Ask HN: Unlimited vacation policy – does your company have it? How is it? - <AUTHOR>

I want to hear from people who are working for companies who advertise "unlimited vacation policy" in their job postings and learn how does that works. <comment><USER2> Reposting a relevant answer that I wrote last year on Quora ([http://qr.ae/I5tZ7](http://qr.ae/I5tZ7)):

I work at Factual, which has an unlimited vacation policy. The amount of vacation that people take varies greatly.

At the high end, I've taken about 8 weeks of vacation during each of the last two years. I tend to do some work during vacations, however, so it's more like 8 weeks abroad in which I happened to squeeze in 4 weeks of work at odd hours. I think a few of my coworkers also take 4-6 weeks per year. Most of these people are pretty disconnected when they travel.

On the low end, some of my coworkers don't take vacations at all, or take one week per year and then feel guilty about it. I understand their guilt about as well as they understand my wanderlust =).

Things that affect how much vacation people take:

* How long you've been at the company. Someone who just joined is much less likely to take a vacation than someone who has been around for a few years.

* Your place in the company hierarchy. More senior people seem more comfortable with taking vacation than more junior people.

* Schedule pressure. If you're working on a huge project that will take 6 months, you probably won't try to take a vacation during that time.

* Being the only person on a project vs. being one of many. If you're the only person who knows how something works, you tend to worry a lot about what can happen while you're gone.

* Personal budgets and travel preferences. If you like hiking trips, 6 weeks of vacation won't set you back very much. If you like overwater bungalows in Tahiti and private cruises in the Galapagos, then you need to have a lot saved up to take more than a few weeks off every year.

* How much you like to take vacations (or how much you love your work). Some people like work enough that they don't want to take vacations. Others don't really care for vacations, so they might take a personal day or two but not go on longer trips.

* Your, ahem, cojones. Generally, if you ask your boss reasonably, you will get a "yes" 90% of the time. A lot of people are afraid to ask.

When our unlimited vacation policy was established, it seemed like people were waiting for their peers to set the boundaries of what was appropriate and what was not. Over time, I've realized that people are just different. People who don't take breaks don't seem to change their habits even when they see others take frequent vacations. Conversely, people who take frequent vacations don't seem to tone things down in the presence of non-vacationers.

</comment><comment><USER3> I love it. I shoot an email to our leads/managers and make sure no one is depending on me for any tasks. I make sure to inform them in advance but once I had a spontaneous trip to Paris that I booked my flight 3 days in advance and took two days off for and they were cool with it (it was to shoot my friends playing music in the Parisian streets: [http://vimeo.com/channels/streetmusic](http://vimeo.com/channels/streetmusic))

If needed I take my laptop and put in any required work remotely - that's great when you work on web tech. I do this when I know my days aren't going to be busy, such as visiting family. If I know I won't have time or access to the net on a trip I let everyone know so they can expect I will be disconnected.

I've taken about 4+ weeks off so far this year, 2 of which I was working remotely, and will be going to Burning Man this year for a week. I'll probably take some time off in December.

The key is to make sure you are being productive and adding value when you are at work so you don't feel guilty taking time off. When you plan off time, make sure there isn't anything crucial to the business happening at that time. Let people know how you are going to be accessible (IM, email, ability to commit code) or if you are off the reservation.

There is a certain amount of uncertainty and self-inflicted guilt about the whole thing; whether you are taking less/more time than your peers. I guess that's the price you pay for this perk.

</comment><comment><USER4> If you're a responsible adult, it works really well. Coordinate your time off with your team & boss, then go. I would usually take 3/4 of December off to spend with family (slow time at work anyway, as the customers weren't wanting changes to be made during their year-end work).

There are any number of ways it could be abused, of course. But the thing to remember is that your coworkers (and boss) aren't blind - if you're using the policy to create a 4-day workweek, and not getting stuff done -- someone is going to say something.

</comment><comment><USER5> so i work at One Kings Lane, which has an unlimited vacation policy. First, i should say that they the true to their word--i have actually seen people take four and five week holidays. Still, the usual seems to be two weeks, which it seems the devs take maybe two of these each year (perhaps more, not really sure).

At OKL, i suspect the policy is just an extension of their "ok, we are all adults here, so just act in the company's best interest at all times--we don't want to work in a soviet tractor factory, we assume you don't either" (my own words, if we had an employee handbook, i imagine it would say something like that).

at other shops, i have heard that the motivation for unlimited vacation is a little less wholesome. The idea is that use it to recruit, then once in the door, the manager can of course limit the employee's holiday because his approval is required. So there's very little to lose, and a lot to gain; when the employee is terminated (resigns, fired) the company does not have to pay out their unused vacation, which is often not a small amount (eg, i suspect a lot of people carry around 2 weeks).

</comment><comment><USER6> I think it really depends on the culture of the company. Some companies seem to be afflicted by an unspoken pressure to keep up with one's colleagues in terms of putting in extra hours and not missing too many days. In these situations, I think a defined amount of vacation days may actually be a better policy - when you have a set "three weeks" of vacation in a year, it can be more socially acceptable to use the three weeks allotted, especially if they don't rollover. With an "unlimited vacation" policy, employees may feel pressured not to abuse the system and actually take fewer days off, because they're trying to match the average number of days off taken by all employees rather than a set time span of three weeks, or perhaps a little less in order to appear exceptional.

However, in a healthy company culture which _encourages_ employees to take time off, it can be great. Particularly because long trips are really a different beast than short ones, and it's hard to do a long trip with 15 vacation days. Solution: take 7 vacation days one year, and 30 the next.

</comment><comment><USER7> My company has had an unlimited vacation policy for 2-ish years. According to the HR dept, it hasn't really changed people's vacation habits... they still take about the same as they did before: 2 weeks.

The biggest thing has been to make sure that you aren't leaving anyone hanging. This is probably a bigger deal for some departments/teams.

</comment><comment><USER8> It is interesting to note that a lot of feedback discusses employees taking less vacation time. This happens for a variety of reasons which have been highlighted and obviously differs from company to company and how the culture is lead from the top. This would not be my first thought when introducing an unlimited vacation policy. From the employers point of view it would be how do we manage and foster a culture that prevents employees abusing this policy, not how do we make sure employees actually take enough vacation.

One company I know has introduced a bonus for taking a set minimum number of days to try and make sure that their employees are taking a decent amount of holiday each year. So for example if you take 20+ days off in the year you will get a annual bonus of £1000.

</comment><comment><USER9> I work at Automated Insights (automatedinsights.com) and ever since I've been there, we've had this policy. The idea is to just not abuse it. Use it when you need it and don't go on last-minute 3 day weekend vacations. Most people go on a week-long vacation once a year (usually during the Summer) and people are able to take days off for personal reasons as long as it doesn't become a habit. Everyone does a good job I think.

<comment><AUTHOR> If all you can get (are getting) is two week, then it's less than my "limited vacation policy"!

<comment><USER10> I agree. Last minute 3 day vacations is actually OK around my workplace, and we have a limited number of vacation days.

First you ask yourself if you have critical work to do those days. If not, you're good. Otherwise, you may have to get it done sooner. Then you ask your coworker if they're going to be around to cover for you. If they are, cool, you've just scheduled yourself out of office. Set up your OOO notification and update your calendar. If not, check with your manager to make sure it's ok for both of you to be out. Generally this may mean a concession that you have to carry your laptop or phone in case stuff goes down. Congratulations, you've now scheduled your vacation.

The only time our manager really gets involved is during Nov/Dec for the holidays when people run into "use it or lose it", so he'll informally let us carry over to January or so, just so that everyone isn't rushing to take at the same time and leaving us without anyone in the office. The other time is when you want to take multiweek vacations, just so he's aware and can get coverage information.

Even then, half the company is in the same situation so it's normally pretty dead in Dec.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It means you never take a vacation.

<comment><USER12> Pithy. But wrong and doesn't contribute to the discussion.

<comment><USER13> I think it depends on the company. My experience matches adammichaelc's -- "unlimited vacation" in practice meant that you could take a day or two off, provided you worked over the weekend or double time the rest of the week. Nobody dreamed of taking a full week; that would have shown you weren't loyal enough to the company.

I no longer work there. :) And in fact, I since turned down an offer at an otherwise appealing company specifically because they told me they had an unlimited vacation plan. I took the job at a company with a specified number of days, knowing that I would actually be able to use them and not feel pressured to never take time off.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> My last job made the jump to a Netflix model of unlimited PTO. On the surface it seemed great, however I found myself taking less time off. I think it comes down to what type of person you are. There were some who abused the policy, some like myself and some who continued with their normal vacation habits. In total, not much changed.

</comment><comment><USER15> Well isn't this just a way for them to screw you out of money. If you get 3 weeks a year that company needs to hold 3 weeks of vacation pay for you in case you get fired or quit. With a unlimited vacation policy this is probably not the case.</comment>


Show HN: Subscription Billing for Developers and Startups - <AUTHOR> http://www.billforward.net

<comment><USER2> Aside from one major flaw [0], I really liked the website. Great use of humor, great pricing, cleanly designed, and I can see clear benefits over other products.

Then I went to sign up and it all came apart. Firstly, I didn't get the email that I was supposed to (even after waiting a while.) Then, I went to sign in, figuring that I didn't need the email anyway. Once I did this, I was greeted with a confusing screen: what the heck is a Unit of Measure? I couldn't find any information on what it was anywhere, including with Google, so I went back and tried to set up a payment gateway. I chose PayPal. For that, I apparently have to email the help account to "discuss integration". So I tried Braintree, Balanced, CyberSource, Authorize.Net - all the same story. Boom, I've already hit several major roadblocks.

Contrast this with [https://snappycheckout.com/](https://snappycheckout.com/), which was really easy to set up, and I've had a great experience overall with it.

[0] The only flaw I saw was that I didn't know what my users would see. Would they see a standard form, as with Snappy Checkout or Stripe, or would I pass credit card details to your service with my own form and you handle the rest?

[edit] Still no email, two hours after signing up.

<comment><USER3> I had a similar experience after signup.

First, Billforward tells you to check your email after you signup which I waited a few minutes for then found it contained no activation link or anything (it just contains some "see our docs" type message). So you let me signup successfully then have me exit your site to read an email that is not required to then come back to the site to login? Why not just log the user in right after signup? Or at least send the user to the login page after signup. This round trip from signup to useless email to login was a waste of time.

I then logged in to see a message telling me to setup a unit of measure. What that is supposed to be I have no idea. The tooltips on the units of measure modal offer no real help. Why not just do a "Create a billing plan" wizard or something similar. Also on the sidebar, there is a link that says "Dunning" that contains no helpful text and just another empty table. If I have to Google a word and read a wikipedia entry to figure out what it's for, you've failed in your mission to 'simplify'.

For a site that is supposed to make billing easier the site is incredibly confusing and unintuitive.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback, there was a minor glitch with our DNS config which caused a few of our outgoing signup emails to bounce... All fixed now and you should have received your welcome email.

<comment><USER3> I received the email with no problem within a few minutes. The problem is that it was virtually useless and not required to login (no activation link).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> If I understand correctly, the deal here is "get a higher level 'Stripe', pay an additional 1% transaction fee" (above $10K+ total transactions).

<comment><AUTHOR> thats correct, BillForward offers a deeper subscription stack making it easier and faster to start billing and handling upgrades, downgrades, switch plans etc....

<comment><USER5> I m currently trying to integrate stripe subscription api, for my soon to be launched service. Could you tell me why I should consider you instead of them?

<comment><USER6> As pointed out by dan_bk we provide a bunch of features above the plan based subscriptions Stripe offer.

If you think you are going to be selling your product with usage based pricing, or want to use tiered pricing then we can add value from what you get with Stripe. Feel free to drop me an e-mail at ian AT billforward . net and can talk through you use-case.

<comment><USER7> It could be valuable to have a feature grid kind of page where you compare your platform to the built-in subscriptions in Braintree and Stripe, to provide an explicit list of the things you can handle that they can't.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, for example, see MailChimp's feature table for their Mandrill service that allows prospective customers to compare Mandrill to SendGrid (the market leader?):

[https://www.mandrill.com/features/](https://www.mandrill.com/features/)

I definitely prefer pages like that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Your pricing looks extremely generous, especially because you only take a percentage fee. This could be good (an edge over the competition when signing up new companies) or bad (unsustainable). I expect your lead time for new customers growing from $0/month to > $10k/month will be _long_ (ballpark 12 - 24 months), which could be problematic depending on the distribution of new vs established companies you end up with.

</comment><comment><USER9> What does it do? I'm confused. Do I get a form or do I still have to build that? You should answer these questions.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, we provide a hosted out of the box subscription checkout for users who do not want to build. We also support you building your own checkout via our API

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> You should redirect HTTP requests to HTTPS.

</comment><comment><USER11> Hey, this looks pretty slick. I like the targeted coupons and progressive discounting, I'm hoping to extend the latter over multiple product lines. I agree this could use a wizard or more explanation for us non technical types, but otherwise it looks very start up friendly. Thanks.

</comment><comment><USER12> So, other than having a free tier, how is this different from ChargeBee, Recurly, or Peakium?

<comment><USER6> Hey there, one of the BillForward founders here.

Our goal is to enable any company to bill how they want without hassle or constraints of building out a full subscription stack. Billing models such as tiered/volume pricing and usage billing can get complex but we make them very simple to use. You can often implement these features in places such as Stripe et al but often the minutiae becomes complex. We built the product that can scale from a simple flat price all the way up to composite price plans with tiered/volume pricing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This looks interesting! Was there a video demo somewhere though? I have a vague idea of what you are trying to do, but I'd love to see the interface (our admin and our customer side) before creating an account to see what we think.

</comment><comment><USER14> Nicely executed, but as a developer I don't understand the value proposition. Especially when it's so easy to do all this stuff. Maybe it's for non developers?

<comment><USER6> Hi, thanks for the feedback on messaging.

What we are trying to do is enable companies to have a single billing platform that grows with them from simple flat priced subscriptions all the way up to subscriptions which have multiple components and pricing strategies.

For example some of our customers sell their subscriptions with 3 or 4 components, for example international calls, local calls, 4g usage, 3g usage etc. Inside each of these units they give discounts the more you use. For example up to 100 minutes of X is $1 a minute, whereas anything above 100 minutes X is charged at 75c a minute.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hey Guys...

Docs are fixed! Thanks for letting us know... [http://docs.billforward.net](http://docs.billforward.net)

</comment><comment><USER15> Is 10k in USD / EUR or any currency ? Looks great, and very competitive price there. I just hope that you can make money out of it to keep it going.

<comment><AUTHOR> We should improve that on the website, 10k - USD, GBP, EUR

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> [https://docs.billforward.net/](https://docs.billforward.net/) was unavailable for me (Chrome on OS X)

<comment><USER17> Had the same issue, you have to be logged in...

</comment></comment><comment> hidden-markov You totally should use billforward platform to manage plans and billing for billforward platform itself. Meta.

<comment><USER6> we do :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Looks interesting! How easy is it to switch between stripe and braintree?

<comment><USER19> Stripe and Braintree are both payment gateways so in theory this should be feasible.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Exercises for Regular Expressions? - <AUTHOR>

Apart from what is available in the books about Regular Expressions, are there any web sites / blogs series / etc. with a bunch of exercises that are somehow more "real world" that the ones in most of the books?
My specific problem is that currently I don't have specific needs / areas where I can exercise what I've learned about RegEx, and yet somehow I want to exercise more even with some other applications like other people's examples... Or writing a simple program for processing some text that can be implemented by heavily using RegEx?
Thanks in advance <comment><USER2> And what was wrong with the pages which result from searching for "regular expression exercises"? Quite a number of hits show up.</comment>


The World's Most Annoying Man: Steven Pinker Is Selling Reason (TM), Not Reason - <AUTHOR> https://www.currentaffairs.org/2019/05/the-worlds-most-annoying-man/ <comment><USER2> I read part of Rationality Now, but couldn't finish.

The problem with writing a book about rationality is that there isn't much to say about it. But you can fill any number of books with the problems of irrationality. It could be interesting to delve into why some irrational beliefs are so persistent, but Pinker mostly just dismisses them.

Dawkins has the same problem: what can you really say about atheism? So he mostly talks about the problems of theism.

The LessWrong community seems to try harder to dig into where wrong ideas come from, how they take root in our psyches, and how to counteract their subconscious influence.

</comment><comment><USER3> He annoys me a lot, too. His positions on human health, and human progress, are fundamentally flawed. The article talks about a common analytical mistake in many of his arguments. But in virtually everything I (try to) read by him, I find so many that I just give up.

</comment><comment><USER4> The only book of Pinker's I found useful was his guide to writing called "A Sense of Style." This columnist could really benefit from giving it a thorough read.</comment>


Nokia to delay Microsoft Windows Phone beyond October - <AUTHOR> http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/feb/16/nokia-windows-phone-microsoft-delay

<comment><USER2> In this analysis (Horace Deidu), it's predicted that the first Nokia WP7 phone only ships in 2012. [http://www.asymco.com/2011/02/14/who-will-buy-the- next-150-m...](http://www.asymco.com/2011/02/14/who-will-buy-the- next-150-million-symbian-smartphones/)

Apparently the minimum time to develop a new product is 12 months. That may be so, but Nokia aren't necessarily starting from scratch. They already have many phone designs, the expertise and they already have a pre-made OS.

I guess it depends on how unique they want to make their new WP7 phones. Surely they could just slap something together really quickly? (I'm thinking an N8 with a different OS or something)</comment>


Aks HN: Looking for a niche which make intensive use of emails - <AUTHOR>

Hi,
we are developing a product which will give users infinite email addresses.
The product at the moment is only an idea and a landing page and we are trying to figure out a particular niche that could be interested in our product.
The idea is to let people create a usable email address whenever they want, they will be able to block any email they create and don't receive any more annoying email.
Do you know any particular niche that make intensive use of email and would benefit from the product ?
Of course, if anybody is interested please send me a PM and I will sign you up for the beta. <comment><USER2> People who want to abuse bonus systems</comment>


Fed takes over AIG - <AUTHOR> http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/16/federal-reserve-may-act-alone-in-rescuing-aig/

<comment><USER2> "The Federal Reserve plans to offer an $85 billion bridge loan to the American International Group in return for control of the ailing insurance giant..."

Nice redefinition of AIG.

<comment><USER3> $85billion!!!

where do the Reserve get the money? do they print it? gold reserves? next year's taxes? asia?

<comment><USER4> they get it FROM YOU.

<comment><USER5> true. Through printing press though. This is additional 85bln usd in circulation. We will all pay at the gas pump and groceries. Socialism for the rich. Communistic China would not do that. It is sad to see the USA becoming parody of this what it used to represent.

<comment><USER6> Why is this _for the rich_? I've seen that remark thrown around several times & I don't understand it.

From what I understand, this sort of a move is basically done by inflating the dollar causing anyone who has savings to lose out (the people without savings only lose if their wages don't catch up).

<comment><USER7> Because only the rich, the people who own/control these mega-corps, are the only ones receiving gigantic funding "bailouts" from the government, meaning they don't face the fallout of their stupid mistakes. It's basically a free ticket to steal money from the American public, but only if you can afford to set up a mega-corp and let it fail while you "earn" multi-million dollar salaries every year regardless of performance...

<comment><USER6> Are the people who own _mega-corps_ richer then those that own regular corps? Generally speaking, stock is not owned exclusively by the super rich. The lower end of the spectrum (those that also have no savings) do not own stock. Anyway, haven't they lost most of their money already?

On top of that this isn't for the shareholders. It's to keep a financial system from collapsing. You can argue that it wouldn't have collapsed. That this makes it more likely to collapse etc. Sure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I want a bridge loan for my startup. Instead, I get to pay taxes to pay for this nonsense.

<comment><USER9> If AIG went down, do you in some way think you would find it easier to get a loan. On the contrary, I think it would be unlikely that anyone would be lending anyone anything.

<comment><USER10> I'd prefer to see the government take even half the amount of money and offer lots of smaller grants/loans to innovative entrepreneurs to launch our country into the next wave of growth. That's where the new jobs and economic growth will be. Give it to people creating value.

<comment><USER11> Do you have any idea how many such programs already exist? They all end up funding catfish farming research programs in Robert Byrd's territory. You seem a bit naive of the real function of cheap/free government money.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> So if big companies can't fail what prevents them from taking a risk that ends up this way in the future? Small companies have the advantage of being able to risk it all, big companies have the advantage of large sums of capital. To upset that balance is to increase the barrier of entry for small players.

<comment><USER13> Yes, all these bailouts create what is known as a "moral hazard"

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_hazard>

<comment><USER14> Precisely. Nobody should get bailed, the economy should collapse for a little while and eventually get itself sorted out. The moral should be, "an economy cannot run on practically free credit alone."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> What harm is there in letting a company that made bad decisions go bankrupt? I don't see how it's pragmatic to pass this burden on to tax payers and the general public. I admit that I am idealistic about such things. I don't see how government is going to solve any of these problems. The government will lessen the pain but that same behavior will also slow any rebound and future growth.

It seems naive and narrow minded to think another company won't step in if there is a continued need for the services that AIG provide{d|s}. This new company is likely to make better decisions. First, because they saw AIG fail. Second, because they didn't fail and thus were stable enough to exist while other giant financial companies failed.

<comment><USER16> _It seems naive and narrow minded to think another company won't step in if there is a continued need for the services that AIG provide{d|s}._

But it's unrealistic to think that the vacuum could be filled fast enough to prevent a wave of failures among AIG's clients (banks who bought credit insurance to get around regulatory limits).

There's more detail here: [http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/robertpeston/2008/09...](http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/robertpeston/2008/09/how_banks_depend_on_aig.html)

<comment><USER6> So is this a reasonable system for insuring against the collapse of insurers (and the world's financial infrastructure)? Government rescues?

How about limiting the size of companies that are not allowed to die for damage control? Or limiting their ability to become companies not allowed to die?

<comment><USER17> It's not the absolute size that's a problem but rather the degree of leverage. If you've borrowed $30 for every $1 in capital (like Bear Sterns did) and your assets all drop by about 3% then you immediately become insolvent. They thought they could prevent that from happening through clever hedging and diversification but it didn't work. A possible solution might be to set hard legal limits on size versus leverage for financial companies. But in practice I'm not sure how practical it would be to write regulations to enforce that.

<comment><USER6> How many companies are in existence that are too big, too important or too interconnected to go under? Can't really be that many.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Somewhere, the ghost of Karl Marx is saying "WTF? They're nationalizing an _insurance company_?"

<comment><USER19> Karl Marx did not tend to write that clearly. Add some dialectic materialism.

Have you ever read the guy? It's awful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Serious question that is actually very related: if you had to move to a foreign country and work on your internet start up, where would you move? Why?

<comment><USER21> Chile, because it is a capitalist country. Costs are similar to India, but the weather is Californian and taxes are really low. Still, though, SV is a better choice. Don't move to Chile to start up.

<comment><USER22> I was under the impression that Chile is socialist.

<comment><USER23> No, it is not.

Chile had a socialist president 40 years ago. He was overthrown by a military coup in Sep 11, 1973 (note the date)

Now days, Chile is one of South America's most stable and prosperous nations.

<comment><USER24> They have a left-leaning woman for a president, though.

<comment><USER21> This is true. However, this does not mean the country has a lot more laissez- faire than any other in the Americas. I don't know why this is the case, but I know that it is the case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> If these companies are too big to fail, and we have to bail them out to avoid returning to the Stone Age or whatever, how about some for the people who created this situation? Maybe it's not ok to let the system collapse to punish a few people, but "heads I win, tails the taxpayer loses" is also unacceptable.

<comment><USER26> They should allow these companies to fail. The world would not of ended. If there's a need (market), new companies would have sprouted up. Stronger, better, and more transparent companies to fill the void.

Sweden had a major banking disaster. Their government allowed them to fail. Their banking system is solid now.

<comment><USER27> "If there's a need (market), new companies would have sprouted up."

You aren't even addressing the given reasoning for the bailouts. Meaningless platitudes don't solve problems.

<comment><USER21> I don't think he/she has to address the reasoning for the bailouts, or that he/she used meaningless platitudes. He/she even cited an example.

You don't have to address the other sides reasoning because it's hard to find every flaw in an opponent's argument.

<comment><USER27> If you ignore the the actual reasons why the bailouts happened, how can you argue against them? Sure, the bailouts preserved weak companies, which is a bad thing, but you can't just ignore the benefits of the bailouts and say they shouldn't have happened. That in no way resembles an argument, though "meaningless platitudes" may have been an incorrect characterization.

"You don't have to address the other sides reasoning because it's hard to find every flaw in an opponent's argument."

But the other side has put out a public statement explaining their actions. This isn't about predicting how someone is going to make their case. The case has already been made. At the very least, you have to address their justifications.

<comment><USER21> What about the example of Swedish banks that failed and were not bailed out? Surely that serves as a counter-example.

<comment><USER27> The goal of the bailouts is to minimize the effects of bank failures on the economy, not to make sure the banking system is sound in the future. The counterexample isn't valid. A valid counterexample would involve a country avoiding a recession while not bailing out failing banks, but even then, I don't think this particular situation has a historical precedent similar enough to be pertinent.

Also, after actually looking into the example, it looks like Sweden _did_ bail out the banks to end the crisis: "The government rescued the banking system by issuing a general guarantee of bank obligations. The total direct cost to the taxpayer of the salvage has been estimated at around 2 per cent of GDP." (<http://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/oxford/v15y1999i3p80-97.html>)

Even with a valid counterexample, I think you should still have to explain why the current course of action is wrong, not just why another would be right, which is why I didn't address it in the first place.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Here are more complete articles:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/17/business/17insure.html?_r=...](http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/17/business/17insure.html?_r=2&hp&oref=slogin&oref=slogin)

<http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122156561931242905.html>

</comment><comment><USER28> I think some questions have to be asked about how risks are mitigated since AIG appears to have a 400bln$ portfolio of CDSs and looks to have been hours from the brink of potentially passing that risk back down through the system. The counterparties of AIG's CDS must be mightily relieved.

</comment><comment><USER29> Whilst excessive risk taking is probably the root cause of the recent financial collapses, I think it's also worth noting the role hedge funds have played in stirring up investor panic by short selling highly geared or mortgage exposed companies around the world. Britain's largest mortgage lender, HBOS, had 30% wiped off its value yesterday, attributed to short selling - <http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article6277.html>

<comment><USER19> How can short selling wipe out value? If it helps find the right price faster, isn't that a good thing?

<comment><USER30> What's the right price?

<comment><USER19> Somewhat above the price Warren Buffet buys at.

And, what's value? A change in market price of stocks does not imply a change in the underlying compant. (For a very technical meaning of 'imply'.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> This news reminds me of an interesting video I happened across last year. From it, draw what conclusions you wish:

[http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docid=-905047436258...](http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docid=-9050474362583451279&hl=en&fs=true)

</comment><comment><USER32> Welcome to socialist states of America

<comment><USER33> Obviously, it's impossible to determine the effect of any one action on the economy -- but if this $85b prevents the markets from crashing, I'd argue its money well "spent." U.S. market cap has already fallen $4t in the past year. Do you really want to risk losing considerably more?

<comment><USER34> That was the argument for Fanny and Freddie. Didn't seem to work, and I bet it won't this time. WAMU is next.

<comment><USER35> You don't think the Fanny bailout "worked"? We don't have the luxury of seeing what would have happened if we hadn't bailed them out.

To make the pro-bailout argument more clear, here is one reputable economist predicting that if we had let the FMs default, the dollar would drop about 30% and unemployment would double, in about a week.

[http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2008/09...](http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2008/09/could- you-clari.html)

<comment><USER36> So it would be like a 19th-century panic/recession, without hard money. He's omitting the part where, since we aren't subsidizing stupid decisions, stupid decisions don't get made and the economy recovers very quickly.

<comment><USER35> If only subsidizing nothing was sufficient to prevent stupid decisions from being made!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> This is just the finance world's Tower of Babel of credit and cheap money falling over, and will mostly affect rich bankers. I think that the everyday economy will be the same but with fewer imports as the dollar weakens.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I don't wish to make light of the situation but Paulson has moved the US Treasury from nowhere to the top of the M&A league table in just 1 year,

</comment><comment><USER38> god! this will affect the economy here in the philippines -- an the rest of asia. makes me sad :(

<comment><USER39> from Thomas Crouch, Thomas Crouch, deputy director general of ADB's Southeast Asia department:

<i>"The Philippines is less vulnerable. It's in a stronger position to withstand these events due to sensible and prudent fiscal response of the government." </i>

<http://www.bworldonline.com/BW091708/content.php?id=004></comment></comment>


Apple disrupting point-of-sale - <AUTHOR> http://www.droplabs.co/?p=141

<comment><USER2> So Apple's potential use of self-checkout is being viewed as some amazing move? If this is the case, my local chain drugstore and supermarket are brilliant because they have had this in place for the last two years. I guess if they were employing some sort of NFC/pay-with-your-handset technology that could be considered something, but I don't see any mention of Apple doing that in this piece.

<comment><AUTHOR> But it goes beyond that. Your local chains make you go through a pre-installed POS for payment. Square disrupted the POS by setting it free inside the store, each store rep armed with their own POS running on a smartphone. Apple, by doing this has eliminated traditionally held notions of a POS altogether.

The POS now runs inside YOUR Smartphone, inside their app. You can browse the aisles, take all the time you need and when ready, check out with out having to wait in line (which you still had to, at your local chain) and with out needing to find a store rep. That is why I called it as re-inventing the checkout experience. It didnt merely parallel the existing POS experience.

<comment><USER3> A grocery store is different. It may process anywhere from 1 to 100 items per person, some of whose prices will depend on weight. Your local chains will probably always make you go through a pre-installed POS for payment and you will probably always appreciate that fact. The volume is high enough to benefit greatly from specialized tools.

Apple can do this because it sells low-volume, predictably-priced items out of its stores. Theft is probably deterred largely by the expense of the items they sell accessories for; far fewer of their customers will want or need to steal. This is the next step for Apple. The next step for your grocery is to identify items automatically, sort and package for carryout.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I might be missing something, but how will the stores prevent theft? Will I have to show my receipt to a salesperson after checking myself out?

<comment><AUTHOR> The items Apple will start off with, are accessories which are low volume, lower priced. If theft in this scenario would be a problem tomorrow, then it should have been a problem today; as Apple only gives you an email receipt and I have not come across a scenario where I had to show the receipt on my way out. Hope that answers your question.

<comment><USER5> This move is only disruptive if it replaces a good chunk of current usage... without handling common and higher margin items, this is not going to disrupt anyone, just streamline Apple Store processes.

<comment><AUTHOR> Being disruptive does not mean that you do everything on day one. This is how you start.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


What Apple Can't Buy - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/what-apple-cant-buy-1493818279?mod=e2tw <comment><USER2> love</comment>


Inside DuckDuckGo, Google's Tiniest, Fiercest Competitor - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcolabs.com/3026698/inside-duckduckgo-googles-tiniest-fiercest-competitor <comment><USER2> Previous submission and discussion (21 days ago):

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7270973](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7270973)

</comment><comment><USER3> That page chomps away at a good 15-18% of one of my cores ... what the hell is it doing?!

<comment><USER4> Mining bitcoin.</comment></comment>


Teaching linear algebra - <AUTHOR> http://bentilly.blogspot.com/2009/09/teaching-linear-algebra.html <comment><USER2> Nice approach. And wow, that makes me realize that I was doing it right after all as a student.

I used to take the following approach, which maps surprisingly well to the author's teaching method:

      - Pay attention, but don't really take notes during class

      - Do the homework, but don't sweat getting stuck.
        Skip stuff that I hadn't picked up in class.

      - Take notes the next day when they went over the homework.
        Pay extra attention to the stuff I didn't get the night before.

      - The night before a test, redo (or actually do) all the homework.

      - Ace all the tests

      - Don't really study for the final

      - Ace the final

I feel like I learned pretty much everything from every Engineering class I took in school. When it came time to do the EIT exams at the end of undergrad, I took them cold, walked out with half the time remaining (and nearly everybody else still in their seats) and passed by a comfortable margin.

Naturally, grades suffered a bit. You can map my grades to how a given prof weighed homework in his grading process. Usually you can drop one test score, and occasionally they'd let you count homework as one of those droppable scores. Those were my A's.

The rest were B's and C's, but that doesn't matter even one bit now, 20 years later. I could still pass that Professional Engineering test again, deriving pretty much all of Mechanical Engineering from F=MA using differential equaitions today. And that's the whole point, right?

Glad to see a professor who gets it.

<comment><USER3> My method was:

      - Show up. Pay Attention. Sit in the front of the class
      - Take notes. 1 page is slacking, 4 sides is about right.
      - Do the problem sets.
      - Studying? What's that?
      - Rock the tests.

If I sat in the first couple rows, my grade would be an A. Back row, I'd be lucky with a B. Back row in a large lecture at lunchtime was a C. Then again, I was known to be able to answer questions when obviously snoozing in the front row of an 8am class. (Steel design, IIRC. "What's wrong with all you? He can answer the questions and he's asleep")

I needed the notes, and specifically the ear - brain - hand - eye loop to make sure that the info got in my head and processed. If I slacked on notes, then the slippery slope started and I'd end up losing the thread of the class for minutes at a time. I didn't really need the notes later, I might go over them before a test, but not often. Mostly when it was an open note or 'one sheet of notes' test. Though, one time my one sheet of notes was "Don't Panic" written in letters large enough to be be seen by anyone glancing at the sheet.

Problem sets were key. As were the bigger design projects and the labs. You could fake getting the problem sets done, but you couldn't fake understanding them.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Note, I resubmitted this because I was hoping that it would find <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=850485> for me. But it didn't. (I later found it through my user name.)

I would delete it, but it has been several years, and so it does not seem bad to have the dupe.

<comment><USER4> Actually, you just waited until we'd almost forgotten your earlier post...

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The "spaced repetition" theory is similar to something I read in Wired[0] long ago, of a guy and his note-taking "SuperMemo"[1] app. The article drifts aimlessly about the guy, but the theory behind the app is very interesting. And the chart is excellent[2].

      For example, say you're studying Spanish. Your chance of
      recalling a given word when you need it declines over
      time according to a predictable pattern. SuperMemo tracks
      this so-called forgetting curve and reminds you to
      rehearse your knowledge when your chance of recalling it
      has dropped to, say, 90 percent. When you first learn a
      new vocabulary word, your chance of recalling it will
      drop quickly. But after SuperMemo reminds you of the
      word, the rate of forgetting levels out. The program
      tracks this new decline and waits longer to quiz you the
      next time.

[0]: [http://www.wired.com/medtech/health/magazine/16-05/ff_woznia...](http://www.wired.com/medtech/health/magazine/16-05/ff_wozniak?currentPage=all)

[1]: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SuperMemo>

[2]: [http://www.wired.com/images/article/magazine/1605/ff_wozniak...](http://www.wired.com/images/article/magazine/1605/ff_wozniak_graph_f.jpg)

<comment><USER6> SuperMemo has been around for quite some time and IIRC it was indeed the first piece of software to employ the theory of spaced repetition. So it's not coincidentally similar, SuperMemo is immediately associated with spaced repetition. That Wired article is a great read, moreso IMHO because it drifts purposely about the guy, who's as eccentric as he is fascinating in his extreme lifestyle choices and devotion to his life's work.

p.s. Something dies within me when I hear good ole' software being referred to as an 'app'.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> (Disclaimer: I am a current college student.)

I took a seminar on Film Studies my freshman year (all freshmen are required to take a seminar outside of their prospective major). We watched exactly one film -- Psycho -- which I greatly admired. That being said, I can't tell you much about the theory behind Psycho; but I can tell you pages upon pages about the evolution and use of 90mm film.

The results in the blog post speak for themselves; the final exam scores were phenomenal.

That being said, I feel the author didn't spend enough time dwelling on the repercussions of his approach to the course. If you're in a two- or three- credit class, you take that class with the implicit understanding course that the time commitment is going to be similar to that of other classes; if your students are spending all night working on an introductory class, then they might master that material -- but at the expense of other classes.

I took a Linear Algebra course last semester that I did well in. It was a conventional class. I definitely couldn't answer that final bonus question (and I bet I couldn't answer most of the questions on that exam) but is that an issue? Introductory courses are meant to be breadth-based, not depth-based; my class wasn't filled with Math majors but CS majors, Chem majors, Stats majors, etc. etc. -- I recognize the huge role tenets of L.A. play in programming, but I'd absolutely resent a professor who essentially uses false advertising in his course.

The metric for a successful college course, I'd argue, is not 'amount learned' but 'amount learned with respect to time and respect to the goals of the course.'

<comment><USER8> _my class wasn't filled with Math majors but CS majors, Chem majors, Stats majors_

I don't know much about chemistry, but for CS and stats people linear algebra is an applicable and important course. Some of these "introductary" courses are foundational to your degree.

<comment><USER7> Absolutely! I remember the basics of linear algebra very well, and can reproduce them easily -- proofs and more arcane aspects of the curriculum, on the other hand, not so much. (Furthermore, I'd argue that the average non-Math major is not going to have to apply such aspects, and thus an introductory course should be relatively cursory regarding them.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I know this isn't the point of the post, but I'm learning me some linear algebra from online video lectures now and wanted to check my answer for the bonus question, part b. Is it [[-3/2 2 -1/2] [-1/2 0 1/2] [1/2 -2 3/2]]?

My method was to represent f(x) as ax^2+bx+c, giving v = [c, a + b + c, 4a + 2b + c] as the vector in the coordinate system and dv/dx = [b, 2a + b, 4a + b] as the derivative. Then d/dx * v = dv/dx. Then split both vectors into a product of a 3x3 number matrix and [a b c], cancel the [a b c] from both sides, find the inverse of the left matrix, and multiply it by the right. I did the inverse by hand so I might have made an arithmetic mistake. Am I on the right track or did I totally misunderstand the question?

<comment><AUTHOR> That is correct.

Your double check is to take the vectors for the polynomials 1, x, and x^2 (namely [1, 1, 1], [0, 1, 2], [0, 1, 4]) and multiply out to see that you get the vectors for the polynomials 0, 1, 2x.

Your verbal description does not make sense to me. But you appear to have done the right operations.

The approach that my class universally took was to realize that if we take the coordinate system whose basis is (1, x, x^2) then the answer is easy to write down. After that you apply change of basis matrices to each side to get the answer in the requested basis.

<comment><USER9> Cool. I haven't gotten to the change of basis lecture video yet, or I might have tried that :)

<comment><AUTHOR> If you do the linear function/notation thing right, the idea of a change of basis comes for free. The basic idea is this. Suppose that we have a linear function F between two vector spaces (which might be the same), and we have coordinate systems on the vector spaces (which might be the same). Then we can take the elements of the first basis, v1, v2, ..., vn, and write out a matrix whose columns are F(v1), F(v2), ... F(vn) in the second coordinate system.

This matrix uniquely represents F. The function F can be applied to a vector by writing out the vector in the first coordinate system, putting that on the right of the matrix, then doing matrix multiplication. You get an answer in the second coordinate system. And the operation of matrix multiplication turns out (if the coordinate systems match up) to be exactly the same as composition of functions.

(This is no coincidence, this relationship is the motivation for matrix multiplication being defined as it is.)

OK, with all of that mess, what is a change of basis matrix? It is simply the matrix you get for the identity function going from one coordinate system to another.

Now in this case the matrix A = [[1 0 0] [1 1 1] [1 2 4]] is the matrix to change from the basis where a+bx+cx^2 is represented by [a b c] to the basis where it is represented by [a a+b+c a+2b+4c] (ie [p(0) p(1) p(2)]). Its inverse is the change of basis the other way. And B = [[0 1 0] [0 0 2] [0 0 0]] is, of course, in the [a b c] basis the representation of the function d/dx.

Then A B A^(-1) represents change from pointwise coordinates to coefficients, then differentiate in coefficient coordinates, then change from coefficient coordinates back to pointwise coordinates. (Remember, the matrices are applied right to left, so you do A^(-1) first.)

If you can keep that straight, you now understand change of basis matrices.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> One of my favorite real-world example uses of <http://www.gwern.net/Spaced%20repetition>

</comment><comment><USER11> As a 2nd year undergrad, I wish he taught my first year linear algebra course. I remember just scrambling to keep up with the prof writing the notes on the board. For my final I just crammed the steps (without knowing why they work or why we do it) for matrix multiplication, diagonalization, orthogonal diagonalization, etc.

I'm going to regret this in my 3rd year...

</comment><comment><USER3> 20 years ago, I had a professor who would ask lots of questions in class. I _still_ remember that Lindsey's designated answer was "Static Electric Charge". I'm not in the field anymore, but I still remember a bunch about that class, and I count the professor as one of my two or three best.

I only wish that I had a linalg professor who was that good.

</comment><comment><USER12> I've been thinking of using spaced repetition in the upcoming semester to help me study (computer science). Does anyone have any tips on when to review, and what kind of material should I be preparing for review? Do I just re-do parts from previous homework assignments?

<comment><AUTHOR> The study schedule that I was taught is to work in half-hour sections. Review for 5 min, study for 20, take a 5 min break. Start the next block with a review of the previous.

After the first day, review on a schedule. For instance the following day, several days later, a week later, a month later. Each day for your review look back in your notes the appropriate time.

When I was a student I was never that organized. Instead I would sit down and try to think through sketches of everything that I was supposed to have learned. Just pretend that I'm teaching it, and start sketching out my knowledge. Wherever I ran into trouble remembering details, that was generally a spot that I needed to review and I'd look it up in the text.

This is unorganized, but I'd walk into follow-up courses a year or two later and still know the previous course cold. So it worked for me.

You could also do it by just redoing parts of previous homework assignments. But that feels to me like a lot more work (unless the professor assists).

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Yeah, I read that a few years ago, too.

Looking back, the authors approach mirrors very well what I tried to set up for myself as a student. (Asking questions, no notes, repetition schedule..)

</comment><comment><USER14> btilly has come full circle! It's still a great post.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=850485>

Coincidence that I should see this; I'm not really active on HN anymore, and just happened to click.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm curious. The first time it was posted, you indicated that you were trying the thirds homework idea.

How did that work out?

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> As a former TA, this sounds like an amazing approach.</comment>


Ask HN: Is programming a good career to start in anymore? - <AUTHOR>

First off, I am mainly a lurker here and read a lot of this stuff, for better or for worse. I'm a junior in high school, unsure where to go next. I do a lot of programming and I suck at it.
I have read quite a few comments that say programming is not a good career. It's hard to do what you love because there are so many people who do the same thing, it's not a unique skill, it's unstable unless you settle for Visual Basic maintenance work, etc.. Judging by the amount of "this thing is so difficult, I need to take a 50 year sabbatical so I can have a proper work-life balance" type of posts I see on HN, it's stressful too.
So, my question is, is it even possible to get a job (in a few years) under the label of "programming"? Do I need to find something better to specialize in (sysadmin, network guy…)?
I enrolled in a Python/C++ independent study class because I took AP CS for the A+ I needed to boost my average last year. So, in a sense, I've already committed another year to this. Is this a skill I will end up using, or will I look back at this as a waste of time for the rest of my life? Am I just being especially pessimistic at the moment?
I don't need any more of that "follow your dreams" bullshit. <comment><USER2> As someone who was in a similar position and whose world view seems to be similar, I would say that looking for a career as a programmer is probably a bad choice, but you're actually far better off than you think.

On the bad side, the career of programmer is a bad career to get into in the same way that scribe, typist, and elevator operator are terrible career options. However, if you go to a job interview and can't read, type, or use an elevator, you'll be shown the door. Programming is heading down that same road.

So, there's some good news. You didn't waste your time. You're going to be writing code until the day you die. You'll just never be called a programmer in the same way that you'll never be called a chauffeur when you drive yourself to work.

The next bit of bad news is that you probably do suck at programming. The CS AP test was a cake walk back when I took it and it DID include pointers at the time (during the brief period where they focused on C++). I was a deplorably incompetent programmer when I took the exam and I aced it without any problems.

The corresponding good news is that it largely doesn't matter that you suck as a programmer. The vast majority of people are so terrible at programming that even basic, wipe-after-you-poop competence will make you look like a superstar. To put it more succinctly, have you head of Git? I'm not asking if you've used it - have you heard of it? Congratulations! If you have, then you're in the top ten percent of crappy programmers.

I guess what I'm saying is that you shouldn't "follow your dreams" \- don't become a programmer because that career is dying. On the other hand, you're pretty well off, because your dreams are going to chase you down. You'll probably never be a "programmer", but you'll spend your career programming, whether you want to or not.

You should specialize, but not in a "sysadmin" or "network guy" sort of way. These also seem to be assimilating into the basic employment competency list. Instead, ask yourself what you want your programs to DO. After all, if a couple of Silicon Valley VCs came to you and said "We need a programmer to make a database of left handed people and code areal drones to blow them up", I'm guessing that you wouldn't be that thrilled at the opportunity. So ask yourself what you'd like them write instead. If it's the next great ray-tracer for pixar, study physics and optics. If it's the next facebook, read up on sociology. If it's the new mining operation. If it's a better news site, study journalism. If it's an encrypted webmail client, study math. If it's blowing up left handed people, study aeronautical engineering.

And keep studying programming. It's a wonderful little hobby that will payout huge dividends in your career. Just don't try to be a programmer. Or an elevator operator.

</comment><comment><USER3> My contrary opinion is that programming skills are one of the surest employment bets that a person your age can make. This is particularly true if you above average intelligence and enjoy the kind of abstract, puzzle solving work that is central to programming.

In addition to what you are already learning, think about adding the following. A decent foundation in Linux, PostgreSql,Javascript, CSS and Javascript. And, on the academic side take lots of math and statistics.

This combination will enable you to secure well paying jobs and if you have vision and a taste for risk this set of skills has high upside potential though creating products.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'd say learn to program, but thoroughly learn a domain to apply it to as well. Ideally you'll pick the domain right, but learning what's involved in learning a domain thoroughly is itself hugely valuable. I don't know exactly when, in your educational trajectory, to advise what though. Probably depends partly on the particular domains you're considering.

</comment><comment><USER5> You took the AP CS, and knew you could get an A+, why do you think you suck at programming?

Being able to program is a wonderful skill - the computers are so accurate, so efficient and never complains once you get all the bugs out. It's great. The languages are getting easier and more powerful. I think the world will soon just have 2 groups of people - people who program or make things, and people who don't.

In short, programming is a great career to start. You don't have to be an amazing programmer to appreciate it's beauty and value. Yes, it may be stressful, hey, even jobs at Starbucks or the Amazon warehouse get stressful - if you work at (any job) loser companies, you also lose your job easily when the bossmen screw up. If I am to choose an easily, portable skill to harness, programming is better than box-packing or coffee-pouring.

<comment><AUTHOR> OK. You're probably right. But AP CS was not difficult for anyone. If you did the work, you got an A+. And then the exam was worthless as an indicator of how good you are. Even my friend who tried to copy and paste off Yahoo Answers got a 5 (the highest you can get). You can look at the course description[0]—it's easier than Programming 101 (of course not even close to the MIT version). It's all in java and you don't have to know what a pointer is.

> _The languages are getting easier and more powerful._

Definitely agree with you on that one. I am learning swift right now and it has come really far from objective-C.

> _I think the world will soon just have 2 groups of people - people who > program or make things, and people who don 't._

Now that is an interesting perspective.

> _If I am to choose an easily, portable skill to harness, programming is > better than box-packing or coffee-pouring._

That's a really unfair comparison. Those are jobs you get for minimum wage. You can't major in box-packing in college, but you can major in software engineering.

As I said before, maybe you're right. My fear is that really, my skills are not unique or specialized. They are just "Oh, I know some C, and some Objective-C, and some Python, and some JavaScript, and some Java, and some shell scripting, and barely any C++". I feel like nothing stands out from that. With the exception of Objective-C (I'm including the native frameworks here), those are all languages that every programmer should know (C) or would be able to pick up fairly quickly (Java).

[0]: [http://apcentral.collegeboard.com/apc/public/repository/ap-c...](http://apcentral.collegeboard.com/apc/public/repository/ap- computer-science-course-description.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's entirely possible to get a job under the general label of "programming" \- businesses everywhere need custom systems written to handle their shit and it doesn't really require any extra skills beyond being able to program. Right now the demand is so high that anyone and with just 1-2 years of total experience as a programmer (and without a CS degree) will have no trouble getting hired, provided he knows the technologies that are in demand (like enterprise java).

</comment><comment> dj-wonk I am having a hard time understanding where you are getting such a negative vibe about software development, systems administration, and related fields. Are you being overly pessimistic? Yes, and that is an understatement. Give it a shot and see how it goes.

Yes, some places don't have a clue about software. Some may not treat you well. Look and shop around until you find a decent place.

What else are you considering?

If you want to talk about some fields that have high dissatisfaction, take a look at becoming a doctor or lawyer. :)

</comment><comment><USER7> Last I checked there's a distinct shortage of programmers in America (which is where I assume you are since you said you took an AP class). But don't take my word for it, I don't need the competition!

</comment><comment><USER8> Yes, definitely. Companies, agencies, clients, etc. will always need custom development. It's a growing market and will just become more popular as the years go on.</comment>


Purging Your Stuff Is the New Conspicuous Consumption - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-01-10/marie-kondo-tidying-inside-the-world-of-konmari <comment><USER2> i did something like this about 2 years ago, i realised a few things, first that almost all my at home entertainment comes from a single source, my laptop, i had little need for anything more than that.

i also realised that many of the things id buy were impulse buys that in many cases never got used or if they did they didnt actually provide much function, i was often buying them more for the act of buying them than anything else, little toys/gadgets/trinkets that never got used and ended up sat in drawers or boxes and such

so following these idea i decided id get rid of all the things that served no real purpose and going forward would only buy things that would be regularly used and provide something the things i already have dont.

currently aside from clothes and the like i own a laptop, an eGPU, a monitor, keyboard/mouse/gamepad, gaming chair, set of speakers, an amp, headphones and my mobile phone, thats literally everything, i dont even own furniture and such as i just rent places that come with all that, it makes for a much simpler life and makes it infinitely easier to move when needed

<comment><USER3> _i was often buying them more for the act of buying them than anything else_

Shopping is just the current idiom over culturally ingrained hunter-gatherer behavior.</comment></comment>


Radiohead's Thom Yorke and Nigel Godrich Are Removing Their Music from Spotify - <AUTHOR> http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/permalink/2013/20130714yorke <comment><USER2> For reference: Radiohead's pay-what-you-want model for _In Rainbows_ was the first of its kind, and groundbreaking. It's entirely possible this starts a trend.

On the other end: I don't like the idea of new artists not getting paid (I try to go out of my way and buy tickets for indie musicians I like or, failing that, purchase swag), but as a consumer I like Spotify a lot. It's also hard for me to conflate the ideas that new artists are being trampled by Music 2.0 with success stories like Karmin and Chance the Rapper, who put out free material (via YouTube and a free mixtape, respectively) and the massive coverage launched them into the national spotlight.

You know what would be awesome? A Flattr-esque system for music. You pay $XX/mo, can listen to whatever, and your money gets divvied up to artists based on play count. (if half of my play count in July comes from Blind Pilot, for instance, then they get half my money.)

<comment><USER3> $10/month for infinite access to all music ever created just isn't reasonable. And the ad revenue from a majority free user base for infinite access to all music ever created is _definitely_ unreasonable.

It's hard to argue with th connivence factor. However right now Spotify is destroying an existing model, not paying artists, and losing money hand over fist. It's lose/lose/lose. I'd rather consumers just pirate the music that way they at least know they aren't supporting the artists.

<comment><USER4> Then how unreasonable is $0/month for radio? I'm happy there's people who can look at services like Spotify and Rdio critically, but I don't think appeals to intuition like "that can't be right?!" help us much.

<comment><USER5> Because radio is not a substitute for recorded music. The inability to choose what you're listening to was always the stick that compelled listeners to purchase a recording. If you have Spotify, there is no reason to ever purchase that music in a download store.

<comment><USER6> Fast, reliable, and unmetered wireless is by no means ubiquitous. There is still the benefit of being able to play offline, burn to CD for the car, share with friends, etc.

Admittedly, the incentive to want offline music may continue to diminish over time.

<comment> k-mcgrady Spotify offers offline access of their $10 p/m plan.

<comment><USER6> Ah, didn't know that. Guessing they don't allow CD burning, but I imagine that's a dwindling use case.

<comment><USER4> Well, more importantly, they don't allow sharing. You can have it offline but it's not like they're giving you plain mp3's to do with what you please.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is only for Thom Yorke solo tunes, Atoms for Peace music from Thom and Nigel, and Nigel's side project Ultraista. The two make the argument that new music is hurt in the Spotify revenue equation.

With the large stake of Spotify that is owned by the Majors and other large corporate entities such as Coca-Cola, it would be interesting if the 'independent labels' were to come out with some sort of streaming service of their own, whether it be on a label by label basis or on a combined level.

Anyways, let's see what happens with this in the news cycle.

Edit: Found an interesting Thom Yorke quote on his feelings about digital content:

 _Radiohead have often riffed on the edge of that thoroughly modern disjunction. From their landmark album OK Computer on, the band seemed like evangelists for the revolutionary possibilities of a digital world, self- releasing 2007 's In Rainbows on a pay-what-you-want download. Yorke is a bit more sceptical about all that now.

In the days before we meet, he has been watching a box set of Adam Curtis's BBC series, All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace, about the implications of our digitised future, so the arguments are fresh in his head. "We were so into the net around the time of Kid A," he says. "Really thought it might be an amazing way of connecting and communicating. And then very quickly we started having meetings where people started talking about what we did as 'content'. They would show us letters from big media companies offering us millions in some mobile phone deal or whatever it was, and they would say all they need is some content. I was like, what is this 'content' which you describe? Just a filling of time and space with stuff, emotion, so you can sell it?"

Having thought they were subverting the corporate music industry with In Rainbows, he now fears they were inadvertently playing into the hands of Apple and Google and the rest. "They have to keep commodifying things to keep the share price up, but in doing so they have made all content, including music and newspapers, worthless, in order to make their billions. And this is what we want? I still think it will be undermined in some way. It doesn't make sense to me. Anyway, All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace. The commodification of human relationships through social networks. Amazing!"_[1]

[1] [http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2013/feb/23/thom-yorke- radio...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2013/feb/23/thom-yorke-radiohead- interview)

<comment><USER7> _This is only for Thom Yorke solo tunes, Atoms for Peace music from Thom and Nigel, and Nigel 's side project Ultraista. The two make the argument that new music is hurt in the Spotify revenue equation._

Dear Thom,

I wish you had thought about this after you got very rich but before you decided that that made it a good idea of give away music for free. When lack of access to a reliable revenue model makes it difficult for build an audience for your own projects, the problem is primarily one of low return on your artistic endeavor.

But for those who don't happen to be associated with an existing success such as Radiohead, that low return often means no prospect of making money at all. Whereas you can have the guitar amp of your choice or feel sure of an audience when you announce a gig, the lack of a revenue model for new music means many will never taste the leverage that you enjoy, with corresponding limitations on their musical development.

This isn't all your fault, of course. But it might be good if you could devote some of your energy to finding a model that works for people without name recognition, eg by relying on your great musical talent but operating under a pseudonym while you search for new ways to sell it.

<comment><USER8> Did you read the article?

Thom and Nigel seem to be lamenting new bands' inability to bring in money, they're not grieving about how they themselves don't make enough through Spotify.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I may be wrong, but is seems like a central part of the complaint is that newly released/recorded music isn't getting a big enough piece of the pie.

I'm not sure if this is just a trollish interpretation but it sounds like they are they asking for a return to the system where "this summer's new hits" get played relentlessly until everyone is sick of them and ready for "this year's christmas albums?"

I understand the argument that sales of new music funds new albums getting recorded while new sales of Hotel California don't promote any kind of artistic work. That's a purely producer side perspective though. For a listener, there is a lot of recorded music that exists. Very little of the best stuff was recorded this year (or in any given year).

</comment><comment><USER9> Technology giveth, technology..

I think a great analogy is/was the porn industry. Every time a new technology made it big, the industry was turned upside down. Ferraris bought by new guys. Ferraris repossessed for others. Home VCRs created an industry that dwarfed adult cinemas. Selling DVDs over the internet was even better until streaming/download video killed that model. The porn industry collapsed and immediately started trying building a new economy on newer technology. How about interactive and realtime? Can that work? If it can, they'll figure it out pretty quick.

No one takes an indignant pornographer seriously so the industry doesn't spend much energy being indignant. It just grows and shrinks as it can or has to.

Thom and Nigel are great artists. I'm glad they're out there making music. But I'm a little turned off by the tone of their comments (now and at other times) it all rings of a feeling that the world owes them or (more often than not) younger artists a certain business model.

<comment><USER10> > No one takes an indignant pornographer seriously so the industry doesn't > spend much energy being indignant. It just grows and shrinks as it can or > has to.

If only indignant moralistic artists were appropriately looked at as foolish. We live in a capitalist world, where the things sold are only limited by what they can give the customer. The artist loses the second they allow their music to be stored in a big, copy able file, and lose all value. Convenience is by far what drives my listening habits, so if you aren't on spotify, to me, might as well not exist (unless I pirate it.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I have always wondered why Spotify does not raise their subscription fees (maybe after one year for example). If they asked me to pay more than $10/month, which seems a totally unreasonable number for everybody in this market, I would just do it because the convenience is awesome, and it is so much cheaper than any other legal alternatives for music lovers...

<comment> k-mcgrady I think they could certainly raise their prices in the US. Unless I'm mistaken it's cheaper there than anywhere else. e.g. In the UK it costs £9.99 which is just over $15.

They could also differentiate their plans better and add in higher end ones. I think they would make more money and not impact consumers too badly if they charged for use. e.g. $5 per month for 20 songs per day. $10 per month for 40 songs per day. $20 per month unlimited.

<comment><USER11> Indeed - they could definitely do that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> i'm an avid spotify user (~4+ hours a day) and honestly have no idea how this is a sustainable business. how much are the 20+ artists a day that I listen to making from my $10 a month? genuinely don't understand how this is working. there are so many artists that come out with new albums that I _would_ buy except for the fact that I can get them free on spotify. It's saving me probably 100-200/year and that's being conservative. That means it's costing artists that much * users.

Why don't more artists take the Jay-Z approach? Build an app for your album, make people buy it, or sell it in bulk to a big brand like Samsung. This seems like a way for artists to take back the industry. Pirating music from a Jay-Z app seems much much harder than from a desktop. I think we're on the verge of a total shift back to the world of pre-CD burners where you simply had to pay 10-20 to listen to an album.

What am I missing?

<comment><USER13> _Pirating music from a Jay-Z app seems much much harder than from a desktop._

There are already dozens of torrents with thousands of peers on The Pirate Bay. It doesn't really matter how hard it is, as long as a single individual can do it.

 _I think we 're on the verge of a total shift back to the world of pre-CD burners where you simply had to pay 10-20 to listen to an album._

Before CD burners we had tapes. The logo of the music industry campaign against home taping is actually part of The Pirate Bay's: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_Taping_Is_Killing_Music](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_Taping_Is_Killing_Music)

<comment><USER7> _Before CD burners we had tapes._

...which were subject to generation loss. You had an incentive to buy albums you liked, because taping involved a loss of quality.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The streaming-music business reminds me of Netflix in its early days, before movie studios became worried that it was cannibalizing rental/VOD revenue for new releases. There are a certain group of fans who are willing to pay $10-20 per album for access to music the moment it's released. With Spotify, those fans are treated like any other stream even though they're willing to pay more. It's inefficient pricing, except from Spotify's perspective as they're able to use immediate access to new release music as a lure for subscribers. So really, you can look at Spotify as capturing that demand and converting it into free advertising for themselves. I don't see that as sustainable in the long run. Some artists are already holding back new releases from streaming services. Like Netflix, I think that in the future you will see few new releases from popular artists until they've been available through premium services long enough to capture demand from hardcore fans.

Spotify treats all songs as if they have equal value, but that's obviously not true from the listener's perspective. For any given person, there are going to be some songs that they're willing to pay a premium to hear, and some that they'll only listen to if it's free. Spotify is a good deal for the latter case, but not if it offers a discounted version of the former to people who could pay for it. Just because Spotify counts every stream as a single interchangeable unit of value doesn't mean that listeners value every stream equally.

<comment><USER14> I think Spotify is in a great position right now, they are building up a huge userbase right now (first step for Facebook etc. too). But the service will monetize very well. For example I would pay extra per album to get to stream a couple albums on the day of their CD release just because it's convenient to have all my music in one application. Or charge me 15$ a month for a gold account and add a feature on the artist page to leave a 1$ tip. This extra 5$ goes into my "wallet" that I can then disperse straight to my favorite artists each month. Like a microtransaction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I wonder if artists who withdraw their music from services like this because they don't make "enough money" from them, realize they are getting paid again and again for me listening to albums I've already bought.

You may not be getting paid in buckets and buckets of cash, but what you're getting is really just a freebie. You cannot complain about getting free money.

If enough artists do this, services like Spotify will not offer me enough convenience, and the other option (simply mirroring my 100GB music collection to my work PC) will then be good enough that no artists stands to earn free money for albums I've already paid for.

As far as Thom Yorke's argument goes: That artists are severely underpaid in the streaming-world, I'm not going to debate that or even oppose that. He probably knows better than me.

But we've already established that this was a problem with the album-model as well. You have record companies taking $10 per album and the artist getting paid $1. With a $100,000 "credit" for studio-engineers to repay.

It seems the only truth and rule in the music-industry is that the artist always gets screwed.

<comment><USER16> > I wonder if artists who withdraw their music from services like this because > they don't make "enough money" from them, realize they are getting paid > again and again for me listening to albums I've already bought

I wonder how common that is? At least 90% of the things I listen to on Spotify are things that I have not bought on vinyl, CD, or any non-streaming online format.

<comment><USER17> I think I'm about 70:30 stuff I already own to new stuff. Possibly even 80:20.

This is probably because I have a huge music collection already, and I'm in my 30s and don't like you kids and your darned modern music so much any more. Music was so much better in my day, mumble mumble, get off my lawn etc etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> 'New artists' always had it hard, I don't think it was easy to get your record printed and distributed all over the world, at least now people can find them easier with youtube, spotify and other services without a big risk (investment). If an artist is good, they will probably get viral (see Justin Bieber) and then earn all the big bucks like Thom and Nigel. Maybe I'm missing something else since I haven't read anything related to spotify in the last few weeks.

<comment><USER7> It was certainly always hard to become a megastar, but it used to be a lot easier to put out a genre record (eg techno, drum'n'bass, jazz) because a well-run label had a pretty good sense of what would sell enough copies to turn a modest profit for everyone involved. An album that sold 4 or 5000 copies to a niche audience could make about 25k each for the artist and the label (record deals in genre music are generally a more equitable than major label ones). That's not a lot, but it's not terrible either, you could pay your rent with it. Nowadays you'd be lucky to sell 1000 copies, so small labels are correspondingly less willing to take a risk on unknown artists, and there are fewer labels with the expertise in distribution, marketing, and developing an artist's career than there used to be.

 _If an artist is good, they will probably get viral_

Don't be absurd. Justin Bieber is talented, but he's also extremely attractive and happens to be proficient at the sort of music that appeals to teenage girls. That's a bit like expecting J. Random Developer to enjoy the same sort of success as Bill Gates, and concluding that if he doesn't it must be because he's no good as a programmer.

<comment><USER18> Well then maybe the way the market is only certain people can get paid that much (just like a random developer becoming the next Bill Gates). Also I said artist not musician, Bieber got to where he's at not for being a talented musician but for being an artist (attractive, catchy, etc).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> As a fan of both Radiohead and Spotify this makes me sad :(

</comment><comment><USER20> Why can't Spotify follow the old VHS/Cinema model? If you want it today, you pay the premium. If you want to rent, you have to wait a bit longer.

</comment><comment><USER21> Avid Spotify-user here (paying about $15 a month in Sweden). I just wish they can work it out so the artists get paid fairly - it shouldn't be that hard, should it?

On the topic of pirating as an alternative - it is just _sooo_ nice not having to manage a bunch of MP3s. Playlists are just way more convenient.

</comment><comment><USER22> I had no idea that individual artists had any say in this (thought that the mega labels determined the fate of everything related to their signed artists).

Or are Yorke and Godrich's solo arrangements with the labels nonstandard, which makes this possible?

<comment><USER23> Radiohead had a 6-album contract with EMI, but from In Rainbows onwards Radiohead were able to call the shots a bit more, hence being able to release it with a 'pay-what-you-want' model.[1]

The article states that Radiohead's old stuff is still on Spotify, and that the albums removed were Thom Yorke's solo projects. So I imagine that EMI controls the first 6 albums, and so they are still on Spotify, while newer Radiohead content and Yorke's personal projects are more under his control.

This isn't a typical arrangement for new artists, they only got that because they were a huge superstar band already.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Rainbows#Release](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Rainbows#Release)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Could someone throw up a pie chart showing exactly how much of your $10 actually goes to an artist? I'm guessing you're going to need to make it pretty large for it to be even visible.

Good on them.

<comment><USER25> A friend of mine with a record deal is getting more from a single album sale than he gets from 50K listens on spotify.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Someone once said that music is the only thing that you consume before purchasing.</comment>


Google still has no idea how to pitch Stadia - <AUTHOR> https://www.polygon.com/2019/8/20/20813684/google-stadia-price-games-marketing <comment><USER2> As someone here said about Google some time ago: Gaming is just not in Googles DNA. I can see no way this is going to work out. The whole concept is odd.

At least PC gaming has evolved to a point where 1440p is about the norm, and 144fps is the refresh rate goal for enthusuasts, with 4k and 200+fps in sight.. and they want to just stream video? I don't believe a second that that'll be good enough for more than the most casual games. Be it compression quality, fps, mod support, latency. And then there's the surprisingly high price.

Also the name Google is about as radioactive as Epic has become, at least from a gaming point of view.

<comment><USER3> ~90% of PC gamers still play at 1080p or below according to Steam's hardware survey [1].

With Stadia offering a free 1080p tier across multiple devices I think it'll be a lot more popular than tech/gaming enthusiasts anticipate.

[1] [https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware- Softw...](https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Software- Survey-Welcome-to-Steam)

<comment><USER2> Sure, I might be wrong. In a year or so we'll see. The GPU market kinda sucks at the moment, so that makes buying the components less attractive for sure. I just can't imagine the streaming tech to work.</comment></comment></comment>


J one-page interpreter fragment (1992) - <AUTHOR> http://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Essays/Incunabulum <comment><USER3> Every time someone posts a link to some new or popular database claiming some superior performance, I think of this "fragment". One individual took this idea and made a database system that beats them all. You never see it included in the benchmark comparisons for these other databases posted about on HN. I wonder why?

Oft forgotten: _All source code_ looks "cryptic" to someone who has no previous exposure to programming.

As a newcomer to programming I would rather be saddled with trying to understand this "fragment" than trying to understand the beginnings of the source code for some other language like Python. Less lines of code to figure out and, if I were successful in understanding it, the payoff is much greater... in more ways than one.

Isn't there an often repeated statistic about the avg number of LOC a C programmer writes in a day?

Wouldn't it be nice if just one or a few lines was actually a _complete program_?

</comment><comment><USER4> Once you get past the formatting and cryptic variable names it's actually a pretty straightforward program, have a look at one of the older threads if you are interested in understanding it:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8533843](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8533843)

<comment><USER5> Unfortunately, I tried getting it to run and it simply doesn't work. Unless the expected behavior of every input is to crash the interpreter.

EDIT: In fact, you can see for yourself using [https://gist.github.com/piotrklibert/4d32c8cc6fcf20643a257a2...](https://gist.github.com/piotrklibert/4d32c8cc6fcf20643a257a26bd17bcde) (thanks, klibertp!)

      $ ./j
      warning: this program uses gets(), which is unsafe.
      5 + 10
      Segmentation fault: 11
      $ ./j
      warning: this program uses gets(), which is unsafe.
      5 + 10 20 30
      j(70679,0x7fffa46de3c0) malloc: *** error for object 0x7f7fc74001b8: incorrect checksum for freed object - object was probably modified after being freed.
      *** set a breakpoint in malloc_error_break to debug
      Abort trap: 6

From [http://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Studio/TasteofJPart1](http://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Studio/TasteofJPart1), `5 + 10` should be a valid J program, but it crashes. Is there any input that doesn't crash it?

<comment><USER4> I did run it back in the day, it works, I think it just happens to assume a 32 bit OS. You can fix the gist by changing this:

      I *ma(n){ R (I*) malloc(n*4); }

to:

      I *ma(n){ R (I*) malloc(n*8); }

Note that it's a very tiny interpreter for a very tiny simple language - <USER2> does not have any error handling (it still WILL segfault if you enter "incorrect" programs, where "correct" is whatever doesn't crash the interpreter :)), the letters a-z are the only available variable names etc., this is why it is so short. Once you get over the APLish way of writing the C code, and once you deduce what the operators are intended to do, it's a pretty straightforward C program.

Here is a sample session:

      a=1,2,3
      3
      1 2 3
      b=4,5,6
      3
      4 5 6
      a+b
      3
      5 7 9

This piece of the gist is the "symbol table" for respectively binary and unary operators, you can use it to get started understanding the language:

      C vt[] = "+{~<#,";
      A(*vd[])() = { 0, plus, from, find, 0, rsh, cat},
       (*vm[])() = { 0, id, size, iota, box, sha, 0};

<comment><USER6> When I last looked at this I found:

plus a+b: addition

      Example: 1+2 -> 3

from a{b: selects the a-th element from b

      Example: 3{4,5,6,7,8 -> 7

find a~b: Not implemented? Or maybe this exploits some old-style C behavior?

rsh a#b: repeat a items of b

      Example: 3#9 -> [9,9,9]

      Example: 7#2,3 -> [2,3,2,3,2,3,2]

cat a,b: concatenate item a onto the list b

      Example: 1,2,3 -> [1,2,3]

id +a: identity

      Example: +7 -> 7

size {a: get the size (in the first dimension) of a

      Example: {7,8,9 -> 3

      Example: a=4,5
               b=a#7
               {b -> 4

iota ~a: enumerates all integers from 0 to a-1

      Example: ~3 -> 0,1,2

      Example: ~2,3 -> [0,1,2,3,4,5]

box <a: Put a into an indirection box

      Example: <1 -> <1

sha #a: get the shape (size in all dimensions) of a

      Example: #7,8,9 -> 3

      Example: a=4,5
               b=a#7
               #b -> 4,5

I don't remember or haven't figured out how to dereference a boxed value, or what this can be used for.

The struct A has members:

      t: The "type": 0=integer, 1=boxed reference
      r: The "rank": size of array d
      d: The "dimensions": Multiply to get the size of array p
      p: The actual data. Can be integers or pointers to boxed data (cast to a 32-bit integer!)

<comment><USER5> Wow. This is genuinely incredible. The interpreter works, and all of your examples run.

Thank you for detailing all of this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'd like to be awed and amazed, but the frightening thought of encountering such a thing in production and under tight deadline kind of doesn't let me :)

EDIT: I've edited the code a bit so that it doesn't look like PERL or J itself [https://gist.github.com/piotrklibert/4d32c8cc6fcf20643a257a2...](https://gist.github.com/piotrklibert/4d32c8cc6fcf20643a257a26bd17bcde)

<comment><USER8> I got as far as trying to build and run it, but bugged out, thusly:

        $ ./one-page-j
        warning: this program uses gets(), which is unsafe.

        Segmentation fault: 11

Ah well, its still cute to try to read and understand ..

<comment><USER9> I got it to compile but what is it even supposed to do?

<comment><USER10> It's a tiny interpreter. You can create vectors, add them, concatenate them, store them to variables, count their lengths, and so on. An example session:

        x=~5
        5
        0 1 2 3 4
        y=x,x
        10
        0 1 2 3 4 0 1 2 3 4
        x+y
        10
        0 2 4 6 8 0 1 2 3 4

To understand the source, the key are the arrays `C vt[]`, `A( _vd[])()`, and `A(_ vm[])()`, which maps the verb token to the dyads and monads respectively. `V1` functions are monads, `V2` are dyads.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> That's actually about as readable as the full J interpreter source code.

[https://github.com/jsoftware/jsource](https://github.com/jsoftware/jsource)

<comment><USER12> Jeezzz!!

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> /aside: Reminded me of "6 instances of SHA-3 and SHAKE" in 9 tweets:

[http://keccak.noekeon.org/tweetfips202.html](http://keccak.noekeon.org/tweetfips202.html)

[https://twitter.com/TweetFIPS202](https://twitter.com/TweetFIPS202)

</comment><comment><USER14> Even if the details are a bit… inscrutable, I do like that figuring out the structure of this interpreter is quite easy as it's all on one page and easy to see all the "moving parts". It perhaps looks a bit scary, but it is, IMO, much easier to understand than 1000 lines of Java spread out across 5 different files. In a way, there's less mental overhead.</comment>


High-energy particle physicists figured out video conferencing a long time ago - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/1832018/how-physicists-solved-your-zoom-video-conferencing-problems/ <comment><AUTHOR> They are using Indico, "effortless open-source tool for event organisation, archival and collaboration" → [https://getindico.io/](https://getindico.io/)</comment>


Java 7 is adding dynamics - <AUTHOR> http://www.baptiste-wicht.com/2010/04/java-7-more-dynamics/

<comment><USER2> While I'm really glad to see Java (the language) slowly evolving in a positive direction, and it might bring me some joy at work if/when we switch to 7, I can't imagine starting new projects in Java anymore if I had my way. Once you've been exposed to the much nicer languages thriving on the JVM now, it's hard to get excited about Java anymore.

I mean, I can't see this sort of thing as being very enjoyable to write all the time.

      JComboBox combo = new JComboBox();

      MethodHandle handle = MethodHandles.lookup().findVirtual(JComboBox.class, "setModel", MethodType.make(void.class, ComboBoxModel.class));

      handle.invoke(combo, new CustomComboModel());

<comment><USER3> I think these dynamic features are actually intended for alternative JVM languages.

If they're exposed via the Java reflection API at all, it's incidental to their actual purpose.

<comment><USER4> I think they could also be useful in creating little DSLs, building parser combinators, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Any word on tail-call optimization? Clojure's recur macro is pretty clever but true compiler-level support for recursion would be nice.

<comment><USER6> I have not played with Clojure since it was introduced, but I have a question about recur or tail recursion. Here is a trivial CL example (nontrivial might be approaches to parsing):

      (defun find-nth-match (test from n)
        (if (= n 0)
            from
            (martial-n test (1+ from) n)))

      (defun martial-n (test from n)
        (find-nth-match test
                        from
                        (if (funcall test from) (1- n) n)))

      (find-nth-match #'evenp 1 5)  => 10

The idea is that tail recursion is not just recursing into the exact same function you appear to be in. Is this available with current clojure? Can recur help me somehow?

<comment> cgrand-net No recur won't help you: it's only for self tail recursion, not for mutual tail-recursive calls. You can use a trampoline or refactor your code.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7>
        "There are three supported invocations modes :
        invokestatic, invokespecial, invokeinterface or
        invokevirtual."

So ... Are there four, or is one very much like another?

<comment><USER8> There are four:

static for static methods

special for constructors I think

virtual for class methods

interface for interface methods (since its harder to find where an interface method is defined, its different to virtual)</comment></comment>


The r7rs situation is total clownshoes - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/andywingo/status/442390453179383808 <comment><USER2> I had to search a lot to find the some context information. This message is apparently relevant: [http://lists.scheme-reports.org/pipermail/scheme- reports/201...](http://lists.scheme-reports.org/pipermail/scheme- reports/2014-February/003941.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for that - I posted this in the hope that someone could provide some background.

Unfortunately [http://trac.sacrideo.us/wg/wiki/R7RSSmallErrata](http://trac.sacrideo.us/wg/wiki/R7RSSmallErrata) is currently returning 503.</comment></comment>


The Cult of Elon Is Cracking - <AUTHOR> https://theatlantic.com/article/611887/ <comment><USER2> We need a cultural stereotype for highly driven egomaniacs who do good work but leave a lot of collateral damage in their wake.

At the moment it seems like you need to love or hate them and complex mixtures of emotions are too complex to be part of the conversation.

I wonder how much the public opinion is mostly "I dont know who that is" followed by "I have no strong opinion on him" and "he's a mixed bag" but it's pretty hard for any of those opinions to get turned into memes or jokes or arguments or other viral content so the minor sliver of people with strong pro or anti feelings dominate discussion and so everyone gets pigeonholed as either an angel or a devil.</comment>