Ask HN: What are the most important problems in your industry? - aman-pro 1. Which industry do you work in?
2. What are the biggest problems stopping your industry from growing?
3. Can something be done about it? <comment><AUTHOR> I may be reading between the lines too much and I apologize if I am...

But every few months (weeks?) I see a post by a founder-type essentially trying to mine the Hacker News collective brains for startup ideas. It doesn't work that way. The best startups are ones that solve a pain point you yourself have experienced.

The idea of a savior who comes in and solving the major problems of an industry they have never worked in is not a myth but close to one. (Elon Musk being a notable exception with cars and space flight... but he has the capital to attract domain experts to fill in the gaps)

I'd point out the problems in my industry except I am actively working to solve them :)

With that said. Don't let a "know-it-all" on HN (myself included) tell you what to do. If you want to tackle a hard problem in an industry you don't have experience in, please do. You might be the next Elon Musk, I don't know you so I don't know.

If that wasn't your goal with this question... again I apologize.

<comment><USER2> > The best startups are ones that solve a pain point you yourself have > experienced.

Aww, yisss. Case in point, EDA and, in particular, hardware description languages and tools. Every discussion I've had with someone trying to get into this has been so cringe-worthy that I'm actively avoiding now. Every self- professed hardware hacker thinks they have the solution that's going to end all this painful Verilog kerfuffle and yet they're so, _so_ far from getting it.

Like the folks who thing the biggest problem with Verilog and VHDL is that they're so alien that it's hard to get software developers productive with them. _Lack of electronics knowledge_ is what prevents most software developers from being productive in Verilog. A "better" language won't help. Paying attention in their Electronics or Systems classes is going to be ten times more helpful than a Scala/Haskell/whatever-is-fashionable hardware description language.

Or the people who think that development tools are what's holding FPGAs back and that FPGAs would be everywhere, were it not for how hard it is to program them. Trying to explain them that FPGAs are pretty slow gets impossibly difficult as soon as the words "Intel" and "softcore" are mentioned.

Not that there aren't _a lot_ of things to improve in FPGA development tools, or in hardware description languages (which is why you see so much work being done on increasingly higher-level synthesis tools). But unless the number of millions of dollars you're willing to invest is not at least half the number of years you've been studying high-speed IC design, chances are you're as far removed from having a serious answer to all these problems as you are removed from being a modest person.

/rant

<comment><AUTHOR> Lol. Funny you should say that.

My wife was an Electrical Engineering major and when I started dating her I saw the Verilog and actually tried to improve it. Although my approach was more a better IDE and emulator than reinventing the language.

I didn't get far. The domain knowledge of electronics needed was too much for me to deal with and still do my own coursework.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I work in the games industry. There are plenty of problems to go around, but I'll pick just one:

Discoverability

In the "good old days" where 2 people could make a video game, odds are that just shipping something guaranteed you'd make money. But that's no the case anymore now that 1000+ apps come out every day on iOS / Google Play. Of course most of those are crap. But you could be making a great game that caters well to a particular audience or niche, and yet you might still fail just because no one can find it or really just be aware of its existence.

The "simple" answer to this is marketing. Hustle your way to some visibility, partner up with some publishers or some platforms holders, and get as many eyeballs in front of your game as possible. However this effort is very close to being "zero-sum." Either you win and get your promo art banner at the top of the app store, or someone else does, but you can't both get it. It's less obvious when it comes to PR and having articles or game review written about you, but it's still there: with so much noise now on the internet, it's hard to generate a meaningful signal.

The harder solution is being tackled by the app stores themselves. Steam, iOS, etc. have all been improving the way games are presented in their stores. There's more focus on specific genre features, more flash sales, more suggestions based on what you already play. It's a decent effort but I don't think it's enough yet.

What can we do about it? Not sure. Algorithms that try to discover what you might like based on your previous purchases are nice and all, but most of my favourite gaming experiences were surprises that came out of genres I didn't expect (e.g. Rocket League), so this can only go so far.

<comment><USER4> I would say that discoverability is a problem that games share with pretty much every form of media in the internet age. I've been thinking that one possible solution is to use _less_ technology - organize local meetups and user tests, build a local community. BitBash in Chicago is an example of this, albeit on an annual basis: [https://bitbashchicago.com/](https://bitbashchicago.com/)

<comment><USER5> FWIW, it was an issue with books before the internet was big. So many novels are written each year. It's long been difficult to know how to find novels that you might like outside of the bigger works.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Intersection of trading and data mining.

I've said this a few times but we're going through a growth period like AAA video games have over the past 20 years.

I used to be that 2 guys could make a video game, then it went to 10, then 50, now its around 200 from what I've last heard.

Hedge funds are going through a similar shift.

It used to be that one person could manage data cleaning, and algo generation for a fund.

Then cleaning got split out into its own job.

Then the number of data streams exploded growing by a couple orders of magnitude.

Then the data types diverged so that each new data stream needs its own special cleaning, and normalization and even data storage, ie some data isn't suitable for a sql or non sql database storage, like satellite images.

Nowadays a typical algo fund might make use of 100 different algos for trading, each of which has 20 different inputs, some real time, some updated irregularly.

It takes those signals and weights them to come up with a trading signal, which then gets mixed with a portfolio balancing signals and risk signals.

It can be tough to disentangle each individual signal from the algos themselves so even things like detecting if a signal still has alpha generating abilities is tough.

You can have 10 people just back testing signals and monitoring risk levels.

And the growth of data and data sources isn't slowing down.

This is good if you are one of the larger players, see Virtu buying out competitor KCG, who previously ate competitor Knight Capital, yes that fund with the huge blowup, but not so great news if you want to remain a small, person wise, fund.

Not sure how to run a quant fund anymore with only 4 people. Not sure anything an be done about.

<comment><USER7> I think here is an idea isn't unique to Quants/finance: curated datasets.

Hosted data-sets that are fully cleaned, verified and kept up to date. You pay a fee for the feed, which essentially covers initial and on-going curation. Fees would probably be based on usage (dev/test/commercial etc) but also the realistic market value of curation.

There's a mile of difference between a data-set that's been fed through a few cleaners and is 99% right, and one that is thoroughly checked, 99.99% right, and still updated as such with little delay. The former is the "one-man dev looking for easy passive income", the latter is the "quality datasets taken seriously".

<comment><USER8> Algo trading is about having the edge.

The edge is something you have and other people don't.

Enjoy your feature engineering.

(Meaning: selling the same curated data product to many customers undermines its value. Overpricing it and selling only to the selected few, on the other hand...)

<comment><USER7> But this is algo trading specifically, the scope for curated datasets is larger.

Plus, what stops anyone building on top of a dataset? If this isn't dive ebay value do any third parties add?

A dataset sold to many customers doesn't undermine the price charged by the seller, as there would be no competitive advantage by not using it either.

<comment><USER7> _s /"dive ebay"/"done, what"/

And to clarify the last point:

If a create a dataset for $100 I could sell it to one person for $120, or 6 for $20 - I make the same even if the value to each individual client is reduced; on the other hand, the value to each client _versus* making their own is (120-100=) $20 in the first case, but (120-20=) $100 in the second, so fewer clients are likely to "roll their own" competing datasets.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> 1\. Legal

2\. Excessive costs, lack of performance among professionals

3\. Change in attitude seems to be the biggest factor. If lawyers stop being about fighting and competing and persuading and more about tackling problems, getting to the truth and finding solutions, we can have a much better chance of succeeding.

There is a lot of opportunity for automation that no one seems to want to get involved in. A good example is document discovery which has been largely automated.

Other areas that could be automated include divorce. For example, in my jurisdiction what each partner is entitled to on divorce in terms of child support and alimony and division of property are set. There is some room to argue about custodial arrangements but not very much.

Given this - there is absolutely no reason to have many years of contentious divorce suits. If there was someone way of just entering the information into a computer and informing both couples of what they are entitled to and then working from there - I believe we would be much better off, because, although I haven't done alot of divorce suits, but in my limited experience it seems to me that lawyers certainly have a large role in exacerbating them and needlessly.

<comment><USER10> Currently a lawyer who is also a programmer and does a lot of legal tech stuff. Some of us are tackling the automation side of things and many lawyers really do want to solve problems. A big issue is the billable hour but I see that disappearing :)

Email is in my bio so feel free to ping me if you want to chat about it!

<comment><USER11> In almost every case, the lawyers are the problem not the solution.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> There are some resources that might be of interest to you (no affiliation)

Ideas: [http://www.oppsdaily.com/](http://www.oppsdaily.com/)

[https://nugget.one/](https://nugget.one/)

Already done successfully

[https://sidehustleschool.com/](https://sidehustleschool.com/)

[https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses](https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses)

<comment><USER13> Thanks for the mention Vijayr!

I'd also add [https://flippa.com](https://flippa.com) to this list.

It's interesting to see which businesses are being put up for sale.

</comment></comment><comment> rm_-rf_slash Higher education. Where to start?

Tenure is a huge cost to the university and not every professor is both an amazing researcher and an amazing teacher. So you have a chunk of the budget spent on old researchers while poorly paid adjuncts fill in for undergraduate classes. Not sure if fixable.

Politics runs everything. Broken clock Ayn Rand was at least somewhat right in _Atlas Shrugged_ when she speculated that bringing about the end of money would usher in an age of pull. That's exactly how higher ed works: unless you can justify your work with student evaluations and big $$$ research grants, politics runs a lot of decisions. Not sure if ever fixable.

No two American universities are alike. Colleges within universities have major differences too. Good luck getting any real traction consolidating IT services. Everyone has different needs and cut-outs for their work.

Higher education is a hydra. It cannot be fixed or reformed at the drop of the hat or with the use of an app.

Abandon simple solutions, all ye who enter here.

</comment><comment><USER14> Not a single industry per se, but a major social problem offering potentially multiple business opportunities:

Homelessness is on the rise nationwide in part due to a serious lack of genuinely affordable housing. Among other things, in the 1960s and 70s, we tore down a lot of SROs. The Baby Boom generation was an anomaly. The unprecedented wealth of their parents was due to WW2. Yet, expectations from that era still shape housing policy and infrastructure, much to our detriment.

You do not necessarily need to be a construction company to play a role in addressing this issue. Another very serious problem is the lack of financing mechanisms for housing alternatives. For example, co-housing projects in the US tend to be self financed because we do not have financial products that fit them. This actively undermines their ability to add affordable housing to the system, a purpose they successfully serve in other countries, from what I have read.

There are, no doubt, many other things one could do to work on this issue.

</comment><comment><USER15> Mobile phone repairs - lack of education and the ability to access quality replacement parts.

You might think that there's no shortage of phone Repairer's out there and your right but you can bet that 90% of them are self taught or eventually taught by someone.

Considering the amount of important information we store in phones and the price of the devices it has now become more important to ensure that your phone repairer knows what they are doing and of course has a reliable supplier

<comment><USER16> Phone manufacturers have an definite interest in stepping on your right to repair.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Academia. I'm going to pick on something specific:

* Reproducibility -- running code months or years later, on another machine.

Current tools, like VMs tend to be too heavy-weight. Docker is too hard to set up.

The main problem with these various tools is that exploration is slow -- Often I'll take an experiment, tweak it a few dozen times, then finally get the code for a paper. At that point I don't want to package it up, I want to be able to "freeze" where my last execution.

<comment><USER18> Authorea (www.authorea.com) supports including data/code in articles. There's even some in-article iPython support.

<comment><USER17> How likely are my pages to still work in 20 years?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> 1\. Jobs/Work

2\. Most people don't like their jobs but suck it up. The 9-5 grind, climb- ladder, can't switch careers, lack of meaning, social pressure to have job. Getting laid off, searching new job, financial downsides of being unemployed

3\. Restructure the job model/market (flexible choices, live comfortably, security)

Unengaged workers- Gallup poll on American workforce trends [http://www.gallup.com/reports/199961/state-american- workplac...](http://www.gallup.com/reports/199961/state-american-workplace- report-2017)

</comment><comment><USER20> I run a quant/hft trading group. We need to know what the margin impact of our position will be. We use a tool from CME called PC-SPAN. The various factors that impact margin change during the day as prices change. I'd pay for a SAAS where I upload a position and get lots of useful margin reports back. We have built some of this but it is a distraction.

<comment><USER21> Would you mind if I got in contact with you about this?

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> 1\. Aerospace

2.1 Access to energy / energy density of fuels (batteries included). This is the case across a wide range of industries and problem areas of course, not just transportation. But incremental optimizations in efficiency have lead to squeezing more performance out of the margins, but no Moore's-law type growth will ever happen without some kind of energy breakthrough.

2.2 Going forward, tightly coupled systems will be the norm. The traditional tube-and-wing aircraft with bolted on nacelles is a bit of a dead end for civil aviation. Systems to enable a more complex design workflow (e.g. graph based dataflow with accurate gradients) will be more paramount.

3\. Research into the next generation of energy storage materials, and improved large-scale gradient-based numerical optimization algorithms.

</comment><comment><USER23> Go to Upwork.com, find a category and see if you find any patterns in what people are requesting, especially if it involves something manual and tedious.

</comment><comment><USER24> 1\. Sports betting

2\. Oligopoly[0] just a few companies who deliver live results.

You would need a ton of cash upfront, to hire people who would watch the games and would press buttons in order to inform you about results so you could parse them and deliver live results which eventually would become a live API.

But as you can see, there are people involved in this, who watch all those games, if you can manage to automate this, without requiring too many people, you are a rich man.

Let's put in that way, almost everyone consumes their API if they are offline, we are offline.

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

<comment><USER25> Seems like something that can be crowdsourced cheaply since so many people are watching the sports shows for free anyway.

<comment><USER24> They are also betting and why shouldn't they publish results that would let them win even if that's not the correct result ?

One could argue that the masses would always return the correct score but imagine 50 people debating about sports, there are 50 opinions and the truth somewhere in between.

And therefore those people also called 'scouts' must be trained in order to accomplish the job.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> 1\. Electronics/semiconductors 2\. Moore's law is loosing stream and complexity is exploding. Turn around times are increasing in everything. This includes runtime for all of our software tools as well as physical processes such as getting chips back from the fab. Vendors are not keeping up. Productivity is suffering.

3\. SystemVerilog is not really at the right abstraction level and still has many of the problems that face Verilog. It is sort of what C++ is to C and what I need is more the equivalent to rust.

<comment><USER27> I saw in some other thread that every programmer looks at making a better verilog, when having a better understanding of electronics would help them be more productive.

<comment><USER28> That's true, but those who do have a good understanding of electronics still want better tools than Verilog.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> 1\. Programming

2\. I don't know if it's stopping the industry from growing, but existing communication tools (specifically chat, email) are a serious drain on attention and productivity. See [http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html).

3\. I'm working on it. Might be better tooling, might be educating people on how harmful they can be.

<comment><USER30> I take a contrarian view on the perniciousness of chat, email, and social media. I'm yet to face a situation when I had to get something done but a chat conversation got so much in the way that I missed my deadline.

Yes, I spend way too much time on frivolous internet activities but when stuff needs to get done, it gets done.

No, I cannot use my time any differently to magically become more productive and build myself a side hustle or teach myself Sanskrit or whatever. Just because I now read a hundred success stories doesn't mean I have emulate and chase after adding to corpus of human growth and knowledge with blind focus.

It's ok to work enough for a living and not impose artificial expectations of extreme productivity on myself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> It's a difficult problem, but food just takes too much of people's time. Something like a personalized service that brings you food according to your own nutritional schedule would be nice.

<comment><USER32> I feel that a lot of people receive a lot of joy from selecting good food from a variety of options. I think with the immense popularity of websites/apps like Yelp, people are even more picky eaters than ever before. I think this makes a personalized food service incredibly difficult to appease a wide net of people and tastes while considering things like costs and logistics.

Of course the existence and popularity of something like Soylent goes against my assumptions. I imagine there are just people who value their time over enjoyment from food, as well as people who feel the opposite.

<comment><USER31> Also fitness enthusiasts are an entire category

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> 1\. Rockets

2\. Cost of launch locks out potential customers and limits R&D uses. Global launch cadence is slow; getting into orbit is a multi-year adventure.

3\. Yes, we're working on reusable rockets.

However, this only goes so far. Personally, I think that more money needs to be put into non-rocket modes of space travel, so that there's some competition. The fundamental problem is that it takes so much energy (and, with rockets, so much mass fraction optimization) to get to space, so it's difficult to engineer things with physical margin.

If you could build a rocket like a car (just toss some more steel in the frame and call it a day, with no need for the obsessive mass savings), getting to space would be a bit easier. If you had a power source that doesn't shake and bake its surroundings, getting to space would be a lot easier.

<comment><USER31> What problem do rockets solve?

<comment><USER34> Problem: Gravity makes it hard to get into orbit.

Solution: Rockets.

<comment><USER31> i can't imagine there 's unlimited demand for cheap rockets. it's not like everyone can send a satellite in order.

<comment><USER35> Cheap rockets will lead to cheaper satellites.

Take a look at the development of cubesats [1]. It's a new "paradigm" for LEO sats: rather than develop a massive and/or complex sat with a lifetime spanning decades, costing years & millions of dollars, you can now make a simpler (no station keeping ability other than using drag, lifetime so low that radiation hardening isn't worth it)/cheaper/lighter sat that you'll replace in a couple of years.

See also these two SpaceX applications to the FCC from 2016 & 2017 [2][3] for respectively ~4000 and ~7000 satellites. For context, there is currently about ~1000 operational satellites, with about half of these in LEO.

Finally consider the Ardusat project [4] from a couple of years ago (the premise was to send an arduino in space and let kickstarter backers run their code on it). The project was successful and allowed the founders to later raise money for a company [5] (Nanosatisfi, renamed Spire) operating a fleet of cubesats.

Basically any entity with ~100k to spend will be able to send up their own space junk. Now would be a good time to figure out how to treat the kessler syndrome.

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

2\. [https://licensing.fcc.gov/cgi- bin/ws.exe/prod/ib/forms/repor...](https://licensing.fcc.gov/cgi- bin/ws.exe/prod/ib/forms/reports/swr031b.hts?q_set=V_SITE_ANTENNA_FREQ.file_numberC/File+Number/%3D/SATLOA2016111500118&prepare=&column=V_SITE_ANTENNA_FREQ.file_numberC/File+Number)

3\. [https://licensing.fcc.gov/cgi- bin/ws.exe/prod/ib/forms/repor...](https://licensing.fcc.gov/cgi- bin/ws.exe/prod/ib/forms/reports/swr031b.hts?q_set=V_SITE_ANTENNA_FREQ.file_numberC/File+Number/%3D/SATLOA2017030100027&prepare=&column=V_SITE_ANTENNA_FREQ.file_numberC/File+Number)

4\. [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/575960623/ardusat- your-...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/575960623/ardusat-your-arduino- experiment-in-space)

5\. [https://spire.com/](https://spire.com/)

<comment><USER31> > Cheap rockets will lead to cheaper satellites.

Indeed, however there's a limited capacity for satellites.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> 1) Advertising

2) A lot. Publishers relying on clickbait to generate money. Advertisers creating invasive ads with autoplay sound and video. Ignoring do-not-track requests as part of the industry (even if some technology providers respect DNT, it seems like a lot don't). Malware. A lot of useless metrics. Bandwidth usage. Etc...

3) Micro-payments vs delivering content only when an ad has been seen? Validating content delivered through exchanges. A better way to anonymize data used for tracking? Smaller ads. Honestly, I'm not too sure, there's probably a lot that can be done but I feel the industry did too little too late.

<comment><USER35> 5+ years of experience in adtech, on the advertisers' side mostly. By far the largest surprise for me was the amount of efforts that went into denying payouts to the publishers. That went anywhere from designing terms that reduces the likelihood of payouts to straight up fraud (ie. double accounting, scrubbing conversions, ...). Ultimately I think a lot has to do with greed: publishers simply expect too high of a payout for these clicks, and advertisers do not want to see the traffic go somewhere else so they align with these expectations. They are then caught in this unsustainable price war with competitors and resort to fraud to keep going. IMO the #1 issue with this industry is one of credibility.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> No one mentioning healthcare?

I think there's a massive opportunity to lower costs and improve user experience in every area. I wish Apple used their pile of cash to invest in a _big_ vertically integrated healthcare service - a chain of hospitals, in- house-developed software throughout, improve user experience, integration and tech on every level. Basically healthcare rethought from the ground-up with Silicon Valley consumer-oriented mentality. Yes, extremely daring, but they're in a unique position to pull that off.

<comment><USER11> The healthcare industry almost always looks better from an outside perspective, but once you're on the inside you become just another part of the problem.

Lowering costs is a good example, but once you're inside you realize that the entire industry has been built from the ground up to create high profits and gains, and trying to change that leads to a quick exit. So once most people are on the inside they just go along with it and play ball because it's the safe and profitable thing to do.

Everyone wants change with healthcare, but short of the industry collapsing and being re-built, I don't see way that it's going to happen, though I'd love to be wrong.

<comment><USER37> That's why I think Apple should give it a shot. They are big enough to basically rebuild healthcare, create an integrated user-focused product including a chain of hospitals, clinics, web and mobile apps, health smartwatches, DNA sequencing, maybe even research.

<comment><USER38> The only thing that will change health care is single payer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> 1\. Banking

2\. Product complexity, legacy IT & culture and regulation

3\. Provide regulated banking services as a lean platform / utility, let others play on top

(3) is not easy to execute and no, blockchain is not the answer

</comment><comment><USER40> The Office of Educational Technology produced a report on Educational Software, what the biggest problems are and where the greatest opportunities are for solving them. It's a great read with lots of suggestions if you want to learn about a field, public education, that I personally feel is still severely behind the curve when it comes to the Information Revolution:

[https://tech.ed.gov/developers-guide/](https://tech.ed.gov/developers-guide/)

I highlighted passages of note here:

[http://mxplx.com/Reference/id=2090](http://mxplx.com/Reference/id=2090)

It's a great opportunity in a field that, despite budget cuts and under- funding, still has millions of dollars to put into software that could meet the needs of school districts across the country. Most of what's out there now is sorely lacking, leaving teachers and schools to use a patchwork of solutions to meet their needs.

</comment><comment><USER41> 1\. Software

2\. Hiring Process

3\. Replace meaningless whiteboarding interviews AND silly notepad algorithm questions, with a live coding interview on a laptop and a real development environment.

Companies would be surprised how fast and efficient the hiring process would be. They would stop eliminating a bunch of great candidates by running relevant technical interviews and not silly CS academic stuff. I can spend 3 month memorizing 500 algorithm solutions and nail all your 45min technical interviews. I would get an offer, a kick ass package and I would join your team. Then, on my first day I'd ask for help from my colleagues because I can't even setup my development environment. I'd write buggy code that doesn't integrate well and wouldn't be able to understand how to design a system. All I'd know is how to write text in a notepad and how to flip a linked list on a whiteboard.

But hey... I'm smart! And now I'm rich :)

<comment><USER42> If your company doesn't ask system design questions they deserve their fate. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> 1\. Training & Education

2\. Not enough companies want to use newer web technologies and advancements in AI & machine learning to train their workforce

3\. Yes but I think it'll require younger incumbents 'eating the lunch' of more established companies for this to change

<comment><USER44> > Not enough companies want to use newer web technologies and advancements in > AI & machine learning to train their workforce

trying to use AI & ML is ok, but why they should use newer web technologies? web technologies are changed so frequently and outdated, its bit scary to jump in to new web tech.

<comment><USER43> A sizeable chunk (not sure on figures) of training courses are still produced using Flash. If it's not Flash, they are built using a Dreamweaver-esque authoring tool that spits out HTML & CSS. [https://github.com/adaptlearning/adapt_framework](https://github.com/adaptlearning/adapt_framework) is the only major open-source web framework.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Here's some problems I've personally encountered: 1\. Software Engineer 2\. It's difficult to get remote debugging and remote syncing working right. We've all been there. It literally takes hours to set up, if you don't have precise instructions. PhpStorm is pretty good, but still takes quite a bit of head scratching to install when your doing remote debugging. 3\. Getting an app to run locally usually takes way too much work.

And, it seems Perl IDEs/debugging tools aren't as good as they should be. We're still using the command line debug tools for Perl, and can't even set a breakpoint before that line has been executed.

<comment><USER27> When you say remote, do you mean a remote server? Or do you mean debugging on an iPhone from your dev laptop?

<comment><USER45> i mean from a remote server. Lots of development is set up to only run from a remote server and it's too much work to get it working on a localhost.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Exploding Complexity. It can take years to become an expert in a tiny little nook of my field. Knowing how to use the software and the theory behind it is very challenging.

</comment><comment><USER47> 1\. Capital Equipment Control Systems

2\. Seamless, lossless, low-cost interoperability

3\. Doubtful. Many companies profit by providing custom products and services to address the problem.

</comment><comment><USER48> 1) Patient safety

2) Massive underfunding from central and local government; entrenched ways of working; incorrectly defensive working; dysfunctional cheerleading of incorrect approaches

3) Yes. Improve efficiency. Move to better ways of serious incident analysis. Challenge people who cheerlead incorrect approaches. Push for more funding, especially using Spend-to-Save data.

</comment><comment><USER49> Don't have time right now to go into detail, but in radiology the biggest problem is rising volumes with lower reimbursement. I addressed this in another thread, but it's an arms race between vendors to maximize radiologist throughput via tools such as dictaphones, templates, computer-aided diagnoses, and now, machine learning.

<comment><USER50> "but in radiology the biggest problem is rising volumes with lower reimbursement"

Huh? So x-rays have become plentiful and cheap due to competition-driven innovation? How is that a problem?

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> 1\. Public Transport.

2\. Funding/Capacity.

3\. More money.

<comment><USER52> 3\. Automation? Depends on the transport it could be 5 years away (trains/similar) or 20-30 years away (buses/similar). Of course the trains/similar is more of a people issue than technical (;

<comment><USER53> For trains, automation already happened - in the 80's. London's DLR and Vancouver's skytrain are examples of mostly automated, completely driverless, metro systems - built in the 80's.

Afaik, the Vancouver skytrain still uses the original OS/2 software to run.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> 1\. Which industry do you work in?

In the publishing industry (where I have worked since 1997), the transition from print-only to print-plus-digital that began around 1999 and really got underway after Amazon released the Kindle in 2007 has finished. Now we have an industry in which print and digital co-exist (at different levels – 50/50 for fiction, but more like 80/20 for non-fiction, and even less of digital for more complex product types like Bibles). Currently the growth area is audiobooks, led (of course) by Audible.

2\. What are the biggest problems stopping your industry from growing?

Publishers have not really solved these problems:

(a) How to distribute very small publications and receive very small payments? We're still reliant on credit cards for payments, which pushes us to a smallest payment size of about $1.99 or so.

(b) How to increase discoverability? Most publishers are reluctant to post all of their content in a web-searchable and social-shareable form (for somewhat obvious reasons). However, this means that it's hard for them to draw direct traffic to their books.

(c) How to reduce reliance on the behemoth of online retailing? As physical bookstores have died away, publishers have recognized that they are too reliant on one distributor, which is a dangerous position to be in (as that retailer has shown itself very ready to use monopsony powers to bully their suppliers). Most publishers have direct-to-consumer selling operations. But (a) and (b) and other factors mean that they find it extremely difficult to draw traffic to their sites.

3\. Can something be done about it?

I have been working on some of these problems in my business ([http://blackearthgroup.com](http://blackearthgroup.com)). Here is a sketch outline of how I would encourage publishers to solve these problems:

(a) Micropayments are needed, and to do that we need an online currency that can be used to buy content without going through the credit card processing network. Publishers should invest in the development of an online token that they would support on their sites. Customers could then purchase a supply of tokens and use them on publishers' sites to buy content. There are a couple of projects like this in the works. The simplest approach would be to create a coin based on the Ethereum network, and then support that coin for all purchases. (The hardest part of this is probably that the value of the coin would not be completely stable, because Ethereum is not, which means that publishers would have to either adjust their token prices regularly, or would have to live with variability in revenues to sales – this problem is solvable, but it requires a lot of capital to create a value stabilization mechanism.)

(b) Publishers should put all their content online in excerpt chunks using non-discoverable public URLs, then submit it all to the search engines, and start sharing excerpts through social channels. It is true that some of the content would be given away, but that would be limited because each excerpt chunk would not be linked to the others in the same publication – access to one would not grant access to all. Using full-content search and sharing is one of the best ways for them to draw more organic traffic to their own sites. (They'll need to invest in better discovery mechanisms on their sites, too.)

(c) Publishers have a real chance of building a customer base in their own content niches, if they invest in developing a content discovery and purchase experience that is significantly better in that niche than what customers experience on Amazon.

(Cross-posted to my blog: [http://blackearthgroup.com/2017/04/20/what-are-the- greatest-...](http://blackearthgroup.com/2017/04/20/what-are-the-greatest- problems-facing-the-publishing-industry/) .)

<comment><USER55> It seems to me that there could exist a paypal-like system for micropayments. Maybe there already is and I don't know about it? Getting a critical mass would be necessary, a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem. If there was a service that went something like this:

\- pay a flat fee of $x to deposit any amount up to $y

\- pay nothing to transfer <$1 to another user (really just shifting numbers in a spreadsheet)

\- pay $x to withdraw up to $y

You are incentivized to deposit more to make it worthwhile, fees don't eat into your per transaction revenue, and you're incentivized to wait for at least $y to cash out for maximum benefit. The company can invest that $ in the meantime and earn a low yield on a money market.

I'm sure if it were that easy it would already be done, but it makes sense to me.

<comment><USER56> I agree that it would be neat, but I fear that the reason only big banks and credit card processors have attempted to dabble in this space is because you've just described a bank. Building one of those carries a whole host of regulations, even if the goal is a very simple, limited set of interactions.

<comment><USER57> It works for Virtual Worlds though. At this very moment I am dancing at a party in InWorldz, and I just tipped the dj with Inworldz dollars that I previously purchased with USD. If she wants to withdraw the money as USD she can.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> 1\. Embedded (safety and criitical systems)

2\. Knowledge sharing within companies/organizations. Formal methods (primarily their absence). Effective use of simulations in design, development, and V&V efforts. Requirements traceability (this is mundane and seems bureaucratic, but it's critical here).

3\. Yes, to everything.

For the first, break down information silos and project fiefdoms. Allow for greater flexibility for staff to move across project boundaries so knowledge can be shared more equitably, and people can see other teams work (learn both good and bad things here). Training. Make it a recurring event. Not the crap training many organizations do. Have a seminar series where people come in and present on something, not always directly related to work. Encourage people to write up their lessons learned, and perform and publish post mortems on projects. Take the approach of avoiding blame, focus on correctable errors and faults along the way (these are primarily process faults, not technical ones; where technical they're typically design and not implementation errors).

Formal methods and simulations are much easier to get started with today than ever. I'm not even talking about making a full-blown simulation of the final system, just high level "is this protocol sound" models. Presently working on radios. I don't need to implement a simulation of every detail of the protocol, I just need to know things like: If we add this new message, that must be sent so often, can it actually get broadcast at the correct frequency within the physical constraints of the radio? This turned out to be _NO_ on one project I saw (not worked on), but not discovered until it was implemented (several man-months wasted). A message was supposed to be sent out every X time slots, containing N bytes of data. Each slot allowed you to send MAX size. Other messages also had to be sent out, say every X _4 slots with size M. N+M > MAX, meant something wasn't sent. Both were mandatory, by design the protocol couldn't function. Another similar issue, though requiring a more complete simulation/model, was that one of the processors handling some of the messages simply wasn't fast enough. It was required to (worst-case) process N messages within X microseconds, but could actually only process ~N_0.75 messages. Admittedly, this was worst case behavior, but by the system's design (protocol requirements, selected hardware, selected data bus, selected program design) it could not achieve the required performance.

The more complete the simulation, though, the better off you are. Technical solutions already exist, it's primarily an issue of finding good case studies or getting an amenable manager to sign off on trying it to demonstrate the cost savings (versus the typical approaches, which in my experience are often significantly late and errorful). Also being at the right stage in a project. Being at the maintenance end, constructing these models/simulations is harder than when you're taking on a novel project.

But, simulations also aid V&V efforts. If you can construct a full(er) simulation of the radio network, your V&V team can start creating test cases, procedures, and models and verifying that they're reasonable. From a protocol perspective, this is relatively easy on our radios, setting aside timing. So ignore time (as a strict concept) and instead focus on time slots. Create a simulation where each tick corresponds to one time slot, let computation run as long as needed. At the end, you'll see what _should_ show up from the radios given some inputs. Run these through your data analysis tools to exercise them, and when you have functioning radios you can use these tools to create simulated network peers (pre-generated network data played back to the radio being tested).

For requirements traceability, just stop using Word and Excel. Use an actual requirements database. I know DOORS sucks, but it's infinitely better than Word and Excel.

<comment><USER59> Surprised not to see the classic IoT security/connectivity combo here. Perhaps you're working on systems that are too deeply embedded to make use of (or allow for) connectivity.

<comment><USER58> Too old. These are for avionics systems that aren't going to change any time soon, and we're on the maintenance end so even if new systems come along we aren't building them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> Outdated technology that leads to outdated systems.

</comment><comment><USER61> bitrot. nuff said.</comment>


How Outsourced explained about Managers acting as coaches - <AUTHOR> https://grosum.com/blog.do?method=openBlogBody&id=What_Outsourced_taught_about_Manager_as_coaches <comment><AUTHOR> How the television series Outsourced helped to understand, managers can act as coaches.</comment>


Lessons from My Math Degree That Have Nothing to Do with Math - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/s/story/6-life-lessons-from-my-math-degree-that-have-nothing-to-do-with-math-d38aba90edfe <comment><USER3> I had a bit more fun with my math degree than the author did, but the curriculum taught me similar things.

I'd add one more: I think it helped me be a better writer. All of college and the closing out of adolescent cognitive development probably contributed some of that too, but I noticed that by the time I'd made my way through analysis classes that I was getting better responses to my written communication and that I could detect a tightness in some of it that was familiar. I think it came from spending so much time trying to clearly articulate details of abstract concepts that I was struggling to come to grips with. A proof is arguably a (very specialized) form of a persuasive essay designed first to illuminate and convince oneself.

Perhaps it contributed to the author becoming a better writer too.

<comment><USER4> Analysis has had the opposite effect on my writing. After having my head buried in measure theory for a semester I wrote in a report for my student organization: "The set of inactive members of the Executive Committee is a non-negligible one." I was asked to rewrite that.

<comment><USER5> "non-negligible" doesn't sound very precise.

You mean "non-empty but finite"?

"There exists a member of the Committee that is not active"

<comment><USER6> In the context of measure theory, a "non-negligible" set is a set with measure greater than zero.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Oddly, I can relate to all the points (mentioned below) as a software engineer, except that I love what I do too much to even imagine giving up like the author seems to have. In fact, I had exactly the opposite experience. I hated computer science and programming in the beginning but ended up doing it for fun and profit.

> 1\. I expect to not get the answer on the first try

> 2\. I can tolerate ungodly amounts of frustration

> 3\. I attack problems from multiple angles

> 4\. I check my goddamn work

> 5\. I practice persistence

I happen to be one of those engineers/persons who thrives working alone, values quality over quantity, and tries to be as self sufficient as possible, so I can really relate to the above points very much.

<comment><USER8> Number 1 was the biggest for me, coming into programming from an entirely different profession. I never learned how to code until I was about 28. I didn't realize that I brought what I call the "consumer attitude" towards electronics into my programming practice in the beginning. The consumer attitude is that machines _work_. If they don't work, something went terribly wrong.

So when I made a mistake, I'd just crush myself with doubt and anxiety. It literally would hurt my brain and give me the sinking feeling that I'd never be able to do this because I can't code anything without screwing up somewhere.

But now, after about 6 years of doing it, I've developed an entirely different attitude. The correct attitude towards machines is that they _do not work_. They are broken by _default_. So if they work, something went terribly _right_.

Now, when I write a line of code, and it breaks, it's just business as usual.

<comment><USER7> I can feel what you mean. In college at times when my 101 code wouldn't compile I was convinced that Borland C++ had a bug.

For me its the point 2 that is most relatable. Every time I have to use a library, even C++ STL beyond the oft used portions, or learn a new framework or language, my heart sinks a little anticipating the impending path of thorns. I have had so many encounters where it is literally a pain in the neck from all the peering into the screen trying to see just what the heck is not working, or eye burn from staring into the monitor squinting at the debugger window with small fonts, or both of this along with sore and sweaty fingers out of frantic googling that I shudder just writing about it. I call this "wrestling with the API". Its an occupational hazard for us to deal with all the man made pieces of software that are as different as their creators, and I have made my peace with it.

It usually turns out that I missed a fine detail in the documentation. Sometimes its my fault where I wouldn't have read the docs properly or have made uncalled for assumptions, and other times its squarely the documentation's fault for being unhelpful. When its my fault, I feel really disappointed with myself for having been so careless despite being an experienced dev. That adds to the frustration. Almost every time, stackoverflow has bailed me out, and invariably it would be an old post. (At times when I find a solution to something seemingly insurmountable, I have even mused about donating some money to them.) I take solace in the fact that someone had faced similar problem long before me and I need not be so harsh on myself. That until it happens again.

<comment><USER9> Haha! I was in the process of spinning up my little blog, and I had a similar experience trying to get dns configured, had I merely checked my provider's knowledgebase instead of going through github's more generalized procedures I would have accomplished what I was trying to do within an hour instead of the 5 I spent scouring every bit of github's docs I could find. Urp.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Hmm,

I'd be slightly leery about taking advice from someone who admits they actually didn't do well learning math. Looking at the points, most of the advice sounds good but a couple seem a bit off.

Especially: "I can tolerate ungodly amounts of frustration".

Math isn't always easy but my hunch is that if it _feels_ hard, you're on the wrong track. The best moments in math for me are the "it's obvious" times, points where everything just flows from first principles.

I've always "found math easy" and occasionally tutored people who had trouble with it. It always seemed like those who got stuck would make the mistake of thinking math was a grind, that if they pushed through enough frustration they'd get there. I think that attitude might help some fieds but I don't think it helps math.

This isn't to say math really is easy. Rather, I think the appropriate approach is to spend a lot of time and approach from multiple angles _until_ it _feels_ easy (and fun and creative). Work really "hard" to attain a state of productive laziness. But that work shouldn't be a continuous grind either, rather a careful survey of all the ways one can approach the topic.

And certainly being able to tolerate frustration is certainly useful in many fields, programming among them. But I'd say that intellectual problems that benefit from overt are problems where a person has all the knowledge necessary for the solution and merely has to engage in a long, frustrating process of putting them together - like a large but not hugely sophisticated, computer program.

<comment><USER11> If Terence Tao admits that doing mathematics is hard, then I am extremely leery of anyone who thinks otherwise.

<comment><USER12> Five years of university math here and I can only mirror the author's experience. If having the feeling that math is hard ought to disqualify you then everybody will probably be disqualified.

Maths is hard for everybody, including the people who excel at it. I've never met anybody who has spent serious time on a math education suggest anything else.

If you get a sadistic pleasure out of torturing your mind with numbing puzzles and like the reward of finally figuring something out that you had to ponder for days (or longer) then you have a good chance of doing maths at the university level. But it never really comes naturally to anybody, it's not the kind of thing we're build for.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> As someone who just went through graduate school in mathematics, I can say this:

This person _has not been doing math_. What he was doing - that's not _what mathematics is_.

To understand why I say this, read Lockhart's Lament[1].

In short: the true joy of doing mathematics is asking interesting questions and exploring. It's telling a good story. It's being the only person in the entire world who knows a spoiler or two for the upcoming series (even if it's anticipated by only a handful). It's about noticing something simple which makes a hard thing easy. It's about that a-ha moment, and about being surprised - sometimes by what you say.

All the tedium, frustration, being stuck, etc _are not the end goal_ , they just _sometimes_ happen on the way there.

The poor sap never got to do math. He's got to eat the crust off a pizza - <USER2> never got to the delicious part.

And he never got to learn how _social_ math is - because, as an advisor of mine once said: mathematics, like food, is beat shared.

[1][https://www.maa.org/external_archive/devlin/LockhartsLament....](https://www.maa.org/external_archive/devlin/LockhartsLament.pdf)

<comment><USER14> Nice gatekeeping, friend. I've also personally never heard my math graduate student friends talk like this.

<comment><USER15> Some of their language is unfortunate but they pulled through with the sharing part. It is quite hard to share maths with others however. How can I share that feeling inside my brain algebraically closed fields give me?

<comment><AUTHOR> >How can I share that feeling inside my brain algebraically closed fields give me?

That's kinda like returning home after a long day, because algebraically closed fields are about the nicest structure you can hope to find yourself working in!

<comment><USER16> The algebraic numbers aren't complete. So you cannot measure the circumference of circles in them, nor does a series like sum(1/k!) converge.

Personally I'd posit finitely generated abelian groups as the nicest structures. Perhaps there is also something to be said for finite algebraically closed fields.

<comment><AUTHOR> There are no finite algebraically closed fields, but I see your point, it depends on what you have to do really, if you want to do any kind of analysis completeness is great, but being more on the logic/model theory side I like all algebraically closed fields!

<comment><USER15> Ya'll rock.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I think how math is taught at the early stages (rote, focus on finding a simple answer which is already clearly known, focus on mechanical arithmetic and calculation) filters out many of those who would enjoy the more advanced stuff. There are some clear filters (basic arithmetic probably is 80-90 IQ, algebra 95, probability and statistics 100, calculus 100-105, differential equations, analysis, and linear algebra maybe 110, algebraic topology a bit higher), but those are really lower bounds for raw intelligence required.

I'd rather have basic arithmetic treated as a separate subject, and then some form of "problem solving math" which can incorporate concepts from calculus, algebra, and especially probability and statistics. The best three math classes I've ever taken were a combination of physics and calculus in a small group taught by two teachers who worked closely together, a weird MIT ESG seminar with a postdoc and 3 students covering the broad expanse of everything post 18.03, and number theory and crypto at the same time (a grad class I snuck into without prereqs and spent the first month essentially 30h/wk catching up on those.). What was consistent with two of these was having a clear problem to solve; with the third it was just high interactivity with an expert for an extended period.

Providing students with exposure to the problem space addressed by a certain form of math, then letting them discover some of the truths and techniques on their own in the same way they were originally discovered, is going to take more time and far more skilled instructors than just repeating facts, but will be more engaging and produce better understanding.

</comment><comment><USER18> Yes, I was a math major as an undergrad, and it is these exact traits that carried over to computer science / engineering. I see a lot of programmers that are cavalier, don't check (unit test) their solutions, unwilling to wrestle with frustrating problems, and are quick to reach for the "framework of the day" to solve what should be trivial problems.

I also add to the list a deep appreciation for elegant solutions (Mathematicians do not like kludges).

</comment><comment><USER19> Solving a problem gives you a rush. When I majored in math, I think this was the biggest motivating factor in continuing on. It helps I was good at it, even though it wasn't always smooth sailing.

</comment><comment><USER20> Most people told me that I am good at math.

But I was like an addict solving every question I could find. I got a kick from solving it before anyone else, completing the whole book before others opened the first chapter.

I was looking at my wristwatch all time and solving it like my life would simply end if I stopped or wasted even a moment.

I was never burned out, never felt tired.

<comment><USER15> That's how I feel. The deep love, and it took me a while to get there. Math can be like the OP described with a workman's mindset, but the untouchable beauty of cracking a problem set and building understanding of the subject through that... I'm not sure what turns on that switch.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> It's not really clear that the author got anything out of doing a math degree that he wouldn't have gotten out of doing most other degrees. I was expecting a bit more from this.

(That said, it would be very interesting to see the same article written by someone with a PhD in math. That's a completely different animal, and might be much more interesting to discuss.)

<comment><USER22> This post might somewhat answer your question:

[https://www.quora.com/What-is-it-like-to-understand- advanced...](https://www.quora.com/What-is-it-like-to-understand-advanced- mathematics-Does-it-feel-analogous-to-having-mastery-of-another-language-like- in-programming-or-linguistics/answers/873950?share=1)

<comment><USER23> At least from my academic degrees through Ph.D. and peer-reviewed published papers, I qualify as a mathematician. So, I'm interested in the OP and your link to quora.

I've read a lot of high level descriptions of math including some from some famous mathematicians that I regard as total BS. In strong contrast, the quora link was pretty good. Some of the best parts in that quora link I had to discover for myself, and the quora link is the first explanation I've seen by others.

For the OP, naw, I can't go along with much of that. In strong contrast, I loved learning, using, creating, publishing, teaching math and still do. Most of what I learned was from what I studied from outside a formal academic course; I studied the material because I wanted to understand it and did like learning it. The work was great fun, not frustrating or unpleasant in any sense. Even in courses, mostly I just wanted to learn the material and often ignored the class and teacher, concentrated on one or a few books, studied alone, and learned the material, generally for the course standards, quite well.

Sorry the OP had a tough time multiplying matrices and understanding eigen values -- I had no such problems. To me, matrix multiplication is glorious because it is an associative operation and from what we can see from that -- amazing when think about it a little. For eigen values and eigen vectors, those are astounding, the keys to the polar decomposition which IMHO is the crown jewel of linear algebra and one of the more amazing results in all of math.

The most difficult material studied was just from writing that didn't explain very well. One example was most of the explanations I read for the simplex algorithm of linear programming. Really, a super nice way to approach the subject is that it's just a nice, nearly obvious, tweak of Gauss elimination.

<comment><USER22> I don't have much training in mathematics, but from what little I have, I can say that coming up with conjectures is not easy and having your conjectures be false can sometimes be disappointing. Thus most time spent in a problem is usually in a state of disappointment. Due to this I can relate a bit to OP.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I didn't really enjoy any of my math courses at University. mostly because it was forced on me and it felt like learning a boring rote process. I didn't see the value in it besides applying it to basic physics and engineering courses I took.

Now, as I program more, I'm starting to appreciate what math has to offer. Especially when I dig through a library or framework and break down what its doing on a step by step process.

I find the people I look up to most, whether its in engineering, programming ,etc - are also great mathmaticians.

Math for me has helped me in the following ways

1\. Its helped me write better. Math is like writing. Its all about expressing the most amount of "oompf" in the fewest syntax possible.

2\. It has helped me program better. Learning discrete math helps me draw parallels on what an array foundationally is (set theory), and why low level logic works the way it does.

3\. It helps me write better notes. I used to use thousands of annotated images for taking notes. Then I realize how poorly that turned out. Over the years I've learned to take better notes by writing more in fewer words. Eventually, this led me to math. Math is the simplest way of expressing complex logic.

4\. It has helped my understanding of 3D and 2D processing. Learning linear algebra from 3blue1brown has made it much easier to understand why and how 3D rendering / imaging programs work at the most basic level. How a box is shaded, how a 3D item is modeled when you apply a fillet to it.

I intend to learn ML / AI , so knowing statistics comes in handy, which at its core is still math.

Just learning and knowing math makes everything so much easier to pick up after.

<comment><USER25> Sounds like you were confused. For example, I know people like stuff like the 3blue1brown movies, but my intro linear algebra textbook from undergrad covers literally all the materials and movations he did if you bothered to read it.

<comment><USER26> Yes, this. Not all textbooks are worth anything, to be sure, but decent "boring" math texts generally have all of the "easily digestible" stuff that youtube videos do, sans animation. Math really took off for me when I started going passed the required problem sets and doing the interesting ones that weren't assigned. Really digging into them and drawing pictures, etc. Math is a contact sport.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I had the same overall experience. Math helped me think very abstractly about problems, but most of the proofs and theorems and constructs I learned are not directly applicable daily. Sometimes though, they help me come up with surprisingly elegant solutions for certain problems.

</comment><comment><USER28> Writing is hard..having to not just come up with ideas but articulating them into words in a way that is grammatically correct and appealing to the reader. I think much of writers block is not due to a lack of ideas but the difficulty of articulating them.

<comment><USER29> Same applies to programming IMO.

<comment><USER30> Same applies to drawing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> >I can tolerate ungodly amounts of frustration

A trait probably shared with most proficient software developers. The diamond of high skill must be formed by the stresses and pressures of persistent frustration and failure.

</comment><comment><USER32> Most of the points that the author has highlighted will hold true for a person who has a Ph.D. in any of the STEM disciplines other than math.

</comment><comment><USER33> When I quit schools at a level that should have prepared me for "work", I left a place that had me running at full speed and flailing. Ever since I took hold in my career on my own terms, I knew that is probably the very elephant in any room I do not want to be in.

</comment><comment><USER34> So the author both learned persistence and the toleration of frustration _but_ also admits to turning in half-done homeworks (if at all), half-assing midterms and generally not trying hard. Or maybe this is just-so story without much merit.

</comment><comment><USER22> Great article.

</comment><comment><USER35> Everything has to do with math.

</comment><comment><USER36> I got these same benefits from a Computer Science degree.

</comment><comment><USER37> Persistence is key.</comment>


Erdős–Bacon Number - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erd%C5%91s%E2%80%93Bacon_number <comment><USER2> There is also the Sabbath number, with the same principle, but it's the distance musicians are from the band Black Sabbath, as they changed formation countless times. Together these three make up the Erdős Bacon Sabbath Number. Stephen Hawkin has the Erdős Bacon Sabbath Number of 8, one of the lowest known; he has the Erdős number of 4, Bacon number of 2 and Sabbath number of 2.

Source: this book [http://www.amazon.co.uk/pracht-van-priemgetallen- eeuwenlange...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/pracht-van-priemgetallen-eeuwenlange- zoektocht/dp/9035138635/) (not an affiliate link)

Edit: I didn't notice ColinWright's comment :)

</comment><comment><USER3> Depending what you count, my E-B number is 6. I'm actively working on reducing that, and looking to get a finite Sabbath number:

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

It's all a bit silly ...

</comment><comment><USER4> Yay, my Erdos number is 2 and thus better than that of Richard Feynman. I have a paper with Erdos-1 mathematician Saharon Shelah. Unfortunately, my Bacon number is infinity. To look up your Erdos number, if any, go to

[https://files.oakland.edu/users/grossman/enp/Erdos1.html](https://files.oakland.edu/users/grossman/enp/Erdos1.html)

<comment><USER5> Just found out my Erdos number is 7 thanks to this [0] (it seems to be only mathematical papers so I had to input a co-author to find mine). Now to just get a bacon and sabbath number...

[0] [http://www.ams.org/mathscinet/collaborationDistance.html](http://www.ams.org/mathscinet/collaborationDistance.html)

<comment><USER6> Mine is 4. Now I only need to appear in a movie with Kevin Bacon

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> My Erdős Number is 4:

      Me->Mukkai S. Krishnamoorthy->Joseph E. Flaherty->David C. Arney->Paul Erdős

For a time, it appeared to be 2, but Paul Erdős and the Erdős-1 mathematician with whom I collaborated ultimately withdrew their paper, because they found their results were similar to a previously published paper.

I've also appeared on a local Philadelphia PA TV show with newscasters who interviewed Kevin Bacon. Not sure if this gives me a finite Bacon Number, since it was TV (not a movie) and it was non-fiction. If so, then I have the finite Erdős–Bacon Number of 6.

</comment><comment><USER8> My Erdős–Bacon number is 6. Bacon number 3: I was in a film with Terence Donovan who has a Bacon number of 2: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=kK...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=kKS14i3aCAk#t=134s) Erdős number 3: I wrote a paper with Gregor Leander who has an Erdős number of 2. I peaked.

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm fairly certain I have a finite Erdos number, but it sure is a pain to find it. Someone with more free time than I should make a list of famous contemporary computer scientists by research area and their Erdos number! It would be a lot of help.

EDIT: it seems my computational geometry professor, Bernard Chazelle, has an E-B number of 5. Too bad I do not have any papers authored with him.

</comment><comment><USER10> It is a stretch, but it is all in good fun: my bacon number is 3 (I played Tara O'Reilly's husband (uncredited) in _Shout it Out_ ) and my Erdos number is 3 (I co-wrote a paper for the TeX User's Group journal with Michael Doob). Total Erdos-Bacon number: 6

</comment><comment><USER11> See also "An Algorithm for Erdos-Bacon Number Minimization" by _Garrod, et al._ in SIGBOVIK 2010, page 11: [http://sigbovik.org/2010/proceedings.pdf](http://sigbovik.org/2010/proceedings.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER12> I recently found out that my Math professor has an Erdos number of 2, there's got to a way to co-author something there in the far future!

</comment><comment><USER13> I have a lecturer who has an E-B number of 5 (Geoffrey Grimmett). Now I just need to appear in a film with him and write a paper with him.</comment>


Show HN: HastyScribe – a CLI tool to generate self-contained HTML documents - <AUTHOR> https://h3rald.com/articles/hastyscribe/ <comment><AUTHOR> Couldn't decide on whether to post the article describing the development of the tool or the actual project page... In the end I went for the article, but if you don't want to read it and want to go straight to the project page, here it is:

[https://h3rald.com/hastyscribe/](https://h3rald.com/hastyscribe/)

</comment><comment><USER2> Good project. For the sake of putting all your data into the web this is awesome.</comment>


Why did Andrew Cooke deleted all his answers from Quora - <AUTHOR> http://www.quora.com/Andrew-Cooke/Why-did-you-delete-all-your-answers-from-Quora

<comment><USER2> Getting past the individual situation here it does raise some interesting questions about what ownership people have over information they submit for the good of others. If Quora restored all his answers against his will I don't think I'd object to that to be honest.

Put it in physical terms. If I volunteer to build homes in a third world country do I have the right to then tear those homes down if I become disenchanted with the organization I volunteered for? My answer to that question would be No and that's why I don't think he shouldn't have taken down the answers.

If the info was used just to benefit Quora that might be different but the fact that they benefit the whole of the community changes things IMHO

</comment><comment><USER3> I thought it would be "he took his ball and went home," read his answer, and confirmed it.

</comment><comment><USER4> Why did someone I've never heard of delete something from a site I've never visited? Who cares?

<comment><USER5> Apparently you do care enough to post.

Guy seems like the Jon Skeet of Quora.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Why did he deleted indeed.

<comment><USER7> Maybe he did died?

Seriously though, I never heard of the guy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Yet he leaves the answer where he said he deleted all his answers.</comment>


Twitter hack has profound national security implications - <AUTHOR> https://www.getrevue.co/profile/caseynewton/issues/a-catastrophe-at-twitter-263960 <comment><USER2> This looks like another "Twitter was hacked" articles... There's virtually nothing about the article about national security... Disappointing.

Here's a national security concern: a president announced he's going to war. Or a military tweets they've lost control of their nukes... Or reports a widespread network communication fault and advises all personal to communicate through a specific channel (which might degrade security)

If you were hoping for national security concerns, don't bother reading the article.

<comment><USER3> If the hacker used Trump's account to call for an immediate call to arms and to attack <enter group here>, enough people could have done something to trigger a civil war.

<comment><USER4> Do you actually think we are one tweet away from a civil war?

<comment><USER5> Probably not a civil war, but a race riot or acts of terrorism? Sure, we've already seen the latter.

<comment><USER4> Yes, fair enough, and to your point has already happened.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I actually think it's a positive thing that the media system is being shaken. Society puts way too much trust in shit that is posted on twitter.

I feel the same way about cancel culture on twitter -- it is bad in the short term, but if it incentivizes people like Yann Lecunn to leave it -- it reduces the importance of the medium itself.

<comment><USER7> It's insane to me just how much of the news content is taken directly from Twitter while newsrooms and investigative journalism is systematically defunded. How can this be reversed?

<comment><USER8> You have it backwards. News content is now being reported directly via Twitter, because the newsrooms and journalists have proven they can't be trusted. They were never "defunded", their customers left because the product is low quality and biased.

<comment><USER9> News content is being reported directly on Twitter because the internet spoiled consumers into not having to pay for reporting. The online advertising model effectively did "defund" publications by forcing them to write low- quality content that people would click on instead of paying for.

<comment><USER10> It's also being reported there because it's an insanely fast way to reach people. Instead of them having to check the news organization's main page to see if anything happened, they can subscribe to their account on Twitter, turn on notifications and get it the moment it breaks.

Granted, Twitter is still a horrible place for long-form news (which is why it links to the full articles) and an even worse one for discussions. Which is why a different platform for instant updates could be beneficial, since news will have to adapt anyway.

<comment><USER11> > Instead of them having to check the news organization's main page to see if > anything happened, they can subscribe to their account on Twitter, turn on > notifications and get it the moment it breaks.

If only there was a really simple way to syndicate all this content that all websites could follow and multiple clients could consume...

<comment><USER10> There is but, realistically, people have moved away from it. Getting someone to try a new thing is hard. Getting someone to go back to an old thing once they're hooked on a new one is harder.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> If this Twitter hack has profound national security implications, then Twitter itself already has profound national security implications that weren't being appropriately recognized or addressed.

<comment><USER13> I think that's true and is definitely part of the larger discussion; when a platform has the power to begin a war; maybe more eyes should be focused on the responsibility of the platform.

<comment><USER14> > when a platform has the power to begin a war; maybe more eyes should be > focused on the responsibility of the platform.

Or, we break up and/or shut down the platform.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> A recent thought I had. Before a service can be authorized for use by public officials, it should go through security compliance similar to PCI, PII, or SOX. Most public offices obviously don't command armies nor nuclear codes, but ones that do should be subject to more rigorous vetting of the services they are authorized to use.

Had the recent vulnerability been a different message from, say, a certain prominent Twitter account, there could be very, very, very disastrous results.

<comment><USER16> This is the most well-intended (I hope, assuming no ill intent on your part) but dangerous message I've read today.

What you are really saying here that public officials should only be allowed to publish on approved enterprise communications systems that has the budget to pay for compliance certifications.

I think Facebook and Twitter would love this kind of regulatory capture because it would cement their position, hindering startups from taking over in their space (which, we know, is prone to being out-innovated every 5 years or so).

Having worked professionally in information security for a while now, let me tell you these kinds of certificates mean very little for actual security.

<comment><USER17> Public officials should be completely banned from using communication systems that are not state owned for professional purposes. It makes absolutely no sense that politicians use Twitter as an official communication channel.

<comment><USER18> How do you plan on telling Trump, who had a sizable Twitter following before he was elected, then leveraged social media to grow his political fanbase, that all of the sudden on Jan 1, he can't use Twitter?

You are trying to close Pandora's Box.

<comment><USER19> We have a mechanism for doing just that: Congress. A law that government communication must be primarily through an official channel (even if it is also mirrored to unofficial channels).

This was exactly my first thought when I saw Sen. Hawley's open letter to Twitter, aghast at the idea that the President's own account could be affected by this. I share his concern, but not his determination of blame. It is not a private company's job to protect the communications of our government. It is the job of our government's defense and intelligence apparatus. They can't do that job without the requirement for communication to be done through channels they control.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Probably not the intent, but the consequence of the twitter hack was actually a benevolent psyop to remind all world leaders to not take any given tweet too seriously. White hat of the decade. Unironically might have done more for world peace than anyone in 2020.

<comment><USER21> A white hat would not have used a real bitcoin address in the message. This was a gray hat, at best. I'm curious if anyone actually fell for the scam.

Considering the millions of people who follow the collective accounts effected, even if 1% were stupid enough to be dupped (and yet know how transfer bitcoin), that might have been quite a windfall for the hacker.

<comment><USER22> > Within the first hours of the attack, people were duped into sending more > than $118,000 to the hackers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The hacker could have done something subtle to possibly game all those Wall Street AI bots they've surely plugged into the Twitter firehose by now. No one would have been the wiser. Instead we got Obama demanding Bitcoins which is so outrageously obvious that we now might finally stand a chance of loosening those pursestrings so we can do more to improve infrastructural weaknesses. Good show.

<comment><USER24> Yeah, a "cleverer" hack would be to buy stocks, and then get the accounts of Obama, Biden, etc, to tweet "We have the cure!" and link to a faked press release about a cure for Covid (how hard would it be to hack a pharma company's website?). The stock markets would probably go through the roof, and you can make a nice profit, and you'd look like just another Robinhood trader.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> People are underestimating the impact a Twitter hack would have on the world. Imagine if instead of doing an overt hack, a malicious actor instead use the POTUS account to tweet something extremely controversial, such as a racial slur. The fallout would be immense, and can single-handedly swing an election.

The hacking of Hillary Clinton's email, is only the tip of the iceberg. We are at the dawn of weaponized-cyberhacks as a way of subverting political systems.

</comment><comment><USER26> SHALL WE PLAY A GAME?

Love to. How about Global Thermonuclear War?

HOW ABOUT A NICE GAME OF CHESS?

</comment><comment><USER27> I wonder whether this problem can be mitigated by signing tweets with cryptography signature. Then people can put the public key in the blockchain or third-party websites. The user can sign the message with their private key and other people can verify it with the user's public key.

So if the attacker can gain access of Twitter system, at least they can not forge the message. But of course they can do other damages, such as reading private messages.

</comment><comment><USER28> Given the ability to completely access arbitrary Twitter accounts using an internal tool, begs the question, how else has this been exploited?

</comment><comment><USER29> Twitter as a platform is engineered to be pithy, immediate, and constantly engaging with as little forethought as possible. It's a machine for viral stupidity. You could call it a _mis-_ communication tool.

I get why people like to use it, but people also like slowing down to stare at car crashes on the highway. Maybe it's not a good thing.

<comment><USER21> Twitter was originally intended as a way to post personal statuses. Short messages that are self-contained enough to require little elaboration.

Only when people started using Twitter to have long-form political and philosophical conversations of controversial topics, things that inherently require more than 120 characters to properly communicate, did it devolve into a mis-communication tool.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> "noted cryptocurrency enthusiast Elon Musk" \- Hmm, I wouldn't exactly describe Musk as a cryptocurrency enthusiast.

<comment><USER31> A recent tweet of his indicated he is!

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> the naïve way of using the breach was just surprisingly stupid. they could've done far worse things with such access.

</comment><comment><USER33> I wonder why they didn't target Donald Trump's account. My guess is that there's some accounts hidden behind a different structure that is only accesible to a handful of people.

Or maybe they just didn't want to shake the hornet's nest.

<comment><USER34> In 2017 a Twitter employee already got fired for momentarily deleting his account.

After that incident I doubt the regular employee admin panel has access to it. Probably a few accounts require special admin privileges (world leader accounts I assume).

Which would be a much more reasonable explanation than the conspiracies being floated and could also imply that Twitter has thought about the "national security" scenarios in the article.

<comment><USER35> He wasn't fired for it. He did it on his last day.

[https://twitter.com/TwitterGov/status/926267806261407744](https://twitter.com/TwitterGov/status/926267806261407744)

<comment><USER36> Was that employee questioned by the FBI? Did they face further consequences?

You shouldn't be able to get away with something like that.

<comment><USER37> > _You shouldn 't be able to get away with something like that_

An account on a private service was deleted. Not a brilliant move. But not something that merits more than being fired and possibly pursued for money damages.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Is there a postmortem on how the hack happened?

<comment><USER39> Twitter employees were duped by social engineering. Hacker gained access to their credentials, used them to get access to internal Twitter tools that allowed them to takeover Accounts. Not very sophisticated but still alarming that random Twitter employees have access to this kind of tool and don't have better internal account security.

<comment> the-pigeon Are you just guessing? I don't see anyone reporting this.

I also highly doubt normal Twitter employees can impersonate any users. I would seriously hope it's less than 100 people with the DB or server access necessary to tweet as someone they don't have auth credentials for.

<comment><USER39> I believe Twitter themselves reported that.

Edit: "We detected what we believe to be a coordinated social engineering attack by people who successfully targeted some of our employees with access to internal systems and tools."

[https://twitter.com/TwitterSupport/status/128359184646423347...](https://twitter.com/TwitterSupport/status/1283591846464233474)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I fail to see how anything about twitter has any national security implications. Idiots following idiots following idiots.

<comment><USER41> Well, for example, the claim is that Barack Obama and Joe Biden had their Twitter accounts hacked as well. You could easily have put words in their mouth that would tip the electoral balance, especially if it happened a few months from now. Being able to discredit a candidate, or confuse their followers, has national security implications.

<comment><USER21> Eh, not really. According to this ([https://www.omnicoreagency.com/twitter- statistics/](https://www.omnicoreagency.com/twitter-statistics/)), "There are 48.35 million monthly active Twitter users in the US."

That means the vast majority of Americans do not use Twitter.

And according to this ([https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2019/04/24/sizing-up- tw...](https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2019/04/24/sizing-up-twitter- users/)), about 80% of the tweets are made by 10% of the users, and most of them are disproportionately young Democrats.

So Twitter is an echochamber within an echochamber.

Were Biden's or Obama's accounts to be hacked, the only effect it would have would likely be with only the extreme fringe of the party. Most Democrats, and virtually all Republicans, would never see it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> This kind of scenario is exactly why I imagined that the very first thing that the secret service would do is snap Trump's phone in half and throw it in the bin. Yet another thing to add to the long list of new legislation that needs to be written, though I'm not sure how it do it. "All government officials using twitter must also post the PGP signature of any tweets they plan to make BEFORE they post them to twitter, and also post them to _some other service_ as well."

</comment><comment><USER43> I was imagining how much worse this hack could have been if a tweet came from @RealDonaldTrump:

      I tried to be nice to Little Rocket Man but the time for games is over. China has not been helpful in keeping @KimJongUn in check. We will now take matters into our own hands.

Kinda surreal to think about a fake tweet having a real geopolitical implication where people's lives are at risk.

<comment><USER44> The sad thing is - this reads incredibly fake because of lack of typos.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Twitter has nothing to do with national security. Official national communication comes from offical government offices through official communication channels and/or on official letterhead. Twitter is a social message board, whether people want to believe that or not. Nothing said on twitter has to be true or accurate or authentic.

<comment><USER46> You're thinking of a decade ago, when people made fun of Twitter for being frivolous but harmless:

Example: Supernews, on the topic of Twitter: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5Ff2X_3P_4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5Ff2X_3P_4)

Today, numerous important organizations and projects have blown off the original distributed Web architecture and email, and embraced Twitter and/or Facebook as their primary public communication channels.

<comment><USER45> Why embrace something you dont control, cannot trust, and can have turned off at any moment? Just because people are there? Ease of convenience outweighs accountability and control? Seems very short sighted when its just as easy to post official communication on your own media and tweet links to it?

<comment><USER47> You are underestimating the level of ease/convenience and overestimating the simplicity of managing "your own media".

For example, think about your _Town-Name House of Pizza_. It really is a lot to ask for that operation to also include a sys admin and in-house hardware on top of everything else. Why bother when you can just put your menu, hours, closures, and grubhub/chownow/whatever link on Facebook for free and get the same result?

<comment><USER45> For sure I agree, but you get what you pay for?

I appreciate it more when people are willing to do the work.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


What's so great about Lisp? - <AUTHOR> https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2036244/whats-so-great-about-lisp <comment><USER2> I second the post below. Paul Graham has written extensively on this. The stack overflow question starts with "everyone who has used it thinks it's great," so maybe the best way to find out why is to play with it yourself. :-)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Worth to see:

[http://www.paulgraham.com/lisp.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/lisp.html)

[http://www.paulgraham.com/quotes.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/quotes.html)</comment>


Impromptu Hacker News meetup (East Bay) at 6PM tonight - <AUTHOR>

Dear HN: dtrejo, derferman and a few of us are meeting up at Jupiters in Berkeley at 6PM tonight! Last minute, but hope you guys will be there! <comment><USER2> If I was still living in Berkeley, I would go. Hope it was fun - Jupiter's pizza is phenomenal.</comment>


Ask HN: Best Free Python Editor? - <AUTHOR> I recently started working in Python and reached straight for VSCode, because it's been so great for other languages. But its Python plugin is... extremely underwhelming. MyPy/Pylint checks don't run until you save, take several seconds, and don't even place the underlines in the right place; they all end up at the start of the line. Autocomplete support is minimal.
I know PyCharm exists, but is there a free editor that does a better job than VSCode?
Edit: Excluding text-based editors (vi/emacs); I'm not a fan <comment><USER2> I would recommend PyCharm Community Edition. If you're doing web development you will be missing a few nice to haves but the experience otherwise is virtually indistinguishable from the professional edition.

<comment><AUTHOR> I assumed it had a "non-commercial use only" license, but looks like it doesn't! That could be perfect.

<comment><USER3> I use pycharm daily and have nothing but praise for it. The free edition will probably take you very far, if you want the database features of the paid version there's always DBeaver

<comment><USER4> Same here, I'm typing that while having it running in the background along with CLion. Some of us benefit from a free license to their entire toolbox via the work on Colour ([https://www.colour-science.org/](https://www.colour- science.org/)). Their support has been helping us for over half a decade.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Make sure that your VSCode is set up correctly - I'm not experiencing any of the problems that you're describing.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm using the official Python extension, made by Microsoft itself.

<comment><USER6> Did you add Microsoft's Pyright[0] extension as well?

It works hand-in-hand with the Python extension and makes VS Code a fantastic Python editor IMO. You may want to set _pyright.disableLanguageServices_ in settings since there is some overlap in the Pyright and Python extensions that can result in duplicate results. (I'm not sure if you _lose_ any Pyright features when you do this though...)

[0] [https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=ms- pyrig...](https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=ms- pyright.pyright)

<comment><AUTHOR> No, I didn't know about that one; the base one has MyPy and Pylint integration so I assumed it was the best version of each that they planned on implementing. I wonder why they would break out the "good version" into a separate extension.

<comment><USER6> I've always found pylint to be pretty useless... see for example [https://lukeplant.me.uk/blog/posts/pylint-false- positives/](https://lukeplant.me.uk/blog/posts/pylint-false-positives/)

I always _pip install flake8_ in my venvs and the standard Python extension can also use that just fine:

        "python.linting.pylintEnabled": false,
        "python.linting.flake8Enabled": true,

<comment><AUTHOR> It's what we use at my workplace; not my call to make

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Notepad++ is a good tool. It knows python and mostly gets out of your way. Its not an IDE but has a lot of related functionality. But I certainly edit all my python code with it.

Then again, I use command line tools for linting etc. so I don't need a lot built-in to the editor.

<comment><USER8> +1 for notepad++

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The free version of PyCharm is great.

</comment><comment><USER10> It's been a couple of years since I wrote python seriously, but MyPy/Pylint annotations were showing up nicely in emacs, IIRC.

<comment><USER11> Emacs has been working for me for several years now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> > Excluding text-based editors (vi/emacs); I'm not a fan

How about both together? => [https://www.spacemacs.org/](https://www.spacemacs.org/)

The git integration under [https://magit.vc/](https://magit.vc/) alone is worth the price of admission.

</comment><comment><USER13> I do a lot of Python development, both at work and for fun at home. Can't recommend Sublime Text enough.

<comment><USER14> I actually can't use anything other than sublime. Nothing beats its simplicity and lack of complex buttons.

<comment><USER15> And speed

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> PyCharm Community Edition is open source, free and great.

<comment><USER17> I came here to mention PyCharm.

Note that PyCharm also has a VIM plugin that is the best VIM plugin I've used on any editor. It does 95% of what I would do in real VIM.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Vim with coc-python works very well for me: [https://github.com/neoclide/coc- python](https://github.com/neoclide/coc-python)

"Built with rich support for the Python language (for all actively supported versions of the language: 2.7, >=3.5), including features such as linting, IntelliSense, code navigation, code formatting, refactoring, snippets, and more!"

</comment><comment><USER19> Nvim + Coc (either MPLS or Jedi, both work good), way faster, and definitely worth the learning curve if you're new to modal text editors :)

</comment><comment><USER20> I'm curious what you switched from that is giving you FOMO right now. If you've mostly worked in strongly-typed languages, you simply can't get the same kind of IDE experience with something like Python. The tools have come a long way and are at least decent now, but will never be as sharp as they will be for languages like C# or Java.

<comment><AUTHOR> Compared to the TypeScript experience in the same editor, the Python experience is terrible. A little bit of that can be attributed to Python's type system being less powerful than TypeScript, but most of it is not. Things like auto-imports, deep autocomplete, instant feedback on the errors it's able to detect, etc should be perfectly doable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> PyCharm community ed is free. Sublime Text is very good (it's nagware).

</comment><comment><USER22> [https://www.spyder-ide.org/](https://www.spyder-ide.org/) quite nice.

</comment><comment><USER23> Has anyone ever managed to get autoformatting (Prettier etc) working on Django templates in VS Code?

</comment><comment><USER24> I've been using Atom for a few years, with a few Python plugins it works really nicely!

<comment><AUTHOR> Maybe I'll give Atom a try. I switched from it to VSCode a few years ago because it just wasn't as stable and didn't perform as well, but if the Python support is better it could be worth it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> PyCharm is too bloated and under-designed for me.

I prefer Atom. Simple, fast, and pretty.

</comment><comment><USER26> Same here, Pycharm community edition, works like a charm ;)

</comment><comment><USER27> do yourself a favour and try liclipse (or eclipse with pydev)

[https://www.pydev.org/](https://www.pydev.org/)

</comment><comment><USER28> On Windows, Mu Code is best editor for beginners.

</comment><comment><USER29> visual studio community with python tools

</comment><comment><USER30> Honestly ppl: vim or emacs - the rest is fluff

<comment><USER31> Sublime is fluff?

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> PyScripter

</comment><comment><USER33> Python is a text-based language. Aren't all these editors "text-based"? You know you don't have to run Emacs in a terminal emulator, right? It's had mouse support for decades.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't want to have to memorize a litany of new keyboard shortcuts to do basic tasks.

<comment><USER34> spacemacs is built with hot key discovery AND modal editing makes it even easier

but, you know, if you don't want to try, then don't</comment></comment></comment>


Facebook's Paper photo tilt feature cloned in HTML5 before it gets released. - <AUTHOR> http://jt.io/2014/photo-tilt/

<comment><USER2> The [1] parallax tilt effect was out there for some time, so I don't think FB have implemented something new.

[1] - [http://wagerfield.github.io/parallax/](http://wagerfield.github.io/parallax/)

<comment><AUTHOR> There is no parallax effect (AFAIK), the Paper's innovation comes from using stilt to scroll through the photo thus leaving the swipe gesture available to flick through pages/cards

<comment><USER2> Sure, but however - you can check the link; the plugin is about parallax on desktop, but there's tilt on mobile, which I think is pretty the same as on the FB Paper video. My thought is that it's not something totally new as UX.</comment></comment></comment>