't paid much attention to the situation down there, and seeing it was enlightening.

Onto the content...

I wonder, can someone tell me why there are so many obese people in these video clips, if food is so hard to come by?

Why does there seem to be so many people sitting around? Surely with so much manpower available, there are way to make them productive on a large scale?

<comment><USER11> > I wonder, can someone tell me why there are so many obese people in these > video clips, if food is so hard to come by?

If those people are alive (as they observably are), then logically they are getting food.

When you're poor, you generally can only afford low quality food. Low quality food is bad for your health, resulting in many problems including obesity and diabetes.

Low quality food is generally processed grain. It's cheap to make and cheap to keep "fresh," which is why we have so much of it in the US. Think high fructose corn syrup, and almost anything that comes in a box, and do the thought experiment across the food chain from the farm, through manufacturing and distribution, to consumption and the doctor's office.

When you see a population of obese people, don't think that their food problem is solved; realize that the food they have practical access to is a problem. (And yes, many rich people in rich countries are obese and have a choice, but many of _those_ obese people are poor and do not, and we're not talking about a rich country at the moment.)

<comment><USER12> Additionally, consuming mostly processed grain leads to micronutrient deficiencies, which can in turn cause food cravings that are extremely difficult to resist -- causing people to overeat the food that _is_ available.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Inflation in Venezuela is over 25k%. People are jailed during demonstrations when they are not shot in cold blood. Children are dying of malnutrition. But for everyone on HN the biggest problem is the article format. Utterly and completely unbelievable...

<comment><USER14> A large number of people (most?) in the HN community are contributors/authors/creators to web sites such as that linked. I love HN people for their ability to respect content while simultaneously addressing how it is delivered. I believe that ~how~ the message is conveyed is extremely important. If the UI is such that people click 'next' and never get to the content, then all of the breathless exasperation in the world will be directed at the uniformed.

<comment><USER15> Exactly. The point is to attract attention, and to keep it as long as possible. The starving and exploited Venezuelans are just a tool for that, and in a way just being exploited just that little bit more by these sites, for their own gain.

The discussion here is about the exploitation, not so much about the source of the initial spec of attention to be exploited.

Besides just wait until someone points out which type of politics were at the source of this change.

The same is true of this comment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I love these multi-media style articles. Didn't anyone else feel completely transported when they watched the yuca getting cooked and saw that woman's tears?

Certainly it's not the right choice for every story, but I think it's often better than a typical narrated video piece. Here's another one that I think takes advantage of the format beautifully: [https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british- columbia/kinder...](https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british- columbia/kinder-morgan-trans-mountain-pipeline-bc-coast/article35043172/)

<comment><USER17> _> Didn't anyone else feel completely transported when they watched the yuca getting cooked and saw that woman's tears?_

I felt an intense pang of shame as my mouse hovered over the "next" button.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Got about 15 seconds into this before deciding life was too short

<comment><USER19> Agreed. Closed it two seconds into the second loading screen

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I loved this format so much. It feels like some of the people who are complaining are acting as if this is going to replace text somehow, which I hardly think will be the case. There is plenty of room for both formats. I thought this was the perfect middleground between a documentary and an article. Documentaries often feel biased or like they're trying to manipulate the audience or something. Articles, at least to me (though it's a function of how good your imagination is), can sometimes feel a bit too distant from reality. Language is too abstract, too manipulable, and some phrases are too loaded to not be distracting. Short videos with scenes from everyday life, coupled with a slight bit of interactivity (the "next" button) makes it much harder to zone out of (unlike a long-form movie), and to me at least made it much more somehow connected to reality. I definitely feel like I have a much closer and personal understanding of the situation, much more so than I would have gotten with a documentary or an article.

</comment><comment><USER21> I wanted to read an article with this headline. Unfortunately, I only got to a slow loading video of someone making a latte before giving up.

<comment><USER22> I can guarantee that's because the article is light on insight and heavy on emotionality and will almost certainly seek to tug on the heartstrings as it has no real commentary or insight into the situation. It just wants to show you crying babies, women and sad people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Who else felt the irony of people complaining about the presentation format when there are human beings suffering from such a crisis? I was moved when I saw the clip of the kids being fed in a soup kitchen.

Not saying you cannot criticize the format, but shouldn't the discussion be more about what actually caused this situation and how it can be remedied or prevented?

<comment><USER24> Well, you could say it is about overall impact. If you turn a bunch of people off with your format, you just reduced your potential impact.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> This was like all the negatives of a slide show mixed with video and some text. I struggled to make it through.

</comment><comment><USER26> "U.S. Papers Hail Venezuelan Coup as Pro-Democracy Move" \- June 2002 - [https://fair.org/extra/u-s-papers-hail-venezuelan-coup-as- pr...](https://fair.org/extra/u-s-papers-hail-venezuelan-coup-as-pro- democracy-move/)

<comment><USER27> My thought exactly. This really sounds like a propaganda piece; "it's all Maduro's fault". really, I don't know. I'm not so sure.

<comment><USER28> As a Venezuelan, I'm curious to know what about this article makes you think it's a "propaganda piece".

<comment><USER27> The fact that it's extremely one-sided, about a country well-known for repeated US meddling. For instance see the example of the Kellogg's factory. They present several questionable facts as given: why did Kellogg's leave the country? it's unclear. May it be in part because of US government pressure? not unlikely. Why do they present the takeover of the abandoned factory as something wrong? The owners are gone. In fact, takeover of the factory to provide work to its employees and products to its customers look like the obvious right thing to do.

Maduro and his clique did many things wrong, no doubt. They failed badly at reforming the economy and making it more sustainable. They're corrupt. They probably mismanaged the country. However international sanctions are the direct cause of most of the problems that make the news daily (lack of medicine, food, etc).

<comment><USER28> > The fact that it's extremely one-sided

There's a fucking crisis destroying this country and you're complaining about this article being "extremely one-sided"? _Any_ accurate portrayal about what's going in the country will appear one-sided _because the situation is one-sided_. You'll be hard-pressed to find _anything_ the government is doing right. That's the extent of their incompetence.

> about a country well-known for repeated US meddling

Ah yes, Maduro's universal scapegoat. Can you point to what "US meddling" you think caused this crisis?

> why did Kellogg's leave the country? it's unclear.

Are you fucking serious? It pulled out of the country because the country is in economic free-fall, and the government is notorious for expropriating companies at a whim. How the government was able to ruin Venezuela's _oil industry_ and is too incompetent to even operate existing infrastructure should be a case study for the world.

> May it be in part because of US government pressure? not unlikely.

Based on what?

Using the abandoned factory isn't the problem. It's what _led_ to that situation that's the problem.

> international sanctions are the direct cause of most of the problems that > make the news daily (lack of medicine, food, etc).

Direct cause of most of the problems? What the hell? On what basis do you claim this? Are you even familiar with the factors that led to the current crisis at all?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I feel like the authors should have picked either narrated video or text, not both. I couldn't get through this, too painful.

</comment><comment><USER30> I wonder, if you go there can you still buy stuff for USD? E.g. how does the reporter survive there? I can't imagine a journalist would drop to that quality of life he describes just for his job.

<comment><USER5> If you have access to USD, you can usually exchange them quite easily - <USER3> officially, of course, but you'll find buyers: importers that will get a nice return on them, individuals who want to keep their remaining savings from disappearing, and so on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Given the presentation doesn't actually provide how people survive, these are some "insights" into it:

\- Paper money is useless (as seen in the video) so everything is done via bank transfer. This has led to a very fast adoption of internet banking. You want to pay someone, you make them a transfer and show them the transaction.

\- There are places where paper money is needed, parking lots. You have to pay 100.000 bolivares in bills of 500. ATMs don't give you enough money to cover that, so you need to ... buy packets of money, for a premium.

\- Credit cards can't keep up their limits with the inflation. All the credit cards in a middle class family amount to a few dollars.

\- Unusual for a country like Venezuela, some weird sense of trust is now needed. You might go to get a haircut and then make a money transfer from your PC when you get home. No one wants your paper currency.

\- Bitcoin has become a common way of sending money from abroad to family in Venezuela. There's people that will buy it in exchange for Bolivares (Venezuelan currency) at a premium. Again, you have to trust them to hold their side of the bargain.

\- All of the issues above work while internet and electricity are working, which very often, doesn't. Banking infrastructure is pushed to its limits .

\- There's start ups trying to work around these trust and centralized systems using blockchain technology. ([https://www.citywallet.net/](https://www.citywallet.net/) \- in spanish)

</comment><comment><USER32> "Revolutionary Cornflakes"... these people are pure evil.

</comment><comment><USER33> Ehh, I find this experience difficult to read and understand (as someone who embraces Aspbergers). I had to give up trying to read it because I have no idea where I am and if I missed something.

</comment><comment><USER34> The title should replace "Money" with "Currency".

It's the Venezuelan Bolivar is worthless. If you use gold or silver, I am sure they will be more than happy to accept it.

<comment><USER35> That would make for a less catchy title.

Though amusingly by the definition of "money", worthless currency doesn't qualify.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> This presentation is a great experiment, but it's just that, an experiment in presentation. It should never have been released to the general public, just to UI or web dev forums in order for them to learn from.

I think that human computer interaction has taken massive steps back from the 90s. That, or I'm getting old. Could be both too.

Aside: some great content here though. so many beautiful shots of the country. And some brief text that gave a tiny bit of color.

<comment><USER37> The biggest step back happened after we started describing the "human-computer interaction". I don't want an interaction. I'm talking to a machine, not a person. This isn't a two-way conversation. If I wanted to see transitions between slides and text fed to me piecemeal, I'd watch a TV report on the issue. This article is like watching that TV report but also having to click an arrow every ten seconds to prove I'm still paying attention. I got through maybe six slides before giving up.

<comment><USER38> > I'm talking to a machine, not a person. This isn't a two-way conversation.

I guess you operate your computer with no output devices?

<comment><USER37> I do, but I am the master in the computer-human or website-human relationship. If I want to read faster, I tell the machine to move faster and it does. When I machine tells me that I am moving too quickly or two slowly and demands that I alter my behavior ... the human does not take orders from the machine. They work for us.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> The format is not bad. I think what made the experience a bit bad for me is the slow Internet connection. It would help if the presentation force you to wait until everything is loaded.

Now back to complaining about the content: It is very light on details. I'm very interested in the Venezuela crisis but this gives practically no numbers and thus no idea about how bad the situation is.

</comment><comment><USER40> An excellent read on economics of "dead economies," and why would one give a gold bar for a piece of bread is "Necroeconomics" by V. Papava

[https://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/abs/10.1108/0306829021044...](https://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/abs/10.1108/03068290210444421)

</comment><comment><USER41> I think it's great that this is being publicized and getting attention. It took many economic mis-steps to bring such a country to it knees (printing money, restricting prices with price ceilings, import taxes, etc), I kinda wish they would focus on all the economic errors they've made, so the rest of the world can learn from those mistakes.

<comment><USER42> The main error was to be the economy on heavily exporting oil, only for the oil price to tank (Thanks, Saudis).

While being able to heavily export oil, they could heavily import stuff that could help the poorest of the population.

But when the oil price dropped, they were loath to cut back on the support systems. Thus a massive trade deficit developed, and the exchange rate tanked.

While the reasons are different, it is the same "death spiral" as one could witness in Germany between the wars, or in Zimbabwe.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> > Last year millions took to the streets last year to protest the mismanaged > economy and silencing of the opposition.

If you're going to have a multimedia presentation with polished production and very small amounts of text, you should be aware that it makes proofreading failures seem like a much bigger problem than they would be otherwise.

</comment><comment><USER44> Are people there still using the Bolivar? Why haven't they switched to some alternative currency? Wouldn't that solve many of the current problems?

<comment><USER45> There are probably heavy controls on the import of foreign currencies.

<comment><USER44> That makes sense... Cryptocurrencies might have helped there, but with how hard they are to use and with how impossible it would be to actually exchange them to and from fiat, they'd practically be no help at all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Both form and content are superb. Very moving story. The crisis is real. We have to act now.

What are the best ideas proposed so far that might help them?

<comment><USER47> Should have been a video, not a slow to load click through light weight social media snapshots format.

This is a very serious humanitarian and economic problem and the glossy reportage format is too glib and simplistic IMO.

More importantly, what will help is an end to the western siege on their economy because they are a socialist country [https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/socialism-blame- ve...](https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/socialism-blame-venezuelas- crisis-180530095418091.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> I fucking hate the modern web.

</comment><comment><USER49> So... the country needs help. How do we help?

<comment><USER50> I don't think we can.

Any attempt to do so will be resisted by the government as the meddling of the imperialists, to be opposed at all costs. We either have to invade to remove the government by force (and kill a bunch of the army), or we can do very little.

One thing that we might, in other circumstances, do, is to tell Columbia, for example, that any refugees that come over the border we will take, so that they don't need to try to keep them out. But under current political circumstances in the US, even that seems out of reach...

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> This is not an article, it's a movie with subtitles. (It should have a [video] tag.) And it doesn't address how to survive when money is worthless, it just shows some vignettes from Venezuela that illustrate how hard it is to survive when money is worthless.

<comment><USER52> It's a hybrid article. Mixed media. Interactive web page. The categorization of movie seems to imply some dismissiveness as well.

The article isn't so much an instructional video on how to survive, and could be interpreted as ironic on some level. I don't think the title is beyond critique, but the content addresses how people are surviving by showing people who are surviving, even barely.

If people think conditions in Venezuela are not that bad, and there are people who believe that, then this should give them pause.

<comment><USER53> In what sense is it hybrid or mixed media? It's ordinary video, with subtitles.

<comment><USER52> The usual video content I experience isn't presented this way. It's also not all video and includes still images. Video loops with text overlays as a webpage vs. Youtube embedded video vs. a movie on Netflix with no interaction. Maybe multimedia presentation is a better description.

The presentation style is simply not the same as a movie. You can argue that it's not unique or original, but trying to make that point by dismissing it as a movie seems pedantic.

<comment><USER53> We'll have to agree to disagree. It's essentially a short film documentary that happens to be presented via a webpage.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Is there a text version? The "multimedia" presentation is pretty annoying.

<comment><USER55> Haven't you heard _everything_ needs picture stories now, if not video? Text is so outmoded.

<comment><USER56> "Print is dead"

\-- Egon Spengler

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> As much as I love media-rich reporting, sometimes I just want to scroll and read. Currently on crappy hotel WiFi and this article is to hard to read (watch?) on this connection.</comment>


The Fifth Ruby Survey: 2014 - <AUTHOR> http://www.ruby-survey.com/

<comment><USER2> "What webserver do you use in production?"

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>---

Passenger

        2010 - 61.719%
        2012 - 32.540% -29.179%

Thin

        2010 - 9.483%
        2012 - 10.675% 1.192%

Unicorn

        2010 - 7.517%
        2012 - 40.836% 33.319%

Other

        2010 - 9.483%
        2012 - 15.048% 5.565%

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>--

Anybody cares to explain why Passenger had such a fall in 2012 compared to a 33% user increase for Unicorn? If I remember correctly at that time everybody in the ruby community was blaming Unicorn, and there was a lot of effort to create more performant web app servers...</comment>


Ask HN: Late-bloomer engineers, when and how did you discover programming? - <AUTHOR> Personal curiosity as I am a college sophomore who has been programming for a year, self taught because I'm in a different major. Most stories I see on HN are "I started BASIC when I was 9" so I was curious for the other perspective closer to mine. <comment><USER2> I dropped out of highschool when I was 16. Worked at KFC and McDonald's. Went to a local community college for a couple of years and learned how to program at 19. And then shortly dropped out again.

Eventually, my parents convinced me that I should go back to college. Which I did at age 24, as a 1st year computer science student.

I graduated with a CS degree from a university almost no one has heard of.

Today, I'm an Engineering Director at Google and I love my job and the people I work with.

You don't need to start programming when you're 9. But there's no substitute for putting in the hours. Or learning the material. Maybe you should switch majors?

<comment><USER3> Thread closed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> You started before me!

I bought a book on PHP the fall of my sophomore year of college. I'd built websites and sorta knew how to create <div> tags and CSS basics, but I'd never dealt with programming logic before.

Best decision of my life.

I grew up in Birmingham, AL and graduated high school in 2009. Our school didn't offer CS. Nobody's parents were computer programmers. Everybody's parents worked in medicine or law or banking or cooking or something along those lines. Nobody I knew - except for another kid named Robert - knew that programming computers was even a thing that kids like us could do. Robert and I would make stop-motion videos with Legos as kids, played with cameras and video editing and special effects.

I think Robert is the only other person in my graduating class of 348 people (348 quite smart people - we had 29 National Merit Finalists our graduating year!) who have learned about programming thus far. I think my high school finally started offering CS last year.

For me, I was trying to build an SMS group messaging app (this was before GroupMe or WhatsApp or anything else like that). I couldn't find anybody to build it. The summer of my sophomore year of college, GroupMe had been built and sold to MSFT for $100 million. I decided, "Why can't I learn to program? Then I won't have to find somebody else to make my next idea." I fell in love with programming!

The spring of my sophomore year, I also enrolled in CS 101 (I ended up minoring in CS, although reading books and doing online tutorials was far more helpful). The professor, who wrote compilers for IBM for over two decades, said at the start of the class, "You are in the right place. When I showed up at college, I'd never seen a computer before. I went on to have a thrilling 25-year career." Since I imagined everybody else had been programming in their basement since they were 8yo, I was relieved.

It's never too late to start something. I wrote this article about collecting sand when I was a kid (which relates to this very topic). It made it to the front page here on HN which I thought was neat: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22131552](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22131552)

<comment><USER5> I think PHP will end up being the BASIC of our generation. It was so easy to pickup and understand. The fact that it was really a templating language helped people make that jump from static HTML -> programming in small increments. And once you knew PHP, you weren't locked into web-dev. You could easily leverage your knowledge into systems development; I think roughly 40% of my PHP work ended up being backend utilities for Linux.

<comment><USER4> Agreed! It's easy to forget how popular it was in the 2000's

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I was a couple of years out of college, having been an sdr at a tech company > managed sdr's > moved into business and sales ops.

I was hitting snags trying to do analysis with excel and couldn't vlookup or pivot on a table with a million rows. A friend mentioned in passing that python would make this pretty simple.

I started there and tried to solve problems I was facing with code instead of excel.

Fast forward a year or two having built a few projects on the side, quit my job and started selling software I built from scratch.

I found having a project to work on that solved problems _I_ faced made the learning effort so much easier. I struggled early on trying to solve fizz buzz-type problems because I couldn't see them solving problems I faced day to day.

I don't code much anymore but having that arrow in my quiver changed my career trajectory significantly. I recommend learning as soon as possible!

<comment><USER7> I can second the experience that learning things in order to solve a problem works great. I struggle when I just have to sit down and lear something from scratch, without any direct application to the knowledge. But as soon I can project concepts and theories onto a problem I want to solve, I have no issue learning new things.

Currently I learn a lot about relational algebra and algebraic semirings, because they are part of the theory behind constraint programming, which I use in a current project.

<comment><USER8> Out of curiosity, how would you say that relational algebra and algebraic semirings help you with constraint programming? While that can indeed be useful in some cases when doing research in constraint programming, I am curious how it helps you?

Background: I'm a researcher in constraint programming and sometimes user of it in work-related projects.

<comment><USER7> Not directly with constraint programming itself. And also, I'm not doing a deep dive on these topics. But having an ideal of what is happening under the hood makes gives me more confidence in working with a tool and reasoning about choices.

<comment><USER8> Interesting. I don't think that would be my first choices of study.

If you want to know more about how constraint programming works under the hood, I can recommend the coursera course Solving algorithms for Discrete Optimization, in particular weeks 1 and 2 for constraint programming. [https://www.coursera.org/learn/solving-algorithms- discrete-o...](https://www.coursera.org/learn/solving-algorithms-discrete- optimization#syllabus)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> There used to be magazines that would print, line by line, entire programs in BASIC for pages and pages. I did those as a kid on a C64. That definitely wasn't programming because I was basically just reading a recipe.

I officially took a BASIC class in Jr. High, but shortly after that, x86 took over and I really didn't do much with computers throughout high school. I got a PowerBook 145 for college where I majored in econ.

My advisor somehow got me an account on a VAX machine and that's where it all started. I was one of the first at my school to have email. Played around with some MUDs, gopher, ftp archives, etc. I eventually started goofing around with HTML. That was far more interesting than my econ work. I looked at changing majors, but my school's CS dept was severely behind (late 90's by this time. The only thing they were teaching was C and Assembly with no internet technologies. I heard they didn't add Java until the early 2000's.

Dropped out because by this time if you could spell programmer, you got a pretty good job as one. I was floating around with frontend stuff, but knew I had to learn backend as quickly as possible. I bought Fast and Easy PHP by Julie Meloni (which I still have!) to help a local animal shelter build a huge database driven site. It was one of the first in the state. That was a game- changing resume item at the time.

Now here we are. Go/Python/Node are my primary tools these days. I eventually did finish my econ degree, but my career is software engineering.

</comment><comment><USER10> I got a degree in public relations and took a job doing tech sales at a Series A company. I was the 6th employee. The product was pretty unstable so I taught myself to code to improve their QA infra.(basically writing automated tests). I went on to build product for them.

Now I work as a SWE at FANG (not Amazon).

I definitely remember feeling like you did before I joined my first big company, but fortunately it's working out. Happy to answer any q's you might have along the way.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Do you have any recommendations for types or scope of personal projects? I see the advice to build stuff a lot but never what or how much. I'm specifically interested in security and systems, NOT front end web dev which is what most guides and stuff are geared towards.

<comment><USER10> > Do you have any recommendations for types or scope of personal projects?

you're in a really great place to teach yourself because colleges will generally have hands-on, free help. Beyond that I would say get projects that people or business need - you'll be way more incentivized to learn. An internship with a small startup where you work for cheap would be a really great starting place. It's a tradeoff - cheap labor for them if they're willing to help teach you.

For security & systems, look for backendy, devops, or rel-eng. opportunities. You'll quickly learn a lot.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I finished my BA (teaching). Went on to a different city to get an MA. Due to costs, I felt like I had to find a part-time job. Applied to a fortune 500 tech company to be a receptionist. Had pretty much 0 programming knowledge at the time.

I quickly realized being surrounded by amazingly smart people with passion for programming is way more beneficial than my masters. I stopped my masters, and started on a never-ending quest of computer science self education.

Every day, 1-2 hours after work, every weekend, 3-6 hours, I spend time on Coursera, EdX, math texbooks... Learning compilers, networking, iOS apps, JS, Java... whatever you give me, I'll learn.

7 years later, I have an "architect" in my title, my salary rose more than 3x. Still probably underpaid, but the pace of learning and opportunities I get far outweigh the salary (e.g. got certifications and trainings worth hundreds of thousands of dollars at this point).

I am also finishing a CS undergrad for fun in the evenings, but my resolve on that is waning. I can do the same for free on my own, minus the degree. I do like the math classes, which are far more rigorous than I'd be on my own. Other than that, it's been kind of meh.

<comment><USER12> Curious about your experience on doing a CS undergrad for fun in the evenings. I work as a developer, but don't have an official CS degree. Some part of me wants it, even though I already have a BA (econ). I'm hoping to do something similar, but haven't jumped in yet. Is your undergrad online or in person? If it is online, any schools you recommend? Are you finding work + school exhausting?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm 40+ been coding professionally for two years now.

I used to be a network engineer but the nature of that business being treated as costly overhead and my personal interest slowly diminishing meant when my employer was bought I had a chance to think about if I wanted to do that and I .... did not.

I tried coding in college but:

1\. I was a terrible student at that time.

2\. At that time it was largely "Here is a book about C ... memorize what I tell you in lecture... now figure it out."

Not a good combo.

I was always interested / reading about coding and I went to a bootcamp and found I was suddenly a good student out of nowhere.

I think maturity and focus (both came late for me) resulted in being really excited every day that someone was going to drop some knowledge on me in a way that...I didn't get when I was younger. A couple other older guys in class had the same experience.

Coming from a different background has helped in some ways. My coworkers can code faster than I can, but I find I have experience that I can pickup businesses logic, craft it appropriately / so that it is useful and can be extended as needed, and can talk to customers easily.

<comment><USER14> Awesome! How did you learn how to code? Did you self-study or took coding classes online or bootcamps?

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Got to college not even knowing how to type - hadn't used a computer at all but decide to study computer engineering.

One major advantage is you didn't take anything for granted... e.g 101 level classes were truly useful to me.

</comment><comment><USER16> I started when I was 29. I was a Product Manager with a marketing/business background and wanted to learn how to do it myself. Udemy courses on Go was where I first started and then progressed into building my own side projects with Go/Vue.

I decided if I was going to make the switch I needed to learn something new. Having 2 years of Go experience puts me on a better position in the market. I can't compete with the guy/girl who's been writing Java for 13 years but I have SOME unique skills as a Go developer. That was my strategy at least.

Even though I wished I had started earlier, being a late bloomer has helped because;

1\. I have better processes for learning concepts than I did when I was young, and so I can progress quickly.

2\. I have a broader perspective. Seeing things from the business/customer side for so long stops me from building elaborate complex solutions for inconsequential problems that won't make it to production.

</comment><comment><USER17> Hi,

I am 43. I am probably atypical for my age range, as most friends would have started with an Atari, Amiga or Amstrad computer, and I had a PC at home from maybe 1984. I always complained that I had crappy games as a result, but for the rest, the PC was fine. I still remember text only Microsoft word.

I started programming in Microsoft BASICA, getting lost in GOTO hell. Then, Pascal, and, at age 13, I put all my savings in buying a C compiler (costed 100€ or so), and also getting a graphical library through shareware (remember ordering the floppy disks by mail).

At university, I moved from C to java, and I more or less stayed there as java is good enough / common for my trade in entreprise IT. I also do not like scripting languages, and prefer compiled languages (faster, errors found earlier).

</comment><comment><USER18> I was pretty decent at music in high school. No interest at all in tech or programming. Went to a top 3 music university for a year and burned out. The hours required were intense. The competition was fierce, and the outcome of getting a music ed degree wasn't that bright either.

Transferred to a nearby university and continued music education for a year. Competition was less fierce but the hours required to stay in the school were still intense. Much more than a CS degree required.

I had my first son during my second year of university. Dropped out. Got a job at a regional gas retailer that's known for paying their people exceptionally well. Moved into doing maintenance. Did maintenance for 5+ years at said gas station. It was great! Pay was good, troubleshooting skills got much better, and I liked most of my job. I ended up meeting my SO there also! Downsides were 50+ hours/week, work weekends, on-call, work holidays, can't choose schedule, work overnights, etc.

Had a breaking point with my boss at gas station. He screamed at me over something small without letting me explain. I couldn't go get another job in the same industry that payed nearly as well. I had bronze handcuffs basically (not as good as golden handcuffs). I had been tinkering with diy project at home and ended up buying a raspberry pi and learning some python. LOVED it.

I started going to university again at 24 for computer science. I worked full time doing maintenance and did 8-12 hours of school per semester in computer science. I felt super behind too.

I joined a programming club that changed my life. Met a ton of great people who set the bar for programming higher than I thought. Won a few hackathons, got hiring letters at a few internships (which I ended up not taking due to needing to maintain my insurance for my son and needing a full-time income).

I went to a ton of local meetups and met one of the partners of the consulting firm I currently work at. He did a mock interview at a meetup with me. We connected on linkedin and he hired me a few months later.

I've been at my current job almost 2 years now. It's been fantastic. I still love programming as much ever. Love the people I work with, and love working in tech.

</comment><comment><USER19> Well I'm currently in school for a CS degree in SWE. I'm 25M currently attending a state college with hopefully 1 and a half years left if all classes align.

I didn't know what I wanted to do when I graduated high school. I just wanted to work. I tried community college but sorry burnt out. I tried business, welding, and IT. I passed a few classes, others I just quit attending. I had no goals or direction and super depressed I couldn't even get a job that made more than $11/hour. I worked probably 15 jobs total in my life by 21. In hindsight looking at it I think this mostly had to do with me wanting to be a priest but people talking me out of it. I struggled with religion ultimately just recanting allowing for myself to rebuild my purpose as a weird way of putting it.

I then got an assiciates degree in business and started working at a bank. From there I worked for a few years building up skills and experience. I got really good with Excel and realized a lot of what I was doing with the functions was very similar to programming. So the logic part and substituting variables was super easy for me to comprehend.

The thing I really appreciate about going back to school now is I know what's what. I know what matters and what doesn't. I had a fully laid out plan and understanding of the way in which I'd achieve my goal. It's so weird that the whole Corona issue didn't even put a dent in how I planned things out. I think it actually helped even get an internship. I'm still very green in terms of skill though. But I enjoy learning it because it's a skill. It's not like hypothetical nonsense they teach you in business classes.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't think starting programming as a sophomore in college even puts you close to being a late bloomer. There are many many developers out there who have been working with the same 2-3 year knowledge for like 15-20 years. Keep learning something everyday, tax your brain so that you can really feel it, and i guarantee that you will be caught up in no time.

</comment><comment><USER20> As a kid I tried getting a BASIC program working on the TI994A, and poorly communicated that to the math/library/tech teacher at my school, who in a moment of disinterested frustration told me you're either born a programmer or you're not. So that settled life for me, easy enough.

And then in my late 20s I'm stuck with a program tearing through my customer records, overwriting values with empty fields and apparently at random. I was able to pull the script from the created username id that did the overwrites, and ultimately derive the flaw as being a 'match first instance by name' with no other restrictions (including overwrite protections in place for other end users, and ignoring things like same names in different states or intentional duplicates for regulatory or industry purposes).

So something didn't feel right that I was able to unravel what this script did wrong yet not be able to program it. When I found out how much the contractor made to write that sloppy POS, it was a career given.

How many fields can you say you doubled your salary with a job hop, really?

</comment><comment><USER21> When I was in high school, I wrote programs for TI calculator to help on quizzes. At 15-20 I gamed quite a bit and did some server maintenance and set up. I tried learning HTML and making sites but never really got into it. I also built many computers for myself and friends.

At 26 I was studying criminal justice, then I had some health issues which would affect the physical aspect of the job, so I switched to CS. I used to think I was stupid because when I tried HTML everything seemed so hard and took long. Then in my CS program, while still dealing with health concerns I did exceptionally well in almost every course, always top of class and I learned that it is easier for me than others.

Before graduation I had job lined up. I am making decent money in non-tech but interviewed in quite a few companies and got offers, they never matched the amount I worked from home though, so I did not make the jump. I also realized I'm a pretty good self-learner and now read books and do online classes non- stop.

</comment><comment><USER22> Graphic Design -> Web Design -> Wordpress Sites -> Front End Dev

</comment><comment><USER23> I was hired by Travelocity in late 2007 to be a designer, but I displayed some coding proficiency. I had taught myself the suite of XML related technologies the year before. They could not find competent UI developers no matter how hard they tried, so I was involuntarily transferred to a front-end developer role in early 2008 (age 28).

I have been doing it full time ever since. Most of my code and learning come from open source projects opposed to my full time work in the corporate world.

As somebody who is self-taught and has maintained two jobs in unrelated careers/industries I have 0 sympathy and 0 patience for developers who do this work full-time yet still cannot figure it out without some framework to do their jobs for them. The general incompetence, immaturity, and accompanying excuses that seem to plague front-end development is really the worst part of the work.

</comment><comment><USER8> I learned programming when I started university, and realized then and there that this was exactly what I wanted to do. I've never felt the "late" start was a hinidrance, and I've been very happy in my professional life.

While some people have years of experience programming when they come to university, it is not always a good thing as I saw many times as a TA. Many come with _very_ bad habits but enough skill that they can coast through early classes, until they hit road-blocks trying to scale up what they do. Not everyone of course, but it is good to remember that all programming is not the same when it comes to developing skill (as in any endeavour).

</comment><comment><USER24> I'm nearly 50 and started at 39 1/2\. I programmed BASIC back in the 80's and loved it but never thought of it as a career. I did however get very into Linux starting like 2005 but didn't program and never even considered I'd do that for a living.

Anyway, I wanted to build a device about a decade ago so I quit my job and learned a little Python so I could control it. It didn't work out after like a year. It was dumb idea and I didn't know enough to really do it properly.

But by that time I had somewhat of a handle on Bash and Python and basic HTML and someone approached me about building a small accounting app so I did it and picked up enough jQuery and CSS and SQL along the way from Stack Overflow it worked out. It was a mess but it worked. A maintenance guy at my apartments saw it why I was working on it, and his wife worked for a company that needed a similar app so I went and talked with them and wound up doing that and it was less of a mess (still not ideal). Then I had an idea for a SASS based on that, built it, didn't market it and wasn't that good, it generated 0 interest but I learned a lot more along the way and had taken some online classes in the meantime. Enough so I landed a real programming job for like a year where I learned even more. I had some freelance jobs on the side during this time. The job sucked and I quit and went back to freelancing and have been working ever since.

I will say it's a grind and you have to love it and be temperamentally suited for it and really put in some hours if you take this path. And it's probably easier if you are like in your 20s but it's still very possible.

I see a lot of people who think they will get into programming because it's a bunch of money but I think that doesn't generally work out as well for them. The interest is what drives you to learn new stuff and put in the time and beat through the frustration for hours until you are dancing and can just do stuff with your eyes closed. Not the money. I will say though lately I'm a little less excited as I see the same thing over and over but it's still cool and I'm really grateful to have had the time and opportunity and whatever mental dysfunction it is that allowed me to amass the skills I have. I don't think I'm super knowledgeable, I don't have to be the smartest guy in the room, I don't know much about advanced topics and would never pass reverse this tree whiteboard tests, but I can pump out useful apps that are increasingly maintainable and pleasant for end users. And people are willing to pay for it which still floors me sometimes.

</comment><comment><USER25> I was working in manufacturing after getting a degree focused on quality assurance & management. I started to hate the work and the fact that my employment was dependent on a large company in a field that was moving outside the US.

Ive always been really fascinated by computers. I'd built plenty of them but never got into the software side and had no idea how it worked. I started teaching myself on the job by starting projects that I could accomplish by programming. That was 2 years ago, now I am on a datascience team doing my work in python. I started teaching myself when I was late 20s.

</comment><comment><USER26> I'm 36 and didn't start programming until I was 29. Tried to work with people on a project, got frustrated and decided to do it myself. I only did full time programming for a very short time, but I still write code for my job regularly and do side projects here and there for fun. I know full time engineers at big tech companies that didn't start programming until their late 30s. I'd say there isn't such a thing as a late bloomer because life isn't linear like society would like you to believe.

</comment><comment><USER27> Not a programmer, but I wrote my first proper script (lots of if/else) at 37 and the world of automation and scripting/programming opened up to me. I work in mostly a Microsoft land, Office 365 and Azure so I work mostly in PowerShell 5 and 7. My daily driver for work is Pop_OS! 20.04 as PowerShell 7 is decently multiplatform now. Current interests/learning are Python and Nim. I don't think you are ever to old to get started.

</comment><comment><USER28> I was a health science major in college spending a lot of my free time programming an LP-MUD (this was mid-90s). I think it was my sister who said that I seemed much more interested in programming than health science. I switched into CS about a year later. If I had been smarter and ambitious enough I would have double-majored in CS and Health Science.

Fwiw, I had zero to little real programming experience prior to enrolling in CS. It was a hard road but well worth it.

</comment><comment><USER29> My fascination with automation basically is how I discovered the art of programming... programming is automation in it's most distilled form.

The path I took to programming was long but a relatively common path:

\- Lego

\- Which led to Lego mechanics

\- Which led to mechanical engineering

\- Which led to manufacturing

\- Which led to automation

\- Which led to programming (about 22 years old)

</comment><comment><USER30> Had to really learn scripting for a notorious CAE and it was Pyhton, jumped on that ship reluctantly but it came good ten years later.

</comment><comment><USER31> edX/coursera when I was 23 living in Europe sleeping on a friend's couch with a bunch of credit card debt. I had never encountered the idea of programming computers before then. Absolutely turned my life around.

</comment><comment><USER32> The Nick Parlante python videos. First time it ever made sense.</comment>