How to Tell Someone's Age When All You Know Is Her Name - <AUTHOR> http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-to-tell-someones-age-when-all-you-know-is-her-name/ <comment><USER2> Not only can you get a good idea of age from a name you can generate names that match age and sex. I have a niece who recently did a science fair project where she used Markov chains seeded with U.S. census data over the last hundred years to create new names. With about 90% accuracy people could tell if a fake name was from 100, 50, or <10 years ago and the sex.

An interesting side note was that she put in a simple profanity filter but in all of her trial runs it never picked up any "fuq" or variant names.

Edit: Here are sample boy names: Shill Flay Roshard Per Coll Milius Madfrego Derry Fer Fordy Carlel Marler Rommyronance Jord Felwooke Rott Luper Bent Zekin Othen Nolanterry Jerarton

Here are some girl names Esalessie Rine Nolenn Alynna Myrtinet Faybeciline Aline Orassabenda Phina Dorgia Lideleaste Beara Sonilinn Judelia Monangeora Jarnina Geleene Emozellyn Maudra Verta Lortis Fret Kathoph

<comment> andrey-p Any chance she could open source that? My friend's writing a fantasy novel and I think he could really use a realistic-sounding fake name or two.

<comment><USER3> [http://www.fakenamegenerator.com/](http://www.fakenamegenerator.com/)

<comment> andrey-p I did specify "fantasy" for a reason. If you're writing fantasy you want your names to sound natural yet unlike anything your reader will seen before. Hence why I guess many names in fantasy novels (I'm thinking Song of Fire and Ice and Wheel of Time) are pretty much a normal name with one or two letters replaced.

I'll keep your link in mind though - for my own writing which is in a non- fantasy setting.

<comment><USER4> I was horrified when I realised that all the names in Game of Thrones are just normal names as pronounced by my one year old daughter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> One of the built-in models in the Wolfram Language does precisely this:

       In[1]:= Predict["NameAge", "Gertrude"]
       Out[1]= 84

       In[2]:= Quartiles @ Predict["NameAge", "Gertrude", "Distribution"]
       Out[2]= {62.8975, 74.7389, 84.8247}

More info about Predict and Classify here:

[http://reference.wolfram.com/language/ref/Predict.html](http://reference.wolfram.com/language/ref/Predict.html)

[http://reference.wolfram.com/language/ref/Classify.html](http://reference.wolfram.com/language/ref/Classify.html)

<comment><USER6> WolframAlpha can handle this, too: [http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=how+old+is+mable](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=how+old+is+mable)

<comment><USER7> My first name is Aubrey, which completely flipped to a girl's name in the US about ten years ago. According to this chart, the fraction of female Aubrey's is approaching 12% at birth. When that fad wears off, it will make a nice spike in the curve for many decades. By the way, Aubrey means "elf leader" or "king of the elves".

www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=how+old+is+aubrey

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is one of the ways cold readers hone in on all kinds of things about the person they are reading. It is a very effective way to guess someone's mother's or grandmother's name or sister's name. if the audience is a group of mostly 30 to 50 year old women the reader has a good starting point. It goes something like "Is there a Laura or Lisa here?" There is a high probability there will be one of those. Once a woman acknowledges their name is Laura the reader can see what her approx. age is and make a guess about what their mother or grandmother or grandfather's name is. They use other cues to figure out which dead relative the woman is there to "hear" from and then say something like "Someone with a M or K is coming forward" if the target reacted to one of those letters the reader guesses "Mar.... Marg... Mary...Margeret... Margeret... Is that your mother?"...

You get the idea.

</comment><comment><USER9> I actually used something similar to this (but not as sophisticated) at a previous startup to generate recommendations of people to invite to the app because the app's target demographic was women ages 20-40.

[http://jwegan.com/growth-hacking/hacking-mobile-invites- with...](http://jwegan.com/growth-hacking/hacking-mobile-invites-with-help-us- government/)

</comment><comment><USER10> Baby Name Wizard (linked in the article) is one of the true hidden gems on the internet. It looks like a fluffy website for moms-to-be, but then you start poking around at the graphs and you realize that an hour of your life has disappeared...

[http://www.babynamewizard.com/](http://www.babynamewizard.com/)

Bonus: This blog post from Baby Name Wizard is utterly fascinating. Everybody I've ever showed this to has been amazed.

[http://www.babynamewizard.com/archives/2012/5/the-shape- of-b...](http://www.babynamewizard.com/archives/2012/5/the-shape-of-boys- names-an-update-on-the-age-of-aidan)

</comment><comment><USER11> I found the age range on "Jennifer" to be particularly interesting.

My sister Jennifer (see [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jennifer_Tilly](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jennifer_Tilly) for details) is in her mid-50s. She was in college before she met another Jennifer her own age. People still are mislead by her name and believe that she has to be a lot younger than she really is.

The moral is that if you have the great fortune to pick a girl's name that _will_ be popular some day but is not now, that girl will probably be happy about it. :-)

<comment><USER12> so according to your username and that wiki page, you are therefore her half- brother ben tilly. your mother is patricia, your father is john ward, and you are from british columbia, specifically texada island.

honestly, i'm not really sure why you would post identifying information on the internet.

edit: just checked your profile. hey ben!

<comment><USER11> There is enough identifying information about me out there that there is no point in denying it. That ship sailed for me many years ago. And sometimes it is convenient to be able to say something and have people realize that I have direct experience with it.

Of course you shouldn't believe everything you read on the Internet. Contrary to what you surmised, I was actually born in California, did most of my growing up in Victoria, British Columbia, and Jennifer is not part-Irish.

Now if you want to get disturbed, go read my sister's book, Singing Songs. None of what is discussed there was stuff that I had any control over, so I have no shame about it. And it is all stuff I've said in public before.

As I said, that ship sailed for me long ago. There is no point in hiding it.

<comment><USER13> I'd no idea she'd written a book. Thanks Ben! As I said her blog was great, I read the entire thing in a single sitting.

Edit. Other sister. Still, I'll give it a look. Talented family you have there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I used to work for an NLP startup, we focused on stuff you could do with Romanized names -- names that were original not written in the Latin alphabet and ended up being written in the Latin alphabet using some kind of transliteration scheme.

For example, we could take a name and generate a pretty comprehensive, and culturally aware, list of variants.

Jennifer -> Jenifer, Jen, Jenny, Jennie, etc.

Richard -> Rich, Richie, Dick, Dickie, Ritchard, etc.

Rho -> No, Lo, Loh, Noh, Roh, Ro, Nho, etc.

The intention of course was to build up lists of name variants that could be used during identification checks.

We also had some pretty significant statistical models that could guess Gender and provide a descending list with confidence levels of the most likely country of origin for a name. It was surprisingly accurate and could account for different Romanization schemes popular in different countries. It could even guess if a name was a surname or a given name.

What did we build the models on? Somehow, one of the founders was able to swing access to U.S. Border Control Data. Even though it was names and country of origin data, it's de-identified (having a list of names doesn't mean we know who the names belong to). There was something north of a billion names in the collection, and included place of birth, country of origin, gender, etc. Names were mined for digraphs so we could build CFGs that could be walked to generate variants. There was lots of manual work as well. Endless regex writing and testing, QA, that sort of thing.

For some countries, we had pretty poor data to be honest. I think we had a couple dozen North Koreans, but for most of the world, our coverage was surprisingly good. It turns out all that work boiled down into a surprisingly small library just a couple dozen megabytes in size and was pretty fast -- I don't remember how fast, but something like a few thousand names per hour. It was pretty niche, but eventually the company was acquired and I went on my way.

I always assumed that technology like that would find its way into more applications, but I'm constantly surprised it hasn't.

<comment><USER15> _> 'I always assumed that technology like that would find its way into more applications, but I'm constantly surprised it hasn't.'_

Many years ago, I was working on a large project for an organization nothing apparently consistent between half a dozen systems with tens of thousands of users each except names. Naturally, those names were full of exactly the kind of variations you're describing.

When I went looking for a solution to do exactly what you're describing I ran into solutions that were both vague about their functionality and expensive. Like you say, pretty niche - it seemed that everyone was used to selling very specific 'solutions' not a library/API.

I ended up hacking together a very basic script to accomplish the same. It took days to run thanks to my non-existent coding skills, but the accuracy was pretty good.

What it couldn't line up was solved by later decoding and discovering correlations between the long forgotten conventions used for unique IDs in the various systems.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Two thoughts:

1\. Marketers surely have mined this data to the hilt -- cross-referencing these trends with address lists and full-name email prefixes can make targeted promotions a lot more effective.

2\. My own name is relatively rare in the U.S. among my age cohort ([http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=ian](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=ian)) to the point where some adults had problems pronouncing it when I was in elementary school 35 years ago ("Isn't that a girl's name?"). But I suspect, based on anecdotal evidence and personal observation, that the name is more common in England, Scotland, Australia and Canada. And the Wolfram data shows that it has been growing in popularity for many years in the U.S.

<comment><USER17> I live in Australia and I concur with you, I know quite a few Ian's.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Can we agree to use the plural "their" for ambiguous sex third-person possessive? "His" is sexist, but so is "her", which is distracting on top of that because it isn't conventional.

<comment><USER19> As someone that's not a native english speaker, can I ask you why "his" is sexist?

A quick read of a dictionary ([http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/his](http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/his)) says that his is "the possessive form of he", and the second definition of "he" is "anyone (without reference to sex)". That's also what I got taught in middle/high school.

Sorry if I'm just missing something and this is a stupid question.

<comment><USER20> Something is sexist when language users think it is. The problem with he/him/his is that the primary meaning refers to males, only. Because of that, anyone reading it gets pushed towards the primary meaning.

That's why some people push towards the use of the singular they ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they)) That may eventually change the language for all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> ...and her nationality.

I'm British. I know two women called Deirdre. They're both Irish. It seems that the name had fallen out of favour in Britain by the 70s, but was still fashionable in Ireland until at least the 80s.

<comment><USER22> Could be related to the character on the long-running primetime soap Coronation Street. She started in 1972.

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

<comment><USER21> Corry's been shown in Ireland since 1978.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coronation_Street#International...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coronation_Street#International_syndication)

Not saying it's not the reason for the divergence, but it seems less likely.

<comment><USER23> A lot of Irish households have access to British TV stations like BBC, ITV etc. and could have watched it there.

<comment><USER24> Since Deirdre is an Irish name, it is possible that the decline in popularity (among the general population) in the UK was at least partly due to increased anti-Irish sentiment in the 1970s.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> The Wizard of Oz was released in 1939, so it makes sense that the median age for Dorothy's is around 75 years of age.

I wonder what other pop culture events influenced naming trends.

<comment><USER26> I bet Liam Neeson is the reason for the new wave of Liams, but I can't decide whether the Karate Kid remake is the reason for the wave of Jaydens, or if it's just a coincidence.

<comment><USER27> [http://names.yafla.com/#n=Jayden&s=mt](http://names.yafla.com/#n=Jayden&s=mt)

Coincidence. The name started its ascent in the mid 90s.

<comment> Larx-3 Not necessarily. Liam Neeson was the star of the 1993 film "Schindler's List." It won 7 Academy awards in 1994, including best picture.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I was curious about one of the deadest male names, Isadore, so I looked it up. It's of Greek origin and it turns out the female counterpart, Isadora, is the ninth most popular name for baby girls in Chile in 2006. The website linked from the article indicates that it's never ranked in the top 1000 in the US. Interesting how a shared, ancient name could be so wildly divergent in usage.

<comment><USER29> Kirk Douglas was known as Isadore Demsky when he grew up in Amsterdam NY in the early 20th Century.

Apparently it was a popular male name for immigrants and first generation children in the early 20th Century. It was often shortened to "Izzy."

There was a social trend in America during the middle of the 20th Century to "anglicize" names. For example, I have uncles who changed their birth name in the early 50s from "Wozniak" to "Wagner." Even Izzy Demsky became Kirk Douglas when he grew up.

Let's take for example, the children in "the Godfather" books, The older children have "old country" names (Santino, Fredo) and the younger children have "new world" names (Michael, Connie.) It's almost as if the older kids "Americanize" the family when they go to school.

Anyhow, names are funny things when taken in aggregate.

<comment><USER30> My immigrant grandparents named my mother an anglicized version of their intended name after pressure from the older children, who said, "In America you say ____, not ____". I think there is probably something to the theory that the family gets more Americanized as the older children are raised in American culture and "correct" some of their parents' old world ways.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> The combination of the SSA babynames data, which is very cool and deep on its own, with the SSA actuarial data is pretty neat, partly because I hadn't known about the actuarial data set...but when I saw that the OP had tried to calculate surviving persons of a given name and birth year, I assumed that they just used the SSA's death database...from until at least 2010, the SSA had a list of every SSA person who has died and also, when they were born, and also, their social security numbers. Since the SSN, until relatively recently, was indicative of what state the SSN-holder was actually born...well, that, combined with the babynames-per-state data, could get you very granular calculations...I'm sure the SSA's actuarial table gets it pretty much within an acceptable margin of error, but who knows, maybe some awkwardly named people were doomed to a shorter lifespan? (I'm only half joking, I think)

<comment><USER32> > what state the SSN-holder was actually born

No, it was the state where the SSN was issued. Not all children applied for an SSN at birth. Centralization of SS offices also altered this practice.

See, e.g., [http://www.ssa.gov/history/ssn/geocard.html](http://www.ssa.gov/history/ssn/geocard.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> The assumption that death rates have no link to names will probably break down in some cases.

<comment><USER34> This was your subtle way of saying that the average lifespan for a typical Afro-American name is lower, right? :)

It's ok to differentiate things amongst races sometimes -- it isn't _always_ racist.

<comment><USER33> That was certainly an example, but I moved away from it for generality (and brevity), not concerns over racial tension.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Would be interesting to apply it to a group of friends. Since they're likely to be similar ages, you should be able to get an improved guess from combining the distributions for all of their names.

</comment><comment><USER36> "The peak year for boys named Joseph was 1914 — when about 39,000 of them were born. Those 1914 Josephs would be due to celebrate their 100th birthdays at some point this year. But only about 130 of them were still alive as of Jan. 1."

Something quite poignant in this. I'd be interested in seeing a life expectancy chart based on name.

<comment><USER37> I'm pretty sure that would be "a life expectancy chart". It's pretty unlikely that your name has any impact on your life expectancy. But, since name popularity is influenced quite a bit by social/cultural status, and those _do_ affect life expectancy, you'd probably see some differences along those lines.

<comment><USER38> Great comment!

In case anyone is interested, there have been some studies done where researchers send in two identical resumes. The only difference is that one has a traditionally 'white' sounding name, whereas the other has a name more associated with minorities. The 'white' sounding name performs better in these types of tests.

[http://www.slate.com/articles/business/the_dismal_science/20...](http://www.slate.com/articles/business/the_dismal_science/2005/04/a_roshanda_by_any_other_name.html)

^ This article gives some more information, including an interesting story about two brothers named Winner and Loser. The most relevant quote, however, comes right at the end:

"The data show that, on average, a person with a distinctively black name—whether it is a woman named Imani or a man named DeShawn—does have a worse life outcome than a woman named Molly or a man named Jake. But it isn't the fault of his or her name. If two black boys, Jake Williams and DeShawn Williams, are born in the same neighborhood and into the same familial and economic circumstances, they would likely have similar life outcomes. But the kind of parents who name their son Jake don't tend to live in the same neighborhoods or share economic circumstances with the kind of parents who name their son DeShawn. And that's why, on average, a boy named Jake will tend to earn more money and get more education than a boy named DeShawn. DeShawn's name is an indicator—but not a cause—of his life path."

(Levitt and Dubner, "A Roshanda by any other name")

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Did FiveThirtyEight steal this idea from Business Insider? [http://www.businessinsider.com/popular-girl-boy- names-2014-5](http://www.businessinsider.com/popular-girl-boy-names-2014-5) They did the same research a week ago.

<comment><USER40> They were probably both inspired by Social Security Administration's release of name data for 2013 a couple of weeks ago:

[http://www.socialsecurity.gov/pressoffice/pr/2014/babynames2...](http://www.socialsecurity.gov/pressoffice/pr/2014/babynames2013-pr.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Somewhat related, here's the latest NIST results for age estimation based on face photographs (PDF):

[http://www.nist.gov/customcf/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=915238](http://www.nist.gov/customcf/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=915238)

</comment><comment><USER42> Xavier? Logan? Guess someone wants to have his son grow up as the Wolverine.

</comment><comment><USER43> It's surprising that Jacob isn't one of the top 25 most common male names considering that it's been the most popular male baby name for 14 of the past 15 years.

<comment><USER44> The list is the 25 most popular names _since 1900._

<comment><USER43> I assume its the 25 most popular names of the living. But either way I would have expected the most popular male baby name for 14 consecutive years to make the list.

<comment><USER44> Baby Boomer generation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> That's very interesting.

Anyone knows some sort of service or website where you input a particular name and then gives you statistics like the average age of persons with the name given?

</comment><comment><USER46> Can someone tell what software was in used to products charts ?

<comment><USER47> Nate Silver willed them into existence.

I often wonder this about newspaper ones as well. I guess graphic designers custom make a fairly large amount.

<comment><USER48> How can y'all not know 'bout R?

[http://www.r-project.org](http://www.r-project.org)

...just kidding, lots of people don't know about R, but check it out, because it's pretty badass!

I'd be curious to know if people still use Processing, professionally?

[http://processing.org](http://processing.org)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Amusing. My brother and I are almost smack on the median of our names. Yet I was named after my father (and his father), my brother after our mother's father.

</comment><comment><USER50> Its great to be unpredictable (Owen, slightly older than 8).

</comment><comment><USER51> Baby names, is this the new wave of data journalism?

<comment><USER52> Baby names were heavily discussed in Freakonomics as indicators of a variety of things. An interesting read if you like this sort of data. Relevant content: [http://freakonomics.com/tag/baby- names/](http://freakonomics.com/tag/baby-names/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> I've just been travelling through Singapore and was astonished to come across young women named Agnes and Gertrude.

<comment><USER54> My name is Sebastian, which was extremely popular in Germany in the early 80s (not once was I the only Sebastian in the classroom). In the USA people would now imagine a small child when hearing my name. It's very interesting how different popular names are in different countries.

<comment><USER55> Was that perhaps influenced by the name "Bastian" for the main character of Ende's 1979 book "The Never-Ending Story" (Die Unendliche Geschichte in the original German)?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> I was searching for a link to download the data (a csv maybe) for me to play with. Did someone find a link?

<comment><USER57> [http://www.socialsecurity.gov/OACT/babynames/limits.html](http://www.socialsecurity.gov/OACT/babynames/limits.html) has links.

<comment><USER56> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> sorry if someone already posted it, but you can also get an estimate on where they live :)

[http://jezebel.com/map-sixty-years-of-the-most-popular- names...](http://jezebel.com/map-sixty-years-of-the-most-popular-names-for- girls-s-1443501909)

</comment><comment><USER59> This totally nailed my Mom. That sounds worse than I meant it.

</comment><comment><USER60> That's very much culture / language / country specific. Naturally societies tend to have certain preferences in names in different time periods. But those only a tendencies, not a set in stone set of names.

</comment><comment><USER61> I wonder how names with alternate spelling fit in?

</comment><comment><USER62> My app, DrillbitApp.com, uses the same data to run on marketing lists. Also does race and gender.

</comment><comment><USER63> Amazing that the oldest male names do not include biblical Old Testament names but the youngest male names do! A sign of increasing religious fundamentalism?</comment>


Show HN: Flask-compose, a routing library for apps obeying the decorator pattern - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/cmanallen/flask-compose <comment><AUTHOR> Hello, I'm the creator of this library. The goal is to dynamically create endpoints from a generalized base. Check out the examples folder. If you have any questions, concerns, or criticisms I'm here to talk.

This library is considered "pre-release" until I've written docs and added better test coverage.</comment>


Hidden Secrets of the Amazon Shopping Cart - <AUTHOR> http://www.grokdotcom.com/2008/02/26/amazon-shopping-cart/ <comment><USER2> Great article...its really something people need to remember. You may want the PERFECT website, but all the "perfect" websites that you are comparing yourself to, have spent close to a decade progressing to the current status. So its better to launch early, even if it looks like crap, just to see what people say.

If "crappy design" is the only negative comment your site gets, you know you are on your way to big bucks. Because you can always update the design at a later time

<comment><USER3> I once worked for a web analytics company. One of the very popular presentations was an overlay of the customer's page which showed counts and percentages for every link and button off the page. It was a simple visual that showed what was converting and what was not. You should try to collect this data even if you are not using an expensive service. It facilitates little optimization experiments.

<comment><USER4> I use Google Analytics on several sites. It's got the same view you're talking about. We like it a lot although there are other things I'd like to change about GA. Can anyone suggest alternative web/ecommerce analytics?

<comment><USER3> IIRC Coremetrics starts out at $2 - $3000 per month. Probably the same for Omniture. Web Trends is quite a bit cheaper.

<comment><USER4> Interesting - thanks. I have a friend who used to work at Coremetrics. I didn't realize it was so expensive. Maybe it wouldn't seem like so much if we weren't all seduced by the free Google stuff.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think one of the points we don't want to overlook is that _they have something I want_. I remember being quite angry that I actually had to figure out their web site after one of their changes, but I wanted the damn books and they beat the competition on price so I stuck it out.

</comment><comment><USER6> Wow! Great article. I still remember that first version of the Amazon website shown as part of a series of historical screen shots.

The author makes a great point about having an evidence-based culture.

</comment><comment><USER7> Anybody has any experience, links or suggestions on how to implement that sort of testing?

I'm interested in things like how to put it in place, with which users, over what period of time, tools to analyze the results, etc.

The concept is extremely simple: let's compare how people react to different design/layout/copywriting and pick the best one. In practice, it seems that there is quite a lot to put in place to track things properly.

Is Google Analytics enough for this?

<comment><USER8> You can check out G Website Optimizer

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> A good friend on mine interned there. Let me pose something to HN that he posed to me: 90% of my job was to get users to consume more. Is that ok because we're offering a good (cheap, convenient) service or is it slimey?

<comment><USER10> "Consume" has negative connotations. How about "transact"? Voluntary transactions are good, because if they were bad people wouldn't do them.

<comment><USER11> > _Voluntary transactions are good, because if they were bad people wouldn't > do them._

Why would this be true?</comment></comment></comment>


How to find web development work in Europe as an American? - <AUTHOR>

I was wondering if anyone else who has made this happen has any advice or resources for finding work. I've been sending emails / applications to European companies but my process is slow and I feel like there has to be a better way to find opportunities. So far I've used LinkedIn job search, googled for European startups (and searched for terms like Copenhagen startups, Amsterdam startups, etc.), used Angel.co a little bit.
I know that the most important thing is just putting the time in, but if there are any good resources or organizations to make my search more efficient I want to find out about them.
My background+resume: cmadams.org. <comment><USER2> I always recommend Berlin (Germany) as it is real fun to be and to work there (full disclosure: I'm German, and I lived in Berlin for 10 years). Start-ups there are usually used to employ people from different countries, which definitely helps. You might want to send your resume to one of the bigger incubators:

www.rocket-internet.de (they are huge!) www.project-a.com (former rocket internet managers)

or directly to one of the bigger players: \- wooga.com (social gaming) \- plinga.com (game publisher) \- soundcloud.com \- 6wunderkinder.com (to-do list app) \- ...

Good luck! Thorsten

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey Thorsten,

Thanks for the info.

I see a lot of job posts from Berlin companies that say they will hire people who only speak English, but when I click on the job listing PDF or go to their website it's only in German.

Do you think it's really possible to work there without German?

<comment><USER3> You can also try this site for Berlin startup jobs: [http://berlinstartupjobs.com/](http://berlinstartupjobs.com/) If current vacancies are not enough you can go down the list of companies on the right side of the page and check their sites directly. Berlin is nice, lots of work, more or less English-friendly, though rent prices are growing. Check for BlueCard visa if you want to move here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Have you checked out the Dutch-American Friendship Treaty? ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DAFT_%28treaty%29](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DAFT_%28treaty%29))

The requirements are pretty minimal for US entrepreneurs.

</comment><comment><USER5> You need to be more specific than "Europe". European countries have different rules and regulations when it comes to employing non-European people.

For GB, unless you have spouse with a EU citizenship, your chances are almost 0 at the moment.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah I've heard the market is really difficult in the UK.

I'm seriously looking at most anywhere on the continent, but it seems like there are the most openings in the Netherlands and Germany. I'd like to live in central or eastern Europe though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Why is it important to you to work in Europe per se? A lot of big companies like LinkedIn, FB, Google, etc. have offices all over the world and when you apply for a job at an American employer you could later ask to go abroad.

<comment><AUTHOR> I want to experience life outside of the United States. Good idea about looking at big companies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Perhaps you could do remote freelancing while living in Europe? You could work for American companies (or European, or anywhere else).

</comment><comment><USER8> Stockholm seems to be startup friendly.</comment>


Researchers Accidentally Create a 'Mini Big Bang' in the Lab - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/technicity/researchers-accidentally-create-a-mini-big-bang-in-the-lab-a2a94bc95ae9 <comment><USER2> The research article is about chemical explosions and supernovas. It doesn't mention the Big Bang. I'm not sure this is related.</comment>


Sweden: The only country in which the metoo movement has caught on - <AUTHOR> https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=metoo#GEO_MAP <comment><AUTHOR> Background:

"1,300 women in Swedish politics allege harassment 'in the corridors of power'" [https://www.thelocal.se/20171120/me-too-swedish-women- politi...](https://www.thelocal.se/20171120/me-too-swedish-women-politics- harassment-sexism-stefan-lfven-campaign)

There currently are several parallel news stories like that, each focusing on a different industry. It's essentially now a daily topic in the major TV news.</comment>


Introducing the BAIR Blog - <AUTHOR> http://bair.berkeley.edu/blog/2017/06/20/welcome/ <comment><USER2> The inaugural post is worth reading: [http://bair.berkeley.edu/blog/2017/06/20/learning-to- reason-...](http://bair.berkeley.edu/blog/2017/06/20/learning-to-reason-with- neural-module-networks/)

It explores a combination of neural networks and structured parsing to solve challenges at the intersection of vision and natural language processing.</comment>


This Is the Chart That's Freaking Netflix Out - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2015-01-21/this-is-the-chart-that-s-freaking-netflix-out <comment><USER2> I tried to watch Star Wars V yesterday. On Netflix? Nope. On Hulu? Nope. On Amazon Prime? Nope. Amazon Instant? Nope. On Vudu? Nope.

I could have upgraded my Netflix subscription, and had the DVD shipped to me in 4 days. Except, I don't own a DVD player.

I could buy the blueray from Amazon. Except, I don't own a blueray player.

</comment><comment><USER3> Netflix is a set in the right direction for keeping pirating down, but the fact that some content is available in another country is still to restrictive.</comment>


The Rise and Fall of Pret a Manger - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.co.uk/article/pret-barista-subscription-future <comment><USER3> I used to work at the Pret during my student years. All employees, we were very puzzled by why Pret is so popular and why are they willing to pay so much for the food. Today with a better-paid job, when in the centre and need to get a quick snack, Pret is often my choice. End of the day they have good food and offer good service. You hear many stories about people who used to work for McD and they say they will never eat there again. I can confidently say that at Pret, I did not see any red flags that would make me not eat there.

I wonder how the subscription idea will work for them. Pret is a sandwich shop, but most of the profit comes from coffee. When I used to work there, the price of a coffee was £2, and the cost was £0.20. I guess they expect most people to not max out on the offer, which is probably a reasonable assumption.

At the time, we were told the reason Pret does not offer free coffee after N transactions is because they want to make a customer feel special when they get free coffee. That's why all employees are allowed to give free coffee to anyone at their discretion, just not too many :) Sounds like it is about to change.

<comment><USER4> > All employees, we were very puzzled by why Pret is so popular and why are > they willing to pay so much for the food.

What's was puzzling about it? They're reasonably nice and fresh sandwiches in a nice room for not a lot of money. And as you knew yourself it seems clean too.

<comment><USER5> Now that I'm a senior software developer, I earn enough that I don't need to care how much food like this costs.

When I was a student, during term time (rather than the summer holidays when I had a job and lived with my parents), I made a game out of spending as little as possible on food. My record was 50p per day sustained over an entire term in 2004 (adjusted for inflation, that's about £1 per day today).

Accounting for disposable income rather than gross income, being surprised that students find £4 sandwiches expensive is like being supposed that someone on €60k doesn't eat _every_ lunch in €100-a-head restaurants. (Those sorts of restaurants are still "fancy special occasions only" for me).

<comment><USER4> But presumably these people are aware that there are people who aren't living on a pound a day. They can't be genuinely surprised that most people out there can afford a couple of pounds for lunch? They'd have to be ignorant of the basic economic state of the nation to be surprised by this.

<comment><USER6> I don't know: as a reasonably well paid software developer I still find the amount people are prepared to pay for lunch surprising. As the article mentions, once you buy coffee+sandwich+pastry+fruit you can easily be over £10, which is something like the price of a new Macbook every year?

<comment><USER7> Well my rationale is a little different. I tend to buy lunch every day because I like fresh/hot food, I like variety and I like putting money into the local economy (many lower income folks depend on their food service salaries). And I enjoy doing other things with my leisure time than prepping meals.

Nothing wrong with prepping food on the weekends — many find it therapeutic while others do it out of financial need or for dietary reasons - but I personally wouldn't do it to save a few bucks. I was a poor student for many years, and I've had to do it out of need, but I'm glad to be able to live differently now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> As an American, I've always been so confused by Pret's sandwiches. Specifically, how they're like 95% bread.

Seriously. You get their "famous ham and cheese" and it's a mini baguette with like a _single_ layer of ham and cheese. Like the ham and cheese is a condiment, rather than filling.

It's a stretch to call what they sell "sandwiches". It's closer to just flavored bread. And remember -- it's not just sugar that increases the risk for diabetes, but massive amounts of processed carbs, exactly like Pret.

I'll take my corner deli please, where a sandwich is more like a balanced meal: an actual full serving of protein inside, with lots of tomatoes, peppers and lettuce too.

<comment><USER9> Sandwiches in the UK are a scandal. Pret got huge in part because their sandwiches we so much _better_ than the other options. Imagine that!

When Pret launched, your options were a packet sandwich from Boots or something, which would be stale sliced bread with a single layer of tasteless waxy cheese, or something from a sandwich shop, where the choices are (1) tuna mayonnaise that has been there since yesterday (2) a cheese bun wrapped in cling film and kept in a fridge (3) a (one piece of incinerated) bacon, (limp) lettuce, and (tasteless, but mercifully thinly sliced) tomato.

Things are a bit better now, but to be honest, still terrible. You can wander around New York or Madrid and find a random sandwich place on a street corner that would be in the top 10 in London.

My theory is that this a manifestation of a broader cultural weakness of (most) British people, which is that they can't imagine that a better world is possible. Nobody looks at that "famous ham and cheese" and thinks, "okay, but what if there were five slices of each of those, and the bread tasted of something, and there was lashings of a delicious wholegrain mustard dressing?". Because they don't imagine it, they don't demand it, and Pret keeps on churning out abysmal lunches.

<comment><USER10> I'm not sure I agree with this AT ALL. I've spent most of my adult life split between New York (5+ years), California (5+ years), and also Berlin and Paris for a few years. I'm originally British and live in London now. I've eaten sandwiches in all of these countries (obviously).

Pret's sandwiches hold up to any sandwiches I've had in any of those countries. I've had the occasional better sandwich (especially in Paris), but I would take Pret's sandwiches over most of the crap sandwiches I ate in New York. New York sandwiches tend to assume that packing in TONS of shit quality meat makes the sandwich better. I don't actual like to eat through an inch of American-quality processed meat to mask the fact that the bread is crap.

French style sandwiches have less total filling but the filling itself is high quality and tasty, including the butter. Also the bread tends to be extremely delicious by itself.

The only sandwiches I would get in New York are freshly made bagels from the better bagel places in Brooklyn. However, this is comparing apples to oranges because this whole discussion is about pre-made sandwiches which you get off a shelf and go, not freshly made sandwiches.

<comment><USER11> Pret sandwiches are airport food, it's incoherent to suggest they're comparable to the sandwich you can get in from bodega deli counter in New York.

<comment><USER10> Dude those bodega deli sandwiches in NYC are mostly shit. Cheap bagel, cheap bread, cheap meat. The only good thing is the "value for money" since you get basically an inch of meat, but the meat is the cheapest bottom of the shelf quality meat you can buy.

Trust me, I spent years getting those bodega sandwiches in New York and sure, when you're drunk they seem good, but it's not quality fare by any stretch of the imagination.

<comment><USER11> You and I have completely different perceptions of reality.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> My guess from chatting to some of the people in the stores is there's gonna be a bloodbath. Your average food shop is running on what kind of margin? Maybe 20% at best, 15% more commonly?

I chatted with a guy who says his business is down 90%. The guy at Subway said something similar. Before the apocalypse, the business made sense because of the sheer number of people walking by. You could pay for the food, the labour, and the landlord, reliably, because there are so many jobs based in central London.

Now that WFH has been "discovered" it's doubtful. I mean if everyone works from home just one day a week, that's 20% fewer sandwiches they will need to buy.

<comment><USER13> _Now that WFH has been "discovered" it's doubtful. I mean if everyone works from home just one day a week, that's 20% fewer sandwiches they will need to buy._

I'm not so sure. Just because you're working from home, that doesn't mean you want to spend a significant amount of time shopping for and preparing lots of different things for your lunches. If you were OK with that, you could easily have taken a packed lunch to work before and probably saved quite a bit of money, but the existence of the sandwich shop as a concept suggests that plenty of people prefer the convenience and variety they offer.

What I _do_ expect to see now is a rebalancing of where these places are found. Not so long ago, we moved from a busy area of Cambridge (UK) to a village a few miles outside the city. Life is different here, but better in most ways. We don't have a Pret sandwich place or a Wetherspoons pub here. We do have a couple of local cafés and a baker, though, and several other pubs. We also get something I had only noticed in passing while living in the city, which is the food trucks that travel around and set up in a different spot each evening. Each truck typically has its own speciality cuisine and they're great if you want something interesting for dinner.

As far as I can tell, these are all independent small businesses, often run by the owners. We were worried for them during the months when almost everything was closed down because of the virus, but fortunately they made it through and now they seem to be thriving, presumably because they're well placed to serve a suddenly-larger local market.

I have nothing against Pret. I've eaten there many times when I've been travelling for work or shopping for a while in a big place. But _almost everything_ is better about those local businesses I mentioned. If the strange circumstances this year cause a permanent change in our lifestyles and if that makes local catering more viable at the expense of the big convenience chains aimed at a commuting workforce, I find it hard to see a downside, at least in the long term after a possibly disruptive period of change. The trade and jobs will probably still be there, just in smaller businesses serving their own communities.

<comment><USER12> Well you're certainly right that the economy will move. If it wasn't for the virus, I would have done even more business at one of the village pubs around here. I can see more than a few people just bringing their laptops to lunch, your local gastropub is nicer than Starbucks.

The food trucks thing makes sense. I've also spoken to some people who run that type of business, and they probably have the best outcome of all the food businesses.

Several of them do this thing where they will book a popular spot in town centre on certain days, then the commuter belt on the weekends. They are of course not bound by long term rental contracts, so it's easy for them to simply not book the expensive now-empty locations on their apps. They also seem to sell out wherever they go (great inventory management), so they can simply adjust their locations.

Agree almost everything about the family owned experience is better. I'm not sure it will be so easy for Pret/etc to move out to the suburbs. Name recognition is all they bring, nobody thinks a Pret sandwich is particularly good. There's also more options for people who are at home: you can cook, you can meet someone for a proper lunch at a pub, you've got the food trucks, the supermarket also sells sandwiches and you might go there anyway, and you've got farm delivery. Pret might be worse off but the rest of us are better off.

<comment><USER13> _The food trucks thing makes sense. I 've also spoken to some people who run that type of business, and they probably have the best outcome of all the food businesses._

That makes sense. Out here in the villages, having the trucks visit is mutually beneficial, too. They provide a diversity of takeaway options that wouldn't otherwise exist in the smaller communities. We provide lots of small markets who are generally welcoming when they're coming to visit, and because they move from day to day, they can be successful with a smaller menu that makes sense to offer from the truck. Everybody wins.

 _I 'm not sure it will be so easy for Pret/etc to move out to the suburbs. Name recognition is all they bring, nobody thinks a Pret sandwich is particularly good._

I doubt it will be businesses like Pret that come out well from the change in lifestyle, assuming it does happen as we're imagining here. The brand represents a safe bet when you're visiting somewhere unfamiliar, and that probably has a lot of value. But if many of us are staying closer to home, we'll probably get to know our local places pretty quickly anyway, and then that name recognition for the big brands and their franchises just isn't that important any more. As you say, the likes of Pret might be worse off, but the rest of us will probably be better off.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> American here (work in downtown Chicago), I used to get Pret several times a week as one of their stores was right next door to my office. They have delicious sandwiches, bakery items, and fruit cups, but it's very expensive - a croissant and a breakfast sandwich ran close to $10.

It's a great place if you want to eat healthy and have a short lunch time, but there are better options to deliver from if you're WFH.

<comment><USER15> I'll miss them. (If you're not aware, Pret permanently closed all its Chicago locations except UChicago last month: [https://chicago.eater.com/2020/8/24/21396276/pret-a- manger-s...](https://chicago.eater.com/2020/8/24/21396276/pret-a-manger- sandwich-grab-and-go-chain-closed-chicago-pandemic-dandds-place-doughnuts- fundraiser))

I just hope Chicgao's own euro-style sandwich chain Hannah's Bretzel survives.

<comment><USER16> Hannah's is even more expensive

<comment><USER17> but tastes better per dollar

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I've had pret in London on a brief visit. I had the Peking duck wrap. It was delicious and I had it as often as I could during that trip.

I came back to nyc with a healthy respect for pret and often ate from there at my last job. I will miss it, personally speaking, but I understand when others see it as unworthy of eating.

That is why a market with variety is so important, different tastes are served by those who serve them best.

</comment><comment><USER19> Pret and Itsu (same founders) have been my default shops for many years because you simply don't have to think, walking in and out in under 2 minutes is absolutely to be expected, and if you're a bit autistic and enjoy routine, can have precisely the same choc bar + coffee + salad + sandwich with identical consistency on every single visit

Their food is hardly amazing, but it is wonderfully consistent. Truly hope they survive and flourish once more, London simply would not be the same without them

<comment><USER20> Dominic Raab (currently the UK's foreign secretary) is (in)famous for having the same Pret meal for lunch every (working) day: a chicken caesar and bacon baguette, with a pot of fruit and the same smoothie.

[https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/apr/26/is- it-w...](https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/apr/26/is-it-weird-to- eat-the-same-sandwich-for-lunch-every-day)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> If you like this subject, you may like the Company Man on YouTube.

Specifically, they have a playlist for "Company declines" on YouTube: [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9_9_unNR_e7MU1-fJy9B...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9_9_unNR_e7MU1-fJy9B3GFgFkNojs13)

Covers: Kmart, Blockbuster, RadioShack, Toys R Us, Pan Am, Kodak, Sear, Payless, Hostess, Nokia, Quiznos

<comment><USER22> Why does the guy who makes those half-laugh at every other sentence of his own script?

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I saw these all over New York in Christmas 2019. Ended up grabbing a bite to eat and was pretty impressed with the food. Definitely fills a market gap for fast, small, semi-healthy food. No oversized combo meals there.

</comment><comment><USER24> I can honestly say that, aside from "good pubs", Pret a Manger is the thing I miss most having moved from London to San Francisco. There's just nothing like it for quick, easy, good coffee-and-premade-food (or I just haven't found it - in which case, please consider this a masterful invocation of Cunningham's Law).

<comment><USER25> I think SF is more of a burrito and onigiri type of town. Some of my favorite grab and go spots are Asian grocery stores.

<comment><USER26> Burritos make an excellent substitute for Döner.

Onigiri look like what happens to picnic loaves when they reach islands at the other end of eurasia?

<comment><USER27> I think of onigiri as a Japanese variant of the Cornish Pasty. I imagine it does have similar roots: making an edible wrapper for food that preserves it until lunch.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Pret a Manger

1) Amazing food

2) Very nicely set up

3) Just read the blogs etc. that London women write about Pret a Manger. In their minds it's the kind of place where they can get good food and also find 'the man of their dreams'

4) very little real competition

5) most people have a decent amount of disposable income. You can eat utter rubbish at a fast food joint, or you can terrible tasting food from a convenience store, or you can eat at a good place like Pret a Manger

6) Quick

 __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __*

They do a lot of things right

If your target audience has money, then providing them a high quality service and pricing it higher is good

It's also a big help if the pricing ensures that only upwardly mobile people can afford it

Go into a fish and chips in london and you have half of East London in there, innit?

go to Pret a Manger and it's people you wouldn't mind having a pint at the pub with

<comment><USER29> 1) matter of taste I would say; I find it quite horrible. Miles removed from something like Le Pain Quotidien, but yeah matter of taste. When working for a client in London I would rather skip lunch vs eat the plastic Pret serves. Or, you know, actually go to the pub and have a pint.

<comment><USER4> > matter of taste I would say; I find it quite horrible. Miles removed from > something like Le Pain Quotidien, but yeah matter of taste. When working for > a client in London I would rather skip lunch vs eat the plastic Pret serves.

It's just bread, salad, vegetables, meat, butter, prepared conventionally.

You're talking about it like it's some kind of synthetic replacement? It's just normal fresh ingredients. I'm not sure it's possible for them to be doing it so bad as to justify your reaction.

<comment><USER29> I'm talking about that it all taste horrible and fake to me. I know they say it's handmade and fresh but all I had (in center of London and on Gatwick airport) tasted tired and artificial and it being wrapped in tons of plastic does not help. This compared to other places (around the corner usually), where it's freshly prepared (so the baguette or sandwich cut and your toppings added, not premade) in front of you and put in a paper bag or in nothing if you eat it straight away. If you put the condiments on the sandwich and wrap it and put it in a cooler (like Pret does), the moist will make it just soggy crap.

Even my local supermarket bakes baguettes all day long instead of 'driving them in' in the morning and being 'maximally 1 day old' according to Pret (which is contested all over the web but let's say 1 day old max is true); 10+ hours is _far_ too old for bread with toppings wrapped in plastic), IMHO. I understand this should be much cheaper to run, but, for instance, my supermarket is cheaper still and nicer, so the cheap (looking, feeling, tasting) factor of premaking everything does not reflect in the prices.

Which is, again, the matter of taste; some people like those soggy things. Maybe you do too or you have a different experience because you went to a US one or one that has different facilities (maybe in other countries they are better; I cannot believe French or Belgian people would eat this quality food while surrounded by freshness)? I went more than once to different ones and it was all equally bad. Especially when you are in London, there are far more superior places around every corner (even at the airport; Jamie's / Wagamama are next door, why would you ever...). I just rather skip a meal than eat a bad one, which is fine I think.

Even most of the images make me cringe [0]. And most of these images are pro images and promotion images; the soggy gunk in my hands didn't look this 'nice'. This for instance [1] would be a reason to go; however, they pulled it because this pic is not real; the real thing was... not good, hence they pulled it (ofcourse the bread is bad if you trying to emulate a french feel but then prepack it). While the Le Pain version [2] is always spot on; nice baguettes, consistent quality and not premade.

Disclaimer: I can only speak for the London Prets as I worked close to one (at a bank) there and went a few times with my colleagues until deciding it was too horrible to actually eat. And only went to the HK Le Pain; I didn't know they had them in London, but seems they do (at least before Covid). If you only care about how quick it is, then, yes, it's quick; I don't however; I care about the taste and quality.

And like I said; it's taste, can't really agree/disagree (or justify as you say), just chat about it; you have a different taste than I have; that's fine; it's not worse or better or whatever; it's probably more convenient (I am very picky about what I eat; it has to be good always, which is why I cook/make most of what I eat myself for the past 20 years, including baking bread (not bread machine; by hand)) to be you, but I seek convenience/saving time in other things.

[0] [https://www.google.com/search?q=pret+manger+sandwich&tbm=isc...](https://www.google.com/search?q=pret+manger+sandwich&tbm=isch&ved=2ahUKEwiOs9e-4_TrAhXOgM4BHW2sDkoQ2-cCegQIABAA&oq=pret+manger+sandwich&gs_lcp=CgNpbWcQAzIECCMQJzIECCMQJzICCAAyBggAEAgQHjIGCAAQCBAeMgYIABAIEB4yBggAEAgQHjIGCAAQCBAeMgQIABAYUOVaWOVaYLRcaABwAHgAgAF1iAF1kgEDMC4xmAEAoAEBqgELZ3dzLXdpei1pbWfAAQE&sclient=img&ei=F75lX87LLc6Bur4P7di60AQ&bih=845&biw=1660) [1] [https://london.eater.com/2019/10/25/20931811/pret-manger- jam...](https://london.eater.com/2019/10/25/20931811/pret-manger-jambon- beurre-sandwich-discontinued) [2] [https://www.openrice.com/en/hongkong/p-le- pain-quotidien-p54...](https://www.openrice.com/en/hongkong/p-le-pain- quotidien-p5460093)

> It's just bread, salad, vegetables, meat, butter, prepared conventionally.

Some reading materials: [https://www.scmp.com/news/world/europe/article/2142241/uk- ad...](https://www.scmp.com/news/world/europe/article/2142241/uk-ad-watchdog- doesnt-swallow-pret-mangers-natural-sandwiches-made) [https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/oct/12/pret-a...](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/oct/12/pret- a-manger-marketing)

Nothing conventional about it unless you mean mass manufacturing, added chemicals and storing it for a day are conventional for a fresh made sandwich with toppings. Maybe they are in some places, not here though.

<comment><USER4> Do you realise all food contains added 'chemicals'? Adding a sprinkle of salt is 'adding a chemical'. It's not true that the food is literally 'plastic'.

<comment><USER29> I didn't say literal; it tastes (and feels, and looks) to me like it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I always thought their almond croissants were really good. It makes sense they are from London because Europeans, even the UK seem to take baked goods more seriously than the US.

<comment><USER31> Is it that surprising that Europeans have higher standards for European foods, or at least the ones local to them? Foreign imports will always be seen as specialty items that tend to be overpriced and usually few and far between. You might find good European bread options in the US if you're willing to spend far more time and money to travel to that one bakery in town that has higher standards, but most people won't bother.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Related: this is a great long read in the Guardian about the emergence of the lunch sandwich in the UK.

[https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/nov/24/how-the- sandwic...](https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/nov/24/how-the-sandwich- consumed-britain)

One nugget: the lunch sandwich was invented by M&S in the early 1990s, and it was immediately hugely popular. Yet management missed the chance to capitalise on it by opening standalone sandwich shops.

A lesson in organisational inertia, leading to a business missing a huge new opportunity right under their noses. My view: businesses should compensate for this by doubling-down _by default_ on any form of enlargement that works, deliberately _not_ considering overall strategy. The limit to consider strategic implications should be higher than it currently is.

</comment><comment><USER33> I never understood the British sandwich culture. I'm currently living and working London and the number of times people will just go for a quick sandwich, which typically means some depressing mayo filled abomination with a packet of crisps and a softdrink is depressing when there are genuinely nice places to have lunch, for not much more.

What is even more mind boggling is when you work with British people abroad at places with genuinely great food culture, like Tokyo or Singapore, and they then lament that there is 'no where around to get decent sandwich`, by which they mean their industrially produced cardboard tasting abomination, since typically you can get actually good sandwiches in those places as well as a variety of other thing.

<comment><USER34> What's to understand? I saw people at lunch eating wrapped rice things in Japan from the 7/11 which weren't that great compared to other places I could eat (especially the 'fresh' ones which were easy to find), but people still ate them.

In Singapore there were amazing food centers, and I saw Singaporeans eating at McDonald's! Why were they doing that when there were so many good options about?

I've never understood why people are so judgemental about what others eat.

<comment><USER33> Sorry, yes it came across as judgemental. I guess it's because food, especially lunch, is such an important thing in my life, pretty much the highlight of the day, it just makes me a bit sad when it's not the case for others.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Ah, if HN readers are fascinated by Pret a Manger, wait 'til they hear about J Lyons tea shops.

<comment><USER36> Don't knock Lyons, they made the world's first business computer[1] for those tea shops ...and they sell crumpets.

This would be like finding out Pret had a side gig in quantum computing ...and crumpets.

1\. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/LEO_(computer)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/LEO_\(computer\))

<comment><USER35> Yes, LEO was the point. A chain of English tea shops were bleeding-edge pioneers of computing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> We need to wait and see how things develop.

Even if people continue to WFH in the long term, I think many would still like to buy Pret a Manger (and others) products because it's not because people are at home that they necessarily want to cook their lunch every day or don't want to buy snacks.

So there may be an opportunity to adapt and perhaps we'll have Pret a Manger vans driving around in residential areas like ice cream vans do on sunny weekends.

People have been saving on this and the hugely expensive train fares (around London) and realise how much more cash they have left at the end of the month, which also explains why they don't want to go back to office. But that means that there is an opportunity for new services to make people spend that cash.

<comment><USER38> man i am so happy not to have to spend for overpriced tiny sandwiches for lunch when i can cook something at home which is both healthier and cheaper - combined with the crazy expensive transport i am saving on, i wish WFH continues as long as possible!

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Perhaps they could consider opening up in New Zealand. Plenty of folks with UK experience would jump at the chance for quality fast lunch.

<comment><USER40> I'm assuming you're from NZ? Given the greater degree of success NZ is having, are offices still filled there, with little change to pre-COVID?

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Fast eats like this are total rubbish in the UK. Don't know why. SF is so much better. Walk downstairs, grab a quick sandwich at Working Girls, or Specialty's (now dead), or Chipotle. Pret is like 7-Eleven food. Probably for the best that it dies.

Fortunately, lots of food carts out in London that'll benefit.

<comment><USER42> > Specialty's

What killed them? We lost ours just about 18 months ago.

They seemed to be in a perfect spot, too. Only restaurant in a 20 floor office building. We used them for lunch when customers came in all the time.

How could you screw that one up? Or was it that all their leases expired simultaneously and they just couldn't pay the now-expensive rent?

<comment><USER43> I was recently informed by a friend in Shanghai that a lot of KFCs have closed down, presumably due to covid-related business slowing. (There used to be about 1 KFC per city block.)

That seemed understandable, until I learned a lot of them had been replaced with other fried chicken places.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> While I agree with other posters here that Pret has overpriced mediocre food the standard coffee they offer is IMHO better than at every other similar place. That includes Starbucks, Nero, Costa etc

OTOH, I havent bought a single cup since March since Im getting my beans from Pact.

<comment><USER45> Honestly, and I appreciate that this might be controversial, but the best quality to price ratio coffee I have ever found, belongs to McDonald's - <USER2> it might not be the best, it's perfectly drinkable and it's consistent store to store, country to country. (Though, it is gross with whatever 'milk' they use - I only drink it black)

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> In Silicon valley there was a chain called Specialty's Cafe and Bakery. They shut down permanently after the pandemic but it was very common place for offices to order meals for lunch meetings. The sandwiches were bland but the cookies were always nice.

<comment><USER47> "after the pandemic"... this sounds like a message left by a time traveller.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> I always read the name as "Pet a Manager" which makes me never want to step inside one.

<comment><USER49> Luckily, the name just means "ready to eat" in French.

Perhaps they could have done like Panera and renamed themselves to something that wouldn't upset easily confused American diners?

<comment><USER50> I always misread it the same way and I'm Polish.

English misreads confuse _everyone_ , not just Brits and Americans, because for better or worse, English _is_ the international language. _Lingua franca_ , to make an obvious pun.

<comment><USER51> OT: 'Lingua franca' might be my favourite term. AIUI its a Portuguese term to refer to the 'Frankish language', the Franks being Germanic (not Gallic; somewhat akin to the situation of Angles and Britons) and somehow it's used normally to refer to English [not exclusively ofc, there are many _lingua franca_ ].

We could just say 'common tongue', but that's just not the English [Language] way - far too simple.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> I don't normally like sandwiches, but Pret a Manger has managed to make many of their sandwiches very tasty. I think they manage to balance the right flavors. Off the top of my head e.g. pickled red onions for sour, cheese/meat for salty, roasted tomatoes and chutney for sweet.

Ingredients they use aren't necessarily fancy or expensive, but they balance them appropriately and consistently.

</comment><comment><USER53> When I was in London on vacation nine years ago, Pret shops were a godsend. I think at least half of my lunches and dinners were Pret sandwiches, as I was generally running around and didn't have time or energy for much else. After they became popular in NYC a few years later, I tried them a couple of times but didn't find nearly as good a selection of healthy options as in London.

</comment><comment><USER54> I would love to see pret move out a bit further where people live and WFH, or even have a delivery truck which works the local area.

My partner and myself both WFH in Peckham, we would love to buy a couple of sandwiches and coffees from pret via an app. We get the occasional falafel wrap on just eat but there are not enough quick delivery options for healthyish lunches.

</comment><comment><USER55> The changes described in TFA seem like good ideas, but one would have expected to read of them in May rather than _September_.

</comment><comment><USER56> I'm so glad I never was a snacker - just from the cost savings alone (never mind the savings in the size of my waist too)

</comment><comment><USER57> Just in case people don't know, although the name _sounds_ French I've literally never seen one in France. I guess it's like Mexico's Taco Bell or something

<comment> barry-cotter Up until 20 years ago a foreign language was compulsory in UK secondary schools through the equivalent of US high school. The default foreign language that virtually every school would teach was French, with other languages usually being a nice to have. There'd be the occasional school that taught German but not French. Up until very recently it could be assumed that virtually every educated Briton could read French to a low level. And up until the 70s at least not being able to speak French on some level would have been vaguely embarrassing for middle class strivers. Writing things in French is not a claim to be from France, it's a class thing.

<comment><USER13> Meanwhile, elsewhere in Europe, speaking multiple languages to a useful level is completely normal. They really are much better at that than we (Brits) are, and the decision to drop the language requirements we did have in schools has always seemed like a backward step to me.

I doubt Pret's name really makes much difference to who it appeals to, though. It's a well-known brand, but if you're selling sandwiches and coffees for those prices as an everyday thing, you are clearly aiming for a certain type of customer anyway.

<comment> barry-cotter > Meanwhile, elsewhere in Europe, speaking multiple languages to a useful > level is completely normal.

If they were more useful many more Brits would speak foreign languages to a useful level. I can get by in French and German and I can read Spanish. It's been of extremely limited use to me except when I lived in Germany. English OTOH is the world's favorite second language and _the_ language of science and international business. If the British had a land border with people who spoke another language many more would speak that, and if fewer people spoke English more Britons would be motivated to learn a foreign language. Learning foreign languages is great but it's kind of a giant waste of time for most English native speakers on any monetary level. Most people never live abroad and holidays are an atrocious reason to learn a language considering the enormous time investment necessary to get to passable never mind fluent.

<comment><USER13> From a purely utilitarian point of view, I can't argue with that. If almost everyone speaks English and your only goal is to be able to communicate effectively, a native English-speaker gains little from learning any other language. I suppose the benefits I have found in studying other languages are more subjective.

For example, I enjoy travelling and exploring other cultures. If I'm going to be spending some time in someone else's community, I feel both a little vulnerable and a little… inconsiderate?… if I haven't studied at least the rudiments of their language and culture before I go. Sometimes the locals seem to appreciate it if we've made the effort as well, even if we're obviously tourists and only able to do basic things like ordering lunch or simply being polite and friendly using their language. And of course, not everyone speaks English, particularly once you move away from the main tourist areas.

Sometimes I also find it interesting to see foreign perspectives on current events. Brexit is the obvious recent example given I'm a Brit, but more generally, I think it's healthy to see different views of international relations or global issues from time to time, and sometimes also to understand the domestic politics of our geographic neighbours and our foreign partners in trade or other matters.

As a rather different point to end on, I think studying languages in school can also be helpful just for expanding the young mind. It requires being able to see things from different points of view and to think logically, and I think those are healthy characteristics to develop in general. IMHO, school at that age shouldn't just be about memorising raw facts and figures and about learning economically valuable skills.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Will Bill Gates return to try to save Microsoft? - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.computerworld.com/17250/bill_gates_will_return_to_save_microsoft

<comment><USER2> _Once upon a time, Microsoft was considered one of the innovators of the tech world_

I don't know that, that statement has ever been true. I am not a big MS basher but I would not give them the crown of a tech innovator either. What I would say is they are good at strategic acquisitions and integrating technologies into their stack. They have done very well as a vertical software provider. They historically have been good at throwing a pile of money at a segment to catch up. This strategy has not been working so well for them lately, because the battleground has changed.

</comment><comment><USER3> See [http://blogs.computerworld.com/17250/bill_gates_will_return_...](http://blogs.computerworld.com/17250/bill_gates_will_return_to_save_microsoft#comment-242165) for a bit of what looks like sarcasm, judging by the bad grammar.</comment>


Ask HN: Can "on-demand" marketplace workers be independent contractors legally? - <AUTHOR>

I've been researching the on-demand marketplaces like Uber, Lyft, DoorDash etc… All of them claim that the people preforming the service are independent contractors. As you guys may be familiar, there is a class action lawsuit against Uber and Lyft from service providers that say they were not independent contractors but they were employees. Talking to a relative who used to work at the IRS and specialized in these types of disputes has pointed out some of the key things that many business get wrong.
1. "Who is paying the service provider". If you collect the payment from the customer and the service provider gets paid by you then you could be in trouble. As far as I can tell, almost all of popular merchant accounts people are using seem to charge the customer, take their transaction fee, then "transfer" the money to the service provider. In that scenario, who paid the service provider? It feels like the business did, not the customer. The only one that I see which might work is the Paypal Adaptive Payment system as they let you direct the payment directly to the service provider and then the service provider pays the transaction fee.
2. "Are you telling them how to do the work". I know that Uber and Lyft both have rules that the drivers need (are recommended) to follow. Telling the Uber black car service to provide a water bottle etc… could be a problem. I don't think DoorDash does this but what if they wanted to their drivers to wear a DoorDash t-shirt, would that be a problem?
There are other factors that are considered but it seems like these two are the biggest.
More info on the laws: http://www.taxes.ca.gov/iCorE.bus.shtml
It is my opinion that the current laws need to adapt so that this entire new genre of business can operate legally. I'm curious what fellow entrepreneurs on this site have learned on this subject. <comment><USER2> A lot of people misuse 1099 status but I don't think Uber, et al are among them. The drivers use their own cars, choose their own hours, can work or not work as they see fit, and are not 'directed' by Uber for the most part. Most of my friends who drive Uber, anecdotally, consider themselves 'self-employed' in more than just tax status.</comment>


It won't fix this bug, but it will get rid of a lot of user-subjugating software - <AUTHOR> http://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=4008

<comment><USER2> It's worth mentioning that the OP (a friend of mine) was actually searching for a fix to this problem in the link, and stumbled across this very-helpful- yet-great answer.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ditto. My current solution is about to be, plug keyboard+mouse into laptop, and completely reverse the way I usually run synergy.

I've heard that rms was a pretty great troll, but this is the first time it's ever impacted me personally.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I don't think it's strange that rms refuses to help with bugs in packages he did not create, on a system he does not use. It would look nicer if he refrained from comments about user-subjugating software, but _then_ it would be strange and dishonest -- it would certainly not be rms's style.

<comment><USER4> He could have not replied and let someone who works directly on the project (as RMS hasn't done so significantly in a number of years) answer the question more effectively. As it is, it comes off as douchey.

(And, c'mon: dude, I'm very sorry, but the results are in, and it's Linux. Throw out those grapes, they've gone sour.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I went to see a talk by RMS at the beginning of this year and say what you will about him he really follows though on his beliefs and will not compromise on them at all in his personal/professional life.

It was really interesting to see people throw question at him and he either shot them down instantly or called them out as just trying to be a smart arse.

I really admire his perseverance as with that much passion and that strong an ideology its no wonder he succeeded to the degree that he has.</comment>


Technical Writing Courses - <AUTHOR> https://developers.google.com/tech-writing <comment><USER2> I graduated with a BA in English with a Technical Writing concentration 15 years ago. I did the job for a few years and, honestly, it sucked. At best, I was treated like an idiot by developers. Developer aloofness seemed much worse back then — they were never wrong. I was always at the end of the software development cycle, so there was never enough time budgeted to do good work. Management couldn't decide if I was a tester and a writer, so I often had to fill both roles. The rapid nature of software development today is great for users and developers, but lends itself to rapidly expiring documentation. I did the job long enough to teach myself software development. I switched over to being a software dev ten years ago and have never regretted it. Entry level pay as a software dev was better than experienced pay as a technical writer. I have been asked to write documentation, and I'm glad to do it — just not as my primary duty.

<comment><USER3> Your comment makes me think that writing primary documentation should always be the job of developers, with time dedicated for the task, and technical writers can do the polishing and categorization that will likely be necessary for it to be published. Being the only one responsible for documentation while not being a developer must be a nightmare.

<comment><USER4> Yeah in practice there's just no other way in the places I've worked. The problem I've encountered still though is getting developers to estimate sufficiently to give that time. Developers massively underestimate (myself included).

<comment><USER5> If you have waterfall, there is usually not enough time to make the product itself, and documentation is much lower priority than that.

If you have agile, in theory all developers are replaceable. In reality, a few have writing skills, but most don't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> After reading some of the comments here, I'm wondering if people are actually following the link and reviewing the content.

The two courses are well-structured. Each course has an overall outline listing each lesson, and each lesson has a table of contents to overview the topics therein. The courses highlight major key topics in technical writing and does so with easy-to-internalize (tenets). I'd have loved for my university coursework to be so clearly organized.

Some highlights include defining your audience[1], engaging your audience[2] and reviewing how short and clear sentences improve comprehension[3].

1: [https://developers.google.com/tech- writing/one/audience#defi...](https://developers.google.com/tech- writing/one/audience#define_your_audience)

2: [https://developers.google.com/tech-writing/one/active- voice](https://developers.google.com/tech-writing/one/active-voice)

3: [https://developers.google.com/tech-writing/one/short- sentenc...](https://developers.google.com/tech-writing/one/short-sentences)

<comment><USER7> Your reference 1 is a deep-link that skips the intro. The intro says:

> The course designers believe that you are probably comfortable with > mathematics. Therefore, this unit begins with an equation:

> good documentation = knowledge and skills your audience needs to do a task − > your audience's current knowledge and skills

> In other words, make sure your document provides the information your > audience needs that your audience doesn't already have. Therefore, this unit > explains how to do the following: ...

This is the kind of fluff that turns many people off. Worse, it is confusing and tries to make a formula out of a sentence. The whole thing could've been replaced with the first sentence of the 3rd paragraph I quoted.

Your reference 2 contains this gem:

> Short sentences communicate more powerfully than long sentences, and short > sentences are usually easier to understand than long sentences.

And the section title immediately after that sentence is:

> Focus each sentence on a single idea

<comment><USER8> Maybe that's the point? Education through irony?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is why "nobody reads documentation." These courses are typical tech- writer overkill, missing the forest for the trees, then getting lost in the weeds (if I may mix a few metaphors). There is too much introduction and setup, then it jumps into the nitty-gritty, but never gives the big picture.

Assuming this was written by the Google tech writers, I'm surprised at how middle-of-the-road the offering is. I kinda assumed they had an academic-like cutting-edge writing department.

To write documentation, you need 2 things: an understanding of the subject matter, and a high-level understanding of what the readers want to do. The reader doesn't want to use your API to list resources, the reader wants to give his/her users a list of resources for further operations. So you don't give a trivial example of getting the list of providers, you give an example of how to display providers by getting the list and processing the various useful fields.

It also helps if the API or UI or whatever is logical and consistent to begin with.

<comment><USER9> _These courses are typical tech-writer overkill, missing the forest for the trees, then getting lost in the weeds (if I may mix a few metaphors). There is too much introduction and setup, then it jumps into the nitty-gritty, but never gives the big picture._

The real challenge is that no one agrees what great writing really is or how to teach it. The problems are conceptual and related to the nature of writing, thinking, and communicating—all fields that are unsolved. I've taught writing in universities and written about the challenges of writing (and related grading challenges) before. [https://jakeseliger.com/2014/12/20/subjectivity- in-writing-a...](https://jakeseliger.com/2014/12/20/subjectivity-in-writing- and-evaluating-writing/)

"The big picture" is often the world itself.

<comment><USER7> I do agree that writing is a moving target. Different people learn in different ways, some people learn best from the style and content in the original submission. I've often thought that all docs should have a mirror video tutorial to give the same info for visual learners.

I disagree that the big picture is so broad. Your article about subjectivity is accurate, but it applies to the field of creative writing. For technical writing and to some extent journalism, they are almost defined by by their purpose in communicating a specific thing. That "thing" is the big picture.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The best i have seen is the economist style guide - [http://cdn.static- economist.com/sites/default/files/pdfs/sty...](http://cdn.static- economist.com/sites/default/files/pdfs/style_guide_12.pdf)

the US Army writing style guide for leadership is also pretty good - [https://www.esd.whs.mil/Portals/54/Documents/DD/iss_process/...](https://www.esd.whs.mil/Portals/54/Documents/DD/iss_process/Writing_Style_Guide.pdf)

The examples here are very very good.

</comment><comment><USER11> Good resource. One common flaw i see in many technical writings, which i missed from the course, is treating the reader as a complete puppet. As in giving copy-paste instructions on what to do, but not explaining what's happening underneath.

Better to teach a man how to fish than giving away a fish, or better condensed by Fred Brooks famous quote from Mythical Man Month: _Show me your flowcharts and conceal your tables, and I shall continue to be mystified. Show me your tables, and I won't usually need your flowcharts; they'll be obvious._

<comment><USER12> To be honest, that's a problem with a lot of in-person workshops and the like as well. There's a lot of type this, type that, run this script, etc. without enough context as to why you're doing these various steps.

<comment><USER13> Yep - so many workshops could simply be a list of steps to do X. But often times the real world isn't that simple, and then the workshops are essentially worthless. With an understanding of how something works, I can apply it to more scenarios, or modify it to fit more scenarios. This is often woefully lacking in modern training/documentation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I find writing documentation very relaxing. After a particularly busy dev cycle, it almost feels like a nice break. Maybe I should take one of these courses; I think we have more ageism in development than in technical writing (just a hunch without any evidence/citation).

</comment><comment><USER15> I'd love a technical PowerPoint course. I find writing to be pretty straightforward. But when manager is like "can you create a couple slides about...." total deer in the headlights.

<comment><USER16> This book completely changed how I give presentations.

[https://www.amazon.com/Presentation-Patterns-Techniques- Craf...](https://www.amazon.com/Presentation-Patterns-Techniques-Crafting- Presentations/dp/0321820800/ref=nodl_)

You can find it on the internet at various price points.

I even had a chance to give a technical presentation in front of the author and he said it was excellent, so apparently I internalized it's lessons.

<comment><USER17> I am a bit torn apart reading into it and watching a presentation by him. I think it might work well in some cultures and with some speakers. Being at a university seeing a lot of technical presentation by students I think he is quite heavy on presentations, which I typically always suggest to use really carefully my students and inexperienced speakers.

<comment><USER18> just "torn" not "torn apart" \-- which is quite a violent thing!

"torn" in this context means to be not decided between a couple of opinions or decisions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Teaching of _writing_ has long been mostly about teaching how to write _belle lettre_.

Some of the lessons there can also apply to technical writing, e.g., have in mind and track the reactions of the intended audience. E.g., the script writers for good movies, along with the director and actors, etc. do well having in mind, "tracking", and _bringing along_ the audience, e.g., in what appears to be relatively technical content for movie audiences, the movies _Star Wars_. So, e.g., anticipate the audience reaction enough to see that they won't get lost and give up.

But let's set aside _belle lettre_ , courses in "creative writing", etc. and move on:

It turns out there are some technical fields that have long had essentially their own _techniques_ of writing. The writing in those fields is especially good on precision. The better writing examples from those fields can serve as good examples for maybe nearly all technical writing. IMHO, from my experience, some of the best examples include:

o The original Kemeny-Kurtz documentation on their programming language Basic.

o McCracken's documentation of Fortran.

o Any of the freshman college physics books by Sears, _et al._.

o Any of the best freshman college calculus books.

o IMHO, D. Knuth's _The Art of Computer Programming_.

One way to make some progress on doing such writing is to take a college course in abstract algebra where the homework is to write proofs and where the teacher reads and corrects the _writing_ style, technique of some of the homework. For a student who was taught writing _Belle Lettre_ where often ambiguity is desired and precision is not, an abstract algebra course can be a good step forward for technical writing.

</comment><comment><USER20> From "Zen and the Art of Motorcyle Maintenance" ([https://archive.org/details/ZenAndTheArtOfMotorcycleRepair-R...](https://archive.org/details/ZenAndTheArtOfMotorcycleRepair- RobertPirsig/mode/2up))

> "But they're from the factory," John says.

> "I'm from the factory too," I say "and I know how instructions like this are > put together. You go out on the assembly line with a tape recorder and the > foreman sends you to talk to the guy he needs least, the biggest goof-off > he's got, and whatever he tells you. ..that's the instructions. The next guy > might have told you something completely different and probably better, but > he's too busy."

> They all look surprised. "I might have known," DeWeese says.

</comment><comment><USER21> I've been writing my entire life.

I've found writing in the vernacular is usually the most effective approach (speaking only for myself -YMMV).

In my opinion, I think that there are a number of "base class" rules for tech writing, but each subject domain really requires a distinct approach, as well as a clear understanding of the audience (and subject matter -but in my experience, being a good writer/teacher is more important than being a subject matter expert. The worst teachers I ever had were subject matter masters).

But this is a cool resource.

The one critical thing I find for my writing, is that the information I give be 100% correct, and the accompanying materials be absolutely polished and tested out the wazoo.

If I'm speculating or unsure, I'm careful to note that.

Mild humor helps, but I need to be extremely careful, and it's usually self- deprecating.

</comment><comment><USER22> Page layout matters, and Google's has become cluttered. For example, [https://cloud.google.com/sql/docs/postgres/private- ip](https://cloud.google.com/sql/docs/postgres/private-ip) It's so busy I've been opening the browser console to delete sections: the fixed header over 100 pixels tall, the left-column site map, the right-column page map, and the footer. This is what happens when you let Marketing design documentation.

I believe part of the problem is also the font. Roboto is okay for a user interface. For prose I prefer serif.

My favorite page layout: [http://www.linfo.org/](http://www.linfo.org/)

</comment><comment><USER23> I want something like this but for Business Architects on how to write their requirements (and conversely, how not write the requirements)

</comment><comment><USER24> I've been working on this tool for a while that makes documentation easier and faster. The main idea is to have the code itself be the driver. Would love some feedback: [https://trymaniac.com](https://trymaniac.com)

<comment><USER25> I want diagrams of my modules and how things are connected, such as one that shows "types defined in foo.py are used in bar.py". While you're generating docs from code, might think about diagrams.

<comment><USER24> That's actually really dope, thanks! I bet we could do something there...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> What do you think, technical writing should be included in the daily job of engineers, or is it ok if the company is hiring people with some low technical skills/experience in favor of some target-language-Bachelor-of-Arts students to do these tasks?

<comment><USER27> I think it is an area of work that (given a large enough company) benefits from having dedicated owners. Engineers have too many other things pulling at their strings, whether it's deadlines or just code they 'rather' be working on.

Some devs will take interest to documentation but most wont. Most seem to just do a single mind-dump and call it good, no better than the college essay they got a C on. There's also real value in having someone own the organization of the writing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> The content seems good but I'm not a fan of the way the sections are laid out on the introduction page. The courses should at the very least have hyperlinks for each of the learning objectives.

<comment><USER29> I actually prefer the way it is. When there are too many links around, I tend to do some DFS-like reading and it ends up anxiety and tons of tabs. Things get worst when there're loops.</comment></comment>