"The Big Bang Theory" Normalized Nerd Culture - <AUTHOR> https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/how-the-big-bang-theory-normalized-nerd-culture <comment><USER5> Disagree. If anything I think it reinforced nerd stereotypes even worse - <USER2> it did was shine a light on a culture that was basically in the shadows. Nerd culture has been perpetuated by a variety of factors:

1\. Twitch / livestreaming / YT - e.g. sub counts = "look at how many people actually do like gaming"

2\. Affinity groups to video games - e.g. NBA players love Fortnite (among other professional sports...see HyperX commercials with Embiid, Hayward, etc.)

3\. Marvel movies - comic book reading is the ultimate nerd fascination. Marvel movies are consistently the most watched movies in the last decade.

4\. Commercial success of tech startups - Zuck/Gates are the ultimate nerds who are now the envy of every banker on wall st.

<comment><USER6> Gates/Jobs are the biggest factors for sure.

<comment><USER7> Jobs never struck me as a nerd. More like the cool preppy kid that would drive a BMW to school if they could have afforded one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I find this show actively uncomfortable to watch. It doesn't normalize anything, it just mocks it using caricatures and awful stereotypes within the framework of an extremely traditional and lazily written sitcom.

<comment><USER9> It's a series filled with Steve Urkel-level parodies of nerds. I chuckled at Urkel as a teenaged nerd in the 90s. Especially when they (sometimes) humanized him more it was ok, instead of just having him the butt of every joke. But a series where the main characters are all the butts of the joke and supposed to represent me (according to other people) isn't really that funny.

<comment><USER10> > It's a series filled with Steve Urkel-level parodies of nerds.

Not really. Steve Urkel was a nerd, but in the show that just meant "annoying personality". The characters in Big Bang Theory might have annoying personalities at times, but at least had interests and attitudes that demonstrated they were actually nerds, not just annoying.

<comment><USER11> Urkel was into engineering and science and such, right? I mean IIRC he built that machine that turned him into Stefan. Maybe a robot at one point? Dunno, that's long enough ago to be pretty fuzzy, but I remember "making stuff with math and science shit" being among his nerdy traits.

<comment><USER10> He was "into engineering and science", yes. But it didn't mean anything beyond that; he didn't do any engineering besides occasionally something would magically appear. And he liked "science" but not any particular part of science. They didn't talk about anything that he liked more than "science".

It would be like if someone said they liked "movies", but never mentioned a single movie that they enjoyed, or actor, or director, or anything. Just they're really into "movies".

Big Bang Theory has many flaws, but it is so far better than Steve Urkel or Screech. If I had been a kid when Big Bang Theory came out, having some positive nerd representation would have been wonderful. And in Big Bang Theory the characters _are_ represented positively—the show clearly likes the characters, to use Roger Ebert's terminology.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> BBT is based on displaying stereotypes and then ridiculing them. As someone who studied CS and now works in IT, I've met quite a few people who actually have to deal with the very issues that this show makes fun of, and let me tell you: being a social outsider is not as much fun in the real world.

I have a hard time imagining how in this day and age the same ridiculing of stereotypes would fly without a giant backlash if the show were about:

      - <USER3>
      - <USER4>
      - Non-white people
      - ...

But apparently, "nerds" are a safe enough as a group that coming up with a skewed portrayal of them that lends itself to making fun of is okay.

Yeah, you go ahead and laugh about those tech freaks... why should the school bullies get all the fun...

<comment><USER13> I'm not homosexual, but have you seen the portrayls of such on the likes of 'next top model', 'queer eye...', and honestly just about any mainstream media now that I think about it.

They're petty much all caricatures of 'offensively eccentric negative-female- characteristics high-pitched limp-wristed men with obsessions for fashion and celebrity culture'.

Its exactly the same thing and pretty standard...if i was less cynical, id think it should of created more of an uproar...

I'm sure I could come up with examples for the other groups...

<comment><USER14> I don't know if your description of the men on Queer Eye is apt. It's a reality show, which admittedly doesn't mean the hosts aren't acting, but the show is hosted by a cast of all homosexual men. Being in the age we're in, it's easy to go find more content that shows the hosts aren't acting for Queer Eye, and perhaps they're being their genuine selves.

Jonathon Van Ness, has a podcast, and has done some Youtube content over the years, and doesn't seem to portray a different "character" than he does on QE.

Mainstream media, especially in the last 10 years, has really changed the way homosexuals, and other LGBTQ+ are presented and seen. I would argue that it's a lot less problematic, and more genuine than it's ever been. HBO's 'Looking' did a decent job of portraying the spectrum of gay men that exist today. (Not a particularly great show otherwise). Amazon's 'Transparent' does an incredible job of highlighting the fact that sexuality exists on a spectrum, and those people can be hyper-fem, hyper-masc, and anywhere in between.

As a gay nerd, I personally think it's important we see all kinds of LGBTQ+ identifying people, and shows like Queer Eye have done that.

<comment><USER15> I haven't seen the reboot of Queer Eye, but most of the cast of the original were hardly stereotypical. Ted Allen?

<comment><USER13> I admit, I had no idea there was a reboot, and I don't know who Ted Allen is :p

<comment><USER15> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queer_Eye](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queer_Eye)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It normalized an easy-to-digest parody of nerd culture, perhaps. Nothing honked me off more than people watching BBT and thinking they understood "people like me".

<comment><USER17> Surely the same could be said of nearly any network sitcom involving a subculture or demographic. That's kind of the idea of broad entertainment.

The problem comes when the parody comes at the expense of the culture - that's exploitation. But by the time BBT was airing and popular, nerds were, and remain, to a certain extent a privileged class, not an oppressed one. They have high-paying jobs, ordinary successful lives, and look back at the old stereotypes of pocket protectors and social awkwardness with a sort of bemusement. Nerds are not a vulnerable class and haven't been in a long time. Nor is "nerd culture" particularly cohesive.

That may not be the case when the group being parodied is genuinely being oppressed or discriminated against and is often not in a position to push back against that. Exploitation in that case can be real and harmful.

<comment><USER18> > Nerds are not a vulnerable class and haven't been in a long time.

The ones who get a CS degree and get a good high paying job, sure.

The ones still in middle school? Not so much. The ones who aren't programmers? Not so much. The nerds growing up in communities where free thinking and geeky passions are looked down upon, sometimes violently? Not so much.

And those kids will reach adulthood dealing with some rather nasty issues. Everything from not having learned great socialization skills, to a poor self image, to a lot of stuff in-between.

Stereotypes are bad, having a show that treats people as 1 dimensional disposable arch-types that exist only to be laughed at, is bad, no matter who the subject matter is.

<comment><USER19> You mean people like Stuart the comic book store owner?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> TBBT is a show written by non-nerds trying to describe what nerds are, and failing miserably.

I have tried more than once to watch it and every time I felt actual physical discomfort at how bad the whole thing was; Even though the show is not strictly about nerds but rather a parody of SV culture, I find HBO's Silicon Valley to be so much better at describing nerds than TBBT - at the very least I can actually laugh at the jokes and there are slight hints that the writers actually know what they are talking about.

<comment><USER21> Having lived in LA for 15 years I met and became friends with some writers. I can't speak for the BBT writers but a lot, if not most, of the writers I met were pretty nerdy. Sometimes you need to write what makes your audience laugh rather than what makes you laugh. They earn a paycheck just like the rest of us.

I couldn't watch it due to the laugh track.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I haven't watched The Big Bang Theory regularly in a long time but I always enjoy it when I catch it in re-runs. A lot of people claim to hate it because it makes fun of "nerd stereotypes". I never found it insulting, though. Exaggerated, sure, but it's a sitcom, it's supposed to be exaggerated. A lot of the fun of the show is the characters "taking the piss out of each other" [1]. Not everyone will like that kind of humor but it's pretty common in sitcoms and a lot of people seem to enjoy it.

It seems to be common for people who dislike BBT to complain that it ridicules nerds as a class. I don't think that's right at all. Does anyone think that "Scrubs"[2] ridiculed doctors and other healthcare professionals as a general class?

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taking_the_piss](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taking_the_piss)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrubs_(TV_series)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrubs_\(TV_series\))

</comment><comment><USER23> It normalized the stereotype of nerd culture.

Aside from being incredibly unfunny it completely misrepresented nerd culture and that's why it was so popular amongst the largely nerd-free network tv audience.

For a more accurate picture still taken to absurd extremes watch Mike Judge's silicon valley on HBO.

</comment><comment><USER24> It is not just Sheldon who is extremely sexist in their group. Here are Pop Culture Detective's video essays highlighting misogynistic and toxic-masculine behaviour of all these "nerd" characters:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3-hOigoxHs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3-hOigoxHs)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7L7NRONADJ4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7L7NRONADJ4)

</comment><comment><USER25> I tried watching this show once and it wasn't about nerds, it was about what non-nerds think nerds are. The laugh track on top of that drove me crazy. It was unwatchable. I genuinely don't understand how it was so popular.

<comment><USER26> It's always interesting to me to hear people complain about the "laugh track" in shows like BBT, but then herald Monty Python as if it were some paragon of comedy, considering it _also_ contains a "laugh track." I'm not speaking about your comment in particular; I have heard from many folks that they hated BBT because of the recorded laughter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> A great quote I remember reading about BBT (maybe in comments here on HN) was in relation to Arrested Development.

Big Bang Theory is a dumb show about smart people. Arrested Development is a smart show about dumb people.

I've never been able to watch BBT. I could never get past the feeling that I was being laughed at.

<comment><USER28> I believe this is the figure you're remembering:

[http://i.imgur.com/IT2K6F8.png](http://i.imgur.com/IT2K6F8.png)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> No more than blackface "normalized" African-American culture.

<comment><USER30> I mean... disgusting as it was, it kind of did.

<comment><USER31> Blackface normalised the racist stereotype of African Americans, not necessarily actual African American culture.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> This show made me realize that there are two distinct groups of people with zero middle ground: Those who enjoy or at least don't see anything wrong with it, and those who feel they are represented (poorly) in the show, and intensely dislike it.

The first group usually tends to compare the second group to the show's characters ("he's such a Sheldon") and doesn't see anything wrong with that, either.

</comment><comment><USER33> So many people complain about the characters...but when I was a student at Caltech pretty much everything that people complain is unrealistic or wrong about nerds on BBT was there in people I knew. It's just more concentrated in the BBT characters whereas it was spread among a dozen or two people that I knew.

What bugs me as a Caltech alum is that Sheldon had an office at one point that had a geology lab directly above on the next floor, which is ridiculous.

<comment><USER34> They're heavily caricatured. There seems to be the implication that this is just how engineers / nerds are. Sometimes, sure, plenty of those people exist. However, in my experience, it's not that widespread. It's way more common for engineers / nerds to be way more socially adjusted, and well rounded. Making a show where the characters embody the worst stereotypical traits of their subjects causes distortion to the point of becoming unrealistic. In my experience only around 1 in 5 or fewer would even begin to approach these extremes; however if you watched the show you'd expect the numbers to be stacked in the other direction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I wonder if past generations felt this too -- this feeling that the as you get older, popular culture seems to twist itself to pander to your tastes and attitudes. I had assumed that I had this feeling because I was in the most sought after advertising demographic. Now that I'm into my 50s though, it seems like it's still happening, and perhaps even faster than before.

As we enter 2019, celebrities are rushing to play Dungeons and Dragons, The Big Bang Theory has better ratings than NFL football, Game of Thrones is the top HBO show, and the most popular movie in America is from a comic book. It's a weird world.

Nowadays I'm a bit saddened that my attitudes have shifted to become more close-minded, like my fathers. Adults playing Dungeons and Dragons are somewhat pathetic, comic books are boring kids stuff, and "fantasy" is for people who have dull lives. I don't subscribe to all of that, but remembering how angry I was at my father for belittling the fantasy escapism that I was so wrapped up in, it's odd to find myself agreeing with some of his sentiments.

</comment><comment><USER36> Pretty sure I first saw this highly-relevant diagram on HN: [https://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/2dwmvx/handy_dandy_v...](https://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/2dwmvx/handy_dandy_venn_diagram_for_your_tv_watching/)

</comment><comment><USER37> I guess this thread is one more proof of why there's less and less funny shows coming from the U.S.

Nerds, scientists, engineers or developers can be make fun of like everybody else.

Sure BBT is not really a good show, especially after the first few seasons, sure it jokes about adults reading comics, but they also got hot wifes, go to the ISS and get Nobel prize.

The most damning thing is that people in this very thread praise Silicon Valley. You do realize that, besides being more realistic and better written, the people on this show are also way more ridiculous and despicable than in BBT? But somehow you're less offended, interesting.

I wonder if support people are offended by IT Crowd ahah.

</comment><comment><USER38> The weirdest thing about sitcoms, to my mind, is how they are always focused in on this group of 4-8 close friends who live in close proximity and spend all their time together. It just doesn't match up with anything I've seen - real people drift around, interact with a bunch of different people, do their own thing. Maybe there are people that live like that, but I just haven't seen it.

</comment><comment><USER39> I find this piece on toxic masculinity in The Big Bang Theory much more interesting than the show or this article:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3-hOigoxHs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3-hOigoxHs) (The Adorkable Misogyny of The Big Bang Theory by Pop Culture Detective)

I'm happy for people who can enjoy The Big Bang Theory but I find it difficult personally.

</comment><comment><USER40> I'm hardly offended by the show despite being a nerd. I think it's because I'm Chinese and there are no characters that I strongly associate with. In fact, I can't recall many asian characters on the show. "Fresh Off the Boat" on the other hand...I can see myself being very uncomfortable watching.

<comment><USER37> But ... Fresh off the boat is adapted from an autobiography, especially the first season.

<comment><USER40> I'm not saying it's bad or anything. Just that in the same way some people find watching TBBT uncomfortable (and I don't), this show may do the same thing for me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I'm confused by this thread. Are people still social outsiders just for being "nerds"? I feel like people are mixing up being socially awkward and being nerdy.

It's much easier to be a social outsider when you're socially awkward. I don't think I've ever seen a nerd who is socially strong be outed from a group just for being nerdy...

This is coming from someone who was nerdy and socially awkward for much of middle and highschool and didn't really have friends. Once I started working on my social abilities (which is not easy, to be fair), making friends was easy.

</comment><comment><USER42> This entire thread sounds like the "gamers are the most oppressed group on earth" meme. Maybe it's a generational thing, but "Nerd Culture" was normalized when people stopped caring about the concept of nerds. I don't think I've met anyone under 30 irl who strongly identifies as a nerd the way people in this thread do.

</comment><comment><USER43> A little off topic but a genuine question. Am I the only one who cannot stand shows with canned laughter?

My other half thinks it's odd but I hate punch lines being ruined / unfunny jokes having a laugh track over them. Which unfortunately makes big bang theory pretty unwatchable for me among others :(

</comment><comment><USER44> Nerdploitation

</comment><comment><USER45> Yeah, no. Nerd culture was normalized years before BBT came along... Somewhere in the early-mid 00s.

</comment><comment><USER46> Relevant post from the ESR blog [http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=7451](http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=7451) Or, Why _The Big Bang Theory_ Normalized the _wrong_ sort of Nerd Culture.

</comment><comment><USER47> As a geek I honestly hated TBBT. I would love to see a show that portrays smart people having street smarts without going the mary sue trope.

</comment><comment><USER48> While I find TBBT kinda annoying, I find people whinging about how horrible it is much much more annoying.

</comment><comment><USER40> "The Big Bang Theory" Normalized _North American_ Nerd Culture

</comment><comment><USER49> It always struck me as a show about smart people, for dumb people.

</comment><comment><USER50> The Windows 7 episode was when I stopped watching it. Just horrible

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tN3qn92R0SE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tN3qn92R0SE)

</comment><comment><USER51> And "Friends" normalized NYC.

<comment><USER39> ha! incredibly apt. clapclap.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> No, it really didn't. I've seen it described by someone else as "the big bang theory is blackface for nerd culture".</comment>


After Moore's Law: Predicting the Future Beyond Silicon Chips - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2016/05/05/476762969/after-moores-law-predicting-the-future-beyond-silicon-chips <comment><USER2> Moore's law is coming to an end and so are the current CPU architecures. The future is for new CPU architectures, that do not spend 90% of their power budget on out-of-order instruction scheduling, huge register files, TLB lookups for every cache access etc.

Rex Computing and Mill Computing are both designing new CPUs with (different) new architectures that use 10% of the power budget of the top Intel CPUs, 20% of the transistors and have better performance. Just because they use a different architecture.</comment>


Slow Code Competition - <AUTHOR>

Given the totally arbitrary choice between writing fast vs. slow code, it seems that developers unfairly discriminate against slowness every time.  It's time to rectify this situation with a slow code competition.  Let's see who can write a code snippet that will take the longest amount of time to print the numbers one through ten.
These are the only rules: - You can use any language you choose, including pseudocode. - Your code snippet must be ten lines of code or less.  Preprocessor directives and such may be omitted. - It must complete in some finite amount of time. - Sleep (and similar) statements are not allowed. - You can't stay awake until 4:00am trying to think of a way to "win."
Yes, I realize this is a stupid competition with lots of loopholes in the rules.  I'm mainly curious to see how people who are much smarter than me might approach the problem.  Without further ado, here's my submission:
/* Variables / unsigned long counter1 = 0, counter2 = 0, counter3 = 0, counter4 = 0, currentNumber = 0; time_t markTime = time(NULL);
while(++currentNumber <= 10) {

    /* Wait until the system time wraps.
     * This should take a few hundred billion years on a 64-bit system. */
    while(time(NULL) > markTime) { /* do nothing */ }

    /* Update the time reference so the above WHILE loop doesn't immediately fall through
     * the next time around. */
    markTime = time(NULL);

    /* If every counter has wrapped back to zero */
    if(++counter1 == 0) {
        if(++counter2 == 0) {
            if(++counter3 == 0) {
                if(++counter4 == 0) {

                    /* Print the number */
                    printf("%d", (int)currentNumber);
    } } } } }
 <comment><USER2> Why is this interesting? Here's Python code which will take longer than your code:

        i = 0
        while i < 9999**9999:
            i += 1
        print range(10)

Assuming 10 billion loops per second that's about 10^40000 years before it finishes. Want longer? Put some extra digits on the exponent.

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually that is really interesting to me. In the languages I'm familiar with, processing something such as 9999^9999 would require additional logic to avoid overflowing a fixed-size storage unit. I haven't worked with Python at all, and after looking at your reply I did a little bit of research and learned that its long integer type will automatically allocate as many bytes as necessary to get the job done. Very cool. I was thinking that someone would probably show me a better way in another language. Thanks for sharing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Isn't the line:

while(time(NULL) > markTime) { /* do nothing */ }

some sort of sleep mechanism? What's the point again?

<comment><AUTHOR> The "no sleep statement" rule is just there to prevent a pseudocode solution from being too easy.

The point is to see if someone will submit something that makes me think, "Oh wow, I would have never considered doing it that way." Thus expanding my software horizons forevermore. It's a simple problem with potentially several creative solutions.

<comment><USER4> Busy waiting isn't any more interesting than calling sleep(). Spectacularly convoluted ways of generating a particular output, yes, that could be interesting.</comment></comment></comment>


How I Organize My GitHub Repositories - <AUTHOR> https://andreicioara.com/how-i-organize-my-github-repositories-ce877db2e8b6 <comment><USER2> This is nice that op gets value. But github has a search feature. Google searches pretty well. I rarely browse user accounts and if someone looked at my account and cared because I had forked stuff, then I consider it a bonus that they exclude me from their job search.

There ar different philosphies to githubbing, the mistake is only when you project your own onto perceiving another's.

</comment><comment><USER3> I would love to see folders available beneath users and organizations. When a company puts repositories underneath github.com/companyname they all go in one giant pile; subfolders would allow organizing components of projects into folders.

</comment><comment><USER4> I would be kind of worried that a project under an organization may not be seen as "my project" when someone like a recruiter was looking at my profile.

I am really excited by what [https://ghuser.io](https://ghuser.io) is working on, and really hope GitHub takes more inspiration from them on how to arrange a profile, as it orders projects (whether mine, someone else's, or an organization's) by a score calculated based on the popularity of a project and how much you've contributed to it personally.

<comment><USER5> > I only keep the most important projects on my profile page. Projects which I > want others users to find and read.

It seems like the whole point of the OP's organization scheme is so that only repositories which aren't in an organization are readily visible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Cool to see.

I do something similar. My main account is @tmm ([https://github.com/tmm](https://github.com/tmm)) and my deprecated projects are in an org @tmm-archive ([https://github.com/tmm](https://github.com/tmm)). Also put my data science university work in an org @tmm-ms ([https://github.com/tmm-ms](https://github.com/tmm-ms)).

</comment><comment><USER7> > Fourth, another fork, but this time nothing has been updated for over a > year. I guess the user pressed fork by mistake?

A guess: they submitted a PR, and upstream never got around to merging it. My understanding is that the PR points to the fork, so if I delete my fork, the PR dies (or loses its content). Is that true?

<comment><USER8> It is true. Another common case I see is people using fork as a way to snapshot stuff they depend on "just in case" (since forks don't go away if the original is deleted or overwritten). I don't do it, but it's quite common. (source: I asked people why they fork my repo but never sent a PR)

My stance to this opinion is similar to many others here: this is all good if it works for the author, but please don't project your idea of a "good" GitHub profile onto other people.

<comment><USER9> I fork without intending to PR.

Reasons:

1\. I intend to build something that requires the repository in question, but I think I might have to extend the code in the repository itself.

2\. I intend to build something that requires the repository in question but I feel more comfortable having a version of the code under my control as it will be quite central. (the snapshot)

on edit: formatting fix

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > "Group repositories together using Organizations"

I've done this in the past. But then decided GitLab's ability to nest groups (i.e., have a hierarchy) made more sense. When I made the switch, GL had free private repos as well.

Sure GH is bigger. But GL was / is a better tool for my needs.

</comment><comment><USER11> Occasionally I use [https://github.com/denis-sokolov/remove-github- forks](https://github.com/denis-sokolov/remove-github-forks) to remove all the forks I've created that no longer need to exist.

</comment><comment><USER12> I don't see the value in having so many organizations. This makes searching things harder. Github has search based features for finding repos you've made. If you have an organization seperating out these, it's no longer a one click search. I use github to search through my old codebases to extract useful code snippets from courses.

You can pin 6 repos on your profile. If you want someone to see those projects, pin it up there. It shows where the repo originated from

If you want to put all your tutorial code together, copy the end results into a /sandbox folder in github, and document the README to summarize how the repo is organized.

Projects that have no relevance / tutorials should just be kept private, you could summarize courses you've done elsewhere. Sometimes I have exposed keys on there that I hadn't set an `env` variable, keeping things private is a good practice against bots

I tend to fork a lot of repos without intending to push a PR, mostly so I can understand how that codebase works, and add my own notations to it. Also, it's to keep a backup for projects I work through other organizations, there's a chance that repo might be deleted down the road. You can always `git pull upstream` at anypoint and grab the latest changes

If you want to show opensource projects you work on → pin it to your account, notate it elsewhere (e.g. portfolio page), and be on the contributor's page for that opensource repo

</comment><comment><USER13> It seems like the repository type in GitHub already handles several of these cases.

A user's list of repositories can already be filtered by "type", and this handles several of his cases:

> aicioara-forks — Projects I contributed to. Anything that I pressed "fork" > on goes here.

These gets automatically classified as type "Forks".

> aicioara-old — Repositories that contain code I may want to refer to later, > but I do not really want to be associated with. Maybe it's a high school or > university project with no stars and which no longer reflect the way I code. > I don't have time to update them, I still need to refer to them sometime, > but I don't want them to say "hey, this is how Andrei is coding today".

These can be marked as "Archived" ([https://help.github.com/articles/archiving-a-github- reposito...](https://help.github.com/articles/archiving-a-github-repository/))

This leaves the "boilerplate" and "gh-pages" categories, which could be indicated by adding prefixes to the corresponding repo names. If the boilerplate code is not intended to be generally useful it could be put in a private repository (especially as all users now have an unlimited number of free private repos

</comment><comment><USER14> If you do a web edit/pr, github will create a fork on your account for that PR... this happens to me if I do a quick readme submission (a few times a month) ... I go in every few months and constantly surprised the number of lingering forks I have. I really wish that if the fork was created to do a documentation edit in the web interface, when the PR is requested, if the only things in the fork are that edit, it would just vacuum it away for me.

Aside: I've also forked repos just to remember to look at them later. I really need to get in the habbit of curating my browser bookmarks better... I don't trust them though as the syncing has sometimes borked them.

</comment><comment><USER15> I find it very hard to believe any recruiter/interviewer would be turned off that my top 6 repos featured a mix of popular and unpopular, personal and forked repos.

Limiting exposure of my open-source contributions to organizations adds not only another layer of search, but the opportunity for me to get passed up because my contributions to ___ weren't immediately apparent.

</comment><comment><USER16> TLDR: Use organisations as folders for repositories

</comment><comment><USER17> Private repositories are now free to use by the way.

</comment><comment><USER18> Something I came across for this : [https://app.astralapp.com/](https://app.astralapp.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> [https://astralapp.com/](https://astralapp.com/) should be a better link where the project is explained.</comment></comment>


Sexy new 3W sheevaplug with wifi+bluetooth+hd - <AUTHOR> http://www.slashgear.com/marvell-plug-computer-3-0-updates-sheevaplug-with-wifi-bluetooth-hdd-0567674/

<comment><USER2> I want. Why can't they sell these on Amazon?

</comment><comment><USER3> what are the advantages of a sheevaplug...ok heck, what is it? is it a router? [http://www.slashgear.com/marvell-sheevaplug-99-linux-pc- hidd...](http://www.slashgear.com/marvell-sheevaplug-99-linux-pc-hidden-in-a- wall-wart-2435556/)

the bottom diagram shows that it provides internet access (wireless, ethernet....bluetooth?)

<comment><USER4> It is an entire PC, not some kind of network device, though you can certainly use a PC as various kinds of network devices.

Think of it as taking the innards of a netbook computer with no screen and putting them in as compact a space as possible, with integrated power cord. It's a netbook you plug directly into the wall.

Since it has no video adapter, you control it over the network, just like how you'd control most servers. You SSH or remote desktop in to it. That's why it has all kinds of network support built in -- so you can plug it in the wall wherever is convenient and have it join your wireless, wired, or bluetooth network.

<comment><AUTHOR> There are some usb/video options out there. Attaching a small low power lcd could give you some interesting possibilities.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I couldn't spot it... they mention when it'd be available?

</comment><comment><USER6> Looks like an Airport Express

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Edit: only $99

<comment><USER7> That is a price made up by a journalist.</comment></comment>


After China attacks, gmail will now default to https for email traffic - <AUTHOR> http://gadgetwise.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/13/google-upgrades-security-on-gmail/

<comment><USER2> Fantastic. Maybe Firefox will finally fix HTTPS caching problems.</comment>


Stroustrup: What Should We Teach New Software Developers? - <AUTHOR> http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2010/1/55760-what-should-we-teach-new-software-developers-why/fulltext <comment><USER2> I can't believe no one's mentioned:

      Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes.
      -- Edsger Dijkstra

Contrary to the beliefs or desires of some, colleges and universities are not vocational training institutions. In the actuarial world, there is a rigorous credentialing process involving a series of exams usually taking a minimum of 4.5 years to complete. However, even with all of the exams passed, without experience you'd be put into an entry-level position. If your experience is in one field of insurance and you want to get into another, that experience won't count for much in the new field and you'll probably be starting near entry- level again.

That's for good reason. Academia is for teaching you known facts and theories, and how to think for yourself. Experience in an industry teaches you how to do a particular type of work so that other people are willing to give you money in exchange for your labor. These are inherently different activities, though the former can weed out some inappropriate candidates for the latter.

<comment><USER3> The purists complaining that CS isn't about programming are correct but misguided: the vast majority of CS majors don't _want_ to study "real," abstract CS.

IMO the right thing is to offer degrees in Software Development, which would include some classic CS curriculum but by no means all, and we could have discussions about the right way to teach programming without people getting bent out of shape that Programming Is Not CS.

<comment><USER4> I'm a CS major, and while I admittedly wasn't fully aware of what "computer science" entailed, I knew enough to know I wanted to study it. And I don't regret it.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, same here, except I graduated in 2004. I took CS from an engineering school, so I had a little less theoretical background (that was replaced with EE / CompE basics). But I agree -- I had exposure to big-O in h.s., but didn't realize that CS would involve so little programming (I probably wrote under 2k lines of code in 4 years, to be honest... but I was a slacker too ;) ).

<comment><USER6> IMO, if one is to choose between theoretical background and EE/CompE, the latter is significantly more valuable. Of course, both are important.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What he says sounds good in the abstract, but I worry about how it will be implemented. For instance he raises the issue of licensing people to practice computer science. However as he acknowledges that it is difficult to even identify who should be in charge of deciding what should be _tested_ for such a license.

And that is a big issue. A license created to meet the needs of business 40 years ago would certainly have required learning COBOL. A license created 20 years ago would have no relevance to web development. One created today would likely be geared towards the needs of large organizations with large code bases - which would put most agile development techniques, languages, and practices off the table.

For better or worse the programming world has diverse communities with rapidly changing, diverse needs, and no possible solution has any hope of fitting all of them.

<comment><USER8> Licensing is an afterthought to his main thesis. His main point is that we have to remove the disconnect between industry and academia. Both parties take pride in being completely separate from one another. This has to end, and that is a cultural change, something that is completely within the realm of doing in less than 10 years.

As for the relevancy of licensing, I think there is a certain degree to which one could start certifying software engineers on a project management perspective, because the principals of how one approaches a project and brings it to completion aren't that different from any other project in any other industry. If you're running your project correctly, programming is maybe 10% of the project. That other 90% has a lot to learn from the rest of the industrial fields to catch up and start adopting standard practices.

A user's requirements are going to be the same no matter what programming language you use. The way you test the software is going to be the same no matter what programming language you use. Within a specific programming paradigm, how you build the software is a shear matter of syntax, all the parts are going to have to be the same. Just as you can have a suspension bridge versus a stone bridge, I think you could study object oriented programming versus functional programming, and I don't see any reason why we shouldn't expect professional, licensed software developers to know both.

COBOL, C, C#, Clojure, C-whatever-next, it doesn't matter. Wood, stone, and iron. The principles haven't changed much at all.

<comment><USER7> _I think there is a certain degree to which one could start certifying software engineers on a project management perspective, because the principals of how one approaches a project and brings it to completion aren't that different from any other project in any other industry._

Huh?

Project management on a website that has an incremental 1 week release cycle has no relationship to project management of an internal database upgrade that is planned for 6 months or project management for developing a shrink wrapped game over 2 years.

The problems, documents, workflow, problems, types of people you need involved, etc are radically different in these three cases.

 _A user's requirements are going to be the same no matter what programming language you use. The way you test the software is going to be the same no matter what programming language you use. Within a specific programming paradigm, how you build the software is a shear matter of syntax, all the parts are going to have to be the same._

I disbelieve.

I've been in a situation where I was creating a reporting system, and was sitting in a group of people building a website. There was absolutely no similarity in requirements, testing, rollout procedures, and turnaround expectations between me and the other developers. This despite the fact that we were working in the same organization, on projects specified by the same product managers!

As for a specific programming paradigm comment, the statement seems to me to be vacuously true because you define "paradigm" to include the internal structure of the software, or else false. Because I've seen many cases where two people deliver essentially the same functionality using the same basic toolkit, but the internal organization, pieces, etc are completely different.

 _COBOL, C, C#, Clojure, C-whatever-next, it doesn't matter. Wood, stone, and iron. The principles haven't changed much at all._

Huh? COBOL doesn't even have recursion. C has function pointers but no closures. C# has closures but no Lisp style macros. Clojure has all of the above. The capabilities of the languages are different, and therefore the proper design and structure of software is as well.

Also where principles have not changed, people's understanding of them may. For instance take test driven development. It isn't new - when Larry Wall delivered Perl 1 in the mid-80s it came with a reasonably complete test suite. When CPAN was founded in the mid-90s the whole perl Makefile.pl, make, make test, make install routine was already standard. And the result was that Perl got a good name for being portable in practice.

However as recently as a decade ago you'd have been hard pressed to find many advocating a test driven style of development. Problems existed that it would work well for. Useful enough tools existed for people to take advantage of them. But there wasn't wide spread acceptance of that knowledge.

Today if you are a programmer and _don't_ know the basics of unit testing, you need some remedial re-education. And a lot of organizations don't use it.

In short unit testing today is where source control was in the late 90s which is where structured programming was in the 80s. It is a good idea. It is widely recognized to be a good idea. But it is a good idea that is more honored by the breach than the observance in your average programming shop.

<comment><USER9> _The problems, documents, workflow, problems, types of people you need involved, etc are radically different in these three cases._

How so? In the web site case I need a person who can code and person to do art/design. In the instance of a game guess what I need a person who can code and someone to take care of the art and design. The only real difference seems to be a matter of scale. Every project in the software development world consists of two things content and code.

 _The capabilities of the languages are different, and therefore the proper design and structure of software is as well._ Hey guess what the properties of wood iron and stone are just as different and require different designs or do you think the sears tower could have been made of wood with out a change in its design?

<comment><USER7> You _really_ think that the only thing you need to produce a shrink wrapped game that is in production for 2 years is someone to code and someone to take care of art and design? And you really don't understand why I would say that project management on that project is very different than project management on a website that delivers incremental revisions every week?

Sorry, but you clearly have some things to learn. Go pick up [http://www.amazon.com/Software-Project-Survival-Guide- Practi...](http://www.amazon.com/Software-Project-Survival-Guide- Practices/dp/1572316217) and learn what a stand alone project on the scale of that game needs to do just to have a reasonable chance of success. Virtually none of that book applies to the incrementally developed website.

Oh, and don't forget that the game has no chance of success without a lot of non-software work such as licensing and marketing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The only problem that he actually mentions is:

 _Also, many students fail to connect what they learn in one class to what they learn in another. Thus, we often see students with high grades in algorithms, data structures, and software engineering who nevertheless hack solutions in an operating systems class with total disregard for data structures, algorithms, and the structure of the software._

That is to say pass fail grading of programs, grading should be similar to an English class how you express it is just as important as what you express.

<comment><USER10> I wholeheartedly agree with you on the grading aspect. Even in classes where professors or TAs effectively grade and comment the code, I think most students have a tendency to see the grade they received and ignore the professor's feedback. The program worked, they got the grade, onto the next assignment.

I had two classes this past quarter taught by a professor with a very different grading system. He used a program he wrote called the "code critic" to have us submit exercises into his grading queue. Only working code could be submitted and we could only have three assignments in the queue at once. He would then use his program to return the code with criticism added on any lines not to his liking and mark the assignment as "Not done," "Almost done," or "Done." If he didn't mark it done, we had to fix the code in response to criticism. These criticisms were very picky, even sometimes dealing with the naming of functions and variables.

At the end of the quarter we were graded on how many assignments we were completed, and _how much we grew as programmers_. If our assignments at the end of the quarter did not require any resubmissions, this was reflected in our grade.

I think this method was an extremely effective alternative to traditional grading. I learned more about programming and style in both C++ and Lisp in these two classes than I have in any other classes to date.

<comment><USER6> _even sometimes dealing with the naming of functions and variables_

Ugh. Asking a CS major to adhere to naming conventions is like asking an art major to color within the lines. It has very little to do with computing.

<comment><USER11> Your analogy does not make sense to me. The professor clearly wanted his students to become not just better at hacking together solutions, but presenting readable, consistent code. This is a noble goal, and you're correct it has little to do with computing. It has to do with communicating to other people what you have done.

<comment><USER6> Good point the analogy definitely doesn't completely account for the adjacent field of software engineering, where coding styles are certainly important. I guess that's mostly because artists rarely work in large groups, and when they do, I'd imagine the work is mostly parallelize-able: several people don't need to go through the details of any single piece of work.

<comment><USER9> Animation. Easy to work in parallel but output is very constrained stylistically. Multiple author books tend to have stylistic constraints as well otherwise the book suffers from an uneven feeling.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I find it interesting the he suggests _requiring_ a minor in another field. I largely agree with this, but at my school, you can't get a minor if you're a CS major. For instance, by the time I graduate, I will have the required credits for a minor in math. That minor won't be recognized by the university, and I can only say that I've completed the courses for a math minor without actually earning one.

The same is true for double-majoring. I have a friend that wanted to double major in CS and linguistics to do AI, but he was told that he couldn't. Instead, he has to stick around for an extra year to get two distinct degrees. He's had to waste time because some of the courses he needed to take required you to have declared a major in that field.

This is from a school that probably has a more vocationally applied view of a CS degree. We are, for instance, required to take two semesters of software engineering. They're obviously interested in giving a student an education that will be useful in the industry, but they also have inane rules like the one described above.

</comment><comment><USER13> It seems unproductive to respond to this discussing how difficult it would be to fix/implement. I think Stroustrup probably knows that better than most anyone else, given, as he noted, his unique perspective.

What is productive is gaining acknowledgement that this problem exists, as that is the (cliche) first step. I believe this is a serious problem. I've seen the sub-par software, code, and the people writing it for years - it's not changing through academia or industry. Both sides continue to address their needs independent of one another, and that is far from optimal.

Many of the finest professionals I have met in the industry cannot say more than a few positive words about their CS programs. Most of them will also recommend _against_ pursuing the degree if you actually want to excel with code.

Agreed, the fix(es) will not be an easy find, but it is far from impossible. This needs to be taken care of - I'd love to be able to tell friends that want to be a good coder that they can go to school for that.

</comment><comment><USER14> This reminds me of Andrei Sakharov, the father of soviet nuclear bomb who became an anti-nuclear activist later in his life. OOP makes writing bloatware so easy, you don't need to think, just reuse someone else's classes, and this is what they teach in CS 101. Ironically the author is one of the creators of the problem.

</comment><comment><USER15> I don't think these problems are unique to computer science.

<comment><USER8> No, they aren't. What is unique though is that we have such a complete reliance on software without any sense of how to do it well. We know how to build skyscrapers without them falling down when the first real "user" steps through the front door. We don't know any sort of thing for software development.

<comment><USER16> We can't afford a single skyscraper collapse, but we can usually afford to use bad software.

The article sounds like Dijkstra in 1988. My bet is another 22 years won't change anything.

<comment><USER17> ...and, let's face it, the relative complexity of a skyscraper compared to a computer software program, given equal cost, is very, very low. A skyscraper costs hundreds of millions to construct. An equally costly software project would be something like the entire lifespan of the .NET Framework including the CLR, Standard Library, C#, VB.NET, Silverlight, all of the "Enterprise" features, etc.

Also, software isn't really construction. It's built by the people who design it, for the most part. Imagine a skyscraper (or car, bridge, etc) built entirely by engineers. Yikes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> You are never going to be able to license software developers as a whole. Maybe some small subset, but the barriers to entry are just too low for a widespread licensing system to be imposed. Software is too fluid for some standards body to say 'you must know XYZ', we are constantly inventing new and better ways to write software.

Also remember, this is the guy who gave the world C++

<comment><USER8> "We are constantly inventing new and better ways to write software". Name one "new" thing in the last 10 years. Whatever you come up with, I bet there is a reasonable analog from 20 or even 30 years ago. We know practically _nothing_ concrete about software development. Even the concepts of RAD and Agile which are so popular today have been around for 30 years.

"Also remember, this is the guy who gave the world C++". Yes, one of the most popular object oriented languages that is still suitable for systems programming. What of it? For all the complaining about C++ as an ideal tool, it's been incredibly successful as a practical tool. I don't use it, but I have a lot of respect for what it has done.

<comment><USER19> I currently make my living with Linux, and yet I get this nagging feeling that if programmers were licensed, I would have to have learned any number of Microsoft technologies (OLE, COM, DCOM, ActiveX, .Net) depending on _when_ I got licensed.

I entered college in 1987. Windows 2.x had just come out (I think)---OS/2 wasn't even being designed as of yet. The Intel 386 had just come out, and major application design in PCs in assembly had just passed in favor of C or Pascal. I couldn't even have comprehended my job today (programming wise---web based applications written in PHP) back then.

Yes, there hasn't really been anything "new" in the past 20 years (except maybe for ubiquitous networking) but the details sure have changed a lot.

<comment><USER8> Whether or not an appropriate, relevant licensing scheme _would_ be developed is a different issue from whether or not it _could_ be developed.

As for the details changing, yes, _programming_ has changed a lot, but programming is such a small part of any project.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Bang! Pow! Super-Stroustrup defeats an entire platoon of evil Straw-Men, single-handed!

</comment><comment><USER21> I think this article was point on. I wish more people in our industry (software developers) understood and tried to fix these problems.

</comment><comment><USER22> Surely there is a better source of "What Should We Teach..." than the fellow who pulled C++ out of Pandora's box?

<comment><USER23> That's sort of ad hominem. Would DHH be a better choice? I mean honestly, I find it hard to take seriously that Bjarne Stroustrup is not credentialed to be a voice in this discussion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> _Another CS professor: "I never code."_

Sort of like a linguistics professor saying "I never talk".

<comment><USER25> Really? How so?

Linguistics is the study of language, but CS at its core is the study of algorithms and theory. A CS prof never coding is more akin to a Physics professor never designing his own bridge. Sure, he technically _could_ if he wanted to, but that's probably still better left to the engineers.

Dijkstra said (rightly, IMO) "Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes." I think a corollary to that is that it's also not about programming/coding per se, but the theoretical study of techniques we use when building programs.

<comment><USER23> I think that's just going too far. I think the analogy to a Physics professor never building a bridge is a bit silly. You might as well say a "Physics professor that never swims or enjoys a warm breeze on a hot summer's day."

A Computer Science theoretician's work is somewhat more closely tied to programming. I mean, let's be serious.

<comment><USER26> What do you have in mind when you say "computer science theoretician" ? Do you mean someone who publishes in the ACM Symposium on the Theory of Computing or do you mean something else?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


StackStorm enterprise features donated To Linux Foundation - <AUTHOR> https://stackstorm.com/2020/05/27/extreme-networks-donates-ewc-to-linux-foundation/ <comment><AUTHOR> "In it's simplest form, StackStorm is a robust engine for IFTTT operations, allowing you to set conditional logic for anything."

I've avoided StackStorm for years because it wasn't OSS. Excited to try it out now.</comment>


The Future of 3-D Printing Depends on Hipsters - <AUTHOR> http://www.technologyreview.com/view/507696/the-future-of-3-d-printing-depends-on-hipsters/ <comment><USER2> > ... Depends on Hipsters

Hipsters? That word is still in use? The risk should be obvious -- the word has had so many different meanings over the years that it risks being rendered meaningless by overuse. In this context it appears to mean early technological adopters, but that's hardly consistent with its other meanings, including Luddite.</comment>


What do you Google EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. and never just memorize? - <AUTHOR> https://dev.to/ben/what-do-you-google-every-single-time-and-never-just-memorize-ajj <comment><USER2> C# String format for doubles.

</comment><comment><USER3> Everything.

</comment><comment><USER4> needle, haystack or haystack needle.

everytime.</comment>


A Radical Plan for Helping Poor Countries: Charter Cities - <AUTHOR> http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2009/09/06/city_of_dreams_a_radical_plan_for_helping_poor_countries/?page=full

<comment><USER2> A critique of Romer's proposal: [http://unqualified- reservations.blogspot.com/2009/08/from-cr...](http://unqualified- reservations.blogspot.com/2009/08/from-cromer-to-romer-and-back-again.html)

<comment><USER3> I am not going to read thousands upon thousands of words containing constant use of the n-word, extreme arrogance and purple prose.

<comment><USER2> I hereby classify your comment as DH2: <http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html>

<comment><USER3> But the article is at -1 on such a scale, so I am a few steps ahead. You can't just "win" by bludgeoning your opponents with thousands of poorly written words. Some things do need to be laughed at and ignored.</comment></comment></comment></comment>