Eigg – A small Scottish isle that runs on 90-95% renewable energy - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20170329-the-extraordinary-electricity-of-the-scottish-island-of-eigg <comment><USER2> If you haven't read _Sustainable Energy Without the Hot Air_ , by David Mackay, I recommend it.

Free download: [http://withouthotair.com](http://withouthotair.com)

About the author:

David MacKay FRS is the Regius Professor of Engineering at the University of Cambridge. He studied Natural Sciences at Cambridge and then obtained his PhD in Computation and Neural Systems at the California Institute of Technology. He returned to Cambridge as a Royal Society research fellow at Darwin College. He is internationally known for his research in machine learning, information theory, and communication systems, including the invention of Dasher, a software interface that enables efficient communication in any language with any muscle. He was appointed a Lecturer in the Department of Physics at Cambridge in 1995 and was a Professor in the Department of Physics from 2003 to 2013. Since 2005, he has devoted much of his time to public teaching about energy. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society.

Nine months after the publication of 'Sustainable Energy - without the hot air', David MacKay was appointed Chief Scientific Advisor to the Department of Energy and Climate Change.

TED talk: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0W1ZZYIV8o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0W1ZZYIV8o)

Harvard talk: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFosQtEqzSE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFosQtEqzSE)

<comment><USER3> Excellent book and a thoroughly nice chap. He also name-checked my business as an example of a nice effective energy product at a DECC event a few years ago, which was flattering and unexpected (radfan.com for those interested).

Update: I had no idea he had passed, such a loss.

<comment><USER4> You should build a little _battery operated_ fan that you open your dishwasher door a little bit and set it in there to gently circulate some air to do the final evaporation that dishwashers cannot do, you would sell millions of them.

<comment><USER5> Couldn't manufacturers just add a low level fin/spoiler to the top of the rotating water outlet ["spray bar"/"spray arm"], run the rotation at low speed as a fan. Seems all the tech barring a slight raised area to catch the air a little is already built in; even just slowly rotating the "spray bar" unmodified probably would give enough air-flow? I can't imagine I'm the first person to think of that [too late to patent it!] bet you there's a company that has/had it as a feature?? One might even pump air down the spray bar using the systems already in place but with no water-flow; residual heat in the pipes might aid the process too?

FWIW some dish-washers have a built in fan eg "TurboHeat Dry" on Kenmore.

<comment><USER4> I paid like $500 extra for the auto-open feature on my Miele, but even getting that spendy, the fan only runs for ten minutes after the door opens, so some things still can be a bit damp. It infuriates me that they went to this complexity, but then don't let you lengthen the fan runtime. It's almost like they want to minimize your happiness per $.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> david-given To be fair, Eigg is hardly a big consumer of electricity. I was there in December of 2006. I was staying in the guest house --- there's only one. I was the only tourist there. At one point I was kidnapped and taken to their community nativity play (which was actually a lot of fun). But the population is only 83, so running the whole place off renewable energy isn't difficult.

Fuzzy pictures from my trip here; the first few are from Mallaig, the other end of the ferry link:

[https://goo.gl/photos/GQNcBpE4vVgv1A1i7](https://goo.gl/photos/GQNcBpE4vVgv1A1i7)

<comment> david-given ...addendum: there's actually a huge pile of small power generation facilities springing up all over the Western Isles and nearby mainland. But the purpose of most of these is to produce passive income.

e.g. in Applecross on the mainland nearby, they're just finishing installation of a community-funded hydro system. It'll produce 90kW, with an income of about 100k GBP a year going towards the community and small shareholders: [http://www.applecrosshydro.scot/](http://www.applecrosshydro.scot/)

90kW is a toy, though. It's not going to provide energy independence for anyone. Rather more significant is the estate across the loch from my father's village, which is installing 3.5MW of private hydroelectricity: [http://www.hydroworld.com/articles/2016/06/gilkes-begins- con...](http://www.hydroworld.com/articles/2016/06/gilkes-begins-construction- of-three-small-hydroelectric-plants-in-scotland.html)

But a 3.5MW plant, if we assume it runs at 100% capacity for a year, is going to produce 0.02TWh of energy, which is about 2 ktoe (kilotons of oil equivalent). In 2015 the UK used 140000 ktoe, of which only about 20000 ktoe are electricity. ([https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachm...](https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/573269/ECUK_November_2016.pdf))

These systems are important locally, but they're not going to run cities.

 _Edit_ : misread one of the graphs, corrected the number above. (The stupid graphs all have lines in slightly different shades of bodily function. Maybe they were trying to make a point.)

<comment><USER6> > not going to run cities

No, that's the big mostly offshore wind farms. Currently sitting at 12% of demand: [http://gridwatch.templar.co.uk/](http://gridwatch.templar.co.uk/)

Energy independence on the personal level is as much of a pipe dream as economic independence. You might be able to achieve it at great expense, but what for? Even on Eigg the islanders are on a little grid.

<comment> david-given That's a really cool site. Thanks for linking to it.

...but I do need to point out that 12% of _electrical_ demand is about 1800 ktoe, which is only about 1% of total _energy_ demand. We use about six times more petroleum energy that all electrical demand put together.

<comment><USER6> Well, yes. That's the great unanswered problem of the world; what do we do when that runs out or we can't burn it without exceeding safe CO2 limits?

Scotland already went through a period of energy resource shortage in the 1800s when there were very few trees left. Going back to only locally renewable resources might be like that again.

<comment> david-given Well, _my_ preferred solution is gigantic offshore tidal power generators in the Minch and around the top of Scotland where there are strong currents, preferably combined with hundred-kilometre-wide offshore wind farms (if you're building power generation structures in the open ocean anyway, you're an idiot if you don't put massive wind turbines on top of them).

Tide is one of the few renewable technologies that generates reliable power, and so is suitable for baseline load. Even in Scotland, the wind drops. But it's had very little investment, partly because of a poor reputation from horrific ecological damage caused by tidal barrages in the past, but mostly because wind is sexier.

But plants big enough to actually make a difference are going to be very, very big. Microgeneration is great for small rural communities, but we live in cities these days.

Here's a new 320MW tidal lagoon being built in Wales: [http://www.tidallagoonpower.com/projects/swansea- bay/](http://www.tidallagoonpower.com/projects/swansea-bay/) These only work when attached to a coastline, though.

<comment><USER7> So that tidal lagoon... Is it basically a two-way dam that's taking advantage of the height differential between the interior and exterior? That's a pretty cool way to do it. Seems much simpler and more reliable than those wave- powered things that come out in news articles every once in a while.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Geology trivia: An Sgùrr, the shapely wee hill that features in the pics, is interesting as it started off as a valley that was filled with lava and ended up lasting longer than the surrounding rocks

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Sg%C3%B9rr_(Eigg)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Sg%C3%B9rr_\(Eigg\))

<comment><USER9> Here's are some pics i took from _nearby_ Ardnish on October last year - [https://plus.google.com/u/0/collection/cS5bQE](https://plus.google.com/u/0/collection/cS5bQE)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Considering this required £1.6m of subsidy (£20,000 per person) , only being able to hit 90% renewable, with loads of gotchas (like serious rationing)

If you scaled this out to the UK, it means it would cost £1.2trillion to reach 90% renewable electricity.

While there will be some economies of scale and you probably wouldn't use diesel for backup, the UK doesn't have enough hydro to do this model, so it's likely the £20,000 per person subsidy would actually be way higher.

I think people are really underestimating the capital required to get past 30-40% renewable. It starts getting _seriously_ expensive once you get past the easy bit (wind + solar).

Govt seems very happy to agree to a 90% renewable target by 2050 (say). There doesn't seem to be any costing at all to see how we get there.

<comment><USER11> Scotland already generates more than 60% of its electricity from renewables.

<comment><USER12> Easy to do when you've got a shit-ton of hydro, which is the case of Scotland (85% hydro, and pretty much the entire potential capacity is installed).

For instance Iceland is 100% electricity and 85% primary energy from renewables, not exactly hard when you've got massive amounts of geo and hydro (respectively 27% and 83% for electricity, 65% and 20% for primary energy). Good luck applying that to Belgium or Florida.

<comment><USER6> [http://www.hi-energy.org.uk/renewables/hydro-energy.htm](http://www.hi- energy.org.uk/renewables/hydro-energy.htm) says 12%, which seems more realistic. That page also says it's been overtaken by wind power.

Both Belgium and Florida seem like good candidates for offshore wind, although I'd be worried about hurricanes in Florida.

<comment><USER13> Well, Belgium and Florida are kind of ok. But what would you do with Poland, which has basically no wind, solar or hydro generation potential? Life's going to be hard for some countries.

<comment><USER14> Just get them to pay a carbon tax which can be used to pay for installing renewable in the places where it makes sense. It's a global problem, and it needs global solutions.

And if they do happen to figure out something that's cheaper than the carbon tax they're paying (maybe they can extract biogas from waste food, sewage or farm slurry or maybe they just super-insulate their homes to save fuel) then they have an immediate financial incentive to roll it out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Sounds like an interesting place, I loved Isle of Skye when I travelled that area. I think the article might be overselling the "leading the world in energy" angle though -- I too live on an island where > 98% of the energy is from renewable sources [1], and it has over a million people on it.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Island#Energy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Island#Energy)

</comment><comment><USER16> > The £1.66m project largely was financed by the European Union's European > Regional Development Fund

This should be mentioned in the opening paragraph.

<comment><USER17> Why?

<comment><USER18> Because we literally handed over a piece of paper yesterday formally starting the process whereby we'd leave the EU. I suspect the parent feels like this is a project that might not have had access to this kind of funding outside the EU in an independent UK

<comment><USER17> Where do you think the money for the funding came from?

Net contributors to the EU, like the UK. We gave the EU more than they spent on us (of course, because there are poorer European countries).

You make it sound like you think EU funding money was a gift from other people. It was them doing us the favour of giving us some of our own money back.

If we choose to, we can spend exactly the same money in exactly the same way. Or we could democratically decide amongst ourselves to do something different with it.

<comment><USER18> It is my opinion that a small-scale renewable energy project on an island community of <100 people would be unlikely to get 1.66M GBP from the UK government. Perhaps the Scottish government would _want_ to, but have considerably less means to do so as they still have a relatively modest budget.

<comment><USER17> You're telling me that the benefit of the EU was that it was an effective way to bypass the people's democratic representatives when they won't do what you personally want?

> would not get 1.66M GBP from the UK government

They did get 1.66M from the UK government. It just went involuntarily via the middleman of the EU.

<comment><USER5> >the benefit of the EU was that it was an effective way to bypass the people's democratic representatives //

The EU is democratically representative too, in a very similar way to the UK parliament. They have the same shortfalls. It just happens that across the EU there is more support for solving the energy crisis than there is in UK Conservative government. In part that's because IMO the EU looks more long term whilst the UK government appears only to be concerned about getting through the next one election. In part it's because the liberal and green elements that aren't properly represented in the UK, because we lack proportional representation, don't get to pressure our government locally but do get to represent the _demos_ in the EU. It's the EU's better, ie more representative, democracy that causes the leap-frogging.

>They did get 1.66M from the UK government. //

Not really, sure the UK provided their part share of that, but they were forced to by the elected EU layer of government. The major share came from the other EU countries. Germany pays around twice the contribution of the UK and with France, Italy, and Spain we pay about 50% of the contribution. So the money is about 0.83M from these 5, perhaps about 0.2M from the UK government.

>involuntarily via the middleman //

The UK voluntarily, through a democratic process, joined the EU. The nation chose to put itself in the position where it would contribute the 0.2M and the other countries would add their 1.5M to enable projects such as this all across Europe.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The project cost £1.66m. With a total of 83 residents, that's about $25,000 per person. It would be interesting to compare this to the total investment needed for a typical non-renewable power infrastructure. This doesn't seem outrageously expensive, though (as the article mentions) this might be out of reach for communities in developing countries.

<comment><USER20> Yeah but the developing countries do not have that much of a power requirement. In India most villages would be fine with just the fans and lighting. 5 units (kWh) should be sufficient for the whole day for a household. I am not sure how much of £1.66m was on solar.

<comment><USER21> 5 kwh still sounds like a lot. Our house in the Netherlands uses about 10/day with a family of 6.

<comment><USER20> Actually a large part of rural India still uses 60/100W light bulbs (filament ones) instead of LEDs as they are much cheaper(1/15th). I took 75W ceiling fans + 100W for the bulbs ~ (75W _20hrs + 60W_ 10hrs)*3rooms. I agree this is still on the higher side as all fans won't be running all the time and would be zero during winters (~3 months).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I don't mean to downplay this achievement, but I've always thought that renewable power, as it is today, isn't going to scale to meet global energy demand. One of the biggest issues is that it's nontrivial to store electrical energy. I think the holy grail for renewable power is farming algae for biodiesel. Essentially solar power, only we get out chemical energy in the form of gasoline instead of electricity. Burning that gasoline would be carbon neutral, since the carbon was taken from carbon dioxide in the air during photosynthesis. Gasoline is much easier and cheaper to store than electricity, we can use existing power infrastructure to burn it, and it makes the transition from fossil fuels to renewable power trivial. Plus the organism just needs sunlight and nutrients and it will self-replicate, so will be much cheaper than solar panels.

I think we're probably decades away from this being a reality. More research needs to be done, and we'll almost certainly need to genetically modify the algae to produce more butane/octane/etc.

<comment><USER23> Here's a paper that lays out a plan to switch the US to 100% wind, water and sunlight based power by 2050 and 80% by 2030.

There are non trivial problems to solve, but the core set of technologies already exist or are experiencing Moore's law like cost curves.

[https://web.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/USSt...](https://web.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/USStatesWWS.pdf)

<comment><USER24> That report is better than most but it relies on the assumptions that 1) the grid can route power nearly instantaneously from LA to NYC with very low losses and 2) on cuts in per person energy use by 30-50% (primarily by switching to electric cars). I see both of those assumptions being even less likely than 3) we cover 6240 square miles (5 Rhode Islands) with solar panels.

<comment><USER14> For comparison, roads and parking cover the same area as the entire state of West Virginia, roughly 24,000 square miles or 62,000 square kilometers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I went a couple of years ago and can highly recommend it for work retreats. Very peaceful, enthusiastic islanders, and a surprisingly good internet connection. (Transit comes from a nearby university, then fibre to the coast, then a microwave link to the island, then small microwave links for each house, IIRC.)

Here are some films somebody I went with made about the internet and the island shop:

[http://text.louisedowne.com/post/relative-economies-of- scale](http://text.louisedowne.com/post/relative-economies-of-scale) [http://text.louisedowne.com/post/relative-economies-of- scale...](http://text.louisedowne.com/post/relative-economies-of-scale-ii)

</comment><comment><USER24> I'm bothered that so many people on here see the rationing that these people do as such a bad thing. The easiest way to increase the percentage of renewable energy that you personally use is through cutting usage and limiting peak demand. The energy company you pay will always use their renewable generating capacity because the unit cost of that energy is 0 compared to >0 for fossil fuel power. If your electric company all of a sudden needed to generate 50% less power, they would cut fossil fuel plants first.

<comment><USER26> There's no heat! Except in the community hall and church. I went in wondering how they deal with that. They never say. Burning peat? Wood? Just staying cold? Its the most important part of the consumer energy equation. Here, at 5kW per household max, there's no way they can heat using electricity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> There's no doubt in my mind that this is the way power is going. I might still be alive to see the last coal/oil/nuclear power stations get switched doff.

<comment><USER28> > a traffic light system is set up at the pier. A red light requests residents > to limit their usage; a green light, normal usage.

That seems like a dystopia.

<comment><USER29> You'd be terrified to know that some utilities will actually disable your AC or electric water heater remotely during periods of peak power usage if you've agreed to receive a discount for them to do so.

Signaling conservation requests isn't dystopian.

<comment><USER28> Not terrified, just amused that people hold these rationing schemes up as some sort of victory.

<comment><USER30> Every system that distributes scarce goods requires rationing.

Sometimes, we ration equal amounts, based per person.

Sometimes, we ration unequal amounts, based on how many dollars/denars/quatloos each person is willing to pay.

Sometimes, we ration unequal amounts, by asking people who don't really need a good to voluntarily stop consuming it.

There are pros and cons to each system - but all of them are rationing systems.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> So their main generator is a standard hydro turbine, 100kW, and they have some wind/solar toys producing so little on average as to be just for show. And they suffer rationing and higher-than-normal prices.

This seems like a design anti-pattern.

<comment><USER6> Maybe you've missed that they're an island and this is the cheaper alternative to diesel? They've done this all with their own money, they're not a VC firm willing to make big investments "just for show".

<comment><USER28> > "The £1.66m project largely was financed by the European Union's European > Regional Development Fund,"

perhaps that explains the desirability of "for show" elements

<comment><USER31> That is far less then the bonuses received by some _individual bankers_ who only received them because their banks were bailed out by taxpayers, in the EU and elsewhere, which I presume includes some of the inhabitants of Eigg.

<comment><USER32> Why is that revelant?

<comment><USER31> Because egregious misuses of public funds don't get the attention they deserve.

How does a subsidy of £1.66 million for an investment which serves a whole community compare with a single payment for the personal consumption of an individual who belongs to a group whose acts have resulted in economic depression for the last 10 years?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> On a national level have a look at Iceland:

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

<comment><USER34> Do keep in mind that Iceland has a small population and the geology to support geothermal energy, which most other nations can't leverage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> New Zealand has been 80% renewable for many years (at least for electricity). We do have a great mix of geothermal and hydro but it can definitely be done at a country wide scale.</comment>


How to Build a Healthcare SaaS Platform? - <AUTHOR> https://www.devteam.space/blog/how-to-build-a-healthcare-saas-platform/ <comment><USER2> I don't see when this article was published but it seems outdated. The team is using MEAP[1] which links to a wiki page listing technologies including YUI that are no longer maintened and was built on MonoCross[2] which doesn't appear to be maintained either. This was obviously a large endeavor to take on so I wonder how the team is dealing with this.

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

[2] [http://monocross.net/](http://monocross.net/)

</comment><comment><USER3> I worked on one of the largest Radiology SaaS coding/billing platform. Working with hospitals is one of the most strenuous industries. Everyone has their own formats and trying to learn the lingo takes a couple years.

Also many players have been in the industry for a long time and it's quite incestuous. I am no systems architect either but the validity of the data at any requested moment is very important so much of the services run in a synchronous environment. In my opinion as much as possible of accounting/scheduling should be async but this is one of the problems the industry is facing i guess.</comment>


Ask HN: How long does it take for crud screens to be integrated into a template? - <AUTHOR> How many hours do you think it would take for CRUD screen to be integrated into a screen template?<p>just trying to get an idea based on various platforms how long it would take to do an MVP. obviously there's no right answer.( also, don't want to get into a platform war either.) <comment><USER2> From six seconds to eight decades. (Seriously, that's one step of vagueness from "how long does it take to build an application?")

<comment><AUTHOR> So how would you quote someone? do you expect a detailed spec? I don't think it's unreasonable in the quote process to use some sort of average time to build a screen to help build an estimate. As long as you qualify your assumptions.

<comment><USER2> I expect, at the very least, what the app is supposed to do. Building a screen is, IMNSHO, not related to the amount of work that is expected; the real time sinks are functionalities _behind_ the screen. Every time I got into estimation from GUI, the result was completely unrelated to the estimate.</comment></comment></comment>


Teslas Hit by 180% Danish Tax on Cars as Green Goals Ditched - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-09-29/teslas-hit-by-180-tax-in-denmark-as-green-goals-get-left-behind <comment><USER2> This should actually be the title:

> Denmark to tax electric cars like other vehicles by 2020

I personally feel that electric cars should get a tax break. However the title at the moment makes anyone who hasn't read the article think that Denmark are punishing people for buying a Tesla rather than just putting them on even footing with oil-based vehicles.

Now if people want to argue about the pros/cons of giving electric cars a tax break, more power to them. That's a completely legitimate discussion and is based entirely on the reality of what was changed in Denmark.

<comment><USER3> There is another angle. Some fraction of the cost of a Tesla is for the electric drive, not weight or luxury or whatever. So by buying a Tesla instead of a Lexus, I am paying an extra penalty for contributing to electric car R&D.

<comment><USER4> Does Denmark still tax cars based on weight? I know we used to, but not being a car owner, I don't keep up with these things.

But that would be an extra punishment for electric cars, since they are heavier per "unit of car" so to speak.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This article is missing the context that conservative parties recently took power from the previous socialist government after elections in June.

<comment><USER6> That's pretty obvious from the content of the article. A new government that repeals environmental policies instituted by a previous government is practically a synonym for a right wing party taking over from a left wing party.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The same thing is going to happen in Norway, and it's so sad.

</comment><comment><USER8> It's still much better for everyone to ride a bike than a huge luxury electric car. 50% bike commuters is good, but it should be 90%. Of course, outside of the cities bikes are often not a viable alternative, so there is something to be said for tax breaks on electric cars.</comment>


Why Good Programmers Are Lazy and Dumb - <AUTHOR> http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2005-08-24-n14.html <comment><USER2> This is a really convoluted way of conveying a few simple concepts: 1) automate what you can and 2) keep your mind and perspective fresh by continuous learning.

I don't see why we need to redefine the words lazy and dumb. Truly lazy and dumb programmers don't really accomplish much.

<comment><USER3> It's a hook to get attention, that's all. Have a title that sounds surprising and counterintuitive, then explain how you _really_ meant something related but different. Would this have been submitted to HN if it argued "Programmers should automate tasks and learn new things" without the pretense? Probably not. It's one of the oldest tricks in the book. See also "worse is better", among others.

In the case of this article, though, I have to say that Larry Wall has already done it better with the "three virtues of a programmer":

 _Laziness: The quality that makes you go to great effort to reduce overall energy expenditure. It makes you write labor-saving programs that other people will find useful, and document what you wrote so you don't have to answer so many questions about it. Hence, the first great virtue of a programmer.

Impatience: The anger you feel when the computer is being lazy. This makes you write programs that don't just react to your needs, but actually anticipate them. Or at least that pretend to. Hence, the second great virtue of a programmer.

Hubris: Excessive pride, the sort of thing Zeus zaps you for. Also the quality that makes you write (and maintain) programs that other people won't want to say bad things about. Hence, the third great virtue of a programmer._

<comment><USER4> The author seems to be trying to pass off "programmers are lazy" as his own, unless he's really unaware of that meme. But I could write these "insightful" little counterfactuals all day:

Good classical composers are tone-deaf and forgetful, because they use dissonance and repeat things with variation.

Good marathon runners are slow.

Good comic artists draw poorly.

Etc etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "Lazy" I get, but when he says "dumb" I think "humble" conveys the idea better. You shouldn't be "too smart", but that's not the same thing as being dumb. Letting go of preconceived notions to get to the root of a problem may involve "playing dumb", but that's still not the same thing.

Still, "dumb" sounds less chest-beating than "humble" (ironically enough) so if you think you're not humble enough about being humble, by all means start calling yourself dumb instead. :-)

<comment><USER6> I would have preferred "experienced" instead of "dumb". His examples still apply if you replace the latter with the former.

<comment><USER5> But "experienced" is another one of those glowing words (like "smart") that emphasizes you knew your way around in the past. This is an external marker, something other people judge you by and you can advertise with. When you have to solve actual problems, it's no good to think of yourself as smart and experienced, because that will only frustrate you if your amazing talents don't immediately suggest a solution. Taking yourself out of the equation and treating each problem by its own merits rather than your own merits is what's required, and that's the point of the "lazy" and "dumb" epithets: they're a deliberate kick to your ego, something programmers can usually use less of. Your talents can take care of themselves.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The Google/Yahoo comparison is somewhat invalid - Yahoo is a portal, Google is strictly a search engine. Look at the "portalized" version of Google (i.e., iGoogle) and the similarities start surfacing.

I work for one of the top 25 sites on the tubes, and our homepage is also fairly busy looking. But it also has been relentlessly verified via both user testing and aggregate data analysis. UI guys hate when these numbers come out - but clean and elegant is not always the most efficient UI (for various definitions of efficient).

<comment><USER8> They also have completely different markets, and I'm annoyed by the number of times I see the Google search page trotted out as an example of what people want. Most of the users I deal with on a daily basis have their homepage set to either their Yahoo page, or their msn page, or something similar.

I don't think I've yet to sit down at a user's computer and find their homepage set to Google's search page.

Unless, of course, they installed Firefox and then forgot it was there.

<comment><USER9> Well, there's me. I don't want to wait for junk to load - I'm not a stim- junkie. Also, consumer computers ship with Yahoo or MSN set as default, most defaults never get changed. So no actual info about user preferences there.

<comment><USER7> Then understand that you're not the average surfer. The problem with web geeks (especially UI web geeks) is that they presume their love for cleanness and elegance is a universal desire for all web users - this is simply not true.

Obviously I can't share any proprietary data here with you - but I work for a company that runs one of the largest sites anywhere - and our UI is kind of ugly, and definitely _very_ busy. It is also the optimal UI - and we have teams of people relentlessly testing alternatives day in and day out. There's designing to your own aesthetic, then there's designing by user input, then there's designing by _real live data from tens of millions of people_.

<comment><USER9> What about all the people that aren't coming there? Perhaps your technique is an adaptive algorithm that learns to keep people who are already there, or something like that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> _lazy_

True. I tend to get things done with less effort than my peers and I don't think it has to do with being smart. I just have an all round better understanding of the surrounding tools/ideas of a problem.

When a lot of people have a project in front of them, I see them jumping in with both feet with a very narrow focus. Afraid of going off in tangents.

Me? I spend most of my time sitting around drinking coffee. Walking. Reading useful stuff on the internet.

I've seen it written before: learn to procrastinate well. I think that's a better way of putting it, no real need to be too derogatory.

</comment><comment><USER11> Larry Wall, is that you?

</comment><comment><USER12> Then I must be a _great_ programmer!

</comment><comment><USER13> Not being a native speaker this confused me for a moment there. I'd like to add to that that most of the world's programmers (and this article's potential audience) are not native to the English language. Don't make the additional effort to confuse us mate.

</comment><comment><USER14> Regarding the dumb thing, I think this quote says the same thing a bit more succinctly:

"In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, in the expert's there are few" (Suzuki-roshi)

</comment><comment><USER15> Lazy and dumb programmers are ok until they discover copy-paste which unfortunately happens very early.

</comment><comment><USER16> I agree with lazy but dumb I do not think so. In fact I think that good programmers are lazy and smart.

</comment><comment><USER17> I wouldn't say Lazy. They are Rational.

</comment><comment><USER18> Linkbait title (and I fell for it).

What OP calls "lazy", I call "efficient".

What OP calls "dumb", I call "open-minded".

I sure hope he doesn't name his variables as poorly as he names his adjectives. Now _that_ would be lazy and dumb.</comment>


Now Is the Perfect Time to Memorize a Poem - <AUTHOR> https://www.thecut.com/2020/04/now-is-the-perfect-time-to-memorize-a-poem.html <comment><USER3> When I was in college I was a member of the Society for Creative Anachronism ([https://www.sca.org/](https://www.sca.org/)). To provide an evening's entertainment, I adapted a folk tale, Why the Sea is Salt, into iambic pentameter.

[http://www.flownet.com/ron/salt.txt](http://www.flownet.com/ron/salt.txt)

It is meant to be performed vocally, not read. The first time I had to read it from my original manuscript (and it was a manuscript, written by hand with a pencil because this was the mid-80s). After that I decided I wouldn't perform it again until I had it all memorized. It took me over 30 years to get to the point where I was confident I had it memorized well enough to perform it without notes, but last year, over thirty years after its debut, I finally did it.

Then Covid happened. Now I recite it to myself in my head to help me fall asleep. It works remarkably well.

<comment><USER4> I would watch a Youtube recording of this!

<comment><USER3> Heh, thanks. To really do it justice requires a bunch of people dressed in medieval garb and that could be a tall order under the circumstances. But let me see what I can do.

<comment><USER5> Please make this happen, even if you can't fully do it justice yet. I just read it aloud to myself and I love it. I might have to memorize this one myself while I'm stuck at home.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the kind words. I recorded an audio-only version this morning:

[http://www.flownet.com/ron/salt.mp3](http://www.flownet.com/ron/salt.mp3)

Some day I'll try to get a visual version done.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's always a good time to exercise your brain in a different way. I started memorizing poetry while in high school just for the fun of it. Some I found motivational, some just silly - Jabberwocky almost broke me. Whitman - <USER2> man knew how to live. My favorite of all remains Poe's The Raven. It was the Simpson's shortened take on that poem that first drew my attention, but man, did Poe know how to tell a story, and the meter! Such a rhythm, such a beat that man had.

In learning other languages one of the greatest challenges of all is to understand their poetry. Pushkin, Lermontov in their original are treasures. If only I could understand them all without always keeping my dictionary handy.

It is always wonderful to find a poet's expressions when they have chosen a different way to say what I'm thinking. Mary Oliver's Summer Day is just a celebration of the wonders of life.

Also, this stuff is a great source of passwords. Nobody puts words together the way poets do.

<comment><USER7> I think to memorize poems is best done with foreign languages. Get the pronunciation right and nobody will believe you just started to the language.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've never been huge on poetry, but decided last year to memorize a poem each month. Totally doable, but I only made it through about four. My own laziness.

You get to know a poem so much better when you memorize it. You need to think about each word. Sometimes your brain wants to substitute another word and you have to think about why the poet chose the one they did instead of the one that might feel natural.

It feels like engaging in a great conversation. These poets all read each other's work, going back in this timeless chain into the distant past. And you can tell when one is responding to the words of another, who they know can never answer back, but there's a connection all the same.

Recognizing Ozymandias being recited in a Ballad of Buster Scruggs short felt like seeing a dear friend make a surprise cameo in a movie.

Plus, if you've got a flair for the dramatic, it's a neat party trick.

<comment><USER9> What was the criteria for the poems you decided to memorize? How did you pick - just based on stuff you already knew of, or did you actively pursue works new to you?

<comment><USER8> One of the hardest parts, tbh. Harder than actually memorizing. I went with classical sonnets, looked for greatest all time lists and found things that were new to me, had stood the test of time, and spoke to me in the moment.

<comment><USER9> Cool, thanks for the insight! I'm now considering attempting this as I've started worrying about memory and how to keep it active and healthy (in my mid 30s but people seem to make a big deal about it).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I memorized The Lovesong of J Alfred Prufrock during my first job as an engineer out of college. The .Net codebase would take 3-4 minutes to compile. I printed out the poem and taped it up in my cubicle. On each compilation, I would work on memorizing a few lines. I had never done anything like it before but memorized all 140 lines in just a few weeks. 12 years later I still remember about 50% of it. It's a famous enough poem that it comes up once every few years and I impress some friends or strangers. At this point the entire poem just feels like an old friend. It has been surprisingly rewarding investment of otherwise wasted time while waiting for a build to finish.

<comment><USER11> The number of times I've turned to my wife and said "Let us go then, you and I..." when it's time to leave the house...

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> _They fuck you up, your mum and dad. // They may not mean to, but they do. // ..._

[http://www.famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/philip_larkin/poems...](http://www.famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/philip_larkin/poems/14515)

<comment><USER13> love that one

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The mind works in mysterious ways. When in high school, I memorized Ibsen's 'Terje Vigen'[0], a dramatic poem on the hardships felt in southern Norway during the British blockade during the Napoleonic wars - and of revenge, redemption and all that. (Cough).

Anyway, it has probably been 20 years since I last recited it, but I just found to my amazement that I still held it down pat, once I had mumbled the first couple of phrases to myself, the rest just came pouring out.

"Det bodde en underlig gråsprengt en/på den ytterste, nøgne ø..."

[0] [http://www.sitater.com/home/ibsen/vigen/idx_eng.htm](http://www.sitater.com/home/ibsen/vigen/idx_eng.htm)

</comment><comment><USER15>
      The Summer Day
      by Mary Oliver

      Who made the world?
      Who made the swan, and the black bear?
      Who made the grasshopper?
      This grasshopper, I mean-
      the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
      the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
      who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
      who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
      Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
      Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
      I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
      I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
      into the grass, how to kneel in the grass,
      how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
      which is what I have been doing all day.
      Tell me, what else should I have done?
      Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
      Tell me, what is it you plan to do
      With your one wild and precious life?

</comment><comment><USER16> I cannot memorize these poems, but I like to go back and read them from time to time. I cannot put into words the emotions they create other than powerful, but that doesn't do them justice.

They are the poems by Xu Lizhi.

The full list of poems he wrote is in the link but I will paste one.

《一颗螺丝掉在地上》 "A Screw Fell to the Ground"

一颗螺丝掉在地上 A screw fell to the ground

在这个加班的夜晚 In this dark night of overtime

垂直降落,轻轻一响 Plunging vertically, lightly clinking

不会引起任何人的注意 It won't attract anyone's attention

就像在此之前 Just like last time

某个相同的夜晚 On a night like this

有个人掉在地上 When someone plunged to the ground

[https://libcom.org/blog/xulizhi-foxconn-suicide- poetry](https://libcom.org/blog/xulizhi-foxconn-suicide-poetry)

<comment><USER17> This poem was the catalyst stopping me from purchasing the newest tech every year. New phone, new laptop, new devices....the magic of modern capitalism is that it hides the human cost of manufacturing. That said, perhaps having a job creates a better lifestyle in many parts of the world, but consumerism doesn't need to go at such an accelerated pace (IMHO).

<comment><USER18> Not just human cost, but also environmental, animal, and habitat. It's why I stopped purchasing things altogether, as much as I can. My costs are now limited largely to web hosting and water.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> If you're super short on time:

"Ode to a Goldfish", Ogden Nash.

Oh, wet pet

[my interpretation: to be declaimed grandly as a great epic, before tailing off as if you've forgotten]

</comment><comment><USER20> One year for Lent I gave up listening to music/radio in the car during my commute to classes (at least half an hour each way) and one of the things I did after an uncomfortable week of silence was to memorize and recite poems to myself. I still do this, adding a new poem every year or so. Now my favorite poems are always with me.

One of the last ones I memorized was Frederick Seidel's "Ode to Spring":

[https://poets.org/poem/ode-spring](https://poets.org/poem/ode-spring)

</comment><comment><USER21> Haven't had to do this since my time at a now vanished English prep school. Thirty years on there remain only tiny fragments of _Ozymandias_ and _Charge of the Light Brigade_ and the first two lines of _Casabianca_ :

        The boy stood on the burning deck,
        Whence all but he had fled

(We have search engines now, but my two inch thick _Oxford Book Of English Poetry_ indexes by first lines. So try to hang on to the first lines in memory...)

<comment><USER22> _Casabianca_ was widely taught to school children for a century, but nowadays sounds a bit cheesy. There are many parodies ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casabianca_(poem)#Parody](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casabianca_\(poem\)#Parody))

Elizabeth Bishop wrote an terrific modern adaptation, though: [https://poetrysociety.org/poetry-in- motion/casabianca](https://poetrysociety.org/poetry-in-motion/casabianca)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> 25 years ago, after a rafting trip in the Yukon and Alaska, I decided to memorize Service's The Cremation of Sam McGee. After working on it for about a month, I had it cold. Never attempted to recite it since. After seeing this article, I thought I would give it a shot. I stumbled over a couple of lines in the middle, but, overall, I remembered it pretty well. Now if I could only remember where I put my keys 60 minutes ago.

</comment><comment><USER24> Where ever I am, there's always Pooh. There's always Pooh and me. Whatever I do, he wants to do. "Where are you going today?" says Pooh. "Well, that's very odd cos I was too." "Let's go together" says Pooh, says he. "Let's go together" says Pooh.

\---

Memorized as a bored ten year old, 'playing' Encarta 95. The first entry - A.A. Milne.

</comment><comment><USER25> Idk about the States, but memorizing and reciting poetry is standard in Polish elementary and high schools. For example, as an assignment everybody is given about two weeks to memorize a poem such as this: [https://literat.ug.edu.pl/amwiersz/0004.htm](https://literat.ug.edu.pl/amwiersz/0004.htm)

</comment><comment><USER26> My kids are almost four and almost two. After a cumulative almost 4,000 readings through a small library of their favorites I can now recite classics like Goodnight Moon from memory. Not exactly great literature but they are usually structured as poems, of a sort.

My wife and I quote their favorites at each other at opportune moments. They are, of course, completely oblivious.

</comment><comment><USER27> Every time I set out to memorize something, be it a poem, prose, song, etc., other parts of my cognitive life tend to improve. And not just the linguistic parts -- I am able to focus while programming much more easily, for example, which for me is a non-linguistic task.

Maybe it has something to do with working to increase the overall page size of my brain or something.

</comment><comment><USER28> Good advice. I've memorized a lot of poems by reading them out loud three times a day. A sonnet or a few stanzas took me a few weeks. Some were pages long and took months. This method is slower than some others, but it's foolproof, and since I only chose poems I loved, I didn't mind spending the time with them.

The method also works for prose.

</comment><comment><USER29> Years ago I discovered that there are many poems you don't have to wilfully memorize, but which you "learn" like you learn melodies, very quickly and totally unconscious. For me, this includes for example Poe's "Raven" [0]. I once had a teacher who had memorized large parts of Goethe's "Faust" by accident, just by reading it every year she taught it in class.

[0] [https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48860/the- raven](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48860/the-raven)

</comment><comment><USER30>
        But go not "back to the sediment"
        In the slime of the moaning sea,
        For a better world belongs to you,
        And a better friend to me.

\-- Voltairine de Cleyre, "And Thou Too"

</comment><comment><USER31> Great is the matter of life and death

Moments go by swiftly and are lost

To squander time is a great shame

Do not waste your life

</comment><comment><USER11> I cannot even begin to put into my own words how essential poetry turns out to be for this experiment in being human.

I have a handful of poems that are nearly always kicking around in my head and come up in snips and tatters in idle moments. Sometimes it's an actual liturgy -- often, when I'm walking, i get snippets of thomas cranmer's english on endless loops through my mind -- but more often than not it's a figurative one, though no less grounding for that.

Poems take a language and bend it past its breaking point, without breaking it.

<comment><USER32> Are they just mantras or do they carry some explicable deeper meaning for you? I'm still unaware of what makes poetry so fascinating to people.

<comment><USER11> huh, the last sentence of my post got dropped; put it back now.

No, they're not mantras.

The easy answer is that rhythmicity of language is just fundamentally compelling to our minds at a very basic level, and poems are a way that we can bend and twist and revel in and celebrate with language that gets that.

There's often a "oh, you clever ... " satisfaction as a reader when the poet picks _just_ the perfect word to rhyme off and you're left almost gasping with ... something indescribable ... at how _right_ it was. It's a thing of beauty.

In translation, Hafiz: "... the Beloved / has just made such a fantastic move// that the saint is now continually/ tripping over Joy// and bursting out in laughter/ and saying "I Surrender!""

Watching someone, often someone long dead from a time and a place I can't even imagine, working within an often highly constrained form to produce something that still packs a punch -- something that can still reach out and wrench something loose inside your head, something that can _communicate_ things that are probably ineffable -- when it happens to you, you'll know.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> john-radio There's a picture of Auden in the OP and he wrote this poem, which I memorized as a teen after learning of it from my mom.

        That night when joy began
        Our narrowest veins to flush
        We waited for the flash
        Of morning's leveled gun.

        But morning let us pass
        And day by day relief
        Outgrows his nervous laugh
        Grown credulous of peace.

        As mile by mile is seen
        No trespasser's reproach
        And love's best glasses reach
        No fields but are his own.

<comment><USER33> Fascinating rhyme scheme in this one. The vowels in each stanza rhyme ABAB, the consonants ABBA. Never seen anything like it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I'll never forget this Dutch poem, called "Het heelal" (the universe):

        Hoe verder men keek
        hoe groter het leek

(the further they looked, the bigger it seemed)

</comment><comment><USER35> For years, I used the walk to school (30 mins each way) to memorize many poems, especially Poe. The Bells, For Annie, The Raven - word for word. Walking was time to turn over the poetry in my mind and reflect on its meaning.

25 years later, and I can recite every poem from my youth, flawlessly. But they don't comfort me at night. I have the poems with me forever, but they are not useful day-to-day.

I don't recommend memorizing old poetry.

<comment><USER36> Maybe you absorbed their value at the time?

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> When I was in middle school (mid 80s) I had to memorize a poem. But I've forgotten the name of it. And I've forgotten the poem ;-) What I do remember is that it was about animals and was off the wall crazy (like poem about Greasy Grimy Gopher Guts). Does anyone know if there is a website where you can enter parameters and it will suggest possible matching poems? I'd really like to find it again.

<comment><USER38> Great green globs of gooey greasy gopher guts/ Marinated monkey meat/ Stinky little piggies feet/

<comment><USER3> French-fried eyeballs swimming in a pool of blood

That's what I like to eat

\---

Ah, middle school. Good times.

<comment><USER37> Our version ended with the phrase "with a spoon".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> > re: Canterbury Tales - "I was in high school, it was taught to us by rote, > the better for us to get a feel for the cotton-mouth cadence of Chaucer's > Middle English ..."

Thats exactly how I was thought in HS. It was a reading assignment before coming to class. I found it difficult to read. And then the teacher read it out loud. I was like ... "ohhhh".

</comment><comment><USER40> If I should die think only this of me That there is some corner of a foreign field That is forever England. There shall be In that rich earth a richer dust concealed; A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware, Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam, A body of England's, breathing English air, Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.

</comment><comment><USER41>
        Canan ki degustasyona gelmez
        Balık pazarına hiç gelmez

Orhan Veli and his wit is pretty cool. I kind of feel sad for people who know a single language, there's something just right about reading literature in the language it's been written. So much nuance is lost in translation.

<comment><USER42> Most people who know only one language nevertheless read all their literature in the same language it was written in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is actually kind of fun, recently I memorized "Gather ye rosebuds" and Poe's "Dream within a Dream". Try the memory palace technique with someplace you recently visited.

</comment><comment><USER43>
      ...
      Weave a circle round him thrice
      And close your eyes with holy dread
      For he on honey-dew hath fed
      And drunk the milk of Paradise.

</comment><comment><USER44> When I was ten I memorized "Jabberwocky" by Lewis Carroll for performance. Still remember that frabjous poem!

</comment><comment><USER45> My girlfriend and I sometimes start reciting Vogon poetry to one another <_<.

Oh freddled gruntbuggly...

</comment><comment><USER46> I think that most people try to memorize things the hard way: by starting at the beginning.

When I need to memorize something, I start with the end, and work my way towards the beginning. For example, if I need to memorize a poem, I start with the last line or 2 lines. Then, I put a line (or complete thought) in front of it and memorize that as it flows into the already memorized part. Rinse and repeat.

Caveat: It sounds like an n^2 algorithm. Yes and no. Larger works can be broken up into chunks so that once the last "chunk" is learned, then only focus on the penultimate chunk, with only occasionally reviewing the flow from chunk to chunk.

I have not found any mentions of this technique specifically in the context of memorization, but rather first heard about it in the context of dog training. E.g., teach a dog the last action of a trick. Once the dog can perform the part of the trick, add one step in front of the learned part, and keep repeating that until the sequence is solid. Then add another step to the beginning of the sequence, etc. Evidently, in this way, animals can learn complex and long sequences of behaviors.

Backward Chaining [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaining](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaining)] is the closest description that I could find matching this technique, but even that isn't totally correct, as the description deals with performing the entire chain rather than ignoring the chain as a whole and only focusing on the end.

I have personally applied this technique to memorization of poetry, scripture passages, and learning piano pieces. It's amazing!

In fact, I teach all of my piano students this method to learn a piece of music. They never "start at the beginning and stumble through the entire piece" unless they are intentionally practicing sight reading. Rather, we focus on the last phrase, and they learn (memorize) it up to tempo. Then they add the previous musical phrase, tying into the part that they just learned. Usually, we go for a ratio of loosely 10:1 (i.e., 10 repetitions of the new section, then 1 of the new section tied to the old section, maintaining a constant tempo). It works very well!

The end result: 1. It is usually easy to remember how something begins. 2. With this method, the performance gets stronger, as the more difficult passages (often towards the end) have more focused attention. 3. The "newest" part is always at the beginning of wherever you are in the learning process, so your brain is always fresh at the place where it needs to work the hardest.

My students love this approach, because, from their own testimony, it makes learning a complicated piece of music a _very_ straightforward and repeatable skill.

</comment><comment><USER47> I'm a lasagna

Hog go hang a salami

This sentence no verb

</comment><comment><USER48> a dormmate used to play _life goes on_ on repeat in college. i couldn't help but learn the words even as i quickly got tired of it. that 2pac was a lyrical genius.

</comment><comment><USER49> If you want a fun take on Shakespeare's poetry, Zach Weinersmith's (author of SMBC comic) _Shakespeare's Sonnets: Abridged Beyond the Point of Usefulness_ is free for the duration of pandemic [0]. As are many of his other books [1].

[0] - [https://www.smbc-comics.com/covid/files/Mini-Sonnets- web-v2....](https://www.smbc-comics.com/covid/files/Mini-Sonnets-web-v2.pdf)

[1] - [https://www.smbc-comics.com/covid/](https://www.smbc-comics.com/covid/)

</comment><comment><USER50> That Whitsun, I was late getting away...</comment>


How a data corruption problem made me more confident about Cassandra - <AUTHOR> http://gilhildebrand.com/afterthought/2011/04/how-a-data-corruption-problem-made-me-more-confident-about-cassandra/

<comment><USER2> Great insight into the triumph and the small tragedies of using bleeding edge tech!</comment>


Indian MP's 'rising fascism' speech wins plaudits - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-48755554 <comment><USER2> The term fascism is being thrown around much too lightly these days.</comment>


Ask YC: Feedback on pongtracker.com - <AUTHOR> http://www.pongtracker.com/

<comment><USER2> imho you should visually show why people should join your site

you may want to use a creative commons css template too, to make your site look a little more professional with minimal work. here's a site that has a listing: <http://www.oswd.org/>

some ads are fine, but right now I'm seeing the ads more than I'm seeing the reasons to register for your site

there is a bigger question in my head though... are people too drunk to care (as opposed to covering other games/sports)? Though hmmm people would care if you designed your site to be displayed on a flat screen at the bar itself (game progress, stats, ...)

</comment><comment><USER3> First impression is that it looks like a MFA page also I have no idea what the site does which makes it hard for me to want to sign up. Maybe put up a demo or something and drop the ads from the landing page?</comment>


Ask HN: What technical decisions make VS Code a better Electron app? - <AUTHOR> I was inspired by the recent article on how Slack (which is built with Electron) is a RAM hog, but I've always wondered how things were done differently when compared to Atom too. <comment><USER2> 1\. They are doing things lazily. Like only render(and check for errors) the part which is inside viewport first.

2\. They are not creating layers of JavaScript. They are using native code wherever necessary.

3\. VS code has more control over what extensions can do so that they don't adversely affect the performance.

<comment><USER3> I'm not sure where you're looking, but as far as I can tell, VS Code uses practically zero native code. When looking to the git repository, all I see is TS, JS, CSS, and some misc stuff.

<comment><USER4> I know they use ripgrep¹ for their project-wide search feature. I'd imagine that the other native code would also be separate processes whose output is parsed, or in C / C++ / Rust libraries that live in their own repos and that they use via bindings which would themselves only be JS / TS code (and might live in separate repos as well).

¹: [https://github.com/BurntSushi/ripgrep](https://github.com/BurntSushi/ripgrep)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> They used good engineers and a major part of the spec was that speed matters and is the ultimate feature. So when they used the Monaco component the engineers behind it made sure to prioritize speed and efficiency (it didn't hurt that they could rely on microsofts years of dev tool experience)

Technically they didn't do anything insane, the real trick is to measure test and improve metrics they care about and not let it become slow.

</comment><comment><USER6> It's based on [https://github.com/Microsoft/monaco- editor](https://github.com/Microsoft/monaco-editor)

But there's also another promising project that uses monaco [https://github.com/theia-ide/theia](https://github.com/theia-ide/theia)

</comment><comment><USER7> Vs code had its share of performance problem. A while ago there was a hog caused by blinking cursor in editor.

<comment><USER8> I got downvoted for saying this last time but I think that was only on mac

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> While we are at it, can we compare those approaches to native web app with that of R-studio?

I was quite surprised to see the right-click menu item "inspect element" open up a DOM-inspector of the entire app! I had not suspected it to be like that.

</comment><comment><USER10> On that note, I haven't heard much about Atom in a long time. Is anyone still using it?

<comment><USER11> A couple weeks ago I switched from Atom to VS Code due to the abysmal performance of Atom. I wish I had switched earlier.

<comment><USER12> I find both sluggish compared to sublime text. I flipping love that tool.

<comment><USER8> Sublime is definitely the king of start times. Vscode feels like more like a full IDE though

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I think it all comes down to the developers abd how they optimize their codebase</comment>


Ask HN/Review my Startup: Sneffel.com - <AUTHOR>

(I submitted this before, but I've made some changes since then, so I thought I'd try again...)
Sneffel (http://www.sneffel.com) is trying to bring real time collaboration to e-learning platforms.  My current attempt at an MVP lets schools create "Sneffel Communities" where they can create new whiteboards, access old ones, and see how many folks are using what whiteboards.  Whiteboards are exactly what they sound like: an interactive html5 canvas.  You can draw on it, and through the magic of websockets, other folks can see what you do.
(its all html5, so no IE support...yet!)
Feedback, suggestions, criticism all welcome.  Thanks! <comment><USER2> IE support for canvas is easy with Google's excanvas plugin. <http://excanvas.sourceforge.net/>

The name sounds a lot like "sniffle" and a runny nose doesn't remind me of real time e-learning collaboration.

Good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> I tried using excanvas and it didn't turn out so well for my usage, actually. I can't remember why....I'll have to give it a go again, thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I think your video goes WAY too slow. You need to get more energy and enthusiasm in it!</comment>


When you spot the horrible spaghetti code while watching a movie - <AUTHOR> https://imgur.com/a/Fc8AZgi <comment><USER2> It looks like horrible structured code, not horrible spaghetti code, I can spot a few if blocks.

It's php code with a few SQL commands, probably autogenerated. (Autogenerated code is usually not nice.)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> At least they have the real code and terminal on the screens instead of beeping 3D shit.</comment>


How to hire hackers - <AUTHOR> https://gun.io/blog/how-to-hire-hackers/

<comment><USER2> Usual shallow, rubbish peppered with quotes from PG and DHH - such as the famous "Never hire anyone to do a job until you've tried to do it yourself first." which makes me cringe so bad.</comment>


Ask HN: Anyone participating in the Heritage Healthcare Prize? - <AUTHOR>

The Heritage Provider Network is running what looks like a "Netflix Prize for Healthcare". More details can be found  at http://www.heritagehealthprize.com/c/hhp, but the gist of the idea is simple: to develop a prediction algorithm to identify patients that will be admitted into a hospital, based on data from their medical records.
Prizes are totaling USD 3 million.
I have worked in the past in an open source tool that deals with EMR (http://esphealth.org) and we had done some Syndrome Surveillance work to statistically determine the rate of infection of flu-like diseases.
I was a little far from the actual scientific models, but this is something that I'd like to get into.
Anyone else interested in the challenge? <comment><USER2> I am, mostly because this is a great dataset to play around with for free.</comment>


Ask HN: Have you used an Executive Coach to build people skills?  Care to share? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I found it very worthwhile. My manager at the time recommended someone who had helped him.

The main, direct improvement she made was with my communication style. I had a tendency to explain things. OK, waffle. She helped me make it more punchy, keep the audience with me. Has worked well.

The most interesting, and affecting, exercise was soliciting feedback on how I come across. From family, close friends and work colleagues (senior, peers and juniors). And then interviewing them about it. Not sure it made me change anything but it affected profoundly how I saw myself.

</comment><comment><USER3> Yes, though it started off with trying to help me figure out how to deal with perfectionism and my relationship with my job.

We eventually got into building people skills. There were active listening skills, some mental models to help find common ground, and we talked about bad assumptions to make versus good assumptions. For example, it's usually good to assume that your co-workers don't have bad intentions.

Are you trying to find out if it was worth it?

<comment><USER4> Could you expand on how much sessions typically cost you and how valuable you found coaching like that to be over alternative methods of learning similar skills?

<comment><USER3> My company was paying for the sessions, so I never saw the bill. It also helped that I work for a company large enough to have their own internal executive coaches. However, this particular EC has since left the company to start his own EC consulting business.

I found it very valuable. As with any kind of coaching, you could try to work through issues on your own, but it might take you awhile. With a coach, they're there to call you out when you try making excuses and keep you honest. Also, I found that saying and talking about things out loud has a much bigger impact and weight than just thinking them to yourself.

It also helped that this particular EC had worked for about 10 years as a software engineer at my company. When I described work situations and problems, he understand exactly what I was talking because he understood some of the political dynamics of our company and technical language I was using.

<comment><USER4> Forgot to thank you for your response! Really appreciate it - it's super helpful.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Daily WTF: 500 – Internal Server Error - <AUTHOR> http://thedailywtf.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> The Daily WTF currently shows a 500 error page. Is this a failure or a meta- joke?</comment>


HN: I want to trade my finance knowledge for python/django mentorship - <AUTHOR> I wanted to see if someone on HN is willing to mentor me through learning Python and Django. Below are some details on my current skill level, what I'm looking for, and what I can offer. I'm located in San Francisco.
I know what I'm offering is limited in value relative to what you are offering me, so I am open to give you anything else I could reasonably offer for this mentorship.
Current Skill Level: I know the basics of Python and have gone through "How to Think Like a Computer Scientist" and written some small scripts. I understand how Django works and have been through some simple tutorials.
What I'm Looking For: I'm looking for someone who could efficiently guide me through learning, i.e. what tutorials/projects/resources I should go through. More a mentor than a tutor. Maybe we'd meet once a week to code small samples. I would email you for help if I got stuck.
I do already spend time self-teaching, but I think I could learn much more efficiently through someone else's guidance. I think this, because I have self-learned a lot of things and have found with a little guidance, things go substantially quicker.
What I can offer: I can teach/guide you through learning:
- Account Fundamentals (understanding the 3 financial statements and how they flow together; balance sheet, cash flows and income statement)
- Interest theory, fixed income/debt/bond valuation
- M&A analysis and Valuation (Discounted cash flow, comparables/multiples, accretion/dilution)
- Options/Futures fundamentals (I think there is potentially an opportunity for adept programmers here to apply their skills).
- Bankruptcy/distressed corporate situations
- Crash course on how to dig through and interpret SEC filings (the only reliable free primary data source if you want to invest in public markets)
Why would you need these skills? I think they are crucial if you are:
1) An entrepreneur who will ever raise capital or sell your company
2) Someone interested in learning how to invest in the public or private markets – this knowledge will serve as a solid foundation/prerequisite
3) Someone in optimizing the financial efficiency of their business
I'd like to think I am at least acceptably good at teaching. I used to tutor economics, accounting, SAT prep, etc. and have received good feedback.
Credentials: I've worked as an M&A/restructuring analyst at a reputable investment bank and have had offers from well-known financial institutions/hedge funds. I've also had the fortune to have some excellent mentors in my past. I can provide more details if you want over email.
My email is in my profile, I look forward to hearing from you.
ADDITION: email added to profile. <comment><USER3> If you find someone to pair with you, great.

If you don't, finish the django book <http://www.djangobook.com/en/2.0/> and start fiddling with Practical Django Projects <http://www.apress.com/9781590599969>. It's a decent book and gives you a feel of some real applications.

There always is stackoverflow and mailing lists if you get stuck.

You can also hop in #django on irc.freenode.net. Sometimes people on IRC can be a bit hostile but if you do your homework before asking questions, they are generally answered.

You also need to know if you are taking up on a real world project, you would need to learn other technologies - Javascript for client side interaction, html/css for UI. Django/Python are just one piece of the puzzle.

<comment><USER4> How significant an issue is it how old these books are? The Django Book is from 2007 and predates even Django version 1.0, and the "in progress" second edition on the website has its last update in March 2009. Practical Django Projects is from 2008. Do these books have enough special sauce relative to up-to-date Django 1.3 documentation and tutorials to be worthwhile?

<comment><USER5> Here is a good answer to your question: [http://www.quora.com/Django/Is-it-O- K-to-read-Django-beginne...](http://www.quora.com/Django/Is-it-O-K-to-read- Django-beginners-guides-for-1-0?q=1.2).

<comment><USER4> Thanks, that is helpful. It indicates there were bigger changes from 0.9 to 1.0 than any since then; The Django Book is based on 0.9, so maybe it isn't worth spending time with now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Just a heads up, the "Email" field in your profile isn't publicly visible. Instead, you'll want to put your address into the "About" field.

That said, I spent a few months last summer teaching some interns how to use Python and Django, with reasonable success, and I'd be more than happy to spend a few hours a week helping you out. My email address is in my profile :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! changed it. Nice, Ill shortly send you an email

</comment></comment><comment><USER7>
      > I know what I'm offering is limited in value relative to what you
      > are offering me, so I am open to give you anything else I could
      > reasonably offer for this mentorship.

Don't undervalue your skillset. If I were a python guru, I would immediately take up the offer and help you out quite a bit for what I would be getting in return. It's just as true that anybody could go online and learn all that "finance stuff" as they could learning all that "python stuff". The value for both subjects is in the mentorship to guide and accelerate the learning. It's not like you're offering home cleaning tips in exchange.

</comment><comment><USER8> Cool idea. An exchange of knowledge. Sadly, I neither live in San Fransisco nor am I an expert in Django/Python. However, I have a general question for you:

For those of us who are unable to pair with you, do you have any recommendation on articles/books we could pick up that you think would help us learn more about finance? Is there a "How to think like a financier"?

Thanks in advance.

<comment><AUTHOR> Id be glad to. Initially, the best thing to do is master financial accounting. Any financial accounting text book should do (the one i learned from is unique to my school unfortunately, but it was an excellent book, if I find a link to it Ill post it). It sounds tedious, but its pretty important to know this before anything. If you give me an idea of where you are, I could give you more relevant resources. If you are starting from a blank slate, this is the best place to start.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> My guess is you will get some emails directly from this post, but I would also recommend you check you HN office hours ( <http://hnofficehours.com/> ) it's basically what you're asking for but for the exchange part.

<comment><USER10> Thank you for reminding me to bug ez about stewardship of that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Been going through a similar process, here are some links

highly recommended - MIT OCW Python course

[http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and- comput...](http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer- science/6-00-introduction-to-computer-science-and-programming-fall-2008/)

Learning Python, Fourth Edition, By: Mark Lutz [http://my.safaribooksonline.com/book/programming/python/9780...](http://my.safaribooksonline.com/book/programming/python/9780596805395)

Official docs and tutorial <http://docs.python.org/tutorial/index.html>

A couple of others <http://personalpages.tds.net/~kent37/stories/00020.html>

<http://diveintopython.org/>

Django - official docs and tutorial <http://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/intro/tutorial01/>

Have started some work with this Django book but jury is still out [http://my.safaribooksonline.com/book/web- development/django/...](http://my.safaribooksonline.com/book/web- development/django/9781847196781)

<comment><USER12> I am an MIT student, and would not recommend 6.00 OCW. I've tutored a few people taking 6.00 and found their explanations over complicated and problems filtered with unnecessary details. Reading a book would be preferable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> For anyone who is a good self learner and wants to acquire this knowledge, i'd highly recommend the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) curriculum, which, as an added benefit, is a (the?) globally recognized financial qualification. The material is excellent and it's not very expensive to take the exam. Assuming you don't plan to get into investment banking, just do the first year which is about 2 months intensive study (+- some factor depending on your base knowledge). It's a very efficient way to acquire this information. <http://cfainstitute.org/>

<comment><AUTHOR> It is indeed, awesome suggestion

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I understand Python gets some mileage in the financial industry, particularly by quant/analyst types. I'm aware that NumPy and matplotlib see a lot of action - are there other open source packages that get a lot of traction? Are there contributions from companies that find their way back into the larger open source ecosystem?

I came to suggest that as an aid to your learning you could focus your attention on using, evaluating, and writing Python packages related to finance. There doesn't seem to be a lot out there: [http://pypi.python.org/pypi?%3Aaction=search&term=financ...](http://pypi.python.org/pypi?%3Aaction=search&term=finance&submit=search)

Examining packages like this where you already have a handle on what the code is supposed to be doing might be a good way to consume a lot of (hopefully some good, and probably a lot of not so good) Python code. Regardless of if you find a local mentor, contributing to or writing your own open source packages should prove to be a very valuable experience. Perhaps you could even start a package or set of general packages related to finance. Sort of like what SciPy is to NumPy. (FiPy?)

<comment><AUTHOR> Id love to do that, once my skill level allows for it. Thanks for the suggestion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Hey, I've already got an accountant (sister in law) and lawyer (father) to help me out, but I'd love to just have you as a friend and person I can turn to for advice when needed. I work with Python and Django all day (and night, my startup is built on Django) so I think perhaps I can be of assistance. Email's in my profile, feel free to contact me, IM me, whatever if you'd like some 1 on 1 django or python help.

<comment><AUTHOR> Likewise, and thank you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I was thinking of trading one day of code against one day from a graphic designer. Is that a trend, bartering for skills? This could be a great way to help each other out.

The way I would make sure the bargain is fair is by basing it on time. That's why I say start with one day. Then it's just a question of how skilled we each are, but worst case, I lost one day to code in exchange for an ugly design. I can live with that.

</comment><comment><USER17> There's also hackerbuddy.com, which exists to pair up wannabe hackers with wannabe mentors. Might not help you find someone local, though. For that, user groups are the way to go. Looks like there's an SF Python Meetup group that meets somewhat irregularly, and BayPIGgies down in Mountain View (which makes for a late night on Caltrain, but maybe once a month that's okay?).

<comment><USER18> ^^Agree. Check out meetups and hack-a-thons. Contact any hacker spaces if there are in your area. Look at startup sites and email lists, e.g. StartupDigest. Go to one or two meetups/ dev. events and make friends. BYOC - Bring your own code. It helps if you have something started already - <USER2> that your serious.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is an awesome idea, I love the fact it allows both learning parties "skin in the game", without a financial incentive.

</comment><comment><USER20> Out of curiosity what opportunities do you see for programmers in options/futures? Anything besides algo/hft stuff?

<comment><AUTHOR> The hft stuff is actually what I'm most skeptical of. I think the barrier to entry is huge in terms of knowledge and initial costs, unless you are an outlier. The opportunities are in more basic things. Mixing a decent quant background with a solid financial background is a potent combination for succesful fundamental value investing. Creating an automated tool to help structure the best ways to get equity exposure using options based on live data is another immediately foreseeable benefit.

<comment><USER21> What are those initial costs? Say I have the knowledge or ability to acquire it, how would I actually go about connecting myself to the great stock feed via (e.g.) Python?

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't know. It's something I know very little about. I speculate that you have to buy a seat or subscribe to a service at a major stock exchange (very expensive) or work through a third party/broker (still pretty expensive, but also less efficient). The reason behind my skepticism is that the only people I know making sustainable (and great) money from it have very deep pockets to begin with or are huge established players.

I was once visiting at a quant fund where they purchased an office building to get physically closer to a stock exchange. It was very expensive real estate and they were a massive fund. They had a lot talented people. Hard to compete with that.

I also read in the Economist a while ago (not sure if its really true, but its believable) that hedge funds are the largest consumers of computer processors in the US. But again, this is something I know very little about. I could be wrong.

<comment><USER11> if you want to play in HFT you want 1) wicked chops 2) collocation with exchange computers to pick up nickels faster than anyone else (was going to say sub-millisecond but my knowledge is not that granular) 3) access to historical tick data to analyze, which is expensive to subscribe to and manage (was going to say petabytes but my knowledge is not that granular)

The way to think of a big part of HFT is really just automating the old function of market-making, adjusting the bid-ask on many securities to keep things in line.

In the old days if you wanted to trade, you called a broker who took it off for a price, the bid-ask, and you tried not go get ripped off too much. Now institutions who want to trade look for ways to feed them into the maw of HFT without getting ripped off too much, and HFTs try to figure out how to get as much of a bid-ask as possible.

Surely the biggest consumers of processing power are the data centers of Google, Amazon etc... Places like Goldman have sizable clouds but I don't think they compete yet.

<comment><USER22> "was going to say sub-millisecond but my knowledge is not that granular" <\-- round-trip times are, to 90th percentile, sub-100-microsecond at colo

"was going to say petabytes but my knowledge is not that granular" <\-- entire market data is sub-100GB per day.

" have sizable clouds but I don't think they compete yet." <\-- cloud computing is not used in HFT

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Why not work for BrightScope.com? (financial analytics, python + django devs on staff)

<comment><USER24> Look up their CEO, Michael S Alfred, on FINRA brokercheck. That's why.</comment></comment>


The Facebook of China Suddenly Has a Myspace Feel to It - T-A http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-10-28/the-facebook-of-china-suddenly-has-a-myspace-feel-to-it.html

<comment><AUTHOR> To me Renren has always been an unimaginative Facebook clone, so I am in no way surprised that they lost out to WeChat and Weibo.

</comment><comment><USER2> IMO, Facebook will be another Myspace eventually.</comment>