The Slackification of the American Home - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2019/07/families-slack-asana/593584/ <comment><USER2> This reminded me Atlassian's 2013 April Fools joke, JIRA Jr. ([https://www.atlassian.com/jirajr](https://www.atlassian.com/jirajr)). Funny how life imitates art.

<comment><USER3> Although that joke is funny, and this article is a little odd, personally I think everyone is taking away the wrong message.

Personal life absolutely could benefit from management and intelligence layers. For banking, instead of logging into each bank, I can use mint/personal capital. But when it comes to so much of the rest of life nothing plays nicely.

It would be awesome to have a shopping, construction, restaurant, recipe, health care aggregation for making decisions and projects. My family calendar should integrate right into "we need to pick a flooring contractor by xx" and when one of marks the one we want in on the platform, that info should trickle up into the management interface. If both of us mark ourselves as in the mood for Mexican, it can filter results down to restaurants we marked or might be relevant and show them to both of us. Comparing reviews between yelp, foursquare, facebook and google is agonizingly manual. Why cant this be as simple as metacritic? Right now collaborating is a painful mix of handing phones back and forth or sending links and screenshots. It's too real time. The same goes for shopping, comparison shopping together is just as disorganized as any collaborative task. Its very hard to break down the task into discrete components that can happen simultaneously. First you pick what you want, then you price shop, rinse repeat. Even simple stuff, like while planning an event, knowing who called an uber and getting an alert.

And then there is the educational aspect. Publishing and sharing a family budget, spending, net cash flow etc would absolutely benefit kids. They could see and learn how expensive things are, see what spending categories the trinkets they want chip into, where the family can reduce spending elsewhere, and what costs are fixed.

F, why not gamify chores. If you give out allowance for chores, why not have a list of available chores, and let the market handle itself? One kid wants to do all the work, they reap all the reward.

Maybe its less of a Slack/Trellofication and more what I want is a PowerBI/Tableau.

I know things like buildshop.com and getcatalant.com sort of fill that hybrid project management and reviews category, for their own verticals.

A collaborative family calendar, with goal planning, and brainstorming space isnt a bad idea. Hey you want to save for a purchase, heres a budgeting tool. Hey you need a ride to a thing at a certain time, this person is available. Building consensus over whats for dinner can be something people contribute to when they have time over the day, instead of requiring everyone to be on the same page at the same time? Oh we picked a recipe that the inventory knows we are out of an ingredient, add picking that ingredient up to the task list and assign it, before people start driving home for the day.

This comment became a very unfocused vomit of a rant quickly, and I dont feel like circling back around to edit it. Sorry.

<comment><USER2> You know, when you put it that way, that does raise a lot of good points. There are legitimate non-obvious problems in this area ("family resource management" might be a catchy name here) and not a lot of solutions. And the solutions that exist are so heavyweight and industry-tailored that when you hear about parents using JIRA, it just sounds absurd (and rightly so).

Probably the reason there aren't many such solutions is that it's not a sexy or obviously lucrative field, and that it's probably pretty hard to come up with a well-designed product that handles all the complexity of a family. I mean, come to think of it, most software startup founders are young and have few commitments (e.g. children); I can't imagine them being able to empathize well enough until they're at a later stage of their lives. But, perhaps someone's working on this as a very extensive side project.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > As per our earlier conversation, we have decided that the children will be > enrolled in tennis camp over the summer. Please let me know if you want to > follow up on this.

I cannot even imagine what it would be like being a teenager under that. Your two choices are either do everything you can to win your parents' approval, or run away at 16.

<comment><USER5> Or just rebel and be a little monster like everyone else at that age.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Something I'm trying to get better at is to be more intentional about everything e.g. I think I've come to the realization that I've wasted a lot of time and spent time doing things I shouldn't be doing because I allowed myself to "drift" in ways that don't help me at all.

I do not have a family or kids, but anything that helps families be more intentional with how they spend time with each other is a really good thing. I know growing up that was far from the case for me.

<comment><USER7> Tools are helpful for being intentional, but so is instruction.

Regular meditation and listening to buddhist instructors can help you along this path.

If your intention is to get better at being more intentional, then you are already halfway there!

<comment><USER8> We shouldn't need religion for this.

<comment><USER9> Meditation isn't religious. Zen-style mindfulness is proven to be beneficial for stress, anxiety, and even some indicators of physical health. It just so happens that most of the best meditation instructors are Buddhist (to some degree).

<comment><USER10> Meditation like what you described is a Zen Buddhist custom.

<comment><USER11> Intermittent fasting is also a custom with largely religious origins. It is also considered beneficial by many non-religious people.

You can take the baby out of the bathwater.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> In 2001, the article "The organization kid" was a popular framing of early millenials - [https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2001/04/the- org...](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2001/04/the-organization- kid/302164/) . 18 years later...the organization household.

</comment><comment><USER13> >"We think of Trello as a tool you can use across work and life," says Stella Garber, [Trello's] head of marketing. [...] (Slack declined to share any information about how people use its software, and Atlassian, which owns Jira, did not respond to a similar request.)

This is interesting... The author may have overlooked the fact that Atlassian also owns Trello.

<comment><USER14> When did this happen? And how much $$$?

<comment><USER15> [https://www.google.rs/amp/s/techcrunch.com/2017/01/09/atlass...](https://www.google.rs/amp/s/techcrunch.com/2017/01/09/atlassian- acquires-trello/amp/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Every family in the world uses IM, and Slack isn't very different from any of the hundred other options out there for group messaging. So not too surprising that families are using it.

Similarly all the other software mentioned can be used for simple calendaring, TODO lists, reminders etc., all of which most people here undoubtedly use in some form to manage their life. It's just the association of these brands with "work" that has people going WTF.

<comment><USER17> Very few families use IM. Are you in california by chance? I doubt its even a majority with affluent families there.

<comment><USER16> Do you use SMS? iMessage? WhatsApp? These are all forms of IM. I'm from India BTW, and about half the country is active on WhatsApp.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> What does it say about us as a society in which a pre-high school child needs to use a productivity suite to manage their lives? The answer here is not to provide more software to allow 11 year olds to eek out a few extra percentage points of productivity. The answer is to expect less of 11 year olds.

<comment><USER19> My cousin is raising 2 kids in a major urban center. Discussions of what pre-K they needed to prepare for starts around the time they are able to independently walk. Social calanders are decided weeks in advance. Play dates are heavily documented on social media and 'bucket-lists' of rites of passage such as photo session at a historical landmark, baseball stadium, etc are turned into holiday cards. My cousin might be an outlier, she is an incredibly driven business woman who juggles a full time lucrative career with family life, but I can't imagine her lifestyle is worth the stress. As far as I can remember the kids have always been dressed in coordinated outfits, hats, vests, capes, etc.

She is definitely a loving mother and cares the worlds for her kids, but I feel incredibly uneasy if this becomes the new norm for kids to succeed in our society.

This is not objective but my brother in law's extended family lives in the suburbs far from a much smaller metro area, spend their time primarily outdoors lightly supervised, and to me are far more confident, articulate, and _fun_ kids.

<comment><USER20> I don't think that's a very subjective observation. It's really challenging to let urban kids be unsupervised (and, in some places - it's borderline illegal)

<comment><USER21> I mean, maybe? Walk around Brooklyn and you'll see tons of unsupervised kids. Seem to be doing fine to me.

<comment><USER20> YMMV. How old are said kids?

<comment><USER22> Maybe like 10? I don't see that many kids younger than that walking alone in NYC.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The next step is to open source your family as a project on Github

<comment><USER24> I'm imagining the classic scene from movies where a teen boy comes to ask the dad if he can take the daughter to prom, except he just opens a pull request

<comment><USER25> "Will you marry me?" \- " _Merge request closed without comments._ "

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> >Julie Berkun Fajgenbaum, a mom of three children ages 8 to 12, uses Google Calendar to manage her children's time and Jira to keep track of home projects.

oh god..

<comment><USER27> Why oh god? Sounds reasonable.

Firstly a calendar can be very useful for knowing which activities kids are doing, what playdates etc. Schools sometimes throw one off things into the mix. Most parents would use a regular calendar anyway.

For JIRA - well that seems a bit heavy handed when trello would do but really it's a good idea. It's a todo list... so is the default todo app on your phone bad? Pen & paper bad? It's the same sort of thing.

<comment><USER28> Like, for a lot of people, if you need to use these tools for your family at all, it's a big sign that you need to do less things. If tracking your family and it's velocity is something that you feel that you need to do, then you need to re-evaluate what it is that you are doing with your family as such activity is glaringly unhealthy. Not saying that I am part of this (tools are ethics-neutral to me, use whatever works, kids are stressful enough), but to a lot of people, family is not something to 'get done' or 'crush it'.

<comment><USER27> Yes I agree, I was thinking more in line with people like me, who can't hold everything in their head, so these tools are sophisticated todo lists.

But if I find my self asking my kid "so... what went well?" or "I'm not sure that's a 5 pointer" before they are working age I'll book an appointment with a professional pronto!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> "american home"? even in terms of content of article, it is clear this is confined to a very small section of society. even that is purely based on anecdotal claims. almost no valid evidence, but broad nation wide conclusion.

<comment><USER30> Welcome to The Atlantic? Or lifestyle journalism?

The idea is to generate a sort of "car crash" style gawking response. A classic technique is implying a nationwide phenomenon from 1 or 2 samples.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> There's ample evidence this makes you more organized. I haven't seen any yet that it makes you happier.

<comment><USER32> I'll go a step farther and point out that it's troubling that we feel like we need these sorts of tools to survive at home today. It seems to be a symptom of an ever increasing level of complexity in every facet of modern life.

<comment><USER33> Why is it troubling?

When I was a kid my family used post-it notes on the refrigerator to organize and communicate, and a big paper calendar for scheduling.

This just seems like a more convenient way to do the same.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> People, please, think about what you want your children to become. Do you want easily employed drones that just as easily can get outsourced or replaced by AI, or do you want independent and creative thinkers? Creativity needs space and time. Extend both increasingly, with age. It's sad to me that American life requires you to manage their time - elsewhere they can just independently go to school, first on foot then on bycicle. Stop living in these hellscapes that makes that impossible, I consider it essential.

<comment><USER35> > do you want independent and creative thinkers

That's probably the worst you can do to a child. It's setting them up for unhappiness.

<comment><USER34> Just give em space and see what happens, don't create a damn curriculum from school out to sleep.

<comment><USER35> > Just give em space and see what happens, don't create a damn curriculum from > school out to sleep.

It's typically parents who nominally want their children to become " independent and creative thinkers" who setup a curriculum with music school, dance lessons and foreign language courses.

<comment><USER34> Yes, I understand that. I just want people to relax on this more.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Trello along with Airtable are invaluable to keeping my life organized.

<comment><USER14> How do you use airtable? I keep coming across it in comments but would like to hear some personal use cases.

<comment><USER37> I don't use it any more, I liked but I was using it as a CRM in a role I'm no longer in. At the time there was a consultant running an airtable youtube channel that I found helpful. He has videos titled things like "planning a party using airtable" and also has personal use case examples in some videos with names that don't make that clear eg. the "Using Views in Airtable to Improve Workflows" video is about a system he and his partner use to plan meals and then make shopping lists for them. I recommend poking around his stuff for ideas.

[https://www.youtube.com/user/GarethPronovost/videos](https://www.youtube.com/user/GarethPronovost/videos)

<comment><USER14> Brilliant, thanks so much for that link!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Well, it just seems a brand friendly way to say "Hey, this families use technology to track activities like we use to do with pen and paper".

And I personally use org-mode to track my kid's activities (and my own), but I believe a plain white board is better to track the shared goals and messages.

</comment><comment><USER39> Biggest stand out in this article is the stats about declining free time for play - as has been said quite a few times on HN, humans need to be bored and to play in order to be creative. Stagnation awaits otherwise I fear.

</comment><comment><USER40> I've thought about creating a family management platform before, but it seemed too weird and farfetched that people would actually use it for a long period of time and not chuck it out.

<comment><USER41> Simple translates to longevity (resilient to environment rot).

I think a family wiki strikes the right balance of simple and useful. I find in families we quickly specialise and when somebody is away, we struggle to do tasks that could have been captured in a few bullet points

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Me and my mom were ahead of our time. Back in 2000 I used to message her on ICQ and ask if dinner was ready. And she'd say yes so I could come out of my teenage computer cave. :)

</comment><comment><USER43> I really think Trello in particular can be a great "life tool". I have coworkers who have begun to use it for planning meals, dates, etc.

</comment><comment><USER44> This is certainly _not_ what Dobbs had in mind.

<comment><USER45> Ah, but he said to Hubbard "They are pink but there money is green."

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Just a fancy parenting gimmick!

Why can't they just use whatsapp or any IM tool to communicate?

Imagine that child's life who has to close that annoying JIRA ticket every time he cleans up his room.

</comment><comment><USER47> Trello pisses me off. Stacking some colored cards with notes. A four year old could come up with the idea. Yet acquired for $425M. The world is not fair.

<comment><USER48> Why didn't a four year d think of it first then?

Lot's of things are obvious _in retrospect_.

We put men on the moon before we put wheels on luggage.

<comment><USER25> > We put men on the moon before we put wheels on luggage.

This claim was so outlandish that I had to fact-check it. Wikipedia says:

> Luggage carriers [...] date at least to the 1930s [...] However, the wheels > were external to the suitcases. [...] The first commercially successful > rolling suitcase was invented in 1970.

It appears you're _technically_ correct. The best kind of correct.

<comment><USER48> It's even whackier that it took them another 17 years to figure out the optimal design - the first two-wheeler with an extending handle didn't hit the market until 1987.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The bad news on human nature, in 10 findings from psychology - <AUTHOR> https://aeon.co/ideas/the-bad-news-on-human-nature-in-10-findings-from-psychology <comment><USER2> All the evidence for claims is from single studies.

I'm sure all of those will replicate.

Just like ego depletion and smiling in the mirror.

</comment><comment><USER3>
      We would rather electrocute ourselves
      than spend time in our own thoughts.

It really doesn't matter what was demonstrated by that study. Whatever percentage you want to try and come up with, it's still wrong for me.

How about instead of " _we_ " change that to " _some_ " and catch your breath on the provocative tone of panic. That some might feel this way is no shock. To presume _all_ is where the controversy lies.

<comment><USER4> Overall, 67% of men shocked themselves at least once, in Study 10 of a bunch of studies.

The full text is on [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4330241/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4330241/) and the data can be found at: [https://osf.io/cgwdy/](https://osf.io/cgwdy/)

Like, I'm not sure I believe this, but at least the data is available, so other people can try different things with it.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, I'm aware. Can we frame the concept differently?

Why the projection of "alone with thoughts"? Why seed the concept of existential dread in the mind of the reader of the study results?

How do the researchers _know_ that it was assuredly the terror of the subject's own mind, their internal monologue or what have you, which certainly provoked them to preoccupy themselves with pain?

Answer: they cannot know _why_ the individuals shocked themselves, but only that the shock happened.

<comment><USER4> Totally agreed. I have this dataset open in R at home, and intend to dig into it a bit more. One would expect the meditation participants to be more comfortable.

But to be fair, if I was left alone in a room with a button that would shock me, I would probably push the button at least once.

<comment><USER5> > But to be fair, if I was left alone in a room with a button that would shock > me, I would probably push the button at least once.

That was my thought as well but didn't they provide a sample of how it feels to each participant beforehand so it was not new to them anymore?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What are some interesting but obscure niche SaaS companies? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Here are some niche but interesting SaaS companies - [https://www.vistaequitypartners.com/companies/](https://www.vistaequitypartners.com/companies/)

Of the list, I find QuickBase as interesting

</comment><comment><USER3> Tarsnap comes to mind, though I'm not quite sure how niche it really is: [https://www.tarsnap.com/](https://www.tarsnap.com/)</comment>


Ask HN: What would you do with $25,000? - <AUTHOR>

Here's the scenario: You have $25,000 cash plus enough money to cover your living expenses for 2 months.  You have coding skills along with business savvy.  You'd like your own business.  What business idea would you pursue? <comment><USER2> Two months is nothing. Create a business that doesn't require much upfront capital and put that $25k into your living expenses until your business can support you.

</comment><comment><USER3> Don't stop what you're doing now to code full time if you don't know what you want to code. Hold on to that $25,000 or invest it until you've already started your business in your spare time, and it's growing so much you have to quit whatever you're doing to work on your new business.

If you don't have a business idea that you believed in 100%, I would suggest investing that $25,000 into a stock that you believed in 100% and keep living like you are now.

</comment><comment><USER4> I would move to SE asia. That much money will last you 2yrs there, holed up in a hotel room with your own room service. 2 years is plenty of time to code.

</comment><comment><USER5> Right now if I had $25,000 I would invest it in our business in the following ways:

1\. marketing material - we don't have stuff like envelopes / letterhead and we are in desperate need of it. when we do need it we need to make it ourselves and print it out which takes up so much time.

2\. setup a mini hosting company - we have so many clients right now but are giving them all free hosting. would like to setup a very small shared hosting service under our umbrella to bring in more revenue to hire a network admin. right now we spend so much time on doing transfers / db stuff / apache stuff and none of us are that good at it.

3\. buy some new chairs - most of us are sitting on waiting room chairs that don't have wheels or arms.

4\. ppc marketing for our blog (Twitter, Facebook) - we get a ton of leads as a result of our blog posts. if we could get some better reach with our blog this would help our phone ring more and even help with backlinks and SEO stuff if people end up linking to it.

5\. spend $5000 on some bonuses divided up amongst our employees for working so hard.

</comment><comment><USER6> 2) Translate "How to Solve it by Computer" from Pascal to Python. [http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Solve_it_by_Computer](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Solve_it_by_Computer)

3) Fork Wikipedia. I'd have inclusion criteria for what I wanted to include (STEM; other academic stuff) and I would exclude a bunch of other stuff (pokemon, recentist fluff, etc.) I'd then create a style manual. I'd then hire people to fact check, cite and source, correct, spell check, etc the pages I had. Each page would have a similar page layout. The lead paragraph would aim to tell someone with no previous exposure to the subject what it was. Each article would have a simple intro, with moderate or advanced sections if needed. The aim is to produce something trustworthy and stable that can be released on a 6 month schedule that could be useful to students.

</comment><comment><USER7> I would buy a site on flippa, something with revenue and work intensely in increasing its revenue by 10X. Maybe to gain a monthly income of 7K or 10K, something that could sustain you for a couple of years in order to build your next big project.

You could even do this a couple of times before embarking into larger things.

<comment><USER8> THis is much harder than most realize. Much harder.

<comment><USER9> Yep, agreed, speaking from experience. Most sites on Flippa have had their traffic artificially inflated for the past 6 months using shady SEO practices just so the seller can get a good price. Within a few months Google inevitably slams the hammer on you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> $15k of computer hardware for cryptocurrency mining, $10k for build out (racks, network, AC, etc).

<comment><USER10> If you're going to downvote for an honest answer leave a reason why. Downvoting is not for disagreement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Here's the last one. (Sorry for splitting over 3 posts but mobile really sucks.)

Unscented washing detergent, with scents that can be added at wash time. This would allow members of the same household to chose floral scents, or whisky and woodsmoke scents. (Perhaps not actually whisky and woodsmoke, but something not floral.)

The bottles of scent would be sized to not fit the bottle of detergent completely. This would act as some kind of lock in - people would have a bit of etergent and no scent or a bit of scent but no detergent. That would (I think) make them buy more product.

</comment><comment><USER6> Not sure about businesses but:

1) Some photography projects. I'd like nice, standard, photos of all the buildings in Pevsner. And other nice buildings. These would be released under permissive licences in web and print resolutions. So the money would be used to set up web hosting and some torrents. The photographs would I hope be provided by students and amateurs and etc etc. The other project would be something like the [http://www.antweb.org/](http://www.antweb.org/) project, but for bees.

</comment><comment><USER11> I would work on my new startup 24/7!

</comment><comment><USER12> Hm, probably almost everyone wouldn't be able to spend it since they have to build the app for the first 2 months, no?</comment>


Craigslist Is Ugly, Janky, Old School, and Unbeatable - <AUTHOR> https://backchannel.com/craigslist-is-ugly-janky-old-school-and-unbeatable-85206829cb90#.ui9k4ktkl <comment><USER2> Am I the only one who doesn't think Craigslist is "Ugly or Janky"? It's one of the only places left on the web where I can go and not be bombarded by ads, pop ups, crazy amount of JavaScript and slow loading. It just works and is intuitive to use. The only major thing I feel is missing is the ability to search through multiple locations at the same time.

<comment><USER3> But if they just wrote an SPA and overrode the back button behavior and displayed a little spinner icon while html was loaded via json, your experience would be so much better.

<comment><USER4> Founder: The paradigm has shifted. 5kb HTML pages are no longer disruptive enough, we need more javascript for a-

VC: Shut up and light this bag of cash on fire. Focus on number of non-paying users and make sure it's big enough so I can introduce you to more people with bigger pile of cash to light on fire.

Craigslist Post: We are hiring front-end React.js developers with 10+ year experience.

<comment><USER5> HR: We hire the best of the best! Are you a passionate code ninja that lives and breathes code?! Show us your github and bitbucket profiles and enter the Craigslist Hackathon today! We promise we'll consider you.. and then go whine on HN about how hard it is to find a truly qualified candidate.

<comment><USER4> HR: Oh we are sorry but it seems like you aren't having enough "fun" by committing your waking hours contributing to open source projects for absolutely no financial compensation. We want people who love coding so much they do it after work and on the weekends. We are willing to pay below market average for said rock stars.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Network effect, reliability, free, anonymous, ability to run without JavaScript.

If Craigslist decided to modernize today, they could potentially disrupt the state of things on the internet. Facebook is trying to move in on their territory for sure. Unfortunately, I don't think they will. If a new-kid-on- the-block could offer anonymity, reliability, and free regional market based transactions, with preferably integration with Monero, it would be a killer app for the crypto industry.

<comment><USER7> I'd really like to know how to deal with users input, forms and other stuff without JS. Every tutorial we see today is like "throw tons of JS to this problem and it shall work".

<comment><USER8> Vanilla forms just GET or POST to some server endpoint with all of the <input>s passed in as query parameters. Frameworks (e.g., Rails) put some syntactic sugar on it, but that's really all that's happening. If the form submission contains invalid input, it's customary to return to the form page (with all the values already filled out) and show a server-generated message about what went wrong.

JS is absolutely not required for any of it.

<comment><USER9> I would really want to know more about this too, built a simple site without all that JS bloat

<comment><USER7> I'm thinking about push some code to github this afternoon using these techniques with nodejs, if you want to I can send you a link to the repo ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It isn't universal, though. One of the things you find if you move to Utah is, "Don't bother with Craigslist." I mean, it exists here. It gets some use. But most people use the online classifieds from ksl.com, the local TV station. At least, I think it is a TV station. I've never watched it, but everyone uses their online classifieds instead of craigslist. Their site also is ugly, and full of difficult buyers and poor experiences. And somehow it beats craigslist in Utah.

<comment><USER11> Similarly, Kijiji actually found success in Canada, and has quite a bit more traffic than Craigslist for most cities here.

<comment><USER12> In Quebec, Craigslist is virtually unknown (with maybe a little traffic in Montreal, but I'm not sure), everyone used LesPAC first, and then Kijiji when it came along. You needed to pay to post an ad on LesPAC, so it quickly lost market share when a free competitor emerged.

Both of these have a French-language version, and I believe it had a lot to do with CL's failure to get the market here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I almost always fight the SV meme that largely founders focus on throwaway trivial ideas. I just think this is so stupid. Craigslist is one of the few companies that isnt greedy, is community driven, and if there are examples using there outsize market to kill competitirs or act nefarious-- I havent heard them.

I did 3 craigslist deals in the past 2 days. Got coffee with a stranger at 2am who let me flash an os to a drive he sold me for cheap..at 2am.

Craigslist is the email of startups. It works well enough, its a cockroach, and other substitute & complimentary companies fill its gaps. Ebay, etsy, amazon, tradesy, ect.

This isnt even a problem. I have done hundreds of deals and havent had a bad experience. Have others; Absolutely. Do I think its common, not in my experience. I suspect the percentage is low, but I dont have data.

Craigslist is what ai would like to see other companies model after, simplicity, community and no greed.

I may be alone, but i find this absurd and destined to fail. Is it profitable? Probably, but show me that balance sheet. Probably founders not oaying themselves, a tiny server and an apartment. I dont want to belittle the founders, they must have had a terrible experience, but this doesnt seem like a profitable or good strategy at all

<comment><USER14> Are you saying Craigslist is a tiny server in an apartment?

<comment><USER13> I am saying the profitabls challenger is just a server probably hosted nearly free on AWS or Azure through sponsorships. Being profitable is great and I applaud that, but my point is what is the magnitude of success? This likely is a lifestyle business and it is disingenuous to say it is a CL competitor.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I find it interesting that there's a general undertone that CL is being "honorable" by choosing to not make more profit.

I have no doubt Craig's intentions were honorable, but in reality, his refusal to make money to fund the site's innovation is hurting society. His users are screaming "TAKE MY MONEY AND MAKE THE SITE (MY LIFE) BETTER", but he refuses to do so and everyone is worse off because of it!

In a way, it's lazy and selfish, and nobody can do anything about it because..network effects.

When money exchanges hands, generally, value is being delivered. He refuses money which, in essence, equates to refusing to deliver value.

<comment><USER16> Now it's lazy and selfish to not take every ounce of surplus you can out of a market?

Some folks just want to lay back and enjoy life. If I were Craig I'd sit on that goldmine for the rest of my life - most likely it will finance a very decent lifestyle until the day he dies.

Why bother with the stress of expanding and doing what everyone else is doing? I'm completely convinced that strategy makes for miserable people. The happiest folks I've met in my life are those who own the "lifestyle businesses" everyone on HN enjoys deriding so much.

Isn't Craig living the hacker's dream? A reasonably useful service that provides value to customer, that once built you don't have to put much effort into maintaining or improving - because it works. Then you spend the rest of your free time on the beach.

You also get the nice side benefit that most guys like this tend to provide relatively low-stress long-term jobs employees can build a balanced life around.

<comment><USER17> The problem is not that CL isn't squeezing out every ounce revenue.

The problem with the benevolent dictator at Craigslist is his kingdom is so big and he does nothing to advance it.

It would not be hard to offer minor but relatively simple identity validation for users. Or dabble with the ability to create trust networks or reputation. Or offer basic mechanisms for safe transactional payments. Or an official mobile app that worked well. Or a hundred other things that would improve lives.

There is no question craigslist gets a "job well done" but there is a great argument that if they have a choke hold on the online classifieds market they should offer increased value over time.

Craigslist reminds me of the IRS. Sure, you can fumble your way through filing your taxes with us, but why would you do that when TurboTax can do it better. Except there is no alternative.

I think Craigslist is acting more like the old newspaper classifieds they disrupted if anything.

Despite this article's focus on a couple companies, there are other startups getting major traction in used goods space apart from Facebook.

If CL loses significant market share, I hope they don't go trying then to revamp the site. Because it would only be that much more obvious how much they held back from their users for so long.

<comment><USER18> >It would not be hard to offer minor but relatively simple identity validation for users. Or dabble with the ability to create trust networks or reputation. Or offer basic mechanisms for safe transactional payments.

And when users are lulled into a false sense of security from these changes, who is all of a sudden liable when things go south? CL being barebones is a feature, not a bug.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I actually think that Craigslist will come to see tough competition from Facebook Marketplace.

Facebook has the existing user base to get a network effect, has a much better UI, notifications, and solves for the worry of meeting someone who is a complete unknown.

Will be interesting to see if Facebook chips away at the Craigslist user-base over the next few years.

<comment><USER20> I'm skeptical FB will make inroads here. One of the bedrocks of FB, positive or negative, is that it connects together people who already know each other in some way. Craigslist is the polar opposite of that.

<comment><USER19> I don't think that argument it applicable to Facebook Marketplace. It allows you to see anything for sale in your region, not by friend circles. You may be thinking of Facebook groups that are used to buy and sell items?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Do they publish any usage statistics, other than the summary?

      More than 60 million each month in the US alone

[https://www.craigslist.org/about/factsheet](https://www.craigslist.org/about/factsheet)

</comment><comment><USER22> When I saw HN first time i thought the same about it (without janky). Sometimes it's all about the content and user base, look at 4chan also.

<comment><USER23> Related thread from the other day: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13638172](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13638172)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> There's an interesting series of tweets here: [http://us1.campaign- archive1.com/?u=78cbbb7f2882629a5157fa59...](http://us1.campaign- archive1.com/?u=78cbbb7f2882629a5157fa593&id=d6081dc3f9)

It outlines a model of "supernova" companies. Companies that initially earmark such a large market that they implode, creating the materials for many other companies. AirBnB for example is just a small chunk of craigslist. Twitter may be in the process of exploding, being unable to capture or tame the reaction.

<comment><USER25> Disappointing article. This for example:

> Twitter "failing" to own the revolutions it obviously took mainstream > (messaging, chatbots) isn't a failure really if viewed that way

Twitter in no way made messaging mainstream. It had absolutely nothing to do with it. Twitter's peer to peer messaging system being so horrific is one of the reasons it failed (WhatsApp, Snapchat, etc. took advantage of that screw- up). ICQ, AOL, MSN messengers, MySpace and Facebook, all did drastically more to take messaging concepts mainstream (the messengers had hundreds of millions of users before Twitter even existed). Twitter was late to the party and showed up with the wrong solution.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> In Japan Craigslist exists but isn't nearly as popular. A lot of companies tried to replicate the Craigslist effect but interestingly with little success

But lately you have new players like mercari and frill with tons of funding behind them and a pretty app that somehow attracted users like crazy, but they all charge a 10% fee if your stuff gets sold. If I sell my MacBook for 2000 dollars that's a significant sum.

I love Craigslist for what it is and hope they will stick around longer

</comment><comment><USER27> I think people miss the bigger picture. CL is the classified section, only 1000x easier to use, both buying and selling.

Generally the stuff sold has a low, but non-zero, payoff / hassle ratio (e.g. furniture), but most of its charm has to do with its rough edges (flaky users, tag spam), which adds a little sense of adventure.

One of my friends whom I would characterize as a semi-pro CL user says some of his best deals came from stuff the seller hadn't listed on CL.

</comment><comment><USER28> I was looking at apartments in Vancouver, BC recently and was happy to see a Map View for searching now. With $381 Million in revenue in 2015 and about $300 Million profit it isn't going away.

</comment><comment><USER29> This [1] is a bit dated - maybe from 2014 - but still quite relevant to this discussion. Some new entrants have made their way in like AptDeco - and some have fallen off. Overall, there is still tons of opportunities to supplant Craigslist piece-by-piece.

[1] [http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/4dd4d1cf4bd7c8c90f0...](http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/4dd4d1cf4bd7c8c90f000000-960/craigslist%20andrew%20parker.png)

</comment><comment><USER30> Great in major metro cities where internet use and penetration are almost taken for granted. I think the Dallas CL is just as lively as the SF one for instance. However, in a city like San Antonio, which I kid about being "40 years in the past," it's barely worth even looking. Very drastic difference in the community approaches. As in, the Dallas Music Instruments section might get 4 pages a day in volume. San Antonio might do 4 pages a month.

</comment><comment><USER31> Somehow this historical wikipedia quote about profits relationship to beauty and trendiness smells appropriate:

"The Roman historian Suetonius reports that when Vespasian's son Titus complained about the disgusting nature of the tax, his father held up a gold coin and asked whether he felt offended by its smell (sciscitans num odore offenderetur). When Titus said "No", Vespasian replied, "Yet it comes from urine" (Atqui ex lotio est)."

<comment><USER32> Background on this:

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> The main problem Craigslist still has is that it does not have an official mobile app which is actually why I started using a competitors service. It's a lot easier on a phone to endlessly scroll through items via an app then it is to go to the CL website. CL is fine when I'm sitting down in front of a computer but if I'm on the bus I want to just be able to use my thumb to quickly flip through.

<comment><USER32> Who needs a mobile app, with its inherent privacy exposures, for content that renders just fine on mobile browsers?

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> This article was posted today, but I swear I saw something exactly like this on HN a few months ago.

<comment><USER35> And I swear CL was ugly, janky, old school and unbeatable a decade ago.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> But you still can't search remote jobs, or any jobs without specifying exact town...

<comment><USER37> I don't get why you can't search for anything across the towns. If I'm looking for something hard to find but is reasonably shippable, I might want to take the risk of a trusting the seller or work out some escrow type thing.

<comment><USER38> They have taken the explicit view that Craigslist is a local service. Providing cross-city functionality would undermine that view.

<comment><USER39> I actually live between three of the cities listed in my area, they're all about 20 miles from my house and part of the same metropolitan statistical area. Being able to search LA and SF at the same time might be silly, but being able to search two or three very close cities is not IMO.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Slightly tangential, but you can find a similar UI in the Ellucian's Banner system used in some schools for course registration, payment, schedules, etc. I think its simplicity is brilliant, but most users find it ugly and old school.

</comment><comment><USER41> Craigslist is fast and gets to the point.

Back in the day, search engine home pages had a vast list of categories... Google just had only a text field to input what you wanted to search for. Google search won.

</comment><comment><USER42> So it is hacker news.

</comment><comment><USER43> Interesting. I imagine Craigslist must indeed be pretty popular—how many people does it need to employ to do that little?

</comment><comment><USER44> Let's be honest, Craigslist is a horrible product and the only reason it's so popular, is because of network effects. Never underestimate the power of incumbency, and getting in on the ground floor of a rocket. The same thing can also be said for half the monopoly-companies out there, and half the politicians currently in office.</comment>


Ask HN: How best to learn software design principles? - <AUTHOR> Recently I had several rounds of interviews with one of the big tech companies, and while they said my problem solving and coding skills were good, they said they eventually decided to reject me due to my inadequate solutions to design problems, particularly software design.<p>In the long term, I'm sure the usual advice of reading through great open source code is the way to go. In the short term, where can I find write-ups of software design, going from 'How would you build a spreadsheet program?' to actual UML designs, discussion of design patterns, etc. <comment><USER3> [http://www.aosabook.org/en/](http://www.aosabook.org/en/)

"Architects look at thousands of buildings during their training, and study critiques of those buildings written by masters. In contrast, most software developers only ever get to know a handful of large programs well—usually programs they wrote themselves—and never study the great programs of history. As a result, they repeat one another's mistakes rather than building on one another's successes.

"Our goal is to change that. In these two books, the authors of four dozen open source applications explain how their software is structured, and why. What are each program's major components? How do they interact? And what did their builders learn during their development? In answering these questions, the contributors to these books provide unique insights into how they think.

"If you are a junior developer, and want to learn how your more experienced colleagues think, these books are the place to start. If you are an intermediate or senior developer, and want to see how your peers have solved hard design problems, these books can help you too."

edit: a major advantage to aosa is that all the source is available.

<comment><USER4> [https://github.com/aosabook/500lines](https://github.com/aosabook/500lines) This is a repo of smaller real world applications that are 500 lines or less in length, so as not to be overwhelming to novice / intermediate programmers.

<comment><USER5> Hey, thank you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Bob Nystrom's _Game Programming Patterns_ is an engaging, informative book about design patterns that are commonly used in games but are relevant to non- game software too.

[http://gameprogrammingpatterns.com/](http://gameprogrammingpatterns.com/)

<comment> squeaky-clean I love this book. It's a good introduction to design patterns. Very well- written and entertaining, and filled with real code examples. It's certainly not boring, I was able to read it in about a weekend (and I read slowly). For a free book, that's such a quick read, it has a surprising amount of knowledge in it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Learning software design principles is like learning how to draw - you need to study many, many examples before getting a good feel for it. For example, in drawing there are many individual principles, such as shading, perspective, scale, and so on. Studying each individual principle is only useful _within the context of a full drawing_.

Software is the same way. Studying SOLID principles, application boundaries, encapsulation, etc. only makes sense _within the context of a working application_. Not only that, but making sense of design decisions is not as easy as "seeing the result" like you can in a drawing. With software design, you have to take a step further and continuously ask questions:

        "Why?"
        "Why not this?"
        "When would I use this?"
        "When would I *not* use this?"

I'm an instructor at a coding school[1], and one of our biggest goals is to inculcate software design principles into our students. Frameworks are useful, but if you never learn proper software design, you'll always be stuck as a _framework_ developer (e.g. Rails/Angular developer), and never become a _software_ developer (i.e. frameworks and languages are just details).

[1] [http://www.makersquare.com/](http://www.makersquare.com/)

<comment><USER8> The difference between framework and software developer is often glossed over by people, especially on HN. In the position of the former, you're pushed around by your tools. In the latter, you learn how to push back and impose structure that speed development, clarify thinking, and reduce bug counts dramatically.

<comment><USER9> You are implying that rolling your own will give you faster, less buggy code, more organised code than using a framework?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Don't feel too bad; the pop culture side of programming (a lot of HN) is profoundly anti-design of any type. This is likely a reaction to perceived overdesign of years past, such as in Enterprise Java. Thus, you don't see as many articles about the topic. (I also sense a bit of nerd-indignation over the fact that this is a squishy subject and nobody's completely right).

Read the AOSA book, read Design Patterns, and read something like Domain- Driven Design. Realize that no-architecture is frequently chosen due to ignorance ('pragmatism'). Know SOLID back and forth. Understand why people strive to isolate things when doing TDD. Recognize and know how to decrease coupling, and what the costs of that are. You can practice these concepts every day, and you should, if only to develop the necessary element of taste.

You'll go through a phase where you adhere to these ideas religiously, then eventually assimilate the knowledge so that it becomes almost unconscious.

Best of luck.

<comment><USER10> _Don 't feel too bad; the pop culture side of programming (a lot of HN) is profoundly anti-design of any type._

I think that's a surprising characterization; it doesn't jive with my own perception (as subjective as that may be). I think the past decade has (rightly or wrongly) seen a reaction in our industry against enterprise-style "architecture astronauts" but that doesn't equate to being "anti-design". (I'm thinking of the emergence of Rails-like frameworks vs. the JEE stack, and then the emergence of micro-frameworks like Flask/Express/Sinatra after that.) Simple/reduced structure is a valid design choice (of course there are trade- offs that come with that, and of course they aren't always appropriate, but I don't think that means it's popular to be "anti-design").

<comment><USER11> " but that doesn't equate to being "anti-design"

I agree fully. I feel that the shift has come about because there has been an unconscious recognition that restricting your tools to one particular problem domain is a valid constraint to make on a design. Enterprise scale, "architecture astronauts" and the like were trying to build tools with which you could build anything, for anyone. And it's clear from the results that this is just a vector for complexity to creep in. Focused tools, from libs to frameworks unashamedly limit themselves to one particular problem domain, or at least used to.

I've certainly noticed a shift in that these hard learnt lessons are being ignored in order to add features to frameworks etc; which increase their applicable scope, with the increase in complexity that arises. The primary driver of which appears to be the younger generations desire to use the same tools for different purposes rather than learn a new set of applicable tools for a different problem domain. A good example is the shift from v1 Zend Framework to Zend Framework 2 which just appears to be so heavily "Java/Enterprise" influenced I simply refuse to use it; its far far too complex a framework for what is essentially a framework for building web sites. Building web sites is simple. These modern frameworks make it massively more complex than it needs to be.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Learn a functional programming language. This has had the most impact on the way I think about systems by far. The biggest impact was realizing all of the time I've spent trying to master all of the OOP acronyms hasn't paid off. I've also realized that OOP might be meant for a type of programming that I don't do (video game logic? device drivers?), where as FP seems to fit great for Web applications that are just wrapping databases and spitting out HTML or JSON.

As for FP languages for a starter, I'd recommend any of Erlang/Elixir, Clojure or Scala (only for its FP features and great learning resources)

<comment><USER13> Would you say that FP itself (not the thought process it generates) would benefit me in mobile application devlopment. It's mostly gaining data and then setting it.

<comment><USER14> FP has been hard to realize on mobile mostly due to the limited choice of languages available.

<comment><USER12> Yeah, I agree with this. However, I could still see a lot of merit in writing the server that the mobile application talks to in an FP language.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> What they want is mainstream orthodoxy like Design Patterns, OOP, etc. You'll want to study the buzzwords, mostly. What are the major principles of OOP? What is a Decorator Pattern? What is TDD?

You won't be able to infer this stuff from studying software that works well. There are specific words they want to hear. Functional programming is probably not going to help at those interviews. FP isn't used at big corporations.

<comment><USER16> Unfortunately, this is very likely the case. Do all the things the thread suggests to learn about design. Then go read the Gang of Four book to get a job.

<comment><USER15> I'd get a job first. If you are not enthusiastic about corporate programming, there are all kinds of companies with all different styles. If you look hard enough, you can find one that fits your style.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The book that inspired software patterns. I found it more interesting than GoF's "Design Patterns", and it feels less dated these days: The Timeless Way of Building by Christopher Alexander [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Timeless_Way_of_Building](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Timeless_Way_of_Building)

The C2 wiki has interesting entries on software patterns and related ideas: [http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WikiPagesAboutWhatArePatterns](http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WikiPagesAboutWhatArePatterns)

Stanford CS 240 has a great list of papers on system design: [http://web.stanford.edu/class/cs240/](http://web.stanford.edu/class/cs240/)

One paper that's no longer on that list, but I remember from when I took the class: End-to-end arguments in system design [http://web.mit.edu/Saltzer/www/publications/endtoend/endtoen...](http://web.mit.edu/Saltzer/www/publications/endtoend/endtoend.pdf)

<comment><USER11> Another good one by the same author Christopher Alexander is "Notes on the synthesis of form", my all time favorite book

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> People in this thread are generally telling you to either read a book or build something, when those things are not mutually exclusive.

So read books, build things and read code.

I like to dig into open source libraries/frameworks/tools that I use in my projects and try and understand their design. It would be great if the documentation people write focused a little on that, instead of the more common "this is how you install" and "this is how you use" (and sometimes "this is how you build it") - but writing docs is hard/tiring and so that knowledge gets lost.

</comment><comment><USER19> * The C++ Programming Language 3rd edition, Part IV of the book.

* Large-Scale C++ Software Design

* The Practice of Programming

* Code Complete

These are a good start but in the end it's experience. It takes a lot of practice to build a good intuition when making software design decisions.

<comment><USER8> Large Scale C++ Software Design is a real gem.

<comment><USER19> Yup. The author obviously have seen it all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The #1 book is "Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software" by Gamma/ Helm / Johnson / Vlissides. It's about imperative programming though, functional/hybrid languages have other design patterns(but "Design Patterns" is #1 anyway).

\+ Free Book "The Architecture of Open Source Applications" : [http://hackershelf.com/book/54/the-architecture-of-open- sour...](http://hackershelf.com/book/54/the-architecture-of-open-source- applications/)

</comment><comment><USER21> I think one of the most helpful classes at MIT for learning the basics of software design is 6.033. Class schedule and readings here: [http://web.mit.edu/6.033/www/schedule.shtml](http://web.mit.edu/6.033/www/schedule.shtml)

In particular, the papers covered topics of software design from failures (like Therac-25) to examples of successfully designed large scale systems (like Map Reduce). I'd highly recommend reading through the papers, most of which can be found via Google search.

</comment><comment><USER22> I'm going to go out on a limb here and not recommend a book. Good architecture and design take _practice_. You can get that practice by working with someone who understands it (some of the better, larger open source projects might be a good way to go).

Books can help to a certain degree, but you have to make a conscious effort to practice what you're reading. The best thing to do, assuming you can't get the experience on the job, would be to find a _big_ project and understand and contribute.

<comment><USER23> I'm not sure it follows that a big project is necessarily an example of good design. But agree on the point that you can't just read about it. Having a qualified mentor is great; if you don't, read _and_ practice.

Note that a lot (most?) comp sci programs don't necessarily address design principles. If you're in a software engineering track they should, but my curriculum was mostly algorithms, data structures, operating systems, and programming languages. My senior year I had one class where design and project management was really a topic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I've seen multiple people mention the GoF's Design Patterns book. This is well known and worth several reads through; it will take multiple passes to grok all of it.

There are several other books that have tried to explain the GoF's Design Patterns in either an easier to approach manner, or in the context of a specific language they have tried to explain where new design patterns have emerged or the original patterns had mutated.

A couple of those worth checking out are

"Head First Design Patterns"

[http://www.amazon.com/Head-First-Design-Patterns- Freeman/dp/...](http://www.amazon.com/Head-First-Design-Patterns- Freeman/dp/0596007124/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1404810991&sr=1-1&keywords=head+first+design+patterns)

"Design Patterns In Ruby"

[http://www.amazon.com/Design-Patterns-Ruby-Russ- Olsen/dp/032...](http://www.amazon.com/Design-Patterns-Ruby-Russ- Olsen/dp/0321490452/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1404811054&sr=1-1&keywords=ruby+design+patterns)

"Learning JavaScript Design Patterns"

[http://www.amazon.com/Learning-JavaScript-Design-Patterns- Os...](http://www.amazon.com/Learning-JavaScript-Design-Patterns- Osmani/dp/1449331815/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1404811139&sr=1-1&keywords=javascript+design+patterns)

</comment><comment><USER25> I sincerely believe that programming has gone through a couple of paradigms over the decades. For instance it used to be a good thing to never be scared of architecting a solution from the ground up (and the best often did) whereas nowadays our ecosystem of libraries and tools are so vast that it much more often is overkill, and the architect mentality often a handicap. (This is obviously just one person's opinion)

Sounds principles are sometimes tied to these paradigms. For instance in past years one could maybe say "never use a tool that you don't know well" whereas nowadays with all of the layers of technologies that you are forced to work with it may have changed to just knowing why you have to use a technology and knowing well the aspects that you are using it for.

Also, there are by now many generations of programmers, and we might not want to admit it but the people that grew up on assembly do tend to have different sensibilities than the people that grew up on scripting languages. With these generations often come ingrained mentalities that are tied to paradigms that are tied to principles which in fact are still subject to change.

</comment><comment><USER26> [http://cleancoders.com/](http://cleancoders.com/) See them all. The best investment you can make into yourself.

<comment><USER27> I hate to sound stingy but at $445 is there a cheaper alternative? Like a book, or maybe shorter series?

What videos would prioritize over the others?

<comment><USER26> Well $445 is nothing in contrast to what you can make if all this knowledge is put into effect. I would definitely recommend SOLID principles above others.

<comment><USER28> It depends heavily on your place of living. In my country $445 is about or over the monthly salary for vast majority of people.

<comment><USER26> Well yes, $445 can relatively be a lot of money, however, in times of globalisation and developers being in high demand one just has to think outside the box a bit and join a company remotely if possible. I'm not saying it's easy, but can be done.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> While I agree that many of the already given examples of books to read are really good books, nice reads.

I feel the best way to get into the mindset of good design, or design principals - even if it isnt "examples of good design" as the AOSA book - <USER2> to get immersed into an architecture formed from a design based mindset different than what you are used to.

Learn something engineered with design principles heavily visible in mind. What is the design principle of a modern GNU/Linux system? Its mosthly philosophical, you wont find the answer in several books, its spread out far and wide and requires that you actually use GNU/Linux for years, to have taken part in its history.

I suggest you pick up and learn JSF (Java Server Faces). Start reading JSF books, Java Enterprise things, start coding it, doing it. One good book is JSF in Action from Manning I believe.

When you begin reading about or trying to make a hello world site in JSF - youll be like "wtf is this, fuck" \- thats right - thats you being exposed to a different design principles based mindset. Its not bad, its in fact very good (JSF and the experience).

Only once youve finished say a "community website, friends can befriend each other, send messages, write on wall, share pictures." in JSF, even though it looks as ugly as can be - then youve advanced more in passing those interviews with regards to design principles - than reading any of the books mentioned so far in this thread. But reading the other books wont dis-help you.

EDIT: From experience, the books flaunted around here, Code Complete, AOSA, Design Patterns here there and everywhere, are just bullshit for this task. What your interviewers were asking for is not if you can count and use Design Patterns. Or if you agree or dont agree on which method in a class should be refactored out and what it should be named. Dive deeper out of your comfort zone - go for JSF.

</comment><comment><USER30> Dive into design patterns. Get yourself a good book listing them. The bible of all developers is the Gang Of Four ([http://www.amazon.com/Design-Patterns- Elements-Reusable-Obje...](http://www.amazon.com/Design-Patterns-Elements- Reusable-Object-Oriented/dp/0201633612)), but there are plenty good ones out there that aren't as dry and academic.

Design patterns are the greatest tool there is for learning software design. If you know them, you can apply them, but much more importantly they show you how you can apply the basic principles of OO development to various problems. By learning them, you're learning the thought process of how they came to be, and you'll be able to apply those thought processes to your own problems. Consider it like learning algebra by doing exercises. You can read theory all you like, but unless you apply it it just won't click.

</comment><comment><USER31> [http://www.objectmentor.com/resources/publishedArticles.html](http://www.objectmentor.com/resources/publishedArticles.html) See Design principles before Design patterns.

[http://martinfowler.com/design.html](http://martinfowler.com/design.html) is also good.

</comment><comment><USER32> Write a relatively complex system without any external code and, preferably, without any previous training...

It will suck, it will break, and eventually, it will be near impossible to add or change anything at all. But you will have experienced what the patterns n' principles authors (better) have and, I bet, even "accidentally" used a few of them.

In my opinion, design principle = minimize dependency. Oh and, if you do follow my suggestion, use a language that isn't object oriented... at the least you will, like me, wonder why "object-oriented something" isn't explicitly defined by gof elsewhere and, at better, might "accidentally" implement some sort of custom object system

I am gonna go ahead and say it... REINVENTING THE WHEEL IS A GOOD AND NECESSARY THING... if done for the right reasons, in the right circumstances...

</comment><comment><USER33> When I interview someone about design problems, I'm most interested in their approach to decomposing the problem and their ability to express their thoughts and keep a track of their ideas as well as interact with me.

In a way, you're almost looking at the interviewee as a teacher except they're obviously having to improvise on the subject at hand.

I'd suggest the best practice is to understand the structure of software you're interested in and write about it.

</comment><comment><USER34> When it comes to designing large scale business systems, I read Application Architecture Guide. I read every chapter many times and then eventually got enlightenment.

Here is the detail description and PDF book [http://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/ff650706.aspx](http://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/ff650706.aspx)

It is targeted towards .NET developers but equally good for JVM, NodeJS etc.

</comment><comment><USER35> I would consider looking at the following books:

[http://www.amazon.com/Beginning-Java-Objects-Concepts- Editio...](http://www.amazon.com/Beginning-Java-Objects-Concepts- Edition/dp/1590594576)

[http://www.amazon.com/Program-Development-Java- Specification...](http://www.amazon.com/Program-Development-Java- Specification-Object-Oriented/dp/0201657686)

</comment><comment><USER36> I'm currently 16 year old, studying in middle school. I want to enter programming, and am already taking Codeacademy courses in Javascript.

I want advice from experienced programmers, on programming, and generally becoming a good programmer and how to think like a programmer.

I also want suggestions for resource that I can use at my absolutely beginner level

Thanks

</comment><comment><USER37> This simply looks as if the jobs you're applying for are too senior for your level of experience. Or the interviewers are idiots: they are looking for an ordinary developer, but interviewing for an architect. (This was a recently posted HN topic.)

Get a job that's right for you and use it to get the design experience.

</comment><comment><USER38> You might find one of these interesting:

[http://philip.greenspun.com/seia/](http://philip.greenspun.com/seia/)

[http://www.amazon.com/Software-Architecture-Primer-John- Reek...](http://www.amazon.com/Software-Architecture-Primer-John- Reekie/dp/0646458418/)

</comment><comment><USER39> From 1983, could have been written yesterday (immutability, log as source of truth, etcetera):

[http://research.microsoft.com/en- us/um/people/blampson/33-hi...](http://research.microsoft.com/en- us/um/people/blampson/33-hints/WebPage.html)

</comment><comment><USER40> I feel for you. I was rejected from ThoughtWorks for this exactly same reason. I received a coding assignment and I implemented it. The solution worked, but it was not Object Oriented enough, nor was it easy to maintain and flexible. Thanks for asking this!

</comment><comment><USER41> Are you able to elaborate on some of the types of design problems that they threw at you?

</comment><comment> mck- Engineering Long Lasting Software [1] is a book written by UC Berkeley profs who were teaching a great SaaS-class on Coursera (using Rails) two years ago

[1] [http://www.saasbook.info/](http://www.saasbook.info/)

</comment><comment><USER42> I really like the SOLID principles: [https://sites.google.com/site/unclebobconsultingllc/getting-...](https://sites.google.com/site/unclebobconsultingllc/getting- a-solid-start)

</comment><comment><USER43> I also was wondering if there was a good way to learn and practice this topic. There are many ways to do smaller coding challenges, but how do you practice software design without having an actual expert to talk to?

</comment><comment><USER44> Teach them. Whatever the subject, when you have to teach it to someone, your level of understanding increase. If you can find a public ready to listen to you, teach the subjects you want to master.

</comment><comment><USER45> Try this: [http://addyosmani.com/resources/essentialjsdesignpatterns/bo...](http://addyosmani.com/resources/essentialjsdesignpatterns/book/)

</comment><comment><USER46> The books referenced in this thread are no doubt great but I wouldn't read a book to get better at software design. I would design software.

</comment><comment><USER47> [http://principles-wiki.net/](http://principles-wiki.net/)

A wiki with some nice explanations of design principles.

</comment><comment><USER48> reading software design principles book is just one thing, most important thing is find a good way to practice what you learned from book, I suggest you following a open software project, or create your own, when your project become bigger, you will face more challenge, and you will learn more. :) just for your reference, fix me if you have better idea

</comment><comment><USER49> I see a lot of people suggesting books on design patterns.</comment>


Ask HN: Baby monitor for hard of hearing person - <AUTHOR> I am trying to design a baby monitor solution for my hard of hearing friend (HHF).
Design criteria: - HHF needs vibrating alerts when the baby monitor is triggered - Ideally, these should happen on his person so his spouse can sleep - Spouse wants a video screen / the usual stuff
I've divided the problem into the baby monitor and the on-person vibrating device.
Baby monitors: the Arlo is supposed to work with IFTT but does not in practice. The Nabi Artistole worked with IFTT but it was cancelled after announcement.
Vibrating device: the Ditto wearable device looks perfect, has a long battery life, and works with IFTT but it's "Sold out" on their website. That makes me think they're a zombie company and the next iOs update might make their app obsolete. Other wearables, such as FitBit, don't seem to vibrate much or at all.
Any ideas? I can code something if needed. <comment><USER2> Can the vibrating device be a cheap cellphone that vibrates when it gets an SMS?

Something like this [https://www.olimex.com/Products/ARM/ST/STM32-E407/open- sourc...](https://www.olimex.com/Products/ARM/ST/STM32-E407/open-source- hardware) on the baby monitor side coupled with your own DSP code listening to the speaker could generate the text.

</comment><comment><USER3> Is there a wearable baby monitor your friend could sleep with? Try opening it up and melting candle wax onto the speaker. You want it to vibrate instead of making sound. If the candle wax doesn't work, there's probably a similar hack that will.

</comment><comment><USER4> I had deaf friends who had a flashing light baby monitor (flashed a light in their bedroom)... in 1985. There have to be better solutions now.</comment>


VsVim - 'q' now works - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/jaredpar/VsVim/wiki/faq <comment><AUTHOR> I've been using VsVim for a while now and loving it, but been frustrated by the lack of recordable macros.

But sometime in the last two releases, Jared has added them to make me a happy man.</comment>


Why You Shouldn't Just Give a Quote to Potential Clients - <AUTHOR> http://webworkerdaily.com/2008/05/05/why-you-shouldnt-just-give-a-quote-to-potential-clients/

<comment><USER2> We do large amounts of consulting, and I just had the experience of contracting out the look-and-feel of the Rails UI for our product to one designer and our print collateral to another, so I feel like I've been on both sides of this.

You should know that the "I think we should talk, what's your budget" answer is pretty unfriendly, even though it makes business sense. When your prospect is reaching out to 5 different firms for a competitive bid, it's really annoying for them to have to convince you to cough up your rate.

</comment><comment><USER3> well no matter what it is, it's going to be too high. Stay strong and get paid what you want for the work that you do.

</comment><comment><USER4> A "quote" isn't a number. It's text. With a number contained within somewhere, maybe.

Perhaps "proposal" is a better word.</comment>


Garmin engineer from India killed by U.S. domestic terrorist - <AUTHOR> http://www.kansascity.com/news/local/crime/article134459444.html <comment><USER2> It's funny how articles showing Americans in a bad light, vis-a-vis immigrants, always pop up here on HN. The insinuation that this is the result of our President is always the underlying theme. It isn't about some random crackpot - as it should be.

The misrepresentative and inflammatory title should be enough to have flagged this long ago.

It doesn't matter that the manipulative and lying media, as well as the George Soros funded domestic terrorist groups have created problems by misrepresenting the immigration issue.

I can post 15 articles right now showing immigrants or foreign-born in a bad light. That would be stupid (much like this article) unless the behavior is associated with undermining The United States and it's people.

It's just more race-baiting from manipulative activists attempting to usurp another website and undermine this country in the process. Growing up in the Bronx, I could provide lots of examples of "reverse" (whatever this is) racism. Another pointless endeavor aimed solely at dividing us as Americans.

As a community here at HN, we should do better than to continue to allow these types of slanted, racist, politically-driven articles from gaining a foothold.

Muchas Gracias, Amigos y Amigas! Que pasen un buen dia! That is all.

<comment><USER3> Actually we are constantly shown immigrants and brown people in a bad light, so I find it interesting that you see it at devisive when it's actually the truth. Of course it seems inflammatory, but he shot random people for being brown, and some Americans get all bench out of shape. It's as if there's a different standard when the perp is white rather than other. The story of the black kids assaulting the white guy in Chicago was a massive story, but I bet you didn't comment on that one...

Your entire post reeks of bias btw.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Actual title: "Charges filed in Olathe Austins shooting; suspect waives extradition to Johnson County"

</comment><comment><USER5> That's a pretty inflammatory title. The guy was shot after an argument in a bar.

<comment><USER6> >A witness said he yelled "get out of my country" to two of the victims, reportedly saying the men, believed to originally be from India, were "Middle Eastern."

What argument?

<comment><USER5> So he yelled that and then shot them? Nothing else was said? How sure are you about that?

<comment><USER7> > So he yelled that and then shot them? Nothing else was said? How sure are > you about that?

Because most news sites are reporting that the police have stated that Adam W. Purinton went out that night with a plan to murder brown skinned people. Didn't matter that Indians aren't even Middle-Easterners or that the victims weren't Muslim.

" The Olathe Police Department and Johnson County DA say Adam Purinton is charged with premeditated murder. " [https://twitter.com/41actionnews/status/834886804121747456](https://twitter.com/41actionnews/status/834886804121747456)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Pete Davies: The 'Invadar' Arcade Collection - <AUTHOR> https://arcadeblogger.com/2016/08/06/pete-davies-the-invadar-arcade-collection/ <comment><USER2> It's hard to keep collections of large objects going. I have too many Teletype machines. An entire telephone museum was auctioned off lately. The Museum of Communications in Seattle is only open Sunday from 10 am to 3:00 pm. And just try to find a home for a Linotype.

<comment><USER3> There just isn't enough demand from the public to require monuments be built to house this stuff. Sad as that may seem I'm hoping virtual reality helps future generations appreciate the stuff of bygone eras.

<comment><USER4> It will be difficult to appreciate the full sensory range of stuff from bygone eras without touch/pressure and smell to accompany the VR reconstructions. I hope researchers and VR companies can perfect these as fast follow-on feature enhancements to VR environments.

<comment><USER5> Mind you, you don't usually get to touch or smell museum pieces, either. Glass cases and all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Enjoyed the post and nice to see the guys collection being preserved and honoured in that way.

Personally though, the best bit was the picture of the "No Man's Land" cabinet, which is a game I've been struggling to find since playing it on holiday back in the early eighties. Never saw it again and couldn't recall the name of it to look it up on MAME.

</comment><comment><USER7> The plaques are a really nice touch. Very respectful.

<comment><USER8> I agree. I sort of wished that the plaques had had a QR code or a link to the write-up too; it made me think that it would be cool to have a service for that kind of thing, where an object passed through several owners could be traced back to each (willing participant) owner, who would have a little write-up of their history and the object.

"If XXXX could speak."

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> When you die, other people get your stuff. So, I think you should use that stuff ... now.

:-)

<comment> jay-anderson Very good point. I think my grandma did a good job of giving things away before she died. I showed interest in some music books I found on her shelves and she gave them to me right away (I wasn't asking for them). At least giving things away before you die you can see others use and enjoy them. Especially when you think you're not going to get the chance to use it again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is a good website to try the "Reader View" button in Firefox.

<comment><USER11> Here is stylesheet that can be tossed into Stylish to fix that terrible layout.

@namespace url([http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml);](http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml\);)

@-moz-document domain("arcadeblogger.com") { .has-post-thumbnail.is- singular:not(.home):not(.single-format-image):not(.page-template-eventbrite- index) .entry-header, .is-singular .entry-media { border: unset; left: unset; position: relative; width: 100%; } .is-singular:not(.home) .site-inner { width: 100%; } #bit.loggedout-follow-normal { display: none; } }

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is the first time a HN link made me cry. In the bittersweet way.</comment>


On Being Accused (Neil DeGrasse Tyson) - <AUTHOR> https://facebook.com/notes/neil-degrasse-tyson/on-being-accused/10156870826326613/ <comment><USER2> It must be really hard to be in the public eye like this. He probably meets, what? 10,000 people a year? Maybe more? Everyone wants a photo, a snippet of conversation. The chances of saying or doing something stupid go up astronomically.

Yes, there are genuine creeps out there. But no, I don't think you can judge a person by a few "puts foot in mouth" moments. We all do that sometimes, but when you are a celebrity the stakes are so much higher.

<comment><USER3> To be fair, they are well compensated for it.

<comment><USER4> Sadly I have to agree with you, when you're in the spotlight like that you have to realise that your actions ripple outwards and drive the behaviour of susceptible recipients.

One can argue "he's just a guy, he did something stupid, probably thought it was funny at the time" but that argument falls flat when you consider that some people will use that as an excuse to imitate the behaviour. Even if you're not a creep yourself, the "I was just messing around" excuse isn't good enough when it might enable real creeps to do the same.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> In this case, and the case with Andy Rubin, I immediately thought "these people are guilty" \- without evidence, without even knowing them or having spoken to them or otherwise having any sort of real judgement about their character.

I had to step back and realize that I was jumping to a conclusion prematurely.

In case you are not familiar with how the law works (outside of the court of social media), an accusation, no matter how believable, is not damning evidence - even when multiple accusations come to light. Objectivity is extremely important in these situations because it has already been demonstrated that our instincts are not impartial.

I'm not saying that any given person is or is not guilty, just that they deserve a fair trial.

<comment><USER6> There is nothing wrong with suspecting that they are guilty when there are multiple accusers, because you _are_ a person in the court of social media, and not a judge.

It's okay to form an opinion without believing that your opinion should be adopted as a legal conclusion!

<comment><USER7> The problem is that it doesn't take a legal conclusion to ruin someone's life. If enough people form a bad opinion of you, even if those opinions are based off incorrect evidence, then your life is ruined, regardless of what the legal conclusions say.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "If I hug you I might just want more." is a very creepy thing to say in my opinion.

<comment><USER9> Uncharitable reading: "a very creepy thing"

Charitable reading: "a funny throw away comment"

<comment><USER10> No, actually, it's just creepy.

<comment><USER11> While I'd agree with you 'in the wild' on a random person, if you watch Neil for a length of time on stage,.... he has an energy about him. It almost exudes as a hyperactive type of quality. Not many people are excited about space "stuff" \- so I can see him just becoming overly excited when people ARE interested.

<comment><USER10> I've watched NDT quite a bit (being an amateur astronomer myself), but that statement is still creepy. I don't think that being 'energetic' automatically excempts any individual from criticism for their actions and words.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Usually the truth lies between the stories expressed by the two sides. Condemning someone just because he is accused is definitely wrong. If things are the way he says then in my book I don't think he did anything wrong but that's just me and my opinion and I don't really know what happened the same way anyone who condemns him doesn't either. Bottomline he's right about one thing for sure, that everyone is a jury in the court of social media. Guilty or not won't matter cause his popularity has already been hurt by the social media backfire.

</comment><comment><USER13> FTA: > _I was reported to have "groped" her by searching "up her dress", when this was simply a search under the covered part of her shoulder of the sleeveless dress. "_

Umm.. what? If you wondered if Pluto was in her tattoo, why not just ask? Or even make a joke, "Hey, do you have Pluto or did you get it removed like I did?"

Actually touching her dress and moving any portion aside is bizarre at best and creepy in many other cases.

<comment><USER14> The alleged groping:

[https://scontent- lhr3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-0/p75x225/472313...](https://scontent- lhr3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-0/p75x225/47231367_10156106015629370_6267043517558685696_n.jpg?_nc_cat=102&_nc_ht=scontent- lhr3-1.xx&oh=c46e3bae392213b5317d2668e089e3e4&oe=5CB0F8B6)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Might want to add Neil Degrasse Tyson to the title :)

</comment><comment><USER16> The complete text from Facebook

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

On Being Accused

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON·SATURDAY, DECEMBER 1, 2018

For a variety of reasons, most justified, some unjustified, men accused of sexual impropriety in today's "me-too" climate are presumed to be guilty by the court of public opinion. Emotions bypass due-process, people choose sides, and the social media wars begin.

In any claim, evidence matters. Evidence always matters. But what happens when it's just one person's word against another's, and the stories don't agree? That's when people tend to pass judgment on who is more credible than whom. And that's when an impartial investigation can best serve the truth – and would have my full cooperation to do so.

I've recently been publically accused of sexual misconduct. These accusations have received a fair amount of press in the past forty-eight hours, unaccompanied by my reactions. In many cases, it's not the media's fault. I declined comment on the grounds that serious accusations should not be adjudicated in the press. But clearly I cannot continue to stay silent. So below I offer my account of each accusation.

The 2009 Incident

I am asked by thousands of people per year to take pictures with them. A flattering, time consuming, but delightful chore. As many in my fan-base can attest, I get almost giddy if I notice you're wearing cosmic bling – clothing or jewelry or tattoos that portray the universe, either scientifically or artistically. And I make it a priority to point out these adornments for the photograph.

A colleague at a well attended, after-conference, social gathering came up to me to ask for a photograph. She was wearing a sleeveless dress with a tattooed solar system extending up her arm. And while I don't explicitly remember searching for Pluto at the top of her shoulder, it is surely something I would have done in that situation. As we all know, I have professional history with the demotion of Pluto, which had occurred officially just three years earlier. So whether people include it or not in their tattoos is of great interest to me. I was reported to have "groped" her by searching "up her dress", when this was simply a search under the covered part of her shoulder of the sleeveless dress.

I only just learned (nine years after) that she thought this behavior creepy. That was never my intent and I'm deeply sorry to have made her feel that way. Had I been told of her discomfort in the moment, I would have offered this same apology eagerly, and on the spot. In my mind's eye, I'm a friendly and accessible guy, but going forward, I can surely be more sensitive to people's personal space, even in the midst of my planetary enthusiasm.

Summer 2018 Incident

While filming this past summer, I had a (female) Production Assistant assigned to me, to ensure, among her countless tasks, that every ounce of my energy was efficiently allocated to the production needs of the show. As part of this, she was also my driver, to and from the studio, ensuring that I arrive on time. In the car we would review details of the shoot and she would help me anticipate parts of the shoot to come. Across the many weeks of shooting she and I spent upwards of a hundred hours in one-on-one conversation. We became so friendly that we talked about all manner of subjects, even social-personal ones, like the care of aging parents, sibling relationships, life in high school and college, hometown hobbies, race, gender, and so forth. We also discussed less-personal topics in abundance, like rock lyrics, favorite songs in various musical genres, concert experiences, etc. And we also talked about food – I'm kind of a foodie, and her fiancé was a chef. In short, we had a fun, talkative friendship.

She is a talented, warm and friendly person -- excellent traits for morale on a high pressure production. Practically everyone she knows on set gets a daily welcome-hug from her. I expressly rejected each hug offered frequently during the Production. But in its place I offered a handshake, and on a few occasions, clumsily declared, "If I hug you I might just want more." My intent was to express restrained but genuine affection.

In the final week of shooting, with just a few days left, as a capstone of our friendship, I invited her to wine & cheese at my place upon dropping me off from work. No pressure. I serve wine & cheese often to visitors. And I even alerted her that others from the production were gathering elsewhere that evening, so she could just drop me off and head straight there or anywhere elsewhere. She freely chose to come by for wine & cheese and I was delighted. In the car, we had started a long conversation that could continue unabated. Production days are long. We arrived late, but she was on her way home two hours later.

Afterwards, she came into my office to told me she was creeped out by the wine & cheese evening. She viewed the invite as an attempt to seduce her, even though she sat across the wine & cheese table from me, and all conversation had been in the same vein as all other conversations we ever had.

Further, I never touched her until I shook her hand upon departure. On that occasion, I had offered a special handshake, one I learned from a Native elder on reservation land at the edge of the Grand Canyon. You extend your thumb forward during the handshake to feel the other person's vital spirit energy -- the pulse. I've never forgotten that handshake, and I save it in appreciation of people with whom I've developed new friendships.

At that last meeting in my office, I apologized profusely. She accepted the apology. And I assured her that had I known she was uncomfortable, I would have apologized on the spot, ended the evening, and possibly reminded her of the other social gathering that she could attend. She nonetheless declared it her last day, with only a few days left of production.

I note that her final gesture to me was the offer of a hug, which I accepted as a parting friend.

Early 1980s

I entered astrophysics graduate school directly out of college in 1980. It's a grueling adventure-marathon, and many people do not finish the PhD. In fact, it was not uncommon for half the admitted students to leave after two or three years, finding some other kind of work in their lives. While in graduate school I had several girlfriends, one of whom would become my wife of thirty years, a mathematical physicist -- we met in Relativity class. Over this time I had a brief relationship with a fellow astro-graduate student, from a more recent entering class. I remember being intimate only a few times, all at her apartment, but the chemistry wasn't there. So the relationship faded quickly. There was nothing otherwise odd or unusual about this friendship.

I didn't see much of her after that time. Our student offices were on different floors of the building and we were not in the same classes. A few years later, I ran into her, pregnant, with who I think was the father by her side. That's when I had learned that she dropped out of graduate school. Again, this is not itself an unusual fact, but I nonetheless wished her well in motherhood and in whatever career path would follow.

More than thirty years later, as my visibility-level took another jump, I read a freshly posted blog accusing me of drugging and raping a woman I did not recognize by either photo or name. Turned out to be the same person who I dated briefly in graduate school. She had changed her name and lived an entire life, married with children, before this accusation.

For me, what was most significant, was that in this new life, long after dropping out of astrophysics graduate school, she was posting videos of colored tuning forks endowed with vibrational therapeutic energy that she channels from the orbiting planets. As a scientist, I found this odd. Meanwhile, according to her blog posts, the drug and rape allegation comes from an assumption of what happened to her during a night that she cannot remember. It is as though a false memory had been implanted, which, because it never actually happened, had to be remembered as an evening she doesn't remember. Nor does she remember waking up the next morning and going to the office. I kept a record of everything she posted, in case her stories morphed over time. So this is sad, which, for me, defies explanation.

I note that this allegation was used as a kind of solicitation-bait by at least one journalist to bring out of the woodwork anybody who had any encounter with me that left them uncomfortable.

Overview

I'm the accused, so why believe anything I say? Why believe me at all?

That brings us back to the value of an independent investigation, which FOX/NatGeo (the networks on which Cosmos and StarTalk air) announced that they will conduct. I welcome this.

Accusations can damage a reputation and a marriage. Sometimes irreversibly. I see myself as loving husband and as a public servant – a scientist and educator who serves at the will of the public. I am grateful for the support I've received from those who continue to respect and value me and my work.

Respectfully submitted, Neil deGrasse Tyson, New York City

<comment><USER17> As someone who explicitly blocked everything FB on a DNS level in his home, I'd like to thank you.

On a related note, I noticed that Outline.com is useful for grabbing FB posts like that one: [https://outline.com/csDYmp](https://outline.com/csDYmp)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> He is right that the presumption of guilt is bad, but typically these things either snowball or fizzle, as more women come forward or none do. If I had to gamble, I'd gamble he's done nothing wrong and this will go away.

</comment><comment><USER18> I read the whole thing with his voice in my head and it made me mad.

</comment><comment><USER19> I thought Judge Kavanaugh was treated in a grossly unfair manner.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson is a chance for us all to do better, let's not condemn him without fair proof. He may well be guilty, but it's best to presume innocent until PROVEN guilty.

</comment><comment><USER20> Neil Degrasse Tyson, Laurence Krauss and Michael Shermer have all been accused of sexual misconduct. What's up with the New Atheists?</comment>


Show HN: Graph Commons – a platform for collaborative network mapping - <AUTHOR> http://graphcommons.com <comment><USER2> Very cool - I see many possible uses. Would be cool to hear from current users how they are using it and how the product helped them.</comment>


Google Is About to Show a Lot More Ads on Mobile Phones - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/14/18623541/google-gallery-discovery-mobile-ads-announced <comment><AUTHOR> Ugh. I can't wait for my Puri.sm.</comment>


Ask HN: Should I learn a niche language or something more employable? - <AUTHOR>

I have been doing iOS development for a few years now and would like to branch out a bit professionally, specifically into cloud web applications. I work on personal projects in Clojure, Haskell, and Go in my free time and I really enjoy languages on the static/functional/concurrency-first side of the spectrum, however I'm afraid to commit too much time to them since there are barely any jobs for them. I'm also concerned about how closed off and proprietary the iOS ecosystem is.
I'm still fairly early into my engineering career, so I have a few questions about how to balance learning these paradigm shifting languages vs maintaining an employable repertoire of skills
1. Ideally I would like to dive deeper into Go. Do you think that there will be more jobs available in a couple years for Go? Could I get hired doing ruby on rails if I mostly have Go experience?
2. Should I just learn rails and then learn more obscure things later? This seems to be the de-facto web application framework with the biggest community and number of jobs.
3. Should I just continue working professionally on iOS, learning whatever I think is most interesting on the side without regard to practicality? <comment><USER2> There's probably more jobs in PHP than rails, but I'm guessing it won't make your list.

I'd say build some small application in rails, so you can point at it and say "I'm not an expert, but I was able to build that in two days."

Then go ahead and learn Go, or whatever you want.

In my experience, most people care if you can code, and don't care as much if you're good at Ruby/Rails.</comment>


Yahoo's Mayer gets internal flak for more rigorous hiring - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/12/us-yahoo-hiring-idUSBRE92B06R20130312

<comment><USER2> I don't think it's a good idea for a company-wide policy of no working from home. Lower level managers should be responsible for the decisions they make in that regard. On the other hand, sometimes a leader has to take strong and controversial stances in order to save a sinking ship.

Jobs was a dick as an executive, but since Apple became the golden child after he returned, nobody said anything. If she turns things around, she won't be called a bitch.</comment>