Show HN: My C# Tutorial Series: Coding Basics. How am I doing so far? - <AUTHOR> http://www.jeremymorgan.com/tutorials/c-sharp/how-to-learn-c-sharp-part-3-coding-basics/

<comment><USER3> I find interesting that you took the approach of explaining a console application instead of a form app. More interesting from a technical point of view but maybe less interesting for a someone who just wants to hack something together to see what happens. When I started using C I always found hard to follow this tutorial because I like to use what I learnt in my own programs but I really did had no ideas of what console apps to make. Instead with server languages (for example) I found it easier because I could create my website and therefore do something "mine". In the end just following the steps of a tutorial I think it's about 30% of the learning process. Making mistakes is a good 50%. And to make them you must try your own things.

<comment><AUTHOR> as I explained in another question it's mostly so the reader can get really "hands on" and write the code out by hand without code completion and other assistance. It may not be for everyone, but for core language stuff I think it's essential. Later in the series I'll definitely be integrating Visual Studio more

<comment><USER4> I think you've made a good choice with keeping VS out of the picture. Understanding the basics of compiling from the command line is where I start with novices. No point blowing their minds with a gazillion IDE knobs and dials. You could take this further and teach some basic command line debugging :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> FYI

>> Using Statement - Defines the scope for your application's objects and disposes them when they're done. This isn't super important now, but I'm going to cover some other ways we can implement using statements in C#. What you need to know now is it's including the types in the System namespace in your scope so you can use them.

This is entirely wrong. The 'using' in your example is the using directive, not the using statement. They are entirely unrelated.

[http://msdn.microsoft.com/en- US/library/sf0df423(v=vs.80).as...](http://msdn.microsoft.com/en- US/library/sf0df423\(v=vs.80\).aspx) \- using directive [http://msdn.microsoft.com/en- US/library/yh598w02(v=vs.80).as...](http://msdn.microsoft.com/en- US/library/yh598w02\(v=vs.80\).aspx) \- using statement

Also, I really don't see why you are focussing on using the command line to compile programs. This is really not user friendly. The possibility for mistake is very high, which will certainly throw the target user of his/her tracks.

<comment><AUTHOR> After looking at the documentation I believe you're correct. I'll fix my explanation of this so it doesn't confuse. Thank you.

My reason for focusing on the command line is simply because I want the reader to focus on the code, and the nitty gritty. The possibility of mistakes is high, which they'll learn from.

Visual Studio is the greatest tool I've ever used and you can't really build anything valuable without it but as a new programmer it also serves as training wheels that can build bad habits and hamper learning. That's my reason for doing the notepad / command prompt angle.

<comment><USER6> I agree about the IDE building bad habits. Almost all people I know who started programming in Visual Studio have atrocious formatting habits - <USER2> believe code formatting is something they don't need to care about because the IDE will do it automatically for them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Great start Jeremy, I've read the entirety of chapter 3 and skimmed chapter 1, you have a solid foundation.

However, I have a few, hopefully constructive, critiques:

(1) As mentioned by qwerty69, links to the other chapters would help a great deal.

(2) Your target audience is "newbies"? If that's the case, it makes sense that you would provide a little more explanation for critical concepts such as variables. In chapter 3, specifically, it feels as if you gloss over the topic by deeming it a "a space to put data." Maybe you're just looking for your audience to build an intuitive notion of the concept, but annecdotally I've always enjoyed learning the essential details when tackling new topics.

(3) Speak authoritatively; don't inject fluff into your sentences. It drains mental capacity. For some examples:

"You just press that button and it will compile and run your program. Or you can just press F5 and that will do the same thing" ==> "Press that button, or F5, to compile and run your program."

"The new method Console.ReadLine() is pretty self explanatory, it reads a line of text from the console" ==> "Console.ReadLine() reads a line of text from the console."

Concise, to the point, and much more effective. I prefer reading books that explain the most in the least words possible.

Either way, keep up the good work. The more resources budding programmers have access to, the better!

<comment><AUTHOR> (1)I'm likely going to put in some sort of menu system for this on the side of the articles, I haven't figured out a great way to do it yet.

(2) Yes my target audiences is newbies who want a very thorough introduction. I plan on doing a whole tutorial on variables, my rough draft on types is huge, probably already bigger than this chapter was and I didn't want to crowd it up.

(3) You're dead on about the fluff, I probably should have let this sit a day and came back to it to strip it out. I may even use your suggestions verbatim.

Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> My background: C# pays for my family, my wife is constantly jumping on and off random tutorials to learn some programming (interested in C# because of my dayjob and Python as a nice beginner's language with lots of learning resources).

If I look at this article I feel that the flow is missing. It is well written, has nice screen shots and explains a lot. But it seems to hop around a lot. I don't quite know who you're targeting, but I'm reasonably sure you'd confuse the hell out of my (intelligent, brilliant) wife.

The style is more documentation slash dissection of stuff, less introduction with a purpose. I miss a global "why", you provide more like "This is something we can do, let's walk through it together". Unless you're already a programmer or really into case studies like this, I think this way to present something is less accessible.

Don't want to bash on your work. I think what you did here looks nice. Just sharing why I don't think I'd subscribe or why I cannot recommend the series to my so.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't take it as bashing, I appreciate honest feedback. If everyone only contacted me telling me how great I am or how bad I am neither would help, so I prefer a good mix.

My aim here is for the serious beginner. By that I mean someone starting out who may have tinkered with a language or two but really wants to learn C# in depth. That's why it's so verbose and I try to cover the topics. A hacker who wants to learn the basics should probably go elsewhere.

I'm honest enough with myself to have already thought this through, and I may throw in some quick hacky stuff specific for what someone is searching for, but for the most part I want these to be a very thorough introduction to the language.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> One thing that jumped out at me right away is your indentation style which is a wee bit messy. New programmers need to be taught good/consistent coding style in the early stages of their development as well as how to use the language. Your examples should reflect what are generally accepted, though not mandatory, conventions.

The first thing I do if I'm coaching/mentoring a C#/.NET novice is to get them to follow the C# Coding Conventions [1] with Allman style indentation [2] and the Design Guidelines for Developing Class Libraries [3].

One other thing I would do is liberally sprinkle the tutorial with links to relevant further reading in the MSDN docs. A lot of new devs are overwhelmed by the MSDN library and often have no idea where to begin looking for reference material. Giving them good entry points so they can familiarise themselves with the official docs would be a beneficial addition.

[1] [http://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/ms229042(v=vs.100).a...](http://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/ms229042\(v=vs.100\).aspx)

[2] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indent_style#Allman_style>

[3] [http://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/vstudio/ff926074.asp...](http://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/vstudio/ff926074.aspx)

<comment><USER9> ^this

There's bad indentation e.g. a for block not indented, and a mixture of C and Java style indentation. I recommend following the standard Microsoft style indentation which is place the opening brace on a new line on its own.

Also, "it will compile and run, then ask the user to press a key go back". One missing 'to' doesn't seem so bad but the accumulation of these little details really adds up.

Really nice though, I like taking the user back to the console and command line and walking them through everything. Best of luck.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> You've made a couple of interesting decisions (that I may not have done if I were writing this myself):

* Picking CSC over Visual Studio for compiling initially * Explaining namespaces thoroughly in part 2, then glossing over them in 3 (I also don't know if I entirely agree with what's under "Using Statement")

No major criticisms with structure/style/order. I find that when teaching a programming language you just wind up dumping information on the person learning until a point where everything clicks, so the order of explaining this stuff probably isn't that important.

One thing that I'd suggest fixing is the indentation on the code. The number of spaces being inconsistent is something that could massively throw off people who don't understand nesting. Other than this, it's a good set of tutorials so far IMO.

<comment><AUTHOR> My explanation of the using statement needs some work as another HN member pointed out, and I'll be modifying it. I am starting with CSC so people can get their hands dirty on the core language stuff, I'll be moving into Visual Studio as we start building more advanced stuff.

Also I'm going to fix some indentation issues as well. Thanks for the feedback!

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Probably a minor point but it seems your screenshots all show Visual Studio rather than one of the express editions?

This might be the best tool for the job, but IIRC VS has a non-trivial price tag which a beginner might not be willing to spend.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yea I actually haven't installed express yet because my internet connection was at dialup speeds, I'll be replacing the screenshots, I plan on using express 2010 or possibly one of the 2012 versions for future tutorials. I know not everyone has the cash to fork out for MSDN or (as in my case) a company willing to pay for it.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thank you everyone for your feedback on this. My reason for going to HN is because it's comprised of experts and people in the field which is not my target audience but can help steer me in the right direction. With your suggestions I'll be changing and adapting as I go, and I'll go back and make past ones better and the end product will be of far higher quality. So I appreciate everyone reading this and responding back, and I'm pretty sure the newer folks using these will to.

</comment><comment><USER12> I think this tutorial is a fine start. I would like to see more like it!

I'm coming at this as someone who knows multiple programming languages and would like to get Java and C# under my belt. I'm not exactly a newbie, but I think a few years ago (when I was a newbie) I would have followed it pretty well.

I don't think you should target people who don't know what a variable is (i.e. true newbies) but rather write a separate {tutorial,set of tutorials} for that. I like how the focus here is just C#.

I think the style/presentation is spot on - conversational without being cheeky.

Please do continue! :)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I got some good feedback last time, it's helpful to hear from other programmers whether what I'm doing here is going to help newbies. I swear I'm not spamming I don't make a dime for it anyway ;)

</comment><comment><USER13> You could add links to the other chapters at the beginning of each article. This way it will be much easier for readers to navigate through the series.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm going to add a menu or nav bar for this, you're right it does seem a bit hard to find especially since I've stuffed other articles between them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> "Side Note: if we end up never putting anything in this variable the compiler will spit back an error. It's ok to initialize with nothing as long as you populate it later."

You mean if we end up /using/ it before we put anything in it we'll get an error. If we never put a value in it, the compiler will spit back a warning.

"Then we will break out of the loop and move on."

What loop?

</comment><comment><USER15> Why take all the pain of creating/editing screenshots, explaining through an article? You could have made a video instead. I personally prefer videos to articles when it comes to learning something -new-.

<comment><USER16> I think it depends on the person. I much prefer text tutorials over video; it's too much of a hassle to rewind a video over and over again to see what the author is doing.

<comment><USER17> Agreed, I hate the trend to have tutorials as videos nowadays.

Not to mention that it also excludes deaf people unless manually transcribed, or if the speaker is clear enough that automatic transcription is possible, but I doubt that is possible with programming videos yet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> What's your target audience?

It seems too verbose for programmers and too specific to a toolset for those who are just starting out.

<comment><AUTHOR> My target audience is newbies who want a very thorough course on the core language. It's not really intended for people looking for quick hacks to problems. Nothing wrong with that but I'm shooting more for the audience looking for a fairly deep understanding, though I know that target audience is much smaller.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> As I doubt I'll ever learn C# I won't assess your tutorial by its actual intellectual content, but visually, it looks great. Too often, tutorials and guides on programming don't use enough visual aids, which at the very least, help break up the dense text.

To echo what others have said: don't do video. You're right to guess that unless you're a skilled video editor/producer, it will eat up far more time than producing screenshots, and have marginally more effectiveness (if any).

What are you using as CMS? Octopress/Jekyll?</comment>


Ask HN: Is English in our app Elimi goofy or not? :) - apa-sl

Hi all. As we are not native speakers, I wanted kindly ask you to take a look at our mobile app Elimi (http://www.ElimiApp.com) and let me know if our English is goofy or not.
If you will see any error/not so perfect wording - please let me know in the comment. Thank you!
And what is it all about? Elimi is a game where looks & BRAIN matters.
How it works? 1. BROWSE people & their games near you.
2. PLAY with people that you like. 3. CONNECT and chat only with the best ones. <comment><AUTHOR> I didn't download the app but there are various English grammatical errors in this post and on your landing page (images included) which could do with some professional proofreading. Even the tagline of "Looks & BRAIN matters!" could use some work in my opinion.</comment>


It will become easier to buy a house - <AUTHOR> https://www.economist.com/britain/2019/01/05/cheer-up-millennials-it-will-become-easier-to-buy-a-house <comment><USER3> They sort of weaken their own premise, first saying that:

"In the past two decades house prices have doubled in real terms"

Then saying: "Most empirical work shows that a 1% rise in the housing stock leads to a 2% fall in prices and rents, all else being equal. On that basis, a mass-downsizing would imply a cut in prices of about 5%."

When things have doubled in price, getting 5% off isn't really much help, especially when, as they noted, purchase taxes have gone up considerably.

<comment><USER4> They've doubled in price, but cost per square foot is broadly stable [1], rates are substantially lower than they were 2 decades ago, and sub-20% down loans are much more common than they once were.

A $150k loan in 1999 at 7.6% would cost you $1,059/mo in mortgage payment. A $300k loan at 4% today will cost you $1,432/mo - a 35% increase over the original price, not the 100% you'd expect. Meanwhile, you aren't paying 2x per square foot - you're getting roughly twice as much house as you did before for that price, for only a 35% increase in payment!

[1] This is a smallish dataset, but the trend holds outside of the pre-2008 runup. I don't have that data immediately on hand, though. [https://www.clevelandfed.org/newsroom-and- events/publication...](https://www.clevelandfed.org/newsroom-and- events/publications/economic-trends/2012-economic-trends/et-20120119-trends- in-housing-prices-per-square-foot.aspx)

<comment><USER5> Zoning / development incentives in many places is such that houses of the size typical decades ago can no longer be built.

Having twice a big a house doesn't help if you can't afford the 35% price increase.

<comment><USER6>
      houses of the size typical decades ago can no longer be built

Where is it illegal to build houses _below_ a given _minimum_ size?

<comment><USER5> Most places have some combination of minimum dwelling sizes, minimum lot sizes, minimum parking requirements, height limits, limits on number of units per lot, etc.

When you add over-wide roads laid out in pedestrian-hostile patterns, additional zoning restrictions on commercial buildings, etc., the end result in many places developed in the past few decades (including almost every recently developed neighborhood in the USA) is to depress density, increase per-unit housing prices, force most residents to travel by car, etc.

* * *

Edit: your other comments indicate you live in San Jose. It seems that minimum home size is not regulated there, but there are many other exclusionary features of San Jose zoning. [https://www.spur.org/sites/default/files/publications_pdfs/S...](https://www.spur.org/sites/default/files/publications_pdfs/SPUR_Room_for_More.pdf)

<comment><USER6> Repeating the question: Where is it illegal to build houses _below a given minimum size_? Can't you name _any_ off the top of your head without throwing up other criteria as chaff?

<comment><USER5> I'm tempted to tell you to take your hostile insulting response and shove it. WTF?

Most municipalities in the US has some kind of minimum dwelling size, sometimes varying by zone. They can be anywhere from a few hundred square feet to about a thousand square feet (or occasionally bigger). Like other local laws, they vary widely in the details.

You can check local municipal zoning codes for whatever specific community you are interested in. San Jose is one of the rare places which apparently does not have such a rule. Though sometimes building codes enforce minimum sizes when zoning laws per se do not – I don't care enough to go read through the San Jose building codes.

For more general discussion, if you do a web search for "minimum house size" you will get millions of results.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think part of an overlooked view is many millennial aren't interested in owning a property and more than happy to rent for life.

I know that in some countries renting is the default mindset and it seems like within the UK priorities are shifting among that age bracket. I'd assume that's partly due to them not seeing property ownership as a realistic goal thanks to the price of them.

As a Guardian opinion piece [0] points out: "Abandoning the hope of home ownership represents freedom for many millennials: it frees up cash that would otherwise go towards buying an asset into living in the present. That can mean renting a more comfortable room (or flat) in a nicer area, it can mean the difference between having enough money to go out or not, and it can even mean hiring a cleaner to make the overpriced rented flat a good deal nicer.

Home ownership is almost universally seen as a life goal, or a milestone of success. It needn't be – not owning a home can be a real benefit for many younger adults. It gives us the freedom to move with work, and try to build savings for other purposes – insurance against getting laid off, for travel, or even for a 'fuck-off fund'."

[0] [https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jun/20/millen...](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jun/20/millennial- house-home-ownership-renting)

<comment><USER8> In short, abandoning the most important engine of wealth creation and savings in exchange for consumption that many of them will not be able to sustain in the elder years. Don't get me wrong, surely you can save and rent, but it takes much more discipline and it's not a choice I would say is appropriate for all young people.

<comment><USER9> Houses do not "create wealth". They go up in price about as much as inflation, but you still end up with just as many houses as you started with.

<comment><USER8> Sure, it's a figure of speech to describe accumulation of personal wealth. "Wealth building", rather.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I won't lie, I've been following the recent volatility in the market and economic slowdown with the intent to take full advantage of it with the end result of buying my first house.

I graduated in 2013 and have lived in high (Boston) and growing (Portland, OR) CoL areas, my next move will likely be either Seattle or the Bay Area. Despite healthy savings for a down payment in a "normal" CoL area when calculating a 15-20% downpayment for homes that interest me and my partner it seems like we are on a treadmill, hustling harder and going nowhere.

Rising interest rates are a concern when shopping for a mortgage, but we'll be ready to transition our funds from the market to a HYSA when the time is right. I lost ~5% percent last year but don't have any intention of drastically changing my asset allocation unless something big happens in the next 6 months.

<comment><USER11> If you need some amount of money sometime within the next ~5 years, then parking it in a FDIC insured savings account is the most appropriate option commensurate with the amount of risk tolerable (i.e. none), in my opinion.

<comment><USER12> Why not invest in <5 year US Treasuries?

Approximately same security, higher yield than savings accounts. (Asuming you're not going through the gymnastics / risk to balance across reward savings accounts)

<comment><USER11> You can, just more work. If you're saving for a smaller downpayment, it might not be worth the effort for 50 basis points.

<comment><USER13> More work? Simply park it in one of (yields as of Dec '18):

* VMRXX - Vanguard Prime Money Market Fund, ~2.4% yield, fully taxable

* VUSXX - Vanguard Treasury Money Market Fund, ~2.2% yield, no state tax

* VMSXX - Vanguard Municipal Money Market Fund, ~1.6% yield, no federal tax

* VCTXX - Vanguard California Municipal Money Market Fund, ~1.5% yield, no federal or California tax

<comment><USER11> I know, but I like to keep it simple and stupid for most people who aren't interested in the field. Marcus and others offer 2.25%. On a $100k downpayment, we're only talking about hundreds of dollars.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Gotta be honest, even with a number of articles in our local news discussing prices starting to drop off, I don't think it will be enough to rescue my generation from near permanent renting. The median prices where I live (Sydney, Aus) are still hovering above a million dollars for a pretty average house over an hours commute from the city and that's not something I could comfortably take on, especially knowing that unlike my parents I'd essentially be in debt for the rest of my life. If it's a choice between that and renting while building some modest savings I'll take that, even if it means the final destination is moving overseas to afford to buy and have some form of post work life.

</comment><comment><USER15> I wouldn't put it past the baby boomers to figure out a way to reach immortality, just so they can prevent this from happening.

<comment><USER16> They'll just vote to remove estate taxes so that their children and children's children will inherit their homes without the place ever touching anything close to the market.

It's cool and internationally minded, like the seigneurial system in early French Canada but now.

<comment> jf- I think it's more likely they'll be re-mortgaged while still occupied via 'equity release', or sold outright to pay for elder care. Either way, I'd expect relatively little to end up being passed on via inheritance.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> As always with real estate, the effects of this will be highly localized. I would expect a much bigger price drop in Florida than San Francisco.

<comment><USER18> Alt view: as the nation ages, a lot of retirees from cold states will move to Florida driving up prices there. (Before the drop).

San Fran I cant comment on because I can only discuss rational markets.

<comment><USER19> >San Fran I cant comment on because I can only discuss rational markets.

Doesn't this imply a bad future? Also since San Fran is cold, I can see it losing its geographic appeal.

<comment><USER5> > since San Fran is cold,

Cold compared to where? (Maybe your reference is Honolulu and Miami?) What part of SF are you talking about?

The lowest low temperatures of the year where I live in SF are among the highest anywhere in the country. We use a heater around this time of year, but it would be reasonably comfortable to go without.

It is sunny most of the time, I would say at least 250 days/year. The typical day throughout most of the year is "warm": the kind of weather for wearing jeans and a long sleeved shirt (so the sleeves can be rolled up or down), but no sweater.

It is seldom "hot" (occasionally temperatures in the 90°F range), and average high temperatures in the summer are cooler than most of the continental US. We don't use AC at all.

<comment><USER20> It's the humidity that kills you in San Fran. I'd take 20F in Colorado over 50F in San Fran anyday.

<comment><USER5> Are you saying it's too dry, or too wet? I find the humidity in SF to be quite moderate throughout the year. I grew up in Southern CA, which is drier, and I have relatively oily skin.

Again, which part of SF are you talking about?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> It's actually not hard to buy one now*

* assuming you don't want to live in CA, Seattle, Portland, or other similarly expensive areas.

<comment><USER22> Yes have fun working your FAANG job, paying a giant chunk of your gross earnings to the state, and then sitting in traffic driving past homeless people IN THE SMOG for hours on the way to your tiny house each evening. Is it worth it? To me, unless my family was from the area I would never entertain going to such a place.

<comment><USER21> Not sure why you got downvoted (tone, perhaps) but I absolutely agree with you. I work for a large company, from home, in a medium-ish town in the midwest. I have no commute, but even when I worked for a different company in an actual office here in town, I only had a 15 minute commute one way. There's no way I'd be willing to have a long commute by train or car just so I could live in a large city.

<comment><USER22> Yeah I figured my sarcasm might penalize me, but it's how I really feel haha

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I would like to see a version of that table for 20 years prior. I would expect the old to have greater property wealth than the young, they've had longer to accumulate it. So without a comparator it seems pretty meaningless to me.

And regarding the closing conclusion. I really don't understand why many people are so against inheritance tax. Assuming it needs to be paid at some point, what better time than when you're dead?

<comment><USER24> The graph in the article isn't great, but on the other hand it's well- established fact that the number of 18-34 year olds owning their own homes (or more specifically, having a mortgage instead of renting and counting head of households only) has dramatically fallen in the past couple of decades. We're talking from ~60% of 25-34 year olds in 2001 to 35% of the same age group in 2014...

[https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/housing/...](https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/housing/articles/ukperspectives2016housingandhomeownershipintheuk/2016-05-25)

<comment><USER4> Other major life milestones like marriage and procreation are happening later, too. It's data ripe to be stapled into any number of narratives.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Should be noted that this is about UK housing, but I assume the US is similar.

</comment><comment><USER26> At what point is genuine mass market remote working likely to happen? In the software world (not a great mass proxy) it is still a rarity, but it's there and growing.

That (and frankly only that) is the real threat to one way house price bets - at least imo - other views gratefully accepted

<comment><USER27> probably never, tbh. It isn't even that prevalent in the software industry which arguably is one the industry that it works best for.

<comment><USER26> but...if you do it means you are managing the real output - surely something that gives you an advantage... unless management is not about getting the best results from each employee

oh ... developer hegemony ...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Buying a home isn't universally difficult across the entire country. It's more that many millennials choose to start their careers in expensive metros like NY, SF, and LA because that is where the jobs are but where a median salary won't be enough for you to save the ~$200k cash to buy the median home in those areas in a reasonable amount of time. There _are_ a lot of programs that allow you to put less than the traditional 20% down for a home (I believe I read a stat that only 55% or so of homes are bought with 20%+ down payment), but again the issue is that a seller is going to view you as less competitive if you offer < 20% and will have a harder time having your offer accepted if there are multiple offers.

Anyone who is hitting their late 20s/early 30s and living in SF, for example, knows how many "going away" parties you end up going to of friends who've been here a few years, married/thinking of kids, and planned their escape so they have a chance of buying a home in less expensive metro.

<comment><USER29> _Buying a home isn 't universally difficult across the entire country._

This article wasn't about housing in the US, it was about housing in the UK.

I believe the US is one of the few OECD countries where housing is actually affordable, 3-4 times median income across the whole country IIRC.

</comment></comment><comment> jf- A full 76% of housing wealth owned by those aged 50+. I knew there was a generational economic conflict of sorts, but I never imagined it was this bad.

These are our landlords. Making the older generation a class of rentiers who maintain their standard of living off the backs of the young. Want to buy? Too bad. How about you pay rent at the equivalent rate of a mortgage instead?

<comment><USER22> Rent should be higher than the equivalent rate of the mortgage, for a lot of obvious reasons.

<comment> jf- All the worse.

<comment><USER22> If you want to pay less, I'm sure you could negotiate handling all repairs and maintenance on the property in exchange for the difference.

<comment><USER30> Assuming that landlords even bother to handle those things properly or safely.

My experience is they don't. They want the money, but not the responsibility.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> *inhert

That's the only dead-sure way our for our generation (in Europe) to get into the same financial situation our parents have been in.

</comment><comment><USER32> It would be useful for the HN title to qualify that this isn't about the U.S.

With the new tax changes + increases in the interest rate, the downsizing phenomenon will not make as much sense in the U.S. given incentives to hold onto the property and the inability to buy a proportionately valuable downsized house.

<comment><USER12> The decrease in interest premiums (on max 1M -> 750k principle) and state property taxes (10k cap) would seem to be a net negative for people sitting in expensive homes, which seems like it would prod to some sales and downsizing around NYC and SF.

<comment><USER32> My point on the tax incentives were that current homeowners are grandfathered into their mortgages (assuming they bought before Dec. 2017).

Regarding state property taxes, I think they are treated as a local tax - <USER2> it wouldn't affect NY or SF given that their state income tax is likely to be higher. Your point is true in other geos though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Not to start of a debate. But wouldn't most millennials have bought a house by now? Going off Wikipedia definition would this article not be for Generation Z? Most millennials would now be mid 30's. Some people I know at that age already have a mortgage.

<comment><USER34> I'm a Millenial, about to turn 30 this year. My wife and I are house-hunting for the first time and discovering that, if we live with roommates instead of having kids, we might be able to afford a mortgage around here!

We consider this a huge improvement from _renting_ with roommates. The concept of being able to support children is basically a fantasy, fiscally speaking.

And we're among the fortunate professional class.

<comment><USER35> There actually may be a good advantage to this strategy in that your childcare costs may also reduce with your roommates being able to chip in and be part of the family - even if it is just when you go shopping for an hour. I'm fairly open minded to finding some good friends to work together to overcome the economic reality that this generation is faced with.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> IMHO every government should put easily affordable housing among its top priorities together with easily affordable professional education - these are the essentials they should care about.

<comment><USER11> The US government should stop offering subsidized mortgages with Fannie and Ginnie and mortgage interest tax deductions (less of a problem now). All of these contribute to drive up home prices, under the guise of helping people own homes.

<comment><USER36> Sounds reasonable. But there also are other thing to do like developing infrastructure, adjusting zoning and developing public transport so all the jobs won't tend to concentrate in big city centers and there would be more land suitable for housing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> And in the meantime, it's pretty easy to buy a van.

</comment><comment><USER38> When homeowners decide they can receive more today than next year for their house. A chain reaction of selling will take place as homeowners all rush to the exits at once.

Prices will dip based on more supply which will start a price supressing feedback loop for a bunch of people hitting retirement age.

Simple as that.

</comment><comment><USER20> Why wouldn't they convert the houses to rental properties and keep the passive income while downsizing?

<comment><USER22> If you're going to be a landlord, better to own property well suited to that purpose. At least in my area it's a lot more efficient to own many low-cost properties than a few middle-cost ones.

<comment><USER20> What they've been doing around me is remodeling to turn a middle-cost property into several low-cost apartment properties. Take out the inside stairs, add a kitchen to the basement, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> [http://archive.vn/t0ccc](http://archive.vn/t0ccc)

</comment><comment><USER40> I thought millennials wanted hip lofts in revitalized urban areas? They do, until they have kids, then it's flee to the suburbs with the decent schools. At least that is the observation with my coworkers.

I'm a cynical gen-x (still with elementary school kids) who bought a suburban house before marriage. Of course it's now almost paid off.

<comment><USER36> Is it so hard to start a decent school in whatever an area when there is demand?

<comment><USER11> "Decent" school means full of kids who come from stable homes with parents who have stable, median+ incomes. Private schools in cities can accomplish this by charging $20k+ per year in tuition, and people who can't afford private schools can opt to live in suburban school districts where there are mostly homes therefore it's auto-selected mostly for kids whose parents are able to own homes.

<comment><USER36> > Private schools in cities can accomplish this by charging $20k+ per year in > tuition

Why? What are the actual expenses that make it cost more than $1000 per month per a child?

<comment><USER11> It's to keep out the kids whose parents can't afford the tuition. $20k/year/student is on the cheap end in the richer areas too.

<comment><USER36> I believe $500/month would be enough. My parents had never been earning more than this for example (but this was not in the US).</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Thieves reportedly used car-sharing app to steal 100 cars in Chicago - <AUTHOR> https://mashable.com/article/thieves-use-car2go-to-steal-100-cars/ <comment><USER2> I'm curious what the hack ends up being</comment>


Show HN: Avanor – Avalanche observation platform - <AUTHOR> https://avanor.se/ <comment><AUTHOR> This is what I've put my soul into lately. The idea is to use radar imagery to find traces after avalanches.

I don't know what more to tell you, but I would love any feedback!

<comment><USER3> Awesome! I'm a huge mapping and avalanche nerd, too. I didn't have much time to read through the sources of data you are using, but would it be possible/feasible to expand the covered area to places other than Norway?

-edit- Sorry, I didn't see the part at the top about requesting new coverage areas!

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes! The only thing that are needed to add another country is an elevation model, and there are global ones one can use if needed. The satellite data is already there for the whole globe. :)

I have not tried to run an instance with multiple elevation models though. It is possible the code need some modification to determine what area it should search for data in, but it shouldn't be too hard.

I'm actually planning to add Sweden rather soon (I'm from Sweden myself), but for that I will just merge the files from Norway's and Sweden's national geographical surveys into one file and use in the code.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The idea seems great, but I was not able to navigate the interface.

If I understood correctly you have access to past data from satellite. If yes, it would be fantastic resource to actually validate avalanches that happened. For that you would need to improve how to find the specific place as well - <USER2> could not figure it out.

e.g. I live in the Pyrenees and often go off-piste snowboarding and see avalanches, also sometimes I see some avalanches directly from my home as well. If you give me Pyrenees coverage and better UI I would love to play with it

<comment><AUTHOR> What browser are you on? Because, IE and Edge does not work right now. This is simply because I do not have access to those browsers. I will probably just block them in the future.

If you use another browser, could you please be more specific about what did not work?

I'll see if I can add the Pyrenees in the coming weeks!

<comment><AUTHOR> Now I have straight out blocked Microsoft web browsers, providing an explanation to why I use other browsers instead.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> FWIW, there are a number of avy forecasting groups in the western US (e.g., utah, colorado, NWAC in Washington state,...), and they may be interested in this, you should reach out to them. Also, IIRC, University of Utah has an avi forecasting program.

<comment><AUTHOR> Could you email me (using either the address in my profile or the one on the web page) more specific information about these groups, so that I can contact them?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I wonder if you can train a classifier to detect noise vs avalanche, just to help clean up the map from the blue noise. That would be a nice later addition.

<comment><AUTHOR> Noise cancelation would really be nice!

My main objective is to create a proper automatic avalanche detector. For this however, I will need to get datasets of avalanches observed in the field.

I'm discussing with Swedish authorities to get access to their database, and the Norwegian is already open. But I feel those datasets are worse than I would like them to be. My dream dataset would have confirmed non-avalanches as well, to find out what a false positive looks like. One way to get this would be to fly a drone over the same area every day for a season, which I think is feasible.

With that said, if any one knows of some data I could use, open or not, please contact me!

<comment><USER7> The only thing I can think of right now regarding a database of confirmed avalanches, is the list of confirmed fatal avalanches in Switzerland, regularly updated: [https://www.slf.ch/en/avalanches/destructive-avalanches- and-...](https://www.slf.ch/en/avalanches/destructive-avalanches-and- avalanche-accidents/avalanche-accidents-in-current-year.html)

As per today, it's still at zero for this winter, but there's also a historic list: [https://www.slf.ch/en/avalanches/destructive-avalanches- and-...](https://www.slf.ch/en/avalanches/destructive-avalanches-and- avalanche-accidents/avalanche-accidents-of-the-past-20-years.html)</comment></comment></comment>


Monster Round For HomeAway: $250 Million, At An Absurd Valuation - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/11/10/monster-round-for-homeaway-250-million/ <comment><USER2> This sounds like another offshoot of the housing bubble - one that hasn't yet burst.</comment>


A general purpose library for C - <AUTHOR> I have been working a C library for the past four years. It was originally designed for the compiler I am writing. However, I realized many of the components could be reused, which gave birth to Jez Toolkit (JTK). Currently, the library implements collections, unit tests, file I/O, and other modules. The library is a well designed alternative to Glib. I need some help to implement other powerful features such as regression, networking, concurrency, etc.
You can check out the repository here.
https://github.com/itsonecube/jtk/tree/dev <comment> git-pull What kind of license is it? Any possibility of ISC / MIT / BSD?

Nice to see CMake!

And also nice to see an effort to make something lighter than glib.

It may be worth looking at BSD's base system in /usr/src to see code you can use as a reference, or add in a generic way. Take a look at #ifdef in ISC/MIT/BSD applications to see if you can port it in to offer portable functions.

Hm, examples: [https://github.com/tmux/tmux/blob/master/compat.h](https://github.com/tmux/tmux/blob/master/compat.h) -> [https://github.com/tmux/tmux/tree/master/compat](https://github.com/tmux/tmux/tree/master/compat)

For inspiration, all SDL2 is a cross-platform wrapper which probably has chunks that may be useful: [https://github.com/spurious/SDL- mirror/tree/master/src](https://github.com/spurious/SDL- mirror/tree/master/src), SDL_net: [https://hg.libsdl.org/SDL_net/file/c5b3c4171459](https://hg.libsdl.org/SDL_net/file/c5b3c4171459)

Maybe the above is relevant / helpful / an inspiration.

We need a lite, portable glib alternative. I'm guessing it must be hard to do. I wish there was a a library where we could just pick what we want and not have to buy into an object model, which inevitably entails a lot of dependencies downstream.

Good luck with this! Look forward to watching it grow. Starred.

<comment><USER2> > What kind of license is it?

It's licensed under the Apache License:

[https://github.com/itsonecube/jtk/blob/dev/LICENSE](https://github.com/itsonecube/jtk/blob/dev/LICENSE)

The Apache License is a permissive license, similar to MIT or BSD.

<comment> git-pull Good find, I was looking at [https://github.com/itsonecube/jtk/blob/3d28ed3/LICENSE](https://github.com/itsonecube/jtk/blob/3d28ed3/LICENSE)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, this was the original license. My bad.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> You should host the rendered Doxygen documentation somewhere. Furthermore, Doxygen is primarily designed for API documentation. You can add pages to explain concepts, but may consider to write additional documentation instead. Without documentation, your library is not even visible for search engines, despite humans.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for your suggestion. I will soon host the tutorial on GitHub Wiki and find a way to host the Doxygen documents, too.

Right now you can refer the following tutorial to get started.

[https://github.com/itsonecube/jtk/tree/dev/doc/tutorial](https://github.com/itsonecube/jtk/tree/dev/doc/tutorial)</comment></comment>


Youtube currently down - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> not for me (Germany)

Update: But for others [http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/youtube.com](http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/youtube.com)</comment>


Automation Insurance: Robots Are Replacing Middle Class Jobs  - <AUTHOR> http://www.good.is/post/automation-insurance-robots-are-replacing-middle-class-jobs/ <comment><USER2> _It's not just manufacturing, either. Automated call centers are replacing customer-service agents. Automated checkout stations are replacing grocery- store clerks. When the science of computer vision advances sufficiently, we'll have algorithms, not humans, evaluating X-rays at airport security checkpoints and screening user-generated content for sites like Facebook._

Of course, call center operator and grocery clerk and X-ray screener were never middle-class jobs anyway (and screening user-generated content on facebook was never a job at all).

There is a genuine problem here, though. As technology advances there is less and less that non-smart people can usefully do. Ten thousand years ago, two thousand years ago, one hundred years ago, there were plenty of useful occupations that could be usefully done with an IQ of 80. But with these increasingly automated, what are the millions of people born with an IQ of 80 supposed to do?

My solution, involving attempting to cut down on the number of such people who are born, is unfortunately rather politically unpopular.</comment>


Share idea: YouTube search-pain pill - <AUTHOR>

I finally was able to define the pain with YouTube I've been facing all the time. Say, I wanted to watch some "piano jazz" music on YouTube, but simply searching by these keywords only gives me videos that have them in their title - which is really wrong. Because Oscar Peterson would definitely match, but most of his videos wouldn't be found like that. Tags would partially solve the issue, but hey: I never noticed it before - I can't see any tags on YouTube, where are they? (probably there are tags there, but I couldn't find them). Also, I would probably want to be subscribed to the channel I like, but what channels are on YouTube? It's basically a single user's video blog. Wouldn't it be nice to have a multiuser blog dedicated to "piano jazz"?
So here's a 3 steps idea:
1. Implement a search for channels on YouTube, indexing their descriptions. 2. Implement tags for YouTube and search for them. 3. Create a multiuser blog platform for videos from YouTube (and, of course, search in those blogs as well).
Since the idea is about 1 hour old I don't know how one can make money on it. I also don't know if it's worth trying to implement it (too heavy?). What do you think about it? See any value in it? <comment><USER2> there are tags attached to all videos, not sure what you're missing.

what would be nice is if the tags were wikified to allow the crowd to deterime the content of the video rather then the uploader.

<comment><AUTHOR> Could you please show me where can I find the tags? :) It's either I can't see them or the videos I'm watching happened to have no tags. And how can one search for tags rather than titles?</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Best documentation for a command-line program? - <AUTHOR> I'm documenting an app that runs on the command line. I'd like to make it as easy to understand as possible for intermediate-level users. What's the best page/site you've seen for such a program? <comment><USER2> The typical documentation for a CLI app is a man page or --help arg, but you seem to be asking about websites? Is that correct?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm thinking of something like the example below, where it takes the user through an example:

[https://www.stanleyulili.com/django/how-to-install-django- on...](https://www.stanleyulili.com/django/how-to-install-django-on-windows/)</comment></comment>


Life Sciences Marketplace Quartzy Raises $17M to Build Up the Supply Side - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2016/01/04/life-sciences-marketplace-quartzy-raises-17-million-to-build-up-the-supply-side/ <comment><USER2> Seems like a good way to track lab supplies - is there a buy button when I run out of stuff or do I have to buy from somewhere else?</comment>


DDR4 memory interface - <AUTHOR> http://www.edn.com/design/pc-board/4432676/DDR4-memory-interface--Solving-PCB-design-challenges

<comment><USER2> I think there will soon come a day when DIMMs become _wider_ and not faster - high clock frequencies are attractive for marketing purposes but as this article points out, are increasingly harder to design for. DIMMs have been 64 bits wide since they appeared, to coincide with the P5's bus width, but modern processors have much wider databuses, so it'd make more sense to maintain the same clocks but widen each module.

Starting in the 90s there was a trend of replacing parallel buses with serial ones (USB, SATA, etc.) but I think it's slowly beginning to reverse as people realise the difficulties of using high frequencies (e.g. multiple lanes in PCI-E).

Incidentally the term DIMM - _dual_ inline memory module - comes from the doubled width over the existing SIMM, which was 32 bits wide. Maybe we'll see 128-bit-wide QIMMs in the future...

<comment><USER3> Because of latency difference between RAM and on chip caches you don't gain too much by making wider data bus to RAM, because latency is still the most limiting factor. Modern solution is to have multiple full memory interfaces ("channels") which give you the ability to both behave as if the memory bus is wider as well as issue completely different memory transactions given that the accesses are suitably aligned (which is more significant performance boost).

Also the general trend of weird (i.e. PCI) and serial interfaces in 90's was motivated by per-unit costs at the expense of required engineering. Primary motivator for PCI's reflected wave switching and multiplexed address and data was to limit number of pins and number of required passive components on motherboard. Serial interfaces that came after that (SATA, PCI-E) were motivated by the fact that routing fast parallel synchronous buses for any significant distances is hard problem because of propagation times, which have to be roughly equal for all bus wires, which implies that PCB material parameters have to be known and reasonably consistent (and that means significant per-unit additional expense in PCB manufacture and testing cost).

Currently only interface that requires careful routing and design on PC motherboard is memory interface, which can be made short enough that manufacturing differences are negligible. (It's funny how TI has 20 page application note on correct routing of USB2 which includes rules as "no vias preferably, at most one", "no stubs", "controlled impedance" and "as short as possible" while Intel's layout recommendations for USB2 can be summarized as "it's differential pair, discontinuities do not matter much, use sensible routing")

[edit: formatting + missing word]

<comment><USER4> It seems part of the answer to the latency question is to stack the ram on top of the dram controller, as mentioned in this recent article on Intel's Knights Corner. [http://www.anandtech.com/show/8217/intels-knights-landing- co...](http://www.anandtech.com/show/8217/intels-knights-landing-coprocessor- detailed)

<comment><USER3> That is more of an answer to routing and signal integrity problems of fast parallel interfaces, e.g. bandwidth. Most of the DRAM latency is inherent in the DRAM array itself (actually getting the data between dram array and sense amplifiers). Almost nobody cares about additional cycle of latency introduced by registered dimms, as it is essentially noise compared to precharge latency of the dram itself. This comes mostly from physical limits of what can be manufactured with reasonable power dissipation and reliability (see how "CAS Latency" grows at comparable rate to clock rate, ie. stays mostly comparable in wall-clock time)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Sad to think I remember the days when you just wired D0 to D0, D1 to D1, D2 to D2, etc.

<comment><USER6> Sad also that I've still got pristine 6116 2Kx8-bit memory chips at home, and maintaining the delusion that one day they might be useful.

[http://web.mit.edu/6.115/www/datasheets/6116.pdf](http://web.mit.edu/6.115/www/datasheets/6116.pdf)

<comment><USER7> Old RAM can be useful, for example if you want to run Ubuntu on an 8-bit microcontroller:

[http://dmitry.gr/index.php?r=05.Projects&proj=07.%20Linux%20...](http://dmitry.gr/index.php?r=05.Projects&proj=07.%20Linux%20on%208bit)

<comment><USER8> I salute you, dmitry.

In order to run Linux on an ATmega1284p, that guy:

\- bit-banged 16MB DRAM

\- bit-banged SPI Flash

\- wrote an emulator for a 32Bit ARM & MMU

Apparently it takes 4h to but Ubuntu.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Scrimba: a video format for communicating code - <AUTHOR> https://scrimba.com/ <comment><USER2> Thanks a lot for all the feedback, everyone! We're overwhelmed by all the positive comments. If you have any feature requests, please submit them as issues here: [https://github.com/scrimba/community](https://github.com/scrimba/community)

Also, a few people have asked us how to create content, so we're obviously not making it clear enough. To do that, simply create an account (with GitHub) and start screencasting in our browser editor.

If you want to get in touch with us, send me an email at email@example.com.

Finally, I want to mention that we're applying for YC this spring. If any of you have any tips or connections you think we should speak with, please let me know :)

<comment><USER3> Y apply to YC. If ur serious about anything and ur a serious developer, u don't need money, connections, etc. Y dilute yourself, Y forever be beholden to investors. I know I don't want anyone telling me what to do regarding my baby.

Programming apps is quicker than ever now. All you need is a ramen noodle revenue stream to keep you afloat while you build.

I urge you to question why you really wanna go to YC. Is it to get consigned by "daddy"? It sure can feel good. It's an accomplishment of it's own, but a sub-par intention.

You got this far, why not monetize on your own so you can support yourself through your product, and never have to give up any equity and rights to decision making for YOUR COMPANY!

Too many people are eager to allow others to have a say on their baby. Don't do it unless you absolutely need to. Start charging. I'll pay for this product. Forget YC. Believe in yourself. Are you a follower that eagerly seeks direction from others or a leader who just knows what must be done and doesn't look to others for validation. Validation seekers will always fare less well because they are less confident. So the question is: why are you not confident in yourselves? Why is this going to fail if you don't go to YC? To put the question in the positive, how could you get to where you wanna go and farther without YC?? What do you need? Is it just ramen noodle revenue for you guys while you build? If so, maybe there are other ways. Have you even tried to explore them?

<comment><USER2> Fair points, the reason is simply because I think we'll be able to build a bigger company if we join YC. Specifically, the pie will grow more than the 7% YC takes from it.

But I might be wrong of course.

<comment><USER4> Let me just add my two cents, having gone both routes. The mantra you will hear all day long is exactly that... Wouldn't you rather have a smaller piece of a huge pie than a big piece of a small pie?

But I would urge you to weigh things out. That first 7% is just the beginning. They will urge you to hire the best and brightest, time is of the essence. They will tell you not to worry about money, more VC money will flow. And then you find yourself with a big payroll and the need to raise another round, and then another, and then another. Before you know it, you've built the $100 million business you always wanted, but you aren't in charge any more and you own maybe 10 percent. Dilution happens faster than you realize. (Unless your growth is off the charts and you can negotiate amazing terms because VCs are falling over themselves to give you money, ala facebook.)

At that point the question becomes, would you rather have a hundred percent of a $10 million business or 10 percent of a $100m business? I sure as heck would rather own all of the smaller business. You don't go to the board to ask for a raise, you don't hope for a liquidity event so you can get rich one day. You don't waste time trying to convince investors that you will succeed. You control your destiny.

But to each his own. Maybe you would never be able to get to that $10m on your own. And maybe you would rather be known as the founder of something big. Nothing wrong with that. Just know that the headaches and distractions of going the VC route are legion.

<comment><USER5> I've never applied to YC but that isn't totally correct. There's no one forcing you to raise venture capital. I know of YC companies who are quite successful who have never raised money or stopped after raising a smallish angel round and still own a majority of their company. Granted they're in the minority, but it can be done.

<comment><USER4> Ya, it definitely happens. But if the company didn't need to move on to raise more money (probably the biggest argument for YC is that it will be easier to raise more), I would question whether YC was really necessary in the first place. Was YC the only place you could have raised $100k? And if you were able to do it by raising only 100k, perhaps you could have done it without their money.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If you provided an embeddable iframe widget that I could put on my own site, and intercept the file changes to do my own rendering, something like:

        <script src="http://scrimba.com/widget.js">
        scrimbaWidget(".my-container", "sc-ri-mbaID", function onFileChanged(name, source, output) {
          persistToMyBackend(name, source)
          output.innerHTML = renderFromMyServer(name)
        })
        </script>

... this would be a very interesting platform play. You would be providing essentially the audio, text capture, and synchronization, but I could keep doing my app hosting. Not having to store audio or deal with browser incompatibilities around recording and playback would be worth some money to me.

Like Filestack for screen recording.

</comment><comment><USER7> Really cool tool. Congratulations and great job! Look forward to seeing where this goes.

Feedback: the rerun project button is hard to locate and not prominent. I wanted to rerun the project after making some changes. I felt encouraged to save (fork) or resume playback, overwriting my edits. Make it more intuitive to rerun after making an edit.

</comment><comment><USER8> I really like the idea and I expect to see a lot of great tutorials in this format. I would really use a version that works with tmux or iterm though, something like asciinema but for multiple terminals + a browser. I wouldn't even mind if the result is read only as long as the viewer can copy paste from it.

Edit: Just to add one more note: I know recording terminal and chrome at the same time is too complicated to productize, but I wouldn't mind having to set it up. I am a developer. I set things up.

</comment><comment><USER9> I literally yelled aloud, "Wait! Stop! What is going on?! THIS IS COOL." when I first interacted with your product. This is novel & fantastic. Well done.

EDIT: I've gone ahead and moved all my UI/UX feedback into GitHub per your request. Good luck working on this! :)

<comment><USER10> Thanks for really valuable feedback :) Great if you want to submit and follow up at github.com/scrimba/community! We hadn't really planned for a HN launch yet so a lot of the ux is rough around the edges.

<comment><USER9> Yep :) I know how valuable the "I've never used this before" interactions can be with a product! I'll toss up an issue!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is a wonderful idea and execution.

Tip for people trying this out, to experience it fully you have to:

\- login with github \- edit some text \- then hit play again. The preview will then update.

\- also, you can record your own edits to the video.

I am surprised by the quality and thoughtful demos.

Some simple things would make it better, like updating automatically without hitting play. Also, I think the videos should have x buttons to close them, not just clicking in another area.

<comment><USER12> Nice to hear you praise the quality. We haven't spent a lot of time on producing the current casts, it's just that the tool makes it easy to create casts of high-production value. No more fiddling with screen-recording software and post-production. It makes a big difference when you can go from "I want to explain this" to a finished cast in three minutes.

The "casts are shown in an overlay"-feature was released yesterday. It certainly requires more iterations. Thanks for the feedback.

<comment><USER13> Neat! The audience for the tool seems to be someone who can hear, though. Has there been any awareness or discussion of those who cannot hear? Of those that cannot hear, a large majority use captioning or sign language. Video in a PIP mode, or captioning support, would go a long way in including everyone to the party. Also, the earlier these features are added, the more content is accessible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Correct me if I'm wrong, but it looks like this written in a Imba[0].

[0]: [http://imba.io](http://imba.io)

<comment><USER10> You are correct :) Initially it was meant as a tool to teach people Imba, but now we support other languages as well!

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is the coolest web tech I have seen in a while.

I am actually not super convinced on the usecase of being able to edit the code at any time, but simply being able to copy it is already so much added value over traditional video course material.

I will definitely be checking out the possibilities with this.

<comment><USER16> A good usecase is for when you are learning something through the video and can play with it right there. Khan Academy uses something similar and it is awesome.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Super cool. One issue...

I was watching the flexbox video and modified the CSS code but the view layout didn't update. I clicked the save button thinking that would update the view, but then it had me sign up. After signing up, I ended up with a fork of the video. Cool, but not what I wanted.

All I really wanted to do was fool around with the code while I had it paused, see the updates in the layout, and click play again - at which point I would have expected the code to revert to the script.

<comment><USER12> Oh, you need to click the "run" button (upper right) once before the CSS changes apply. After that it should be live. We need to make that more clear.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Wow this is so much better than a traditional video explanation of code. Really well done and polished for a beta project.

Speaking of 'beta', what is the plan for Scrimba? Are you interested in it being an open place for sharing videos and demonstrations? Or are you planning on monetizing in some way?

<comment><USER2> We plan to add monetization options yes. Basically sell courses through Scrimba. But it will also be possible to simply share casts for free.

<comment><USER19> Thats great!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Very cool.

In the last few weeks I've been thinking something similar would be great for podcasts. Not on-screen editing, but tools for displaying information and soliciting feedback.

In my case I've been listening to a lot of podcasts about real estate. Frequently they reference a PDF or web site to sign up for more info. It would be nice if that just showed up onscreen rather than having to open a browser on my phone (especially when I'm in the car).

Dedicated apps can do this, of course, but I an open protocol would have a lot more uptake from semi-technical people who want to create simple online course distributed via podcast.

<comment><USER21> There is so much opportunity for learning here... I agree, I wish podcasts had some kind of technology that allowed you to follow things that are hard to convey through Audio.

<comment><USER8> I once started writing a podcast app like that. As a listener I would reallly like the idea. Unfortunately I don't see why a podcaster would do the job of adding metadata on my platform if they don't get anything out of it. If it was a core of their value proposition, they would probably use a mooc platform and not a podcast.

Then I though I would probably need to build a more useful tool to manage other needs of a publisher, like website, feed generation, pushing to multiple platforms, etc. That way I would have all sorts of metadata for free AND I would provide value to the publishers (automatic publishing to all other platforms). I could host the content too and give them download numbers, could post listening habits from my app, and all that. But that is a lot of work though, before I can provide any value to either the listeners or the publishers.

Then I listened to a podcast about the podcast ecosystem (how meta) about how podcasters actually benefit from the ecosystem being so distributed. If there was a single format for metadata dictated by a single company (would probably be apple) it would eat into their advertising revenue. They would not admit it, but it's actually good for publishers if they only have rough download numbers. Without clicks, they can just make up their numbers, and sell ads even though everyone fast forwards on the ads. If they had actual clicks, their revenue would become dependent on it.

<comment><USER20> For sponsored podcasts you're right. But much of what I listen to doesn't have advertising, or it's indirect in the form of interviewing guests who promote their products.

For example, one of the podcasts I really like is run by a guy who a) knows a lot about real estate and b) sells a SaaS product for people who want to do what he does. He frequently references show notes, PDFs, webinar signups and the like in his show, and I engage with most of that stuff... if I remember to do it when I get home.

In his case the value per customer is quite high, so he would probably make the investment in rich media. He doesn't have sponsors and so isn't beholden to click through rates.

And I'd wager that's true for the vast majority of podcasts. A handful make money from advertising because they have really large audiences. The rest do it as a hobby or to promote their businesses.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Much like IanDrake said, this is super cool but kind of "primes" the user into thinking that he'll be able to play around with the code while paused. It'd be great if you supported that, e.g. by doing a "fork" into local storage.

Anyway, the project is really great and impressive! :)

<comment><USER2> We do support that. Hit the 'Edit' button in the lower right corner :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> This is really cool!

However... I might be a bit obtuse or something, but how can I produce my own videos?

Maybe I'm overlooking a link?

<comment><USER2> Just login and you'll see a plus icon in the top right corner:)

<comment><USER23> Aha!

My script blocker was preventing the button from showing up.

I though I was going mad...

Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Wow, this could be a game changer. Imagine using a tool like this to teach math as well. Great job guys.

</comment><comment><USER25> Wow, this is far much better for code than standard videos.

Is it recorded using the scrimba.com website ? Is it only for web code ? The about page [https://scrimba.com/about](https://scrimba.com/about) does not explain much.

<comment><USER12> Yes! You can sign up now and record your own casts. For now it's focused on client-side libraries, but we're looking at supporting server-side languages as well.

<comment><USER26> What languages are on the road map?

Also, really really well done!

<comment><USER2> Not 100% decided exactly which. But expect the most popular ones. More info will come :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Basically "web version" of asciinema, right?

</comment><comment><USER28> Great idea and great execute, I like it! One thing that I haven't seen yet but what I think would be a really important feature would be embeddable "videos" which developers could put as a widget in an iframe on e.g. their website blog.

</comment><comment><USER29> This is insanely well executed - like most people here I am psyched to play with it

</comment><comment><USER30> I was thinking about something very similar, essentially embedding an IDE on top of Youtube videos. Like others, I agree this is very neat. Is it just me that can't hear any audio?

<comment><USER31> If I stop the video, then use the "resume video" in the lower-right corner, then I get the audio but it's out of sync by however long it took me to stop the video in the first place.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Maybe you need a YouTube video detailing the experience, as it obviously isn't quite as good on mobile Chrome (no sound, I only realised from the comments here; also awkward to control accurately).

A video would also give people a sense of what the environment/process looked like before they hand over details - I'm happy to trade my details for a good experience once I know it's likely to be a good experience, less so when I'm not confident, it becomes a bit chicken and egg...

</comment><comment><USER33> Stuck on "loading" in Edge on all videos.

<comment><USER34> Same here. Console shows syntax error after loading a stream.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> The moment I try scrimba, I notice is using the code completion from VS code, so I went with my instinct and open a file with .ts(for typescript) and it work

EDIT: a bit hackish but it is possible to add d.ts, by putting the file directly(like creating a file call jquery.d.ts and put the jquery def inside), the def will actually load in

</comment><comment><USER36> Great job! Is there any other way to login that's not github? I'm trying to move away from github and so far the only thing preventing me are sites that require github login. It would be great if you offered just plain old email login :)

<comment><USER37> Why are you trying to move away from Github, out of curiosity?

<comment><USER36> just a personal stance. It's a good service, I just personally don't like it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Is there sound accompanying the video? I watched several but didn't hear anything.

<comment><USER12> Yes. It's supposed to have audio. Could you submit an issue at [https://github.com/scrimba/community](https://github.com/scrimba/community) with details about your browser/environment?

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Beware: The website asks my mobile browser for permissions to take pictures and video.

<comment><USER10> Oh, it's probably because we ask for webrtc mic-access when you record. Will look into it :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Great job,

\- Any plan on embedding option for 3rd party websites? \- Self-hosted versions?

<comment><USER2> Yes!

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> This is really awesome! I was wondering about how you are planning to monetize or sustain the project. Are you going to give the ability for users to monetize their own contributions?

<comment><USER2> Yes, that's on our bucket list!

<comment><USER10> We're still young so we have plenty of time! :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Looks great on desktop. On my android though, it's slow, low-contrast, and a bit janky.

The desktop experience, though, is better than comparable stuff I've seen. Nice work.

</comment><comment><USER19> Man this is good. Any plans to extend it to other languages?

<comment><USER12> Thanks. Yes, other (server-side) languages are definitely coming. We're currently working with a prototype that integrates with Jupyter/IPython, and we're also playing with the idea of using Docker images for giving a full terminal. The biggest challenge is to give a powerful execution environment _and_ make it easy for the viewer to play with the code and be able to run it.

<comment><USER43> Do you have a blog where you would update this?

<comment><USER2> We'll create a blog soon, which will be linked to at Scrimba.com.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Would love to see something like this for golang. I mean the tour of go is already great, but this is yet another step better :-)

</comment><comment><USER45> Awesome work, this seems like something pulled from the future.

One quick question have you considered including Python related stuff?

<comment><USER2> Support for Python and various other server-side languages is on our roadmap yes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> This is a great idea.

I have one small suggestion: Please give the cursor a better contrast or outline/shadow.

</comment><comment><USER29> Does anyone have any tips to start playing around in this environment with ES2015 stage-2?

<comment><USER2> We'll open up for that soon!

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Minor nit: some of the thumbnails report they've been viewed "1.52" times.

<comment><USER10> Thank you for reporting. Fixed now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> If I edit some text in a video that I created, do I need to re-record all of the audio?

<comment><USER2> As for now, you can't change the code after it has been recorded audio over it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Bug: if you hover over the "popular" ones, some say 3.81 views, etc.

</comment><comment><USER50> feature request: Ability to change playback speed. Eg 0.5x, 1.5x, 2x

<comment><USER12> I've opened an issue for tracking this here: [https://github.com/scrimba/community/issues/9](https://github.com/scrimba/community/issues/9)

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Is there a way to search all videos?

<comment><USER10> We're working on search, discovery, and sorely needed social features as we speak. It's coming very soon!

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> very cool tool. would be even better if you add #tags so say you can filter all the #imba casts.

</comment><comment><USER53> Looks great! Signup took seconds.

</comment><comment><USER54> Insane and well executed!

</comment><comment><USER55> Needs a volume slider.

</comment><comment><USER56> Please add a favicon!

</comment><comment><USER57> This is pointless, tried editing , did not work as I thought it would. Sad!

<comment><USER58> There is a small "play" button in the top right corner you have to press after editing.

You don't need permissions to edit, but you do need them to save.

<comment><USER57> Yeah I saw that , little bit too minimal to be honest , doesn't scream "click me" so was a bit confused initially. Though it was just another play button for the video. Maybe moving it to the output window would be a bit less confusing

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> Just wanted to say I think you've done an excellent job with this!

</comment><comment><USER60> Wow, very exciting! Already starting to use it. Question: How to embed a scrimba "video" on another page?

<comment><USER2> Support for that will come, but it might be a pro feature. Any specific use case you were thinking?

<comment><USER60> Just to post in blogs, github pages, etc. I'm biased but I think you would get free marketing if people embed it, and a paid feature for people to keep them private (password locked, whatever).

That way people who publish free educational content (freecodeacademy, me - example, a todo app tutorial: [http://gun.js.org/think.html](http://gun.js.org/think.html) , etc.) would spread scrimba awareness. The inverse, sites that charge for classes - Udemy, etc., have a natural incentive to keep their content secret, which they'd have to pay for.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> This is so badly needed in a world of video coding tutorials (cough Unity3D). Awesome technology

</comment><comment><USER62> <rant> I cannot wait for the "everything needs to be a small looping video clip" fad to go away.

Video clips of typing make no sense. The animation is distracting, it provides no useful information, and they _always_ either loop too quickly (frustrating me because I lose my place and have to wait for the whole thing to come back), or go too slowly (frustrating me because it won't hurry up). A 3 second loop is great for a hamster meme, it's not great for displaying text that I want to read.

It's like an entire group of people completely misunderstood why GIF animations were despised and died off.

Seriously, what value are these video clips adding? </rant>

<comment><USER54> You can pause and edit the code inline...

<comment><USER63> You can also skip to the end and mess with the finished code via the progress bar and edit button if you don't care for the explanation.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Hypothetically speaking: You're working on the biggest idea - <AUTHOR>

Hello HN,
Hypothetically speaking:
You're working on an idea that has the potential to become one of the most successful products in the world if built well. For the sake of argument, let's say it "will" be considered as one of the best ideas of the last decade or two. You have the idea, and you know exactly what your product should do and how it should do it. But you are not an engineer. The dilemma is that your idea cannot be downplayed. Whoever you share it with immediately realises how insane of an idea it is; which makes your idea super easy to steal. Let's say this idea needs quite a lot of resources to be well built, and you definitely can't do it alone since you're not an engineer capable of building such a thing. Again, for the sake of argument, imagine you're not well connected to the startup scene so you'll have to make cold intros.
And one last hypothesis, your biggest motivation is not the money or the fame, but it is to change the world. And your idea will do that.
What do you do? Explain step by step your action plan to succeed. <comment><USER2> Share your idea with anyone who will listen. A) If it is truly going to change the world, you'll be labeled a hero and will quickly gain support. B) If not, you'll know pretty quickly from the masses that it won't work. If you get shot down, you'll get feedback to where the holes are in your idea, which can only solidify your idea further. Execution counts. Ideas are a dime a dozen; even world changing ones.

<comment><USER3> Indeed, foremost if money is not your prime motivator.

Now sometimes you want to ensure that the idea is actually developped.

You could have a nice idea, lack the means of executions, patent it, and then some big oil company may buy your patent and NOT develop it!

so now, you have two choices:

\- either go to school, learn what needs to be learned to be able to implement the idea yourself, spend the rest of your life working all nights and week ends on your idea, while working for some soulsucking corporation to bring bread on the table and finance your idea, or

\- go start up an unrelated company, so that you may become billionaire, and then finance the development of your idea later (this is eg. what Jeff Hawkins did, creating Palm, making a fortune, and now using the money to develop AI with Numenta which was his original purpose. Numerous other examples exist.

If you're lucky, you may try some variant of the second plan, where your startup develop products related to your idea, so that both you and your teams get accointed with the technical requirements of your idea, and gain some expertise required to solve the problems you may encounter for its development, and then, when this startup is established and viable, you might start developing this idea.

<comment><AUTHOR> The second strategy is very smart. Problem with that is sometimes you only have a narrow timeframe before some big name brand comes up with your idea and implements it in a really shitty way. So waiting until becoming rich enough is not really a good option.

Although that's "hypothetically" my problem.

Thanks for answering!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I suggest that you downplay your own idea. If you start talking to startup people and devs you will find out that your idea could be great but not so great or that many others are working on it. There is a saying:

If your idea is insanely futuristic it is not the time to do it. If it's not then be sure that at least 5 other stealth startups are working on it NOW.

That's not to say that your idea is not worth it. But we have all been there in this cloud where your idea is the best in a decade.

</comment><comment><USER5> As a person in that situation, I openly share the vision with anyone who wants to hear it. Then you realize that people don't understand it, and therefore don't care.

<comment><USER6> Can you share it with us? =)

<comment><USER5> Humanity needs a new language, a new way to think.

It is obvious to me that the vast majority of problems we have in the world are either caused or sustained by inefficiency, which can't be solved without a better organization system.

That's what I'm creating.

<comment><USER6> Sounds awesome. Is it anything like lojban? Is there a link where I can check out your project?

<comment><USER5> Lojban is extremely interesting, especially the predicate logic part of it. However, it's still a language that's meant to be written and spoken by humans, which comes with limitations and drawbacks (i.e., binary is extremely flexible and powerful, but not practical to speak and write by a human). It offers no real innovation as far as semantics goes.

What I'm researching is knowledge representation, independently from any physical representation or implementation. Mainly, how to represent facts and intention. The semantic web (linked-data) is very close to what I have in mind as far as facts representation goes. However, it seems to completely ignore the intentional aspect of communication (x wants y because z).

It is not difficult to represent "This pizza costs $10" or "I want this pizza" in RDF (semantic web language). However, that's a naive and simplistic way to think about the situation. It's should be more like a semantic contract:

Person A broadcasts this promise (offer):

\- Person B owns Pizza X

\- Person A owns $10

Person B broadcasts this promise (demand):

\- Person B owns Pizza X

Matchmaking algorithm finds a match (2 people that share similar promises). In this case, both share the "Person B owns Pizza X" statement. However, since all promise statements must be true, Person B has to agree to add "Person A owns $10" to its promise. Once both have identical promises, the contract is sealed. Now, both users are responsible for making these promises (future truths) become reality. The contract is complete when reality matches these promises, and the trust score of both individuals is increased (trust score, like a credit score, determines how reliable people are at respecting promises aka predicting the future). This "trust score" also happens to become the future currency.

We must realize that all communication is about describing either actual truths or future truths. Contracts are simply endorsement of a set of future truths. Whether the truths you endorse become reality or not affects your credibility, and therefore the value of your endorsements. All we need is a framework to communicate these things, and nothing more. That should eliminate 80% of apps we use today, and reduce communication noise significantly.

Of course that's a gross simplification that probably doesn't answer your question.

<comment><USER6> Sounds very interesting!

When the project is ready - feel free to send me an email, and you have one early adopter.

I wish you luck =)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Building a Micro SaaS with MailerLite, Netlify, Stripe and Zapier - <AUTHOR> https://bullish.email/blog/building-a-micro-saas-with-mailerlite-netlify-stripe-and-zapier/ <comment><USER2> You can't ask people on IndieHackers to upvote here.

</comment><comment><USER3> Amazing Idea!

</comment><comment><USER4> This is very neat; appreciate the breakdown.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Nice!

</comment><comment><USER6> Cool idea! Thank you for sharing everything that went into building it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: what happened to the first distributed social network, the blogroll?  - <AUTHOR>

The blogroll + FOAF and such was the first distributed social network, as far as I can tell. It pretty much failed. Is there any real activity going on around these open standards these days, or has everyone given in to the FB juggernaut and the religion of walled gardens? <comment><USER2> The opportunity cost for Facebook and Twitter is much lower than blogging, especially when most blogs were meant to target friends, relatives and co- workers. Really, if blogging was meant to be taken as social networking, there's no point in setting up something outside of what all of your friends are doing unless it's a special case. And, right or wrong in terms of openness, that's what's happening.

As per "special cases:" most blogs left tend to be dedicated and area- specific, meaning that a blogroll is somewhat pointless. Look at Smitten Kitchen: it's a highly targeted website about a specific area, not a general purpose "Hey guys" website. No blogroll, no need for one. If you're doing small-kitchen cooking, great. If not, you probably know about Serious Eats.

The few weblogs left are analogous to 'zines, when everybody else was mailing letters and talking on the phone. "Revolution girl-style now" indeed.

</comment><comment><USER3> I always wanted to see a plugin/widget for WordPress (and generic JS plugin for non-WP sites) that let you input the URLs for your friend's blogs, and it pinged their site to tell their widget (if they had it) that you've added them to your blogroll, and let them add you back.

A simple decentralized version of follow/friends for blogs and sites in general, without them needing to be on the same platform.</comment>


Show HN: Mailform – Print and Mail in bulk from your browser - <AUTHOR> http://blog.mailform.io/post/142351302856/mailform-for-business-send-bulk-mail-from-your <comment><USER2> Seems very similar to a project a friend of mine did (Also based on Lob's API): [https://www.snailr.co/](https://www.snailr.co/)

His prices are a bit cheaper $2 + $0.15 for each page but with fewer options it appears.

</comment><comment><USER3> What are the differences between this and Lob ([https://lob.com](https://lob.com))?

<comment><USER4> Hi, Lob employee here! Mailform actually uses Lob.

Lob's focus is on building printing and mailing infrastructure accessible through our API. Mailform is creating an easy to use interface (via Lob) for customers to print their documents.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Can you poly-select on a map to get addresses? Or do I need my own pre- compiled list?

<comment><USER6> We used to have a Google auto-complete widget, but it appeared to confuse things: right now you have to bring an address list with you. We take in CSV/XLS/XLSX in generic formats, and exports from QuickBooks. We're also working on direct imports from a number of other programs: is there a specific address source you have? Would love to understand your use case.

<comment><USER5> We are required to notify (by mail) residents within a specified distance of a map feature. directmail.com uses a geoselection tool that, while suffering from last year's UI, is fairly full-featured:

[http://www.geoselector.com/default2.aspx](http://www.geoselector.com/default2.aspx)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> letterbug.co.uk is somewhat of the UK equivalent.</comment>