Instagram's founder, a marketer who learned to code at night - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/2012/04/10/instagrams-ceo-had-no-formal-programming-training-hes-a-marketer-who-learned-to-code-by-night/ <comment><USER2> This is very misleading - his Quora answer (below) means that been involved (if at a limited capacity) with coding since he was very young.

"Depends what you mean by coding. I've been programming here and there since I was in middle school. In high school I was excused from my foreign language requirement so I could take more computer science classes. The first real class I took was in Pascal, and then later in c++. Independently I started playing with MySQL and PHP, but never did anything significant.

My freshman year at Stanford I took CS106X which was the first year's worth of CS in 1 quarter (it's usually two). I wouldn't say I did so well... I looked around and saw so many fantastically smart folks in that class and decided I was better off majoring in something like business. Looking back I wish I had stuck with it. It turns out that no undergrad class prepares you to start a startup -- you learn most of it as you do it."

Source: [http://www.businessinsider.com/meet-kevin-systrom-a-qa- the-2...](http://www.businessinsider.com/meet-kevin-systrom-a-qa-the-28-year- old-who-just-sold-his-startup-to-facebook-for-1-billion-2012-4#ixzz1rekicv2z)

</comment><comment><USER3> This just goes to show that the most critical ingredient to success is determination and focus, not any specific training.

If you are committed to a goal, picking up any specific hands-on skills (coding included) is just the matter of sticking to it.

Something to keep in mind when hiring.

<comment><USER4> "Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education alone will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan Press On, has solved and will always solve the problems of the human race."

Calvin Coolidge

"If you want to set off and go develop some grand new thing, you don't need millions of dollars of capitalization. You need enough pizza and Diet Coke to stick in your refrigerator, a cheap PC to work on and the dedication to go through with it."

John Carmack

<comment><USER5> Is it still true? can you actually do much nowdays (in that scale) on a cheap PC? it seems like heavy machines/cloud access is crucial

<comment><USER6> A cheap PC today is way more powerful than PCs of just a couple years ago. Server rooms have shrunk not just because of the cloud, but because the same amount of work can get done with less machine.

John Carmacks quote becomes more pertinent as time goes on because computing power is only becoming cheaper. And to directly address your point, the common person now has access to more computing power than ever before at a cost lower than ever in history because of the cloud.

If anything the barriers to entry continue to drop leaving only our lack of persistence as what stands between us and success.

<comment><USER7> >Server rooms have shrunk not just because of the cloud, but because the same amount of work can get done with less machine.

The demand for servers and compute power has increased because of the cloud. Just because server rooms have turned into datacenters does not mean they "shrunk", quite the opposite.

<comment><USER6> When I started at my previous company we had a server room that was full of computers. When I left we had consolidated to a single rack, and nothing had been moved to the cloud. While the companies demand for compute power went up during the time I worked there, the compute power available in a single machine went up faster than the demand.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Not entirely true though. He's been coding for a long time. He studied management science and engineering. It's not as if he wasn't technical before he started with instagram.

<comment><USER9> Today, nearly everyone has been coding for a long time. Everyone learns the basics in school. At college or university many will have a lot of further contact with many computer science concepts. It's a lot like math, really: everyone knows the basics (or has at least heard them once and promptly forgotten them), but that doesn't make everyone a mathatician.

(My dad, a construction engineer, learnt programming at college in the freaking late 70s. He never needed it during his long and successful career as a construction engineer, though, and has forgotten all about it. Today, anyone who studies anything to do with social sciences – for example – needs to have some coding skills if they want to do effective statistical analysis.)

There is a difference between that and building your own app.

<comment><USER10> I'm sorry but as a graduate trained social scientist (psychologist), this is simply not true (for the social sciences at least).

I do know how to program (R mostly, some python and java) but I am an extreme outlier with my field. In fact, people are ridiculously impressed at my use of awk and regex to extract relevant articles from a CSV file.

I would agree that everyone who studies the social sciences should have some familiarity with coding, but SPSS refutes your claim that it is a necessity. In addition, I had never coded a line before the age of 28 (I'm almost 31 now).

<comment><USER11> I'm 30 and I remember being taught the basics (in BASIC, no less) of programming in elementary school. My father talks about programming on punch cards when he was in high school. We both went to the same small rural schools, not even big city institutions.

Given that, I'm with the parent. It does seem kind of amazing that virtually anyone in the workforce today in North America didn't have at least some programming training. Whether they still remember is another matter, but I guess everyone comes from a different background.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I find the story misleading .... it is one thing to build a prototype and another thing to create an app to support millions of people and their pictures.. on top of that he has great connection and a great environment .... you must check the big picture and not just take one element to create that cinderella story.... by the way his co founder is a real CS genius .... let's face it ...it is easy to raise money right now in this crazy environment...I don't take away his hard work and talent but just check the picture too....

</comment><comment><USER13> It is good to know that there are GOOD marketers-turned-programmers in the world. I work with someone who bills himself as a programmer, in fact was hired to be "senior developer." This "senior developer" isn't. Instead, he's a marketer and bullshitter who lied his way into his position. He's not coded a single thing in the 8 months of his employ. Instead he has had his position changed to "marketing director" because "that's his niche."

I wonder what impact being around world-class engineers are Google had on Systrom's path.

</comment><comment><USER14> Regardless of how experienced he was technically, think this is another case, among many, that demonstrate just how important it is to have sharp marketing instincts.

Behind every internet hit was a lot of clever marketing and positioning that really made it (facebook, zynga, groupon, mint, plentyoffish, hotornot, the list goes on).

</comment><comment><USER15> Fair play to him. He's achieved to what many here aspire. I cannot begrudge him the success because he's NOT a developer.

If he was a developer and not a marketer, would the community be judging or discussing him in the same way?

</comment><comment><USER16> So I'm curious...what programming language did he learn and use for instagram?

<comment><USER17> The way I parse it is he built something in html5, and showed it at a party.

<comment><USER18> Owen, this is clearly a situation in which your insight is more valuable than most other people's. Care to elaborate on the Digg parallels?

<comment><USER17> I don't really want to draw parallels, because I don't know anyone at Instagram, but this really feels like a standard Silicon Valley puff piece to make the newly wealthy insiderish person look like a renaissance man. I'm going to guess that along with the $500k came the admonition to hire real engineers stat.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I would like to believe that his skill at coding had less to do with it versus the connections he had and the people he surrounded himself with.

As quite a few people have pointed out here going to Stanford in any capacity and graduating gives you a huge leg up in terms of the potential Alumni you can now reach out to.

Right place/Right Time/Right Product is what this boils down to. I am also assuming that he did not write most of what is the current Instagram code. Funny that no one mentions that Mike Krieger as his Cofounder in addition to the other engineers on the team.

<comment><USER19> I am going to reply to my own comment and also note that their first engineering hire, Shayne Sweeney also didn't go to college for programming.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> What's so hard to believe about that? Are there any programmers who aren't self taught these days . . .

<comment><USER21> Tons. Most.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I thought that most tech entrepreneurs have learned to code by themselves.

</comment><comment><USER23> Is that true about Codeacademy?

</comment><comment><USER24> another big dollar sign, another over'night' myth.

</comment><comment><USER25> From the article:

Unlike Mark Zuckerberg, the man responsible for acquiring the popular photo sharing app for $1 billion, Systrom received no formal engineering training.

From Systrom's bio on Instagram:

Kevin graduated from Stanford University in 2006 with a BS in Management Science & Engineering—he got his first taste of the startup world when he was an intern at Odeo that later became Twitter. He spent two years at Google—the first of which was working on Gmail, Google Reader, and other products...

Gotta love the spin.

<comment><USER26> Spin aside. His story would be really inspiring for folks i have met who think that for one to learn how to program, they need to go to Uni and apply for a cs degree which is bullshit.

<comment><USER27> The problem is that a lot of HR departments won't consider people without degrees. A Stanford degree opens a lot of doors.

This is one of the reasons I have a lot of hope in online education. When it becomes mainstream, HR departments won't be able to ignore it.

<comment><USER28> >>>The problem is that a lot of HR departments won't consider people without degrees.

Aren't people who are motivated to teach themselves coding the very kind of people who would want to _avoid_ dealing with Suit HR departments? Wouldn't they be more interested in working at a smaller firm, especially a startup, if they had to work for someone else at all?

<comment><USER18> Sure, but the fewer alternatives you have available to you the less control you have over your market rate. Ideally you'd like to be eminently qualified and command a bigco salary at a strong small firm.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Which Cryptocurrencies Will Survive? - <AUTHOR> https://kishansagathiya.github.io/blog.html#crypto1 <comment><USER2> Probably the ones that exhibit the opposite features the author purports will make a crypto survive. I'm not sure any exist that have those features</comment>


Show HN: Backblaze Reed-Solomon erasure codes - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Backblaze/JavaReedSolomon <comment><USER2> Nice. For those wondering what Reed-Solomon codes are all about: they are extra data that allows certain types of corruption to be detected and fixed.

I believe RS codes are used on optical media such as CDs and DVDs which allows perfect playback with a few scratches here and there. They're also used in QR codes, so even if the scan is imperfect, the data can be reconstructed correctly. In the case of QR codes, the standard allows the QR code creator to set the level of error correction, providing a wide range of of data size vs resilience to corruption choices.

<comment><AUTHOR> Exactly. Thanks for adding that. They're also used in nearly all large storage systems from Amazon S3 to RAID6.

<comment> m-app And also for Forward Error Correction (FEC) on Optical Transport Networks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> In 2000, I wrote a Java reed solomon implementation that also includes native libraries for linux-x86 and win32. I expect it to be at least 5x faster than a pure Java implementation.

[http://www.bytebucket.org/onionnetworks/fec](http://www.bytebucket.org/onionnetworks/fec)</comment>


BuzzFeed Journalists Vote to Unionize in Wake of Layoffs - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-12/buzzfeed-journalists-said-to-vote-to-unionize-in-wake-of-layoffs <comment><USER4> BuzzFeed founder Jonah Peretti told employees in 2015 that "when you look at companies that have unionized, the relationship [between managers and employees] is much more adversarial."

I suppose the remaining employees have taken the layoffs as a sign that management IS their adversary.

<comment><USER5> > I suppose the remaining employees have taken the layoffs as a sign that > management IS their adversary.

Nah, basic economics says that now that the supply of employees at Buzzfeed has been reduced, the remaining employees have more leverage to negotiate with management as rugged individualists. /s

<comment><USER6> I don't suppose they'll care to bail the company out with their own finances if the company were to teeter on bankruptcy for the sake of collectivism...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Do people read BuzzFeed because it's something to talk about during breaks at work? Other than clickbait, does the site provide any kind of meaningful content? Does BuzzFeed operate on a 'vision' or 'goal-driven journalism' ?! I never saw the site for more than a junkyard selling bullcrap to make money.

<comment><USER8> They do some serious journalism: [https://www.pulitzer.org/finalists/staff- buzzfeed-news](https://www.pulitzer.org/finalists/staff-buzzfeed-news)

<comment><USER9> Makes me wonder if they've had difficulties selling their work as credible to the general public, considering what the BuzzFeed name entails.

<comment><USER10> I absolutely discounted and avoided BuzzFeedNews work for the longest time, until I accidentally read one of their investigative pieces [1] and was blown away. I almost even think it vindicates the relentless stream of garbage from their main site, if it allows them to fund such stellar journalism.

      [1] https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/sheerafrenkel/fake-news-spreads-trump-around-the-world

<comment><USER11> The thing is that Buzzfeed cannot be trusted to write about topics like this. They have an explicit and overt anti-Trump bias and this article is suspect because of that. Really, any mainstream news organization using the term "fake news" and suggesting it impacted the 2016 election cannot be trusted.

It was Buzzfeed News that released the unsubstantiated Steele Dossier and more recently unsubstantiated and refuted claims against Michael Choen.

They are not journalists, they are activists.

<comment><USER12> Calling the Steele Dossier unsubstantiated is just objectively wrong considering we've seen many claims within it bear fruit over time. There's a reason why many agencies take it very seriously.

What exactly is your bias here?

<comment><USER11> It's not objectively wrong, even the author himself says only 70-90% of it is accurate and opinions go downhill from there. You can see for yourself:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump%E2%80%93Russia_dossier#V...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump%E2%80%93Russia_dossier#Varied_reactions_about_veracity)

<comment><USER12> Now you're intentionally moving the goalposts. The author says it's only 70-90% accurate because you cannot ever expect an intelligence dossier to not be potentially contaminated by other agents or sources looking to intentionally provide false or conflicting information.

That does not render the dossier unsubstantiated as you claimed because you have to evaluate the merit of each claim and use it as an avenue for further investigation. Which is exactly what the Wikipedia article you linked says: in that many claims have proven to be true over time despite some disinformation.

So can you tell me again what exactly makes it unsubstantiated?

<comment><USER11> Actually it's you who moved the goal posts. I said it's unsubstantiated, provided a link with examples and now you want to debate what level of unfounded rumor a report must contain before we can say it's unsubstantiated (>30% is enough imo).

<comment><USER12> You provided a link that proves the opposite. The fact is that the Steele Dossier has mostly credible claims, many of which has gone under investigation and proven to be truthful. To claim otherwise is to lie and/or deny the reality of the dossier. You can't talk about bias while also denying the facts.

<comment><USER11> _On January 11, 2017, Newsweek published a list of "13 things that don't add up" in the dossier, writing that it was a "strange mix of the amateur and the insightful" and stating that it "contains lots of Kremlin-related gossip that could indeed be, as the author claims, from deep insiders—or equally gleaned" from Russian newspapers and blogs.[177] Former UK ambassador to Russia Sir Tony Brenton stated that certain aspects of the dossier were inconsistent with British intelligence's understanding of how the Kremlin works, commenting: "I've seen quite a lot of intelligence on Russia, and there are some things in [the dossier] which look pretty shaky."_

<comment><USER12> It's funny that you share complaints about Buzzfeed, and yet you decide to quote me a website that does not run fact checkers and frequently shares literal fake news as cited in their own Wikipedia article.

It would be fitting that you would focus in on that paragraph on Wikipedia and not the fact that security professionals clearly took the document seriously enough to use it as a reasonable basis for investigation.

<comment><USER11> Well at this point I don't think we're going to agree on much. I see all of the literally unsubstantiated claims in the report as cause for suspicion and you don't. I don't think there's anything that's going to convince you of its shaky foundations. Do remember that _only_ buzzfeed reported this though. No other major news source was comfortable with its unsubstantiated nature. Again from wikipedia:

 _BuzzFeed was harshly criticized by several mainstream media outlets for releasing the dossier without verifying its allegations.[6][7] Washington Post columnist Margaret Sullivan called it "scurrilous allegations dressed up as an intelligence report meant to damage Donald Trump,"[85] while The New York Times noted that the publication sparked a debate centering on the use of unsubstantiated information from anonymous sources.[86] BuzzFeed's executive staff said the materials were newsworthy because they were "in wide circulation at the highest levels of American government and media" and argued that this justified public release.[87] The dossier's publication by BuzzFeed has always been defended by Jack Shafer, Politico's senior media writer, as well as by Richard Tofel of ProPublica and the Columbia Journalism Review. Shafer defended the public's right to know about the allegations against Trump, and saw a parallel in Judge Ungaro's ruling in the defamation suit filed by Aleksej Gubarev.[8]_

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Something to be applauded, but I fear that this may be too little too late, especially considering Buzzfeed's heavy dependency on "community content" (read: unpaid work).

<comment><USER14> >Something to be applauded, but I fear that this may be too little too late

Well you could also see it as history repeating itself. We're only at the start of the new gilded age and now it's service workers and people higher up the value chain that are seeing the consequences of squeezes in the work place.

Maybe this time around it'll be IT workers and journalists who discover that organised labour exists.

<comment><USER15> As far as I can tell the vast majority of unions almost entirely existed in dead industries that all moved to China (and now that China's wages are rising as they develop mature markets to other countries behind the times) or have very close connections to gov work.

<comment><USER16> Those developments didn't occur in a vacuum. American industry and politicians have for half a century worked tirelessly to crush American unions or render them as ineffective as possible.

There are plenty of examples of countries with strong unions, solid industry/services sectors and workers that aren't being exploited (read: underpaid, overworked, poor or unsafe working conditions, etc.). Every benefit you have as an employee that is enshrined in law was fought for by a union!

<comment><USER17> That is not true. Unions totally dominated major industries in the US. Most of those that didn't outsource saw themselves become uncompetitive and lose market share to foreign competitors.

Public services that unionized saw costs go up and quality stagnate or decrease.

>There are plenty of examples of countries with strong unions, solid industry/services sectors and workers that aren't being exploited

Like what? Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Germany? Any countries without strong work ethics and a tradition of engineering excellence? As for the Northern European zone, how has wage growth been in there these past 40 years?

<comment><USER16> > Unions totally dominated major industries in the US.

Yes. They DID. And since their heyday they've been sliced and diced at until there's nearly nothing left today.

>As for the Northern European zone, how has wage growth been in there these past 40 years?

Not a lot. But that's the case for all of the west, and certainly also for the US. Meanwhile, quality of life and happiness in those countries has risen. The US, on the other hand..

<comment><USER17> That's ahistorical. The reason union membership rates declined is that the industries they dominated shrank. By and large the unions killed their own industries. For example, passenger rail service was bankrupted by the punishing collective bargaining agreements the Brotherhoods coerced passenger rail lines into.

>>Not a lot. But that's the case for all of the west, and certainly also for the US.

Yes, and a large part of that is that any investor knows that any large stable concentration of skilled workers in the West will unionize and began extracting above market wages.

That's why the only unionized sectors in the West that have seen significant growth are those paid for by the taxpayer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I do not see unionizing as the solution. The entire industry needs to reinvent itself. It's totally understandable to seek security; but the issue is deeper. This wouldn't be the economic solution that can sustain itself – it maybe allows temporary job security.

The platforms that exist today are in danger of capitulating because the common consumer of our zeitgeist no longer has the behavior to pay for what they use. Social media has absolutely destroyed what paying for a product means. The common consumer has become used to not paying online because they are the product.

These businesses are not sustainable no matter what in the current zeitgeist of ad money and social media. Besides the option of all journalists working for Twitter and Facebook which wouldn't be my pick... but that's another topic.

We need something radically different to offset that imbalance.

<comment><USER19> Well they get upset if you tell them to learn how to code, could even get you banned from twitter.

I prefer independants these days, folks on bitchute and youtube and etc. The "organized press" has been gunning for shutting down independants with crap like six degrees of hitler, like what happened with gab. But ultimately it has next to zero overhead to start your own "channel", and you find people that actually do a pretty decent analysis without being obvious political tools or otherwise completely manipulative all the time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I think this is a perfect anti union example. These "journalists" were probably laid off because the market was not interested in their highly politicized outrage "journalism," possibly in addition the recent expiration of the Countering Disinformation and Propaganda act. A union would only have kept these people onboard as dead weight.

<comment><USER21> If they unionize that means that the company as a whole would reap what they sow with their editorial direction, instead of being able to just lay off the employees who carried out the marching orders. Their listicle and quizlet department can't save them now. I'm for it.

<comment><USER22> > If they unionize that means that the company as a whole would reap what they > sow with their editorial direction

...And so you mean the company would fold. What would be good about that?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> This is great news. Other industries, including software and IT, would stand to benefit from unionization, as well.

<comment><USER17> Look at Detroit in the 1950s (highest median income in the US) and look at it today (a ghost town), to see the long term effects of unionization on industry.

The reason the US software industry has been getting stronger and producing ever greater numbers of high paying jobs is that it enjoys the efficiencies of a free market in labor, aka it's not dominated by monopolizing unions.

<comment><USER24> The impact of the gas crisis, a preference for foreign imports, and the continued (real or percieved) lower quality of American-made vehicles might act as several intervening factors for the fall of Detroit; moreover, while all unions intervene on behalf of their employees, not all enforce wage ceilings.

The Screen Actors Guild is a counterexample for both points - <USER2> continues to be world-leading, and top actors continued to be paid well, while even the actor you've heard the least of has a minimum wage, down to rules around how many times they can be called-back for an audition.

The free market relies on free association, equal footing, and complete information for both parties. For most people, the business has a significant power advantage. Moreover, management is organizing together in order to depress wages through non-poach agreements - why shouldn't the workers work together as well?

<comment><USER17> Hollywood is a counterexample, I'll grant you that, but I'd argue it's only because the nature of film making - with many short-lived independent productions - doesn't give unionized work units the monopoly control they would have in large stable production facilities, like factories, and moreover, due to being cultural work, is very difficult to outsource.

Numerous industries in both the private and public sector have declined since being unionized.

Germany seems to have strong unions and a strong auto industry, but the German economy as a whole has suffered decades of wage stagnation. One outperforming industry alone doesn't negate the broader correlation between restrictive labor laws, and degraded economic performance.

>>The free market relies on free association, equal footing, and complete information for both parties.

A free market merely means anyone is free to offer their products/services, and everyone is free to take the best offer on the market.

There are plenty of market failures and government-imposed market distortions, but the idea that locking the market down with one-size-fits-all labor relation rules is going to mitigate the harm of these distortions is unbelievable. It's just going to make industry less effective, and in the long run, less beneficial to its workers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Seems like the kind of thing Buzzfeed would be all for

</comment><comment><USER26> Lean management may be the answer

</comment><comment><USER17> I expect this will affect the political impartiality of Buzzfeed journalists. They will have a direct financial interest in discrediting the idea of a free market in the public eye.

<comment><USER16> By your very own logic the editorial board/owners of news media have a financial interest in discrediting the idea of collective bargaining and profit sharing in the public eye, instead promoting free-market ideas at all costs.

If you claim they don't, then you can't draw that conclusion for unionized journalists either

<comment><USER17> Of course, the owners are not going to support restrictive labor relations laws that are directly aimed at reducing their private property and contracting rights in order to enable their employees to extract above-market wages from them.

But it's pretty hard for owners to prevent this kind of outcome. You are legally restricted from exercising your right to free association and only employing people who oppose unions, if you ever become an owner.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Single company unions are very interesting.

There's often very little reason not to join a single company union. Not joining means your coworkers will already dislike you, and typically your pay will be higher anyway. This makes single company unions incredibly easy to form strong monopolies on their employers labor supply.

Contrast this to monopolies in the greater market, a company typically needs to dominate the entire industry to form an effective monopoly.

Effectively unions limit a company's labor supply to a single supplier - <USER3> union - despite there often being hundreds of other near identical suppliers/unions in the greater marketplace. Imagine if you could only buy smartphones from Apple, and other people could only buy smartphones from samsung. That's effectly what single company unions accomplish. Quite miraculous.

<comment><USER28> The system you describe as a "single company union" \-- which seems to be a closed shop contract with a union that operates a hiring hall -- has been illegal in America since the late 1940s.

Therefore, that is not at all what Buzzfeed's journalists are organizing here.</comment></comment>


Trump attacks Nasa and claims the moon is 'a part' of Mars - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/jun/07/trump-moon-is-part-of-mars-tweet-nasa <comment><USER2> This is even more epic than Berlusconi has made for Italy.

Here we are on another league by itself. Why don't they kick him out of his chair? I cannot believe a US President can't be decostutitionalized by the Senate.</comment>


What happens to your files when a cloud service dies? - <AUTHOR> http://www.extremetech.com/computing/114803-megauploads-demise-what-happens-to-your-files-when-a-cloud-service-dies

<comment><USER3> My wife subscribed to an online, Quicken-like service a few years ago that went under, and then refused to allow her to download her information. After that, she realized how vulnerable her data was, since she has no clue who has her data, or what happened to it.

I don't use Dropbox or any online file service for exactly this reason.

I should really download all my gmail, but it's a major hassle having to take care of that, but I realize that's another major point of failure for me.

<comment> mike-cardwell Just use IMAP instead of or as well as the webmail interface. Configure your IMAP client to download all your mail locally.

This is not a major hassle if you actually care about retaining access to your email.

<comment><USER3> yes, I know I can use POP to download my mail, but the thing I've found is that it creates a huge, fragmented multi-gigabyte mail file in Thunderbird, which is annoying to have to take care of. But yes, I realize #firstworldproblems :)

<comment> mike-cardwell A quick search for "imap to maildir sync" shows up several free apps for syncing between IMAP and Maildir. That way, each email would live in its own file. Might be more manageable.

<comment><USER4> If you've got linux, or probably even OSX or cygwin, fetchmail is almost trivial to setup to do a single run to do this. Read more about it at [1]

[1] [http://www.ioncannon.net/system-administration/97/using- fetc...](http://www.ioncannon.net/system-administration/97/using-fetchmail- and-procmail-for-maildir-style-storage-from-a-pop3-account/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is why I like Dropbox. If it dies then I have all of my files on my desktop and my laptop anyway.

<comment> mike-cardwell Unless the Dropbox service sends a command to your Dropbox client to delete the files as part of its "death".

If somebody other than the people who made and run Dropbox were responsible for the action of shutting it down, this might happen accidentally. Or if the service was hacked.

It's still a good idea to have your own local backups.

<comment><USER6> This is true for _any_ service, cloud or not, that has permission to write to your hard drive. This ability has nothing to do with storage, and this risk is much, much less likely than simple bankruptcy or whatever.

<comment> mike-cardwell You misunderstand my point. Not backing up files on your hard drive because they're in Dropbox is not safe. Dropbox has built in functionality to delete those files from your hard drive. If any one of your clients or your account is compromised, or the Dropbox service is hacked, these files could disappear. Hence why you need backups.

Also, if the FBI starts pulling servers in a random order to shut Dropbox down, are you confident that wont cause Dropbox's systems to incorrectly send delete commands to your client just before the service disappears? If you are, you shouldn't be. Not after the "log in to any account without a password" issue of last year.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> <https://gist.github.com/1641705>

</comment><comment><USER8> As has been said time and time again, you should have at least 3 copies of every file you care about. One local, one local backup, and one remote backup.

If you need to restore a file quickly or the remote backup goes down you have your local backup. If your house burns down you have your remote backup.

<comment><USER9> The backup mantra I was taught: Files that don't exist in three places don't exist at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Not to be a broken record for everyone else but I always keep a local copy (several) of all my data. I have a folder called "Store" and it is a large tree of everything I ever plan to keep long term. Parts of it are on various cloud services (mainly DropBox) depending on the type of access I need but everything resides locally somewhere in that tree structure. From letters I wrote in 1990 to photos (critical ones) to pretty much every line of code I've ever written. That folder is backed up across several devices by a nightly sync because I came perilously close to loosing it a couple years back when I got lax. In short, when it comes to my long term data I trust no one. :) Not even myself most of the time!

</comment><comment><USER11> I guess the key here is, are you storing files or are you mirroring files?

It would seem that the best possible solution is to run your own file storage service, but who has the time/desire to manage that? For a free product like Dropbox, I'm content (for now, at least) to make that tradeoff. I don't have to worry about clients or syncing or servers, etc. I just save my files on my computer and then they appear on my other devices.

Perhaps the trick (to avoid data loss) is to backup locally as much as possible. I do backups once every 1-2 weeks depending on how often I'm nagged by Time Machine. That seems to be the only way to get the convenience of cloud storage while also not losing data if they go away.

<comment> mike-cardwell For people who don't have local backups, it's going to bite you one day. Here's how to set up free, hourly, incremental, encrypted backups with minimal effort. I do it on my laptop:

[https://grepular.com/Secure_Free_Incremental_and_Instant_Bac...](https://grepular.com/Secure_Free_Incremental_and_Instant_Backups_for_Linux)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The article's claim that AWS et al would do better under the circumstances seems dubious to say the least. Do they have an example of a more enterprise- oriented cloud service going under to generalize from?

</comment><comment><USER13> Mr Hand, I've been thinking. If I have access to the files. And you have access to the files. Then doesn't that make them "our files"? - <USER2>

</comment><comment><USER14> Use personal cloud services like Tonido with your public cloud services. That way you have a local copy as well.</comment>


(A Better) Text Based Flappy Bird - <AUTHOR> http://jbovatsek.com/projects/flaptext/

<comment><USER2> Not better than anything I have used as I don't know how to flap. I tried enter, shift, control, mouse click, space bar and tab. (FF 26, Ubuntu 12.10)</comment>


No software development process for startup - What do you think about this? - anonymous-dev

I have been pondering on this for a while and need to get some feedbacks from fellow developers.
Here is the scenario:
I am a developer documenting what I work on (apis, tools, etc) to. However, my colleagues don't. This have been driving me nuts but I cannot change them (I tried).
I also like to improve existing tools (build system/ code base). However, my colleagues don't.
Here is what every developer faces every day:
 - No automated build (e.g.: Continuous Integration Server)
 - Released archived as emails instead of FTP/Nexus like software.
 - Developer builds production releases on their dev machines.
 - Undocumented APIs/build system
 - No automated test
 - No clear roadmap
 - No code review
 - New developers are hired without going through any technical interviews nor have background
 or experience required (programming language, software dev lifecycle, mindset).
The business was not doing well until recently which explains why all those things creeped up (although IMHO, automated build and unit test should be done anyway).
Now, the business is doing well, I managed to develop an automated build system after a year or so battling with management and reworking tools to make it happen.
New hires are coming in but I feel those processes aren't really used/sought by other developers. Some management folks seems to care  about the issue but don't see the need as much as I do; a strong, well structured yet flexible software dev process is a very valuable asset for any company and should be respected fully.
No other developers (about 20) raised any concerns about the current software dev process, only me.
a) Am I too impatient since things are slowly changing ? b) Am I too process oriented ? This is a 5+ year old startup. c) Am I the problem ?
d) Is this software shop not a good place to work for and improve one's skills set ? e) Should I just suck it up ? That's the startup world.
I really appreciate your feedbacks. <comment><AUTHOR> Have you read the Pragmatic Programmer? They talk about how to handle a situation like this. From what I remember it said to build a pocket of excellence in your dev workspace first, and then expose everyone else to it.

Set up the CI/build server on your machine, have it email everyone when the build fails. They will see the use of the tool then, and when the team accepts it they will hopefully get an official server to host it on.

Write tests for your code, and when other devs work with you on issues, or break things, write tests and send to them "Hey, i wrote this test that shows the code you wrote is failing, can you make it pass?" Also ask others to make unit tests. You will have to write the bulk of tests. You probably know which others on the team are open to writing tests and working with you on the pocket of excellence. Get them involved first, and then the idea will spread. A good idea would be buy them copies of Pragmatic Programmer too.

No, you aren't process oriented. A software team that doesn't at least like the idea of automated builds, and tests is crazy. As far as if it's a good place to work and improve one's skills? That depends. In some teams you might never get them to adopt the pocket of excellence. If you are working in a place like that, then it's probably not a good place to work. But if you have a shot at converting them by just doing it on your own first, then it would be a great opportunity to get experience with setting up these aspects of a software shop. And you can put that on your resume, blog about it, etc. In that case it would be a great experience.

<comment> anonymous-dev I heard about the Pragmatic Programmer book. I guess it is now time to read it.

About CI server, it is on its way but only for production release. No continuous build for now mainly because there is no unit test infrastructure setup.

About writing test, well, no one uses unit-test for the reason above. It maybe a good time to introduce that and get to show them the light :)

"In some teams you might never get them to adopt the pocket of excellence. ". I am a bit afraid of that. Why ? I have spent some time trying to change things and yet I see little or no effort from others.

What are you thoughts on documenting things ?

<comment><AUTHOR> Very high level documentation is good. Things like, what are the steps to get the app to build, what tools do you need to install, frameworks, etc. What's the directory structure, so that a newcomer knows how to approach the project.

I'm a fan of self documenting code. Trying to document code is nice, but rarely possible to keep up to date. I do like to put short comments on a method if the name and class its in don't provide enough info. It's better to spend time writing code and tests than documentation.

You can't always convince people to do things they don't want to do. Some people don't care about putting more than the minimum of effort into work. Most people hate change. But if you just go ahead and create the pocket of excellence, people tend to notice why its good and if you get momentum then the rest will follow. Who are the influential people on your team who if they started using these good practices, the rest would follow? How do you think you should best convince them? For some people, find out what motivates them, and then see if you can explain to them how adopting these practices would benefit them.

<comment> anonymous-dev About the first paragraph, that's exactly what I am trying to get going.

About the second paragraph, I 100% agree with this.

I did create this pocket of excellence (myself only) and lead the way for some time. Yet no one notices it and the ones who do, well, they don't care about it - both for junior and senior developers. IMO, the most influential peoples are so called "rockstar" developers within the company and they clearly stated they don't see the interests. I already talked to them and attempted to convince them. I am running out of ideas.

<comment><AUTHOR> Why are the rockstar dev's not interested in things like automated builds, and unit tests? Are they really "rockstar" dev's? It might be political. Maybe they like being the only ones who know how to build the product, or that it has to be done on their machines.

Sometimes people shoot down ideas of those below them because they don't want to see a "threat" rise up to compete with them. Maybe if you can't convince the rockstars, just get everyone else onboard.

So you created the "pocket", are you getting anyone else involved? If you already tried to get official adoption of these practices and that didn't work, I dunno. You might just get it done. A lot of times managers ignore requests like this because they don't want to bother with change. THey don't realize the benefit, or they don't want to try to force change on a team (maybe they don't want to adopt anything the rockstars aren't into).

<comment> anonymous-dev "Rockstar" developers are simply jack of all trade developers with the most experience by far in the company - they created the entire system from scratch. About it being a political thing, I believe so.

I failed to get everyone else on board (even new hires as per my last discussion) because they seems to have already pledged allegiance to the "rockstars" AND/OR don't give a fuck about good engineering/project management practices. Eg: Some have already told things like "I don't mind having a commit fixing two issues at once while the bug report clearly specifies to fix only one of them. I don't mind not raising an issue in the bug tracker about the second bug I silently fixed".

Some managers are former developers who did implement those practices while they were devs but they don't see the urge now. Maybe they know they will not have to fix the issues directly and that might be the reason why they don't push those changes as much. What do you think ?

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, there is no guidebook for this kind of thing. I don't know what to tell you. THere are probably people who know how to accomplish what you are trying to do, but I don't know how to advise you past this point.

The takeaway is that while you sound like you are probably a solid developer who's passionate about good software dev practices, the thing you need to work on is people skills, and the politics on how to get what you want. Basically you have a set of things you want to see done from a tech perspective, but now you need to figure out how to effect that change in the company you're in. It's not as easy as it sounds. It's not as easy as explaining the benefits to people. A lot of times, to be honest, I've felt very passionate about something and when it came time to try to convince others, I couldn't really convince them and it was really frustrating. The only thing you can do in those cases is to learn to be less rigid about it. If it's going to bother so much that youa re going to keep stickling about it, you might better off working somewhere else.

I learned that I am sometimes very rigid in how I want things done, but that is only my idealized version of how thing should be. The rest of the team may not want to adopt my ideas, so I had to learn to accept that. There is the perfect way of doing things, an then there is how things are done in real life. Everyone has different motivations. Sometimes people just aren't into their software dev jobs, sometimes they just know software as they learned it years ago and don't want to learn to do things the "right" way, or don't want to learn new technologies. Sometimes the motivations are political. Sometimes it is possible. I think it's often impossible to effect change if the "rockstars" aren't in agreement, often as we discussed before, because they don't want the guys lower on the totem pole showing them up by improving things.

It sounds like you have reached a dead end. You can either figure out how to do it on your own, which will take soft skills. You won't do it by convincing anyone that your ideas are technically the right way to do things. People generally don't care about that in the real/business world. You will have to learn to influence people, to convince them to do things they aren't into. One of the ways I know of is to do the pocket of excellence and make the team dependent on your way of doing things, and then when they are dependent on it, expand, and formalize it. The CI server is running in a VM on your workstation. You just use it and set it up, and make sure everyone on the team can access it. When they want a build, you send them a link to the URL for your CruiseControl instance (o whatever CI tool). They want to fix a piece of code you are in charge of? If they code a bug, make a unit test and ask them to write code to make the test pass. Just set things up the way you want as much as possible an force people to use it. Don't give them a choice. If yuo try to have a discussion in which you envision people agreeing with your way of doing things, that will never work. Just force them to move in the right direction by doing it. Managers aren't as powerful as you might think. The team generally does what they want. The worst that could happen is they ask you to cease and desist, but they probably won't because they probably know that you are a good contributor and they will have to put up with your desire to do things "right".

That's it, basically is to keep trying, but don't try to argue verbally, just put stuff in place and don't give people a choice, or you can find other employment. Focus on small things, and 1-2 changes at a time, you don't want to change everything at once.

Hope this helps.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> Personally I'd probably leave. I think there is a point where its healthy to try to change the system but it sounds like you are fighting a current that is too strong to encourage the way you want to work.

I believe you when you say your efforts are needed - the problem is management very frequently has a hard time being able to understand that there is an upfront cost that will eventually pay off. They are looking at spreadsheets and just want to see that profit column keep on going up - you essentially are proposing that the profit column should go down a bit (development costs) with the promise that it will eventually go up much faster.

I've found that software companies either qet the necessity of quality/process or don't (also some types of businesses do not really need much software quality). Most of the time this is determined by if they have technical people in the leadership ranks or not. By the hiring practices you listed Im guessing they don't get how software quality and process impacts the bottom line.

My pessimistic view is that very little will change with the exception of burning yourself out - sorry for the dire prediction Ive just been there myself.

<comment> anonymous-dev "Most of the time this is determined by if they have technical people in the leadership ranks or not.", can you elaborate a bit on this ?

According to my experience, management has always viewed software as binary world: it works or it does not.

About your last sentence, I was about to but gave myself a reason no to; instead of trying to change things, I simply leave them the way they are and stop "bitching" about it. Either way, I will see if good engineering practices are really important or if a team can do without it (and what the potential cost would be).

Now, my only focus is becoming good at spotting bugs, fixing them and implementing features with fewest lines possible (a.k.a Spartan programming) :)

<comment><USER3> > "Most of the time this is determined by if they have technical people in the > leadership ranks or not.", can you elaborate a bit on this ?

From my experience, non-technical managers often don't realize the importance of these processes. Us programmers know how important is to control how the codebase grows—when there are more than a few programmers touching the code, and when the software keeps growing, a good test suite will prevent the team from having to spend a lot of time trying to change something in the future without breaking anything else (often in vain.)

I worked for both kind of people, those who understand and those who don't. I found it was a huge PITA to work for people who don't understand, especially if they can influence the hiring process. They will have a direct impact on the culture of the team, and I don't believe a single developer can change this alone.

This is just anecdotal, but the place where I worked for this kind of people just closed the doors; the software grew to a point where it was unmaintanable and, despite all my efforts to convince them on fixing things instead of putting new features like mad, nobody ever listened. Now talk about frustration...

Edit: of course I don't believe _every_ non-tech manager is like this. There are those who, despite knowing about nothing when it comes to software development, knows how to identify someone who does, hires this person and trusts their opinion. Basically, people who know what they don't know.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Don't worry about the process. Worry about the outcome of the process. Is the site always down? Do you fail to ship? If so then you need to fix things. Otherwise just let people work the way that lets them be most productive.

For instance, I'm not a fan of unit testing. I find that 99% of the time when my tests fail, the failure is the test itself, not he code. WHen I'm forced to write uni tests for everything, it slows me down greatly. I prefer to keep my code clean and readable, instead of focusing on 100% code coverage. The same principle applies to CI and other such "processes", in my experience. But thats just me, everyone works their own way.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree with this, if everything works with the company's current process, there will be no way to convince people to change, and there wouldn't be any reason to.

Try to maybe focus on fixing problems that your company actually has.

<comment> anonymous-dev Will do that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I recently quit my job for pretty much the same reasons. (I even created an auto build system, too... weird.) I actually faced a professional development dilemma: No forward progress. In an environment like that, where you have 20+ other people who don't care, aren't paying attention, just hack things together... you're not going to make forward progress (professionally, and the business will eventually be burdened with wanted growth and a messy code base, or something will break big-time and cause major loss of revenue). They are and they will continue to be stuck in the muck until someone closer to the top most likely runs into a very hard decision, or looses a great deal of money and has to face up to the reality of how they're building their business. I recommend moving on. There's some positive to be said for being pragmatic (sometimes you just have to hack it). However, if this culture is persistent, it's a BAD culture, especially if they hire inexperienced / unqualified people, and start teaching them these habits / traits (bad ju-ju for everyone, the entire development world, when places operate like this).

</comment><comment><USER6> "Now, the business is doing well"

That is what matters to the decision makers in any business at the end of the day. So if that is the case, you might not be able to convince the management. Sure, your points are valid and I have the same frustration at work many times but understand that management doesn't care about proper unit testing etc. unless it impacts the business. As someone else pointed out, if you have critical production bugs frequently causing loss (specifically monetary), then you have a solid case to argue to change the process.

Not to say that you should just suck it up. I think it is worth to try and do things the best way but just keep in mind that you should not expect management to just do it because it is the right way to do it. So keep expectations low but keep trying as well.

<comment> anonymous-dev This reminds me of "Happiness = Expectations - results". You are spot on.

I think I mixed up my personal expectations (as a solo developer) with those of my company. Will keep my work related expectations low and solo developer related high.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Lead by doing. Show what you're doing and why, and get others to support your vision. Then it may be easier to get others do tackle some of the challenges with you.

<comment> anonymous-dev I did try that and it did not work. See explanation above.</comment></comment>


General Game Playing with Schema Networks - <AUTHOR> https://www.vicarious.com/general-game-playing-with-schema-networks.html <comment><USER2> Here's a link to the paper as well (ICML 2017 preprint)

[https://www.vicarious.com/img/icml2017-schemas.pdf](https://www.vicarious.com/img/icml2017-schemas.pdf)</comment>


Premium prices for GPL software: The curious case of commercial Wordpress themes - <AUTHOR> http://bengtan.com/node/1-charging-premium-for-gpl-and-wordpress-commercial-themes

<comment><USER2> I think a huge point is being missed. If I bought a wordpress theme, I wouldn't be inclined to resell it or give it away simply because I want my site to look more unique.</comment>


Cargo Status Update - <AUTHOR> https://gist.github.com/wycats/9678784

<comment><USER2> I don't really understand why you'd want to have a design like Git as opposed to one (or more) libraries, where commands would simply be endpoints but not rely on each other.</comment>


Ask YC: Startup Interview Tips - <AUTHOR>

Hello, I am freshly unemployed and am about to embark on a few interviews with different startups.  Can anyone recommend any tried and true resources or advice that might set interviewing at a startup apart from interviewing at a regular company/corporation? <comment><USER2> Write and release code. Startups often say that they have to hire great people, but I know plenty that would be happy with a junior person. What they can't handle is someone who requires a lot of hand holding.

The engineers are going to google you before you interview. If they can't find anything to judge you on they're going to ask you the same questions they would ask themselves (often full of gotchas that you would only know if you actually worked at the company).

If you have released code, they can judge you before hand, make a decision about whether they have a need for someone at your level, and then re-orient their interview questions to whether or not they like you enough to work with you.

Sorry if I incorrectly assumed junior, although frankly a lot of start up engineers would assume that no matter what if they can't find an public contributions from you.

If you're not sure what build you might try building something using the startup's API.

<comment><USER3> Agreed! It's amazing how many applicants you get that have only ever written code for school assignments or other jobs. Contribute to OS, start a project, just do something visible! It also shows you actually _like_ what you do, which startups are definitely looking for.

<comment><USER4> Contributing to OSS would definitely make a candidate stand out in my eyes. Not to mention that you can also review his/her code. Few things in life are more annoying than interviewing a candidate who's fancies himself a programmer b/c he read a "Program ____ in 24 hours".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The biggest issue is whom you choose to interview with. The worst case scenario is a false positive = you get hired and it is a bad match/you don't like the job. This isn't a corpo job where you can hide or distract yourself all day.

So with that in mind be very honest and only look at projects/companies that you are genuinely interested in. Don't reach for any position.

Make sure you like the co-workers and do some research on the product and the market.

<comment><USER6> Building on the last line of parent's comment, you should also research your co-workers ahead of time. Spend an hour or two googling the company, their email addresses, screen names, etc. If you're decent with Google, you'll find a lot. You should be able to get some idea of who you'll be talking with and working with ahead of time, which, in my case, helped me to be more confident during the interviews.

Anecdote: I recently came home from an interview at a startup, one which shall go unnamed, and decided to do more googling of their employees. I found that they had been taking parts of my cover letter, which was admittedly eccentric, and Twittering them amongst themselves, mocking me. How embarrassing, more so since I had just been in interviewing with them. Jerks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> When you're in the interview, be sure to ask a lot of questions about the company's origins and the founders' backgrounds. Ask about the company's strategic direction and where they want to be in 6 months/year/5 years...

I had put in a couple of months at a startup of sorts (not tech related, but in 'green' real estate development) doing sales and biz dev work. I left because the founder wasn't putting his all into it and the company began to suffer. He had other business interests and obligations that prevented him from making this company his primary focus. The experience taught me that leadership and strategic planning/execution are extremely important. It can become frustrating if you don't agree with the way your employer makes decisions, especially if you come from a business background.

In short, make sure the people you're working for know what they're doing.

<comment><AUTHOR> That is really great advice. I will definitely research that. Thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> When I interviewed for a startup about a year ago, I wrote down some questions that I needed to have answered before I would take a position

[http://www.innovationontherun.com/considering-working- for-a-...](http://www.innovationontherun.com/considering-working-for-a- startup-34-questions-to-ask-before-signing-up/)

Hope it helps.

</comment><comment><USER9> I just started interviewing developers for Tipjoy. I don't think there is anything in particular different about a startup. We want really smart people. I really like to hear about projects done on the side, when no one was looking and you didn't have to do it. You should check out Tipjoy, and the other good YC companies who are hiring: <http://news.ycombinator.com/jobs>

</comment><comment><USER10> I totally agree with the above comment, but would also add that most start-ups are really tight and small groups... who also happen to be way more susceptible to turnover. The best thing to do is to be yourself, and make an honest judgment if your culture meshes well with those around you. Meshing together is often a much bigger deal than experience, at least in my experience.

</comment><comment><USER4> Not a tip...

But I'm curious, does anyone else get rubbed the wrong way by some of these job descriptions for these startups?

A good portion of them want "super smart", "kick-ass", "rockstar" developers and a number of them even incorporate puzzles. I understand people will mimic Google but don't ya'll think it's going a bit too far?

Or does it really work?

<comment><USER11> When I interview, I'm most interested in the jobs which sound challenging, and expect me to be excited about 'doing a bit extra' because that's actually fun. That's why we put this sort of thing in our job description. We want people who love this sort of stuff like we do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Be honest with the co and yourself. Self select who you interview with make sure its where you want to be. Large corporate jobs can bounce back from bad hire easier that a small co. Don't snowjob them, be honest, and make sure its a good fit. If so, work as hard as you can to get the job, and bust arse like never before once you do!

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for all the responses! One piece of information I did not mention is that I am not an engineer/hacker but a biz dev/sales guy. I don't think that changes much but just thought I would put it out there in case it does change anything. Thus far I have been very selective about the startups I have chosen to interview with. From the advice here, it looks like I should continue doing that.

<comment><USER12> Ahhh, a sales guy. :) Bit of a brain dump here, but I've been on both ends of this - the hiring end, and the sales guy end (and the tech dev end - wait, can you be on three ends?)

Like any sales jobs, have numbers. Show what you did, where and why it's relevant. Don't be too salesy in the interview. Show they why you are committed to THIS opportunity, not that you could sell ice to well, folks who live in cold places. Show that you've done your homework on their market. Show them why you're more than a hired gun. Be ready to pitch whatever they throw at you. Know their competitors dead. Seriously, do all your homework. Also, building on what was said before, it doesn't hurt to familiarize yourself with the founders / head folk's previous work lives. Google is your friend.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> From my experience, most companies want someone who will add value on day one and who gets along with the existing team.

Don't be intimidated by the questions. Keep your confidence high and make sure to answer honestly in a straight forward manner.

Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER14> Look at Paul Tyma's _Howto Pass a Silicon Valley Software Engineering Interview_

[http://paultyma.blogspot.com/2007/03/howto-pass-silicon- vall...](http://paultyma.blogspot.com/2007/03/howto-pass-silicon-valley- software.html)</comment>


fman: The addictive file manager - <AUTHOR> https://betalist.com/startups/fman <comment><USER2> This seems to be devoid of any actual information besides what platforms it works on, and at least on my phone, I can't find any links to more information. What features does this have that make it better than what I already use? Is it open source, and if so, where can I look at the source code? Do I have to pay for this app or is it free (as in free beer)?

<comment><USER2> Ah, from viewing the site on my desktop, I can see the link to the main site. It appears to be a paid app (but still in pre-release)

EDIT: link to actual site: [https://fman.io/](https://fman.io/)</comment></comment>


Slowly we're being phased out of the internet - <AUTHOR> I have a MacBook Air 2011 with Lion and Safari 6. Today Google released Meet and I can't even know what's that about, their web page won't even show me a welcome page showcasing the features with some cool pics or something, instead I get a blank page saying I am not welcome.
Sadly that same experience has been happening lately in every major website I visit, like Twitter, Facebook, Gmail, Medium. Sometimes I go to the Develop menu and change my user agent to Safari 7 and now they let me in, WTF? Am I welcome or not?
Some people would say I should upgrade my OS, and even if I would like to do that, my laptop only has 2GB RAM so it would be almost impossible to even open notepad without making it crawl to a halt, while right now from start up to the web it takes less than five seconds. So no, that's not an option, much less buying a new computer.
I am not saying the world should stop progress to accommodate our needs, or that everybody should feel compassionate for poor, insane and plain dumb people like me, I just say it is hard to accept that a perfectly fine computer no longer has access to the modern internet.
We're being phased out, and that's definitely a sad feeling. <comment><USER2> That said, there are still good web sites, you can browse them:

[http://gnu.org](http://gnu.org) [http://fsf.org](http://fsf.org) [http://stallman.org](http://stallman.org) [http://gutenberg.org](http://gutenberg.org) [http://cliki.net](http://cliki.net) [http://informatimago.com](http://informatimago.com)

Perhaps there's a pattern in there...

<comment><USER3> Not to mention this very site, which still works fine on my 2011 Thinkpad x120. That being said, I have the same feeling. I can run a modern web browser because I use Arch, but it's slow and my poor old thinkpad gets very hot when I try to view the internet. Sites I avoid: most news outlets, all social networking sites. Sites I visit: this site, aldaily.com, software project websites and documentation, various technical fora. There's still a good internet out there, I just can't participate in the mainstream internet on my old laptop.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> You can use a browser that isn't tied to your OS version, either Chrome or Firefox should do.

Or you could blame Apple for an OS/browser that can't run on 2GB and laptops that you can't upgrade.

Sure, everyone could keep supporting Safari 6, but there's a real cost to that and it will only keep getting paid while there are enough Safari 6 users.</comment>


Trump University Settles Fraud Claims for $25M - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2016-11-18/trump-university-settles-fraud-claims-for-25-million <comment><USER3> _"Donald Trump fought us every step of the way, filing baseless charges and fruitless appeals and refusing to settle for even modest amounts of compensation for the victims of his phony university," Schneiderman said in a statement. "Today, that all changes. Today's $25 million settlement agreement is a stunning reversal by Donald Trump and a major victory for the over 6,000 victims of his fraudulent university."_

That's not even 5k a head. A pittance, really.

<comment><USER4> You forgot to take the attorney's fees off the top first. Even at the low end of the scale ~30%, that brings the individual payouts to less than $3K.

<comment><USER5> _" Lawyers for the students agreed to forgo legal fees as part of the settlement."_

<comment><USER4> You're right. That detail was left out of another article I read about the case, which must have been what I used as my source. It seems strange that attorneys would waive fees in a suit against a billionaire that has dragged out for nearly 4 years now. That's a lot of goodwill.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Weren't the defendants in a position of greater leverage once he was elected president? From what I'd read, it would have been the first time a sitting president was forced to defend himself in a criminal trial. So if you've endured this legal battle for so long, why settle for a relatively small amount just when your leverage has started to climb?

<comment><USER7> No, he had less leverage. Ongoing lawsuits are embarrassing. Being deposed as the sitting President is _really_ embarrassing. Settling the case was the smart thing.

<comment><USER8> Pretty sure that OP was wondering why the plaintiffs agreed to settle, not the other way around.

<comment><USER6> Of course that was my point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I can only wonder what effect this would have on voters if it settled prior the the election.

<comment><USER9> None. The people who opposed Trump would still have opposed him, and the people who supported him would have brought up the Clinton email scandal and accused the media of slander and propaganda for even trying to equivocate him with "crooked Hillary."

Trump quipped during the election that he could shoot somebody and not lose voters, and I kind of suspect he wasn't wrong. His support was a matter of reactionist ideology - it didn't matter if he was honest, competent, or sincere, only that he served as the vessel for the right wing zeitgeist.

<comment><USER10> It makes you wonder how many people consider politics to be like sport - <USER2> have your team and stick with them. Even if a player on a team is accused of a crime (usually sexual) fans often stick with them and blame the victim instead.

<comment><USER11> Its all.belief and tribalism. Just like religion and sports. Fundamental lizard brain stuff.

Scary to see where thats led us throughout history.

<comment><USER9> knee-jerk tribalism a difficult trap to avoid. Even on HN, which is supposed to self-select for high intellect and curiosity, politics seems to short- circuit otherwise reasonable and intelligent people's rational thinking. I've fallen prey to it a number of times without even realizing it.

<comment><USER12> Agreed. Forums do have one advantage: you have the opportunity to review what you wrote before you submit. And if we can note politely when we see it in others, maybe we can build better habits. Who knows? We manage to shape our speech in different contexts.

Maybe I could have a little js script (that I run myself) that detects language I'd rather not use. Kind of like a spell checker. I could choose to turn it on, and I could choose to ignore its suggestions. Or maybe more like an ignition interlock, but one I can override :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I wonder if Donald Trump of 2012 would let a President Elect who was found to have conned thousands without making a big deal of it. "Worst abuse of power ever" or something like that.

<comment><USER14> The thing with a settlement. He now wont be found to have conned thousands.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> If you are curious like I was why this wasn't a bigger issue during the election, turns out the other candidate wasn't in a position to take the moral high ground on this either.

[http://www.politico.com/story/2016/08/bill-clinton- laureate-...](http://www.politico.com/story/2016/08/bill-clinton-laureate-for- profit-college-pay-226971)

<comment><USER16> One big difference is that Laureate's schools are generally legitimate, with proper accreditation and whose degrees actually have some value. Generally about the worst you can say for most of the programs and schools is that you may have been able to get a better deal financial at a non-profit school.

Trump University, on the other hand, was pretty much a straight up rip off.</comment></comment>


Excellent Article on United States New Visa Discrimination - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2015/12/16/a-call-to-arms-against-mccarthy-2-0/ <comment><USER2> This "excellent article" could use some basic fact-checking.

9/11 terrorists nations of origin included UAE, Egypt, and Lebanon, not just Saudi Arabia.

Farook was born in the USA, not Pakistan.

Sudan is not mentioned in the bill. Nor is Iran.

Much of the rest of the article is similarly hyperbolic, with basic factual errors.

The actual text of the final bill is here:

[https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/house- bill/158/...](https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/house- bill/158/text)</comment>


One day left to apply for Shotput Ventures summer 2009 - <AUTHOR> http://www.shotputventures.com/

<comment><USER2> I don't understand why so many similar programs automatically excludes single founders like me.

<comment><USER3> Having multiple founders greatly reduces the chance of a startup being abandoned.

<comment><USER4> I agree whole-heartedly with that statement.

However, I've seen quite a few startups funded by YC and other incubators break up because one guy thought he had to have a token co-founder and that person wasn't ultimately into it.

So I wonder if this sort of attitude is a good thing, or if it just means "If you're a single founder, get someone to apply with you so you get in."

<comment><USER5> That is definitely a problem. I'm not sure what to do about it. Would those startups have done any better without the extra founder? Maybe, maybe not. We need more data.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Atlanta is a beautiful place in the summer. Come hack with us!

<comment><USER7> _"Atlanta is a beautiful place in the summer."_

I thought they called it "Hotlanta" cuz it's hot and humid. No?

<comment><USER8> It's a trick statement. Summer is beautiful, but is one of 5 seasons, and only lasts from May until mid-June. Basically it goes: Spring, Summer, Hell, Football Season, and Christmas. Football Season is the best time to be in Atlanta.</comment></comment></comment>


Iowa City officer develops software to find stolen Wi-Fi-enabled devices - <AUTHOR> http://www.thegazette.com/subject/news/public-safety/iowa-city-officer-develops-software-to-find-stolen-wi-fi-enabled-devices-20150907 <comment><USER2> I wonder if the survey sent to the other law enforcement agencies mentions remote surveillance of suspects. It's a pretty small leap from "finding stolen phones" to "finding any phone".

On the other hand, I really like the idea of a LoJack for cell phones, and they've got a nice entrepreneurial story written about the guy, so good for him.

Do stingrays already spoof wifi networks? Should be pretty easy to come up with a wifi network that the target phone will join, and then you get to snoop Internet traffic along with cellular.

</comment><comment><USER3> While I do give kudos to this guy for stepping outside of his comfort zone and making a product, I have to say that for a device meant to help solve 'high level crimes' it's a complete fail. It's trivially easy to disable the WiFi radio on both Android and iOS devices. Additionally, with a little more work, it's possible to also cause the kernel to report a different MAC address than the one assigned to the radio during manufacture. Am I missing something here?

<comment><USER4> Yes. Criminals are dumb, and while you wouldn't catch them all, you could certainly use it to catch some.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Sad:

"[The officer] said he applied that concept to his product, which was designed by a developer he worked with."

I thought they had a programming cop. That would be sweet.</comment>


Tell HN: Raise your freelance rates - <AUTHOR>

I just saw this comment about top PHP and Rails devs in NYC charging $65-75 / hr:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4604780
Not picking on the comment author, but I know that the top devs in NYC are charging way more than that. It took me years to realize that I should be charging way more than that as well, and I still need a gentle reminder every now and then that I'm a professional, I help people make money, and I should charge accordingly.
I'm not selling anything here, just a friendly reminder to HN freelancers that you're probably not charging enough and you need to raise your rates. I recently found this ebook (not mine, no affiliation, no gain for me if you buy it) to be very helpful and worth every single penny that I spent on it. I made it back 100x over within a couple days.
http://doubleyourfreelancingrate.com
I know what most of you are thinking: "that's fine for those guys, but I can't raise my rates because I'm not a rockstar programmer / located in the right place / a scam artist / someone with a huge following."
But you probably can, and it'll probably be easier than you think. I just landed a job at $150 / hr, when I had been charging $95 / hr. And literally all I did was change my rate on the estimate form. The client didn't even mention it.
You can do this. <comment><USER2> _I'm not selling anything here, just a friendly reminder to HN freelancers that you're probably not charging enough and you need to raise your rates._

Here's a friendly reminder of my own: be careful not to confuse anecdote with rule of law. Dangerous things can and do happen.

<comment><AUTHOR> I stand by what I said: most freelancer developers are not charging what they could be. Prompting some of them to consider that fact and research/test accordingly is hardly dangerous.</comment></comment>


I just got a job offer for less than I asked for, what should I do now? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.jobety.com/i-just-got-a-job-offer-for-less-than-i-asked-for-what-should-i-do-now/

<comment><USER2> The reality is that when a company offers you less then what you are asking for - they are devaluing your worth (currently and in the future). After working in freelance for roughly a decade and not running a small agency, I've learned that in order to become successful, you have to strive for your ideal clients. When clients are less-ideal, that is when issues arise - whether it's the cost factor, attitude, adding large edits to original project scope...etc. This should be the same when looking for a job. During an interview, you should be interviewing the company just like they are interviewing you. When it's a right fit for both sides, expectations will be the site, value will be the same (if not higher), and the attitude/work environment will be superior.

The #1 reason why people don't succeed - whether it's freelance, running a company, or being an employee is that they under-value themselves and their work.

</comment><comment><USER3> This video by Ramit Seth gives a good view on how to do salary negotiation: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elbjLyz1SHI&list=PLD14FA0C81E...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elbjLyz1SHI&list=PLD14FA0C81E7008A7)</comment>


Elon Musk just undercut investor confidence by cutting off analysts - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-05-02/tesla-earnings-raising-many-questions-interesting-or-not <comment><USER2> Found this image of the highlights: [https://imgur.com/a/fXsRt53](https://imgur.com/a/fXsRt53)

Musk needs to sleep and live like a human being for a bit. He's acting like an idiot.</comment>


Commercial Open Source in Europe Vs. the US - <AUTHOR> http://lmaugustin.typepad.com/lma/2008/09/commercial-open-source-in-europe-verses-the-us.html <comment><USER2> _Dual licensing business models: (European View) Not true open source. Proprietary business models using Open Source for PR and marketing._

It should be noted here that the two really notable champions of the dual license model, Trolltech and MySQL, are both European.

</comment><comment><USER3> Interesting.

I would suggest the US software industry is older than other software industries and our more established players, have grownup before OSS, are very proprietary. it would make sense that we would be slower to change than newer younger industries built on OSS.

<comment><USER4> > I would suggest the US software industry is older than other software > industries

Is it though?

There were many European computer companies in the early days.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Market Driven (US) versus Government Driven (Europe)</comment>


Why English sucks as the language for international and scientific communication - saint-loup http://www.madore.org/~david/weblog/d.2015-03-20.2284.html#d.2015-03-20.2284 <comment><AUTHOR> My, what a collection of old chestnuts. * All his bugs are features: malleability and adaptability are English's strengths. * Most languages proliferate their vocabulary to express all the needed shades of meaning, English uses Norman/German vocab to distinguish formality just as Japanese uses wago/kanji compounds. * Basic English's claim to a limited vocabulary only makes sense if you ignore the many implicit phrasal verbs that are even more inaccessible to learners that ten-dollar words are. * Relatively isolating morphology vs. more inflection isn't really a feature or a bug: it just correlates with a relative reliance on syntax rather than morphology to communicate. Interlingua is even more isolating IIRC. * Every language has ambiguities. * How is it possible to invent and impose an artificially created vowel system under the conditions where it is impossible to do something as simple as spelling reform?

Spelling reform is surely needed, but the ferst wun to spell rite shall lede us.

English has succeeded not only because it is the voice of global hegemony, but also the voice of global resistance.

International English can't happen as something people create in a lab and try to impose in the world. It comes when you have a dictionary and grammar of Standard Indian English and Standard Filippino English and Standard Nigerian English, where people are comfortable speaking English to a non-American or non-British standard. It will be pluricentric.

<comment><USER2> To make a dot-point list, preface each line with four spaces. HN interprets that as 'code snippet' and keeps your formatting.

On-topic, one thing I see missing when I read articles detracting from English is the benefits of English. Like not having genders for non-gendered things. This article talks of ambiguity in English, but in turn an English student doesn't have to figure out whether a pair of scissors is male or female.

<comment><USER3> _> To make a dot-point list, preface each line with four spaces. HN interprets that as 'code snippet' and keeps your formatting._

        If you do this, remember to add line breaks
        every 50 characters or so for mobile screens.

* An alternative is adding two newlines between each bullet point,

* so each point is in its own paragraph.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> "I am not trying to argue that we should now give up English for international or scientific communication, or try to replace it with this or that other language (except possibly in a limited way, e.g., see below on Basic English). I am not proposing to use Interlingua, Esperanto, Latin, Italian, Chinese, Russian, or anything else: I am maybe saying that we should have used Interlingua, Esperanto, Latin, Italian, Chinese, Russian, or something of the sort (probably any of the above would have been better than English) "

He really lost me when he suggested that Chinese would be a better scientific language than English. First, he didn't say _which_ Chinese language or dialect. It's truly remarkable how many Chinese people cannot understand each other even though they speak the same language. Second, all Chinese languages are far harder than English to master speaking. Finally, _writing_ is yet another steep learning curve.

<comment><USER5> Nor does he address the creation of dialects, an odd omission given how much time he dedicates to analyzing the ways different speakers of english dialects may misunderstand himself. Italian, for example, is primarily spoken in Italy and almost nowhere else except by expat Italians. If Italian were to explode as an international language, you can be sure there would be regional dialects pop up that may misunderstand each other in systematic ways.

<comment><USER6> My wife speaks Italian. My brother-in-law also speaks Italian. However, they both speak different dialects (Sicilian and Bari), and have a hard enough time understanding one another. So, there is no need to wait for it to explode. =)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Seems like English for international and scientific communication is like Javascript for the internet.

<comment><USER8> I felt like I was reading a "Why PHP sucks..." article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The large size of the English lexicon isn't just a result of the Norman invasion and subsequent merging of Old English and Norman French. During the renaissance, a huge number of words were consciously imported into English from classical Greek and Latin by scholars and scientists seeking to make English a better language for learned discourse. The so-called "inkhorn controversy"[1] arose when some other writers objected to all these new, foreign-sounding words, particularly those for which there was already a suitable alternative in English. Despite the objections, many of the new words did gain acceptance, and the English lexicon swelled accordingly.

So it's a little ironic that one of the author's chief complaints is partly a result of scientists trying to turn English into a scientific language in the first place.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inkhorn_term](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inkhorn_term)

</comment><comment><USER10> No one got up one morning and said, "You know what? We really should be conducting all of our business in English." It was the result of many years, and many different accidents of history that led to English having its current position in the world. World War II, the growth of American industry, the dominant position that the US has played in research and business, and the growth of the computer industry in the US all led to English being adopted world-wide. And you're not going to change that now.

Every language has its own trade-offs. It's totally true that English has crazy spelling, a huge vocabulary, and lots of ambiguous syntax. But it uses a simple alphabet, and doesn't have a centralized body making decisions about its direction, which also gives it flexibility.

So yes, maybe Spanish or German would have been a better choice. But that implies that there was a "choice" to be made. There wasn't.

It's definitely true that this has resulted in native English speakers having advantages over other people. But unless we decide to use an artificial language that is native to no one, there will always be some native-speaking group with an advantage. Fortunately, the diversity and flexibility of English are such that even if someone has an accent or stilted syntax, they're still (largely) accepted, and are able to get their points across.

<comment><USER11> I think your list of reasons begins a couple of hundred years too late.

<comment><USER10> English wasn't the main language of commerce or science until about 100 years ago. Before then, French and German were pretty dominant, if I'm not mistaken.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> For me it seems a global language strength lies, in fact, in this ambiguity, loose standards and acceptance of errors (in pronunciation, for example) - I'm thinking like HTML - it really can be buggy and still render text fine. French, German or Polish, on the other hand, are like XML - sure, it's strict and there are all these rules - but boy, try to make a mistake and it will blow in your face ;)

<comment><USER13> The spelling leaves lots to be desired though. Luckily it is among the easiest things to change in a language.

<comment><USER14> Is it? What's the smallest set of organizations that need to agree to make meaningful spelling reform (of a hundred troublesome words, say) actually stick?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The thing is, there are no perfect language, just like programming languages. You will always find advantages and disadvantages of them at some point.

Yes, I agree with the author on the points that he is making, but comparing to other languages, I think that English is one of the easiest languages that can be learned and understood easily.

"Ease" is an important aspect in the context of languages, since people all around the world are not using latin alphabet and to get them using the language as fast as possible requires to eliminate some parts of the language like the meaning of the words for instance.

"Like" can be used for several different categories such as liking somebody/food/something. It is not the same for other languages, there are different words for liking somebody and liking something. Which puts more learning curve to get going with the language. Sure, you can express yourself better if you have time learn everything.

I guess this was one of the important reasons why English took off as well. (I might be totally wrong on this)

Interestingly I find this topic kind of similar to programming languages. Most of our interns in the company prefers Ruby over Java when they are learning web development. Because they can get something working during the day. On the other side, ones that choose java are spending time with configuring their libraries to compile the project. They will both eventually find out the advantages and disadvantages of both over the time.

<comment><USER16> Are you sure that English didn't just take off because of the British empire?

<comment><USER17> Followed by the rise of the USA as a superpower.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> One and two are not a problem; three is. German, Italian, and Korean might have been better choices in that regard. French has some frustrating silent letters and horrifying irregular verbs (although not to the scale of English)

<comment><USER19> It's even more annoying when you learn new words mostly through a text channel (like, say, most of the Web).

For instance: I've read elsewhere that no common word rhymes with "orange". But what about "range"? If it doesn't rhyme, then I'm pronouncing one of them (or both) wrong, but how would I know if it weren't for that "nothing rhymes with this" tidbit?

<comment><USER20> For what it's worth, dictionary.com will play a little sound clip of spoken words:

[http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/orange?s=t](http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/orange?s=t)

[http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/range?s=t](http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/range?s=t)

Of course, it's only one possible accent, but might be helpful with things like this. (In this example, it says "orange" is pronounced, [AWR-inj], and "range" is [reynj]. That's about how I would pronounce "range", but you don't hear that strong distinction between syllables of "orange" here. It comes out more like [awrj].)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Any human language would fail at one point or another when you need a strict interpretation, a strict pronounciation, and a strict syntax. It's a inherent human species trait to make the language evolve in inconsistent ways on all fronts.

A good candidate would have to be specially created with _unambiguity_ in mind, like with formal languages, but as importantly, it would have to be aggressively controlled to avoid any misuse or divergence of usage. The later is most probably impossible in practice: enforcement would not scale. A simple question: how would a user of that language deal with a concept for which no word exists? The only possibility is to formulate that concept in lengthy sentences ( _Ents_ do speak like that), until a word is officially adopted by the language conformance body. Of course, people wouldn't be able to wait for that adoption each time they stumble on the issue, and it's bound to happen all the time. From then, one or more unofficial words would pop up for ideas yet inexistant in the language lexicon, and of course subtle semantic differences would crop up among these variants. Or maybe the author is implying that agglutinative languages don't suffer from that problem?

I am only talking about vocabulary, because this issue alone is enough to demonstrate the problem. For grammar, Lojban and a few other artificial languages have been created with _syntactical unambiguity_ as a goal.

</comment><comment><USER22> I more than agree. The tragedy is the contender to the throne is Mandarin Chinese (with it's tonality). You will beg to have your perplexing English back.

</comment><comment><USER23> > "there is no such English word as costlily;"

There isn't? I've certainly used it as such.

<comment><USER24> A few times in conversations I've found myself trying to force "friendlily" (friendly as an adverb) out of my mouth. Aside from me tripping on my tongue trying to pronounce it, the people around me understood what I was saying just fine.

<comment><USER25> Adverbs for adjectives ending in -ly end in -like instead, e.g. "costly-like", "friendly-like".

<comment><USER21> I would just go with "cost-wise", "friend-wise", although I feel there's a nuance in there somewhere.

<comment><USER26> Hmmm, how about costlywise & friendlywise?

<comment><USER25> "friendlylike" and "friendwise" have different meanings and usage contexts, but I wouldn't use "friendlywise" except in an unusual context.

"friendlylike" is used because the adjective "friendly" already has an -ly ending which makes the corresponding adverb "friendlily" sound clumsy, so e.g. "I spoke slowly and friendlylike to him". We could use "friendwise" to introduce a context, e.g. "Friendwise, I don't have many, but acquaintancewise, I do". But "friendlywise" requires an unusual adjectival context, e.g. "I show different behaviors for different situations: suspiciouswise, on the train or in the mall; attackingwise, on the sports field; friendlywise, at work or in karaoke." It sounds very contrived though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I understand the issues with English and well Latin is a great scientific language BUT...

English is the most spoken language in the world. There are 4 times as many second language speakers for each native English speakers. I totally get the issues listed. I am a native English speakers with horrible Spanish skills and 4 years of ancient Hebrew and Greek studies.

English just works as a language for people and it is 100% about the content that is available in English as opposed to every other language.

<comment><USER28> According to Wikipedia [0] Mandarin has slightly more speakers. 1200M vs 1350M.

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

<comment><USER27> Good post showing the content part of my argument.

[http://blog.esl-languages.com/blog/esl/most-spoken- languages...](http://blog.esl-languages.com/blog/esl/most-spoken-languages- world/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> It's interesting how there is an International Academy of Sciences San Marino that uses Esperanto as its language platform.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akademio_Internacia_de_la_Scien...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akademio_Internacia_de_la_Sciencoj_San_Marino)

</comment><comment><USER30> Once I read that German is the language of science.

I'm sorry HN people for not remembering exactly where, but it easy to find a ton of results about this on Google: [http://bit.ly/1CewLMB](http://bit.ly/1CewLMB)

<comment><USER31> German _was_ the language of science decades ago. Before that, it was Latin. Before that, it was Greek. (Your mileage may vary in various regions.) Things change.

</comment></comment><comment> vezzy-fnord I've always found such linguistic criticisms of human languages to be quite intriguing. Most are used to thinking of programming languages as "tools" (though there are persuasive arguments for them being more like materials), and consequently this axiom leads to the implication of using the right tool for the right job.

Yet we seldom see such ideas for human languages - that some could be better for expressing certain concepts than others. Is it because the huge keyword count of human languages necessitate us to desire a single _lingua franca_ for quick communication, or is it a fear of cultural insensitivity?

<comment><AUTHOR> We seldom see this idea because it's mostly not true. To the extent that it is, it's because some cultures have spent more time thinking about algebra and spaceflight than others, and have more words for them. But words are cheap, they're easy to make.</comment></comment>