SkrivML: A lightweight markup language - <AUTHOR> http://markup.skriv.org/

<comment><USER2> I've been comparing these things (ascii markups) lately, mainly because I'm writing software to support an organization with a long history using not one, not two, but three unique ascii markup conventions. Could these somehow be translated into a more or less standard one, and gain the freedom of output provided by e.g. Pandoc?

What's depressing to me -- and my depression is not alleviated by reading Skriv's syntax -- is how similar they are and yet how none of them deal with the many kinds of typographical formatting that are routine in printed books.

For one simple example: Poetry. (Case in point: [1]) People who publish poetry expect as a matter of course to control their line-breaks and their indention in support of their meaning, and to center lines of text. Only AsciiDoc ("verse" block) and Skriv support literal line breaks (outside of monospaced code blocks). I don't know of any of the ascii markups that support centered text, or controlled indents.

Another simple example: Drama, play scripts. (e.g., [2]). Act and Scene titles are centered; character names are often small-cap (try commanding small-cap in any ascii markup); in older published plays it is common to have entrances and exits right-aligned: "[Exeunt" in the right margin. Both verse and drama (not to mention legal documents) often have reference line-numbers in the right margin, on the same line as left-justified text.

Quoted correspondence often has dates and signatures right-aligned. AsciiDoc supports right-alignment only in the single case of the citation of a block quote. I don't know any other text markup that allows even that much.

In short, the couple of dozen extant markups are solving the same limited range of problems over and over for no better reason than general NIH, while ignoring the much wider gamut of published formatting.

[1] [http://carl-sandburg.com/chicago.htm](http://carl- sandburg.com/chicago.htm)

[2] [http://www.shakespeare- online.com/plays/macbeth_3_1.html](http://www.shakespeare- online.com/plays/macbeth_3_1.html) and this is a wretchedly ugly example but look at the source! It's a TABLE!

<comment><USER3> I quite like the generality of scribble syntax [1]. It is in the spirit of LaTeX, but is programmable in racket/scheme. The downside is that it is implemented pretty much for the purpose of writing racket documentation, with little/no support for other programming languages or output formats.

[1] [http://docs.racket-lang.org/scribble/](http://docs.racket- lang.org/scribble/)

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the pointer. I find the documentation pretty resistant to a quick lookover, read "The Scribble Syntax at a Glance" and be afraid.

However I see that it does support centered text, intentional line breaks and -- unique among LMLs to my knowledge -- right-aligned text spans ("margin- note" command) which could be used for poetry line numbers, stage directions, and sidenotes.

Now... if there was a Pandoc reader for it...

<comment><USER3> The thing is a scribble doc is not markup. It is code. (This is one of the beautiful things about lisp.) So if you want the "syntax", all you need to know is this -

        @animal[bowow "meow"]{Various sounds animals make}

translates to

        (animal bowow "meow" "Various sounds animals make")

The rest are just libraries of code that render these resultant data structures in various ways. When writing documents, this programmability is very powerful.

If you don't need too much programmability, but would occasionally like to have it, "org mode" on emacs is fantastic. (I wrote my Ph.D. thesis in org mode and I also use it to track tasks.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Criticism:

\- I dislike the fact that line returns are kept inside paragraph. I use automatic linewrapping in my text editor to produce neat markdown files that look clean both when rendered and when viewed raw.

\- I would like to have the option of displaying vanilla smileys :)

Otherwise quite nice!

<comment><USER5> I agree with you on the line returns. It really annoys me when it's not rendered like a WYSIWYG. Especially when I'm quoting or writing something like a poem.

Nevertheless, I quite like how CSS classes fit nicely into the syntax

<comment><USER6> If I read it right, you're actually _disagreeing_.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I like how images are written:

{{/path/to/img.png}} vs. Markdown's ![](/path/to/img.png)

List syntax is nice and reminds me of wiki syntax. I've always favored that style over Markdown's list syntax. Actually a lot of it reminds of wiki syntax. Tables also looks like a breeze to remember how to write.

I like this.

<comment><USER8> Can we just make a new version of Markdown that supports that and Skriv | [http://skriv.org](http://skriv.org) for links?

<comment><USER7> Skrivdown? :)

You'd have to switch to Skriv's syntax for headers since Markdown's headers and Skriv's ordered lists use the same syntax. Another thing I'd change about Markdown would be to remove multiple syntaxes for writing the same element. For example, with Markdown you can use *, -, or + to create unordered lists. That might exist for some reason I don't know about but I don't like it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Happy to read there is some interest in "Markdown 2.0" or "lightweight markup, next generation". With adoption by big outlets like Github and StackOverflow, and dozens of static site generators built on plain text source files, marked- up in Markdown syntax, Markdown is becoming a _de facto_ general-purpose document _editing_ and _storage_ standard. With the advent of fast client-side parsers, soon it might even substitute html as a document _exchange format_, too (at least for some use cases).

But there is no official spec, development of the syntax grew stale (from the start, thanks to Gruber)¹, and hence the language heavily suffers from fragmentation²: people want to be able to do more with light-markup, so they build extensions, or fork the language altogether. The troubles with Markdown are discussed in various³ places⁴, John MacFarlane built a formalized comparison tool⁵, but as of yet, there is no joint effort to cooperate on a lightweight markup standard.

There are a few interesting projects that dare to forsake Markdown and try their luck: Fountain.io⁶ (a domain specific light markup language for playwriting), SkrivML⁷, Strictdown⁸, and z.m.l.⁹

Then there are, of course, the many predecessors of Markdown, which prove that Markdown (or light-markup in general) is not the imprescriptible privilege of its self-proclaimed benevolent dictator for life, and some of which are still widely used in various communities: Setext (1992), AFT (1999), Grutatxt (2000), AsciiDoc (2002), MediaWiki (2002), reStructuredText (2002), Org-mode (2003), Textile (2004)…

We need an extensible lightweight markup language of sorts, a "lxml", if you will, and we need to work on it together.

If we want ever to succeed in establishing a true standard light markup language, the big challenge is not only to focus on extensibility, but also to reconcile the various existing and future syntaxes, and take care of backward- compatibility (with plain Markdown), as much as possible. As mentioned by quite a few commenters here and elsewhere, weeding out conflicting syntax should be the first thing to do.

For starters, I begun a concordance¹⁰, listing the various delimiters and patterns used by competing lightweight markup languages. (Very rough draft, though, and need to think about a way to formalize the data, to make more accurate comparisons, and consequently, better decisions on the syntax of a future xlml.)

¹ [http://blog.codinghorror.com/the-future-of- markdown/](http://blog.codinghorror.com/the-future-of-markdown/) ² [https://github.com/rhythmus/markdown- resources](https://github.com/rhythmus/markdown-resources) ³ [http://www.wilfred.me.uk/blog/2012/07/30/why-markdown-is- not...](http://www.wilfred.me.uk/blog/2012/07/30/why-markdown-is-not-my- favourite-language/) ⁴ [https://medium.com/the-future-of- publishing/495ccfe24a52](https://medium.com/the-future-of- publishing/495ccfe24a52) ⁵ [http://johnmacfarlane.net/babelmark2/faq.html#what-are- some-...](http://johnmacfarlane.net/babelmark2/faq.html#what-are-some-big- questions-that-the-markdown-spec-does-not-answer) ⁶ [http://fountain.io](http://fountain.io) ⁷ SkrivML ⁸ [https://github.com/jakwings/strictdown](https://github.com/jakwings/strictdown) ⁹ [http://www.z-m-l.com](http://www.z-m-l.com) ¹⁰ [https://github.com/rhythmus/markdown- resources/blob/master/l...](https://github.com/rhythmus/markdown- resources/blob/master/lightweightMarkupSyntaxComparison.tsv)

<comment><USER9> The intransigence that Gruber gets so much flack for is largely limited to asking people that make a text processor incompatible with Markdown to not use the name.

I haven't researched carefully to figure out if he coined the word, but if he did his request is pretty reasonable.

<comment><AUTHOR> Fair enough. But then again too bad Gruber gets all the credit (and consequently the privilege of nomenclature), while the late prodigy Aaron Swartz at least was his underacknowledged co-inventor.¹ I don't think Swartz would have agreed on such a lock-in.

¹ [http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/001189](http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/001189)

<comment><USER9> He is acknowledged here:

[http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/](http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/)

You have to scroll down to the heading that says "Acknowledgements".

Setting aside that your statement is not especially precise, the style of your argument here is pretty gross. If you want to find something a dead person actually said on a matter that is one thing; arguing that they surely would have agreed with your position is quite another.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I hate '' for italic. It is strange from semantic point of view (I definitely don't agree with the "its syntax is intuitive" claim), and it would force me to change the keyboard when I'm writing in Russian.

<comment><USER11> Doesn't Russian use angular quotes or double quotes where angular ones are not available?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This seems like a more verbose version of Markdown :\ Maybe the only advantage is displaying code, but everything else is either equal to or more verbose than Markdown.

EDIT: I do like the link syntax, though.

<comment><USER13> Yeah, that was basically my reaction as well. They tweaked Markdown a bit, changed a few things around, but it's pretty much identical to Markdown. I don't really see any big wins here. This XKCD seems somewhat appropriate: [http://xkcd.com/927/](http://xkcd.com/927/)

<comment><USER14> Is it sad that I recognized the comic from the context and the number in the link?

<comment><USER15> Sad but not very surprising: [https://hn.algolia.com/?q=http%3A%2F%2Fxkcd.com%2F927#!/comm...](https://hn.algolia.com/?q=http%3A%2F%2Fxkcd.com%2F927#!/comment/forever/0/http%3A%2F%2Fxkcd.com%2F927)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It looks nice, but do we _really_ need another one of these?

<comment><USER17> Better than just seeing Markdown/reStructuredText/AsciiDoc/Textile/... there. I'm designing a new markup language, too. Happy to draw inspiration from Skriv.

Not all markup languages are good for blogging, especially for different spoken languages. At least, both Markdown and reStructuredText are not very good for Chinese writings.

<comment><USER18> What problems do Chinese writers run into when using Markdown or reStructuredText?

<comment><USER17> Most inline markups require spaces surrounding the text, and Chinese do not need spaces between words. Although reST provide "\ " to remove the spaces from output, it makes the document ugly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I jump between Creole and Markdown and this seems like an interesting mashup. Though I don't like all the choices made. I have been thinking lately about just combining Creole and Markdown into one master markup lang.

The one thing I really like in Skriv is the ability to assign CSS classes to paragraphs or divs. That is something I have wanted in an abbreviated form for a while. I wrote an extension to do this in my own Creole parser but most of the time I am using someone else's or writing in Markdown so I can't use the syntax.

</comment><comment><USER20> _These markups can affect full-words only, they are not effective if they are written in the middle of a word._

What if you want to emphasise parts of a word? I know I've had to do that at least a few times. This seems like one of those things that felt like a good idea and does work most of the time, but then _really_ infuriates you when you find out that it's _virtually impossible_ to do it.

<comment><USER2> As in documenting an API or command syntax, when you want to go from mono (literal) to italic (variable input) with no break. In Skriv it would be ##--input=##''filename'' except that (a) Skriv requires a space and even if it didn't, (b) the -- would be an unbalanced strikeout code.

Not to worry, reST doesn't do it either.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I've yet to find any markup language that has the power and flexibility of org-mode.

It makes for exceptionally tidy source files, with neat folding of headers. Tables are a breeze. You can easily run the code in your code blocks. Adding css styling is a piece of cake.

All this an only a couple of hundred key combinations to memorise.

<comment><USER2> Thanks for pointing out YALML (lightweight markup language) for my collection! With regard to my comment below, I note that Org does support a Centered mode for paragraphs and a Verse mode in which line breaks are preserved, although it does not appear to allow control of the indention of those lines.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Despite the negative tone here, I feel like the direction they're working towards.

One possible pitfall in syntax, though: two dashes within one sentence would be translated to strikeouts -- which I could only come up with context- sensitive fixes -- which would violate the core principle (of removing ambiguity).

</comment><comment> vim-guru Why make yet another markup language without any real improvements to the widely adopted markdown? Curly-braces are usually used to bind data, so you actually loose a great advantage that markdown has with it's syntax. Let's improve markdown instead

</comment><comment><USER23> There's also an alternative lightweight implementation: [http://bohwaz.net/p/SkrivLite-a-lightweight- implementation-o...](http://bohwaz.net/p/SkrivLite-a-lightweight- implementation-of-SkrivML)

</comment><comment><USER24> I would change ''italic'' to ___italic_ __. It is easier to remember how to create a bold and an italic word if you only have to remember one sign. Besides the ' sign is not very common in some countries.

</comment><comment><USER25> Oh no! Please not _another_ lightweight markup language.

This increased diversity will only push Markdown's dominance and not help to get better alternatives _at all!_

<comment><USER17> That is not just for Markdown at all, and Markdown is not good for everyone at all. Why so serious?

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I like the syntax. However, how many markup/markdown languages do we need?</comment>


Web frameworks benchmarks (round 13) - <AUTHOR> https://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/#section=data-r13&hw=ph&test=fortune <comment><USER2> I expected better results from asp.net core. Performance was one of their main objectvies. It is for sure tremendes improvement over previous asp.net frameworks, but I kind of hoped that I will see them on top 10 or so...</comment>


The European Startup Scene is Still Broken - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@faloppad/the-european-startup-scene-is-still-broken-f56be481993d <comment><USER2> > Funding gaps remain larger in Europe than in the US.

Well, of course. Engineers in the US take home five-figure sums each month, which explains why there are so many startups largely funded by ex- Google/Apple/MS/FB employees.

In Germany, wages are so low, and taxes and rent so high, that you have to be either fucking good or fucking rich via inheritance to save enough money for your own startup.

Not to mention that failure is expected and financed in the US startup culture, whereas in Europe you can't even get a small loan without putting your car/house/... as collateral, and you will get shunned for failure. Therefore, many capable people (have to) choose not to enter the start-up world.

<comment><USER3> Thats not really the problem though startups aren't paying engineers a lot in the beginning so thats comparing two different things.

While it's true that the funding gaps remail larger in Europe than in the US it's still the wrong question to ask.

The real question is why the funding gaps are there to begin with. I would claim 4 major reasons.

1\. Disconnect between the needs of the European politicians and those of European startups.

2\. Europe has no Silicon Valley or New York.

3\. European startups ask for permission instead of forgiveness.

4\. The EU seems to be fixing the problems that the startups could fix.

In other words a lot of the problems in Europe is the EU.

Go back 40-50 years and plenty of fortune 500 companies were European.

I am exploring it in more depth in this essay:

[http://000fff.org/why-is-europe-failing-to-create-more- unico...](http://000fff.org/why-is-europe-failing-to-create-more-unicorns/)

<comment><USER4> >The EU seems to be fixing the problems that the startups could fix.

and then

>In other words a lot of the problems in Europe is the EU.

Are the EU fixing or creating problems?

EDIT: okay, I'm reading the essay. Maybe they are creating problems for the creation of startups, but solving problems for the population.

<comment><USER3> It's a problem that the EU (read politicians) are fixing a lot of the problems that startups could have been fixing instead.

I.e. it's a bad idea that the EU is not trusting private enterprise more than they are.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm french, and I even wonder if kickstarter is a decent opportunity for me. I'm not sure it is in term of finance law.

France is pretty protectionist, and labor laws are also pretty tight.

Maybe my personality is an issue, and maybe it's because I don't have a degree nor experience, but as someone who is able to read and write C, C++, java, PHP, when I hear that IT is a booming sector across the globe, I just can't believe I'm still unemployed.

If you failed at school but went to programming classes and like programming, if you're not part of the top tier class of people who went to an engineering school, or managed to get through university, you're not employable.

It's sad because I always hear that you don't need a degree to have a programming job. Well in france it's not really the case.

Recently I even failed some government funded 1 year school program, where people learned programming (most of them never wrote code). I learned nothing, and the jury was patronizing and condescending for some reason which made me fail and not have this degree.

Meanwhile, the pharma company I went to, which is doing molecular research for cancer treatments, was pretty happy about my intership.

I guess something might be wrong with my attitude too, but I'm sure I know why countries like America have more success with IT, it is because they are liberal, and france is clearly not. I like france, but IT here is not so awesome.

<comment><USER6> Speaking as an employer (not in France though). What do you have to show me that you are capable? I place next to no value on formal education. But it will get you a foot in the door if you have no actual work experience. It at least tells me you can commit to something, even if it sucks (like most formal CS education).

What I do care about is what you've worked on. If you have any personal projects to show me.

No education, no projects that you have worked on tells me nothing about you. If there are 10 candidates waiting, you have very little chance of being picked.

Someone with a history of open source contributions would be at the top of our candidate list.

<comment><USER5> I have some downloadable exes on my website [http://zonas.free.fr](http://zonas.free.fr)

Also bitbucket.com/jokoon/eio and github.com/jokoon/eio

Not really bright, but when I hear the "booming IT sector", I'm a little skeptic.

<comment><USER6> Please keep in mind I'm just trying to give you advice on how other employers might view you.

Your github/bitbucket just looks like bunch purposeless code. I presume it's your game?

If I were to make a judgement from looking at that. My impression would be that you might have a hard time being motivated for the work I would give you. You were not motivated enough to finish school. In your spare time you're working on a game, which is something beginners tend to start with.

There are a bunch of projects that are highly active and welcoming to contributors. Projects like servo or atom.io

Also try to keep your reddit and similar profiles private. You can give an employer too much of an intimate view.

<comment><USER5> > If I were to make a judgement from looking at that.

I'm reading anyway

> You were not motivated enough to finish school.

You might not know what the school system is like in france, and you don't know me either, so don't jump to conclusions.

> on how other employers might view you

You seem like a PR person, and I don't really like it. I has its importance, but I don't think it matters to me or should matter to my existence.

> You can give an employer too much of an intimate view

I got nothing to hide, I like to be honest. Points up for creepiness. If an employer wants to be politically correct, it's his problem.

<comment><USER7> I read your parent posts and nodded in agreement, wondering if maybe I should ask for your resume. IT around here really has a lack of smart people that can keep things running. Then I read this. Whoops, dodged that one.

<comment><USER5> So what I should change my mind about my opinions? I could say the same about your comment "Phew, dodged that one".

If you really think you're going to know me by reading my internet comments, well, that might be your problem too.

<comment><USER7> No, you should not change your mind on your opinions. You should however keep your opinions to yourself or give up on "l'ascenceur social". Pick one.

(And also, read between the lines. People are dropping heavy hints in their responses to you.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The title of this article is an understatement. I'm a startup founder in Europe and we've been treading water for a year. How is a company supposed to get off the ground if nobody has a hand that is able to be reached out to any of us.

The government made it easier for startups to get loans from the bank. But they did it the same disastrous way as the housing market crash started. You can get a loan, the government takes a lot of the risk away from the bank. But you still have to pay it all back. All that means is that people are getting loans who shouldn't.

There isn't even a path through immigration. You're much more likely to be able to stay in Europe if you get a job. Otherwise they just won't let you in.

There aren't any investors here. When we look for investors, we have paid for tickets into large conferences and met leaders, owners, of Venture Capital organisations. There is a point where commonly they tell you after jumping through their hoops they do not have money. They say, we can give you 20k€ for x amount of equity where x is a two digit number. Everywhere you turn there are vultures, preying on startups. I get grilled by people promising to hook me up with investors all the time. People wearing business suits and trolling tech meetups only 5k€ for their help! They know people. Paid upfront.

Taxes are higher if you own your own company than if you simply have a job somewhere. Every single thing works against you. If a year ago we were able to hit the market we had 0 competitors, now we have 2.

<comment><USER9> _You can get a loan, [...]. But you still have to pay it all back._

Nooooo! Really? You've got to be kidding me!

So basically you don't want to create a profitable company, but living the cool "startup life" while getting a basic income from the state?

That's... not how we usually see startups.

<comment><USER8> You missed the point. In order to explain the point I need to repeat myself, as I went out of my way to explain the point in my original post. When loans are given out to people who shouldn't be getting loans, you bankrupt more of those people than you help.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I believe London has co-opted (in the Naomi Klein sense) the US startup scene. We do all the superficial activity: incubators, pitches, hackathons, and so on, but it is driven by government initiatives and established businesses.

\- There are many copies of the US startup accelerators, but the people running them do not seem to have the same level of experience and connections as in the US.

\- Much of the activity is due to business students, both at bachelors level and MBA, who are somehow "trained" in "entrepreneurship". They "win" startup pitch competitions based on some slides and sales forecasts, then troll CS departments, alumni mailing lists and tech meetups looking for coders. I know this is an old stereotype (and that business skills are critical too) but it is very true here.

\- The government is often heavily involved. I wouldn't call myself a libertarian, but I think we would be better off without cringeworthy gov initiatives like "tech city", state-funded startups ([https://interact.innovateuk.org/](https://interact.innovateuk.org/)) and university entrepreneurship schemes that look a lot like a way to boost new grad employment figures.

It all feels like a pale imitation of the US tech industry. Obviously there is some bias in terms of the US companies we hear about, but most people are thinking very small here.

A few years ago a friend and I coded up an idea we had over a few weekends. It was more complex than a straight CRUD app and had some nice visualisations, but nothing too crazy. We met several "startup advisors" through our contacts and at meetups. Every time we finished describing our idea, people would ask us if we were having any luck "finding programmers" to implement it.

<comment><USER11> I've long considered London to be nothing more than a giant PR exercise. Of course the prime minister is an ex-PR guy, so a connection wouldn't be surprising. I'm not sure it delivers on the image it projects in any respect. Except the new trains that have started on some lines - nice to have room to breathe when you're stuck on a track waiting for a signal failure. Even the new double decker busses with the aero fronts. What's the real difference? Nothing. In fact the new appearance doesn't even last beyond the front of the bus which is what people see when it approaches - the rear of the busses is unchanged. So we don't have impressive new busses, we have busses that look, upon first glance, from a specific angle, as though they are. Everything is careful illusion. People buy into perception. Look! We have silicon roundabout! Seriously?

<comment><USER12> The problem is that even if it is a giant PR exercise, it's still sucking talent away from the Midlands and the North.

There's a somewhat large group of startups here in Birmingham and there is a significant lack of talent (unless you want cookie cutter Microsoft technology developers) and investors. I started my own company to work on a project and I'm contracting at the moment to keep myself going and I still get asked if I want to join someone's startup as their first software engineer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> My experience running 2x startups in EU is that while lower salaries (esp Dev) helps at seed stage, in addition to government schemes like SEIS, scaling at SV pace is not possible without SV money. The best product in the world still needs consistent paid PR and advertising to acquire users - even viral growth needs a great social and content team to compete with a SV counterpart. These cannot be scaled cheaply. When the 1st round of EU unicorn founders sell out and start investing - then things will get interesting. Problem is - I don't have faith in many of the EU start ups being touted as unicorns, especially when I compare them to AirBnB, Dropbox, Stripe et al.

</comment><comment><USER14> Can confirm that these are real problems (Belfast here).

I'd disagree that there's any kind of local bump among Europeans from being in Europe. More often than not, I've found that being based in Europe only serves to put people off, even at home.

I must admit that in the past I've outright skipped over new shiny apps and websites based in Europe (even if I believe in the idea) under the assumption that they'll just get crushed later by a US-based rival anyway, although I try to really give them a fair shake these days and not be an ass about it.

The funding picture here is fairly anemic too, and relies quite heavily on government support. Most European governments have some public funding allocated to building their "own Silicon Valley", but their results from allocating funding is about what you would expect from people not well versed in the industry.

I wrote about this recently as relates to losing Web Summit for silly reasons on Medium (same username). Don't want to direct link as I'm not trying to hijack the thread, people can check it out if they're interested.

Thanks for writing this.

<comment><USER15> > I must admit that in the past I've outright skipped over new shiny apps and > websites based in Europe (even if I believe in the idea) under the > assumption that they'll just get crushed later by a US-based rival anyway

And this is one of our big problems in this space.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> The problem I have with these kinds of comparisons is that they seem to compare with Silicon Valley and not European countries that overachive in terms of startup like, say, Sweden which isn't very close to SV culturally.

</comment><comment><USER17> there is no european startup scene* - if you are mark zuckerberg and building something that you intend to scale to every single person on earth, every single person you meet will look at you like you have two heads or something.

europeans write essays like tihs - [https://signalvnoise.com/posts/3972-reconsider](https://signalvnoise.com/posts/3972-reconsider)

that is literally a european essay urging you to reconsider.

* obviously they use the word, they just mean something different by it. i'm cmparing it with s.v.

<comment><USER18> I find it only positive that there's a European startup scene that tries to do things differently from Silicon Valley.

If you want to do the unicorn chasing thing, it makes sense to go to San Francisco. Places like Berlin, Madrid or Helsinki each need to have something unique to offer; there's no point in being a cheap imitation of the California dream.

<comment><USER19> Perfect. I think you nailed it. Posts claiming that European startup scene is bad is only looking for unicorn chasing. I just don't think it's a healthy, organic way of building a sustainable company.

I think more startups should stop imitating the SV culture and come up with their own way of doing business.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> >Talent is still localised. The European mobility is still low and employment laws are still strict on non-EU citizens

This may be an acceptable argument for America, but makes no sense for Europe.

I've seen great migration from high-unemployment EU places( Spain, Portugal and Italy) to UK, Germany and Switzerland.

Finding talent in EU is much easier (and cheaper) than in the U.S.

<comment><USER21> I guess the point is flow of talent from outside Europe. For example, there are significantly more good engineers from Indian, Europe and East Asia moving to Silicon Valley.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> What are the factors stopping remote working in start-ups? It seems easier to address these than to force your hires to all move to a single place.

</comment><comment><USER23> It's not like SV doesn't have any difficulties though (hiring, living costs, copycats etc). The main difference is the depth and failure tolerance of the home market. The number of early adopters is so much higher that it is much easier to take a product off the ground. In Europe you probably have to scale it country by country</comment>


When Part of Apollo 13 Reached the Moon - <AUTHOR> http://news.discovery.com/space/history-of-space/when-part-of-apollo-13-reached-the-moon-130516.htm

<comment><USER2> So, is there natural seismic activity on the moon? Apparently so: [http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/02/moon-seismology- ea...](http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/02/moon-seismology-earthquakes/) but i'm having trouble finding anyone talking about results from these installed seismic sensors.

<comment><USER3> Here's a great link that talks about data from these seismometers: [http://www.nasa.gov/exploration/home/15mar_moonquakes_prt.ht...](http://www.nasa.gov/exploration/home/15mar_moonquakes_prt.htm)

Some relevant quotes:

 _'There are at least four different kinds of moonquakes: (1) deep moonquakes about 700 km below the surface, probably caused by tides; (2) vibrations from the impact of meteorites; (3) thermal quakes caused by the expansion of the frigid crust when first illuminated by the morning sun after two weeks of deep-freeze lunar night; and (4) shallow moonquakes only 20 or 30 kilometers below the surface.'_

...

 _'Furthermore, shallow moonquakes lasted a remarkably long time. Once they got going, all continued more than 10 minutes. "The moon was ringing like a bell," Neal says.

'On Earth, vibrations from quakes usually die away in only half a minute. The reason has to do with chemical weathering, Neal explains: "Water weakens stone, expanding the structure of different minerals. When energy propagates across such a compressible structure, it acts like a foam sponge--it deadens the vibrations." Even the biggest earthquakes stop shaking in less than 2 minutes.

'The moon, however, is dry, cool and mostly rigid, like a chunk of stone or iron. So moonquakes set it vibrating like a tuning fork. Even if a moonquake isn't intense, "it just keeps going and going," Neal says. And for a lunar habitat, that persistence could be more significant than a moonquake's magnitude.'_

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

Edit: Aha! I wonder if it was Werner Von Braun who first said the moon "rang like a bell." That was the search phrase I used to find the above. Here's a really cool article by him in Popular Science from 1970, talking specifically about the impact from Apollo 12's Lunar Module [2].

 _"The object of the deliberate crash was to see what the instrument would report to earth, and the result astounded scientists. The moon rang like a bell!"_

[1] [http://www.nasa.gov/exploration/home/15mar_moonquakes_prt.ht...](http://www.nasa.gov/exploration/home/15mar_moonquakes_prt.htm)

[2] [http://books.google.com/books?id=VQEAAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PA62&#...</a>

</comment><comment><USER4> I wonder where the spent S-IVB stages from the three previous missions are, right now?

<comment><USER3> They're in some sort of heliocentric orbit [1]. They didn't track them.

One's been rediscovered, initially designated as asteroid J002E3 [2].

[1] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-IVB#Stages_built>

[2] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J002E3>

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> intrusive advertising kills this post.

<comment><AUTHOR> Here's a link with fewer ads (I think - I have an ad blocker)

[http://www.airingnews.com/articles/130797/When-Part-of- Apoll...](http://www.airingnews.com/articles/130797/When-Part-of- Apollo-13-Reached-the-Moon)</comment></comment>


Every Email the NSA Got After Asking Americans for Tips on Protecting Privacy - <AUTHOR> https://news.vice.com/article/heres-every-email-the-nsa-got-after-asking-americans-for-tips-on-how-to-protect-privacy <comment><USER2> > How do we start this discussion on defending our nation and protecting our > civil liberties and privacy?

How were you doing it before the internet? Go back to that.

<comment><USER3> You mean like the old "Cabinet noir"?</comment></comment>


Autonomous Linux - <AUTHOR> https://www.oracle.com/cloud/compute/autonomous-linux.html <comment><USER2> Is this only for Oracle Linux distro ? If so how many app deployments currently being in Oracle Linux distro ?</comment>


Digital-age students fall behind in handwriting skills - <AUTHOR> http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/digitalage-students-fall-behind-in-handwriting-skills/news-story/04c5648c2eaf5572b493300b3fbacd90 <comment><USER2> Similar moral panic in 1500: "Printing-press age students fall behind in illuminating skills".

Look, it's not like handwriting is something sacred in and of itself. Handwriting is a tool, just like abaci are. Only crazy people mourn the loss of abacus skills, and only crazy people should mourn the loss of handwriting skills.</comment>


Is web typography broken? - <AUTHOR> http://zellwk.com/blog/web-typography-broken/ <comment><USER2> I'm no expert on this, but the article seems to ignore vertical-align. I could be confused though</comment>


Why I am Not a Professor, or The Decline and Fall of the British University - <AUTHOR> http://www.lambdassociates.org/blog/decline.htm <comment> UK-Al05 I find threads like these funny, people complain about not enough software engineering such as not knowing design patterns or the details of a java implementation. On the other hand a different group complain about the lack of of 'real' cs, which is mostly math.

Two opposing views, but they think the argument is both in their favour.

There is also a massive backlash against universities in the UK at the moment. I am seeing many 'apprentice' software developers, and freelance developers skipping university. They tell me they know more than the average university graduate. So I ask them about complexity? Nope. Predicate Logic? Nope. These are things taught in even the lowest polytechnic school and they don't know them. They don't know the bounds of their own ignorance because they think cs is just knowing a few programming languages, whipping up a few apps and websites. They know more languages the average graduate? Maybe. Can they do software engineering? The easy business stuff. Do they know cs? No. I think they have never been exposed to cs and don't how deep it goes.

I've seen the accredited software developer apprenticeship curriculum and it's mostly java and design patterns.

I think the focus on apprenticeships at the moment is creating a generation of software developers who don't know what NP-Complete means.

Computer science is not whipping up applications with fancy design patterns, that's why you're better than them. Give them a few years and their cs background + Software engineering experience will begin to shine.

<comment><USER3> I attribute that confusion to the fact that the term "Computer Science" is used as a facade for both Computing Science (a branch of mathematics), and the skills necessary to create and deploy software systems (which most of the time doesn't even require "engineering" math).

It's like grouping "Industrial Design" and "Theoretical Physics" under the term "Physics", if "Industrial Design" also included "Product Managment".

<comment><USER4> There's also the fact that zero science actually happens in a Computer Science department. But since our society worships science, everything has to be science or it's no good! Even stuff that isn't science!

<comment><USER5> That is absolutely wrong. I am a PhD student in Computer Science, and I strongly consider what I do more science than engineering. Machine learning is all about making a hypothesis, implementing it, testing it, and observing the results. There is a pressure toward only publishing positive results (no one want to learn about an algorithm that doesn't work), but it's still very much a science.

The same kind of experiments happen in lots of other CS sub-fields: high performance computing, security, etc.

<comment><USER4> It's a science in the same way that math is a science. A "formal science" seems appropriate. My school considered it a natural science, which is just stupid.

Note that most computer "science" classes are stuff like learning java, learning UML, learning software engineering. This stuff is barely engineering, let alone science. It has more in common with a fine art.

Algos and data structures etc are arguably a form of math, depending on the class most likely applied math.

It's not a natural science, and what you're doing is similar to the way artists will use, say, a picture of a DNA molecule to create a cool painting. If they use scientific principles in their art, does that make it a science?

No - what you are describing is a "craft" - a very informal kind of engineering. Architecture is not a science either.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > _An easier way is to water down the educational system to a lower standard > and then peg the university income to the number of students accepted while > reducing the funding per head. In that way universities are given the happy > choice of losing money and enforcing redundancies or watering down their > requirements._

This has also become true at many US universities.

You can't water down the requirements and maintain placement stats at the same level. Many companies will simply pull the plug on recruiting and hiring once they have a bad experience with lame recent grads.

The really sad thing: The universities take the student's money, and then leave the kid unemployed at the other end. All that student debt is not dischargable in bankruptcy.

<comment> UK-Al05 I don't know how elite US universities were. In the UK very very few people went and pretty much guaranteed middle or upper class life. One of reasons we boosted universities in the UK was because USA was sending a lot to univeristy. However it ended the guarantee of middle or upper class life.

They were education path of the elite, but we let a few working class smart people in via the grammar schools(Elite state schools) to keep the majority happy. Grammar schools selected at 11. The other way to get in was private schools, if you had the money. My ex-school is now an ex-grammar school because selection was banned for state schools. The people who did not pass selection went on to vocational training at 11.

Note - Working class in the UK is roughly the same as lower middle class US.

The university system in UK is still one of the best, were small country and have many universities in the top 100. However it's gone down.

<comment><USER7> In the old days, you could study at a library, go to private tutorials, then take a bar exam or accounting exam to become a lawyer or accountant or doctor. I doubt even the public service required a degree, as long as you could pass their entrance exam. There were other requirements for the professions, (such as an apprenticeship), but a degree wasn't always needed. (note, I'm not certain of the details, that's just what some of my relatives have said about how people used to cope without degrees).

The more people get degrees, the more things they are needed for. The lower class were mostly freed by economic growth. In 1960, the UK GDP/capita was about $3 a day, which is about the point where people stop worrying about what they are going to eat, and worry about health, education, their career, and where they are going to eat. If they needed to study at privatized training centres, then pay for a professional board to assess them, they'd have done that too, but the government responded faster than the professional societies.

<comment><USER8> You're right, and it was the same in the other medieval institution he doesn't talk about-- the Church. Unlike today, you didn't need a Master of Divinity (M.Div) to be offered a job as a pastor or priest. You presented yourself-- and were usually sent-- to a bishop (or consistory or presbytery) as one prepared, usually with Latin and Greek, to "read for Holy Orders." Often, the student was taken into the home of the bishop (!) and ate all meals with his family while being tutored in Greek, Hebrew, biblical exegesis, and Church history. Before the advent of the theological seminary in the early half of the 19th century in America, all ministers were educated this way. It worked very very well up until recently.

I mention this because it parallels the University exactly. They changed the system, and educationally we are all the worse for it because the most important thing now is the credential rather than knowledge. To get the credential you have to go into extreme debt if you happen to be poor. If you don't believe that there's been inflation and the system has gone soft, just take a look at a McGuffey's Sixth Reader. Shakespeare and Dryden at that stage! Something very important has been lost, but most Anglo-Americans don't realise it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> See also this recently published book for more on the problem of publishing in academic journals that nobody reads: Planned Obsolescence: Publishing, Technology, and the Future of the Academy

A free version is online: [http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/mcpress/plannedobsol...](http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/mcpress/plannedobsolescence/)

Here are some quotes from an interview w/the author from [http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/09/30/planned_obsole...](http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/09/30/planned_obsolescence_by_kathleen_fitzpatrick_proposes_alternatives_to_outmoded_academic_journals)

"Here are two ideas Fitzpatrick proposes to kill for good: Peer review is necessary to maintaining the credibility of scholarly research and the institutions that support it; and publishing activity in peer-reviewed journals is the best gauge of a junior professor's contribution to knowledge in her field."

"Little in graduate school or on the tenure track inculcates helpfulness," she writes, "and in fact much militates against it."

"But to the extent that individual academics continue in their lust for "power and prestige" by vying for exclusive spots in elite journals, they should not be surprised to find themselves as irrelevant and moribund — indeed, zombie- like — as print monographs have already become, warns Fitzpatrick."

"If we enjoy the privileges that obtain from upholding a closed system of discourse sufficiently that we're unwilling to subject it to critical scrutiny, we may also need to accept the fact that the mainstream of public intellectual life will continue, in the main, to ignore our work," she says. "Public funds will, in that case, be put to uses that seem more immediately pressing than our support."

</comment><comment><USER10> This aligns with my experience as a British student who received a first class degree from a fairly well-respected program.

The reality was that the teaching was uniformly mediocre, I remained pretty clueless about the subject material, and I produced so-so quality work. I should have worked harder for my own curiosity, but there was a complete lack of external motivation because the academic standards were so low.

To paraphrase someone's quote: I wouldn't recommend a club that had me as a member.

<comment><USER11> Woody Allen

<comment><USER12> I thought it was Groucho Marx? <https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Groucho_Marx>

Although apparently the sentiment even predates his usage of it by about 60 years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I have experienced two degrees in two different universities in the UK. First was a standard undergraduate course finishing in 1992, a joint BSc in Economics and CS. Course content was fine (complexity, algorithms, compilers, database design etc).

However the students attitude was poor. As an undergrad straight from school I did not self learn, did not study - generally not motivated. Left in recession and with poor CS skills could not find work so delivered pizzas, worked the call centres, manned beach car park huts - all fun however.

Second degrees was a 1 year MSc in Software Engineering - this time focusing on the softer skills around methodologies, design, large systems modularity etc.

This time the student was motivated. I read, studied, wrote C++ and Java programs, delivered tasks on time and used my previous economics knowledge to build a dissertation on neural networks analysis of wholesale electricity prices. I left and went straight into a C/C++ job helping to build a mobile phone network planning system.

On both occasions the tools, environment and time were available. Just the student attitude differed. I saw what I wanted and went for it - just not the first time.

</comment><comment><USER14> Not just in Britain. The grade "scaling" or inflation is rampant in the US, but not nearly as bad as the insane focus on research. The number one job of a professor should be to teach the students of the college.

<comment><USER15> Research is teaching; teaching the graduate students how to do research.

I agree with your sentiment that college profs should care about teaching, but to be honest too much is asked of them. They're expected to be excellent researchers, inexhaustible grant writers, engaging teachers, inspiring mentors, and part-time entrepreneurs. Those who can achieve 4 of the 5 are still impressive, and more often then not somethings got give.

<comment><USER16> In the US 'Research' generates money for a University. You apply for outside grants and then fund your students who are then able to pay the University the vast majority of that money. Depending on the grant you may even pay for lab space and equipment as well as a large chunk of a professors salary.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> "I've never worked out whether I was, in American terms, an assistant professor or an associate professor."

Generally speaking, British lecturers are equiv. to associate professors, and assistant professors are untenured.

Most post-docs in proper academic departments are assistant professors, but this is not a hard and fast rule; post-docs in tenure-track programs nearly always are assistant professors.

</comment><comment><USER18> I graduated from one of the top 5 British universities in the mid 90s with a 2:1 degree in History, and I have to say that it was one of the easiest thing I ever did. I had class and lecture time of 4-6 hours a week, and spent another 8 hours reading and writing essays. The essay requirement, which contributed almost half to the degree grade, was only about 12 3,000 word essays a year. I had so much free time that I turned my part time job into a full time job, working 35 hours a week.

Of course, I should have worked harder, and I would have learned more if I had, but I was 19 and 20 years old and it was just so easy to get a good degree without working at all. I know I was far from alone in this.

Every degree course is not the same, and no doubt others may have worked long hours to earn theirs, but my own experience has left me with no respect for UK degrees, to the extent that when I read CVs from candidates I consider a third level degree irrelevant.

<comment><USER19> If it was so easy, why didn't you get a First? Sounds like you chose low standards for yourself.

<comment><USER18> I addressed that above:

"Of course, I should have worked harder, and I would have learned more if I had..."

My point (which I thought I'd made clearly) is that it was far, far too easy to do well, with little effort.

<comment><USER19> My point is that by your own admission, a 2:1 requires little effort and therefore is not to be considered "doing well".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> k-mcgrady Two and a half years ago I made the decision not to go to University and so far I think it was one of the best decisions I've made. I have learnt a lot more through experience (I'm a freelance iOS developer). I have also learnt about life quicker. After living with some of my friends who went to University I quickly realised how easy they have it. A few hours of classes a week (depending on the course) and very little studying outside of class. They also have everything paid for them through student loans and grants. On the other had I had to work hard and ensure my business succeeded or I wouldn't make rent.

University in the UK has been something that is just 'what people do'. Most people coming out of A-levels wouldn't even consider not going to University, especially because High Schools push it so hard (as it makes them look good). There needs to be more education in High Schools about the option of not attending University.

<comment> UK-Al05 Learning how to program in IoS is such a small part of software engineering, and probably does not even constitute computer science. Simply put, you don't know, what you don't know.

<comment> k-mcgrady I don't mean that by learning to develop for iOS I have learnt what I could have learnt studying at University. I think that everything I have learnt in the last few years which I wouldn't have had I attended University has/will be vastly more important and useful.

I could be wrong, there are still many years ahead of me, but I think what I have gained by not attending University is much more than what I would have gained by attending it.

<comment><USER20> Don't mind the mean guy or the down votes.

If you want to learn fancy stuff, you can read books on your own time -- and watch video lectures from universities and other sources -- and learn it faster, more efficiently and more pleasantly than you would have by attending school.

He's right that there are various important things you don't know right now. But:

1) you might never need to know them, it really depends on your career trajectory, life priorities, etc...

2) if you had gone to school, there would still be plenty of gaps in your knowledge anyway

3) you can address gaps in your knowledge whenever you want without going back to school. Non-school learning is possible and effective.

4) Learning advanced CS topics -- and really understanding what they are for and how to use them and other useful stuff -- is a lot easier with some experience as a programmer like you're gaining.

<comment> UK-Al05 I didn't mean to be cruel.

Self-Doubt is most likely going to be the driving force for him to get through the fancy stuff on his own. However I want to be known learning to program != cs.

Being confident in your own knowledge can often stops you from learning more. I often doubt my own knowledge, I often feel worried if I meet someone else because they expose me for the fraud I am. This keeps up the knowledge hunger.

I was young hackery type when I was a kid(I wasn't particularly academic either), trying various programming languages(C, Scheme, Haskell), building games(Even 3d), exploiting software with buffer overflows, maybe some malicious hacking(I was curious) and generally exploring computing. This made me over confident in my ability. Then the academic community completely showed me up, they showed me how little I know in terms of theoretical cs. Destroyed my confidence. They don't even respect the skills I had, they're not academic skills. This made me doubt myself, and to catch up on the academic side of cs. This taught me the lesson of being overconfident. Actually changed my attitude to approaching other computer guys too from "I'm the best", to "this guy might know more than me".

This made me impulse buy copies of don knuths books =P. My math skills also received a serious boost when I realised that was needed too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This was my experience doing Computer Science at a British University, too.

Most of the modules which I took were so watered down that they were absolutely useless to me. I knew this and I was pretty depressed at the time. I'm not very good at doing mindless work: some of the lectures I just stopped going to and other times I completely ignored the vacuous assignments I was being asked to do.

Looking back I wish I had dropped out and gone straight into a job with the programming skills I was teaching myself. (But I guess if I had done this I might not have learnt about fundamental CS concepts.)

I actually love learning but like to do it in my own way, on my own accord. I'm thinking of taking those online Stanford classes which are starting soon -- I guess the only thing that is missing from these is human conversation. I wonder if one day people might informally meet for coffee to discuss the online courses they're taking together. ;)

</comment><comment><USER22> If you want a longer, elaborate article, NY Books has a great article on the current problems plaguing higher education: [http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2011/nov/24/our- uni...](http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2011/nov/24/our-universities- why-are-they-failing/?pagination=false).

</comment><comment><USER23> This gives me a better insight as to why my CS degree is a piece of shit and why I learn not much more than I already knew or that I use on a regular basis.

I'm Canadian not British, but I do relate to everything that was said in this article. I completed my degree in 2004.

Great read.

<comment><USER24> Most colleges do a poor job of providing CS education. Worse yet, CS is a poor substitute for the education needed to do software engineering.

<comment><USER25> We're finding candidates with a math, physics, or engineering background are better prepared to write software than CS graduates. I don't really understand why that should be the case.

<comment><USER26> When I did a CS degree in the 80s we did roughly the same amount of maths as engineering courses and all of the more difficult CS classes (generally the more mathematical/formal ones) were mandatory - there was a relatively small amount of choice and certainly no way to graduate without being a fairly decent developer _and_ quite happy with formal abstractions.

Unfortunately, as the article describes, many CS courses have become "customer focused" so are now, as far as I can see, attempting to become vocational training courses, which universities are generally pretty awful at. When I finished my undergraduate course (with a 1st) the only thing I felt qualified to do was go into postgraduate research - which is pretty much what the course was oriented towards, although this was only apparent in retrospect.

"Real" CS is irrelevant to 98% of development jobs. In my opinion anyone believing that a CS degree will train them to be a good developer is going to get a nasty shock.

Having said that, some of the very best developers I have worked with did have the combination of awesome raw talent _and_ CS degrees (often PhDs). Of course, I've also worked with some equally good developers (in their own way) who didn't have a degree.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> This is, in my opinion, entirely the government's fault.

The government decides how much to fund universities based on publication quality, which they rate based on the journals the papers are accepted into.

There is almost no benefit to teaching students better, and there are huge advantages to passing students who would otherwise fail. This is because universities have a strict limit on the number of students they can accept, and these are not replaced if students fail their first year.

So, to maximise income universities have to keep hold of students, while getting as many papers as possible into high quality journals.

</comment><comment><USER28> I graduated in Computer Science in 2004 from a very well respected British University. I graduated with a first. There is usually a very clearly signposted path to getting a "good degree" without necessarily having to know all that much core computer science.

My course was a four year course. The total weighting for each year was 10-20-3-40 (years 1-4). The first two years had non-optional, core CS modules (algorithms, logic, discrete maths, etc.) and the final two years had a lot of electives. If you could muddle through the first two years, you could take a series of electives in the final two years (foreign languages, Accounting and finance, etc.) that were agruably much easier.

I got mediocre grades in the first two years, but good grades in the final two years, resulting in a first class degree overall.

I regret my choices, but as a lazy undergrad, I took the path of least resistance to achieve my target (a first class degree). I was not the only one who did this. The problem is that people like me made the University look good, so I think they made it very easy to game the System. The only thing I worked really hard on were the programming assignments and projects. The exams were easy to pass provided since they had a very clearly laid out pattern, and questions tended to be repeated year and after year. If you could solve exam questions from the last 3-4 years before your final exam, you would probably ace it.

</comment><comment><USER29> You know, I'm getting pretty sick of all of these "doom and gloom" stories about the modern higher education system.

Yes, the modern higher education system is not ideal. But what, in life, really is? That's not to say that we shouldn't pursue a better system, but we shouldn't give up on a system just because it's not ideal.

And with all of these doom and gloom stories, I have yet to see anyone offer an alternative. Yeah, there's a lot of paperwork involved in being a professor, and you get evaluated on criteria that don't quite line up with the ideal for being a great professor. But what would be better? How can we create a better system? And if there's such an obvious better answer, why doesn't someone do it?

If there is some obviously better system, I'd love to see it. If such a thing exits, it should be quite competitive with the current higher education system. No one wants to hire incompetent new graduates. No one wants to be one. So we should see something better, something that indicates there is some better way of doing this.

Instead, we see a steady stream of technological progress. I can do things that no one could do before, like carrying a device around that allows me to pinpoint my precise location, stream maps down to me, find me directions to wherever I want to go, read those directions aloud in a synthesized voice, all for the price of of 2% of median yearly income (including hardware, software, and the service). And that, of course, is not to mention all of the other things that are available to me.

Now, maybe I'm living in a bubble, built by people who got a proper education before all of this grade inflation and other nonsense. But really, this article is complaining about the last 20 years. A large portion of the people who are doing work in technical fields finished school within the last 20 years. And yet, we're still seeing significant progress; we are still living in a world that is tumbling into the future at a high rate.

So I want to know two things. For one, why are we still progressing so quickly, despite these apparent problems? How are we managing to innovate, if our educational and academic foundation is so unsound?

And for another, what is the solution? What do you propose we do better? If it's so much obviously better, why don't we do it? Or why doesn't someone, somewhere do it, and show significantly better results?

I think one reason is that when you are doing work in the top few percent of human ability, you look around and realize how ordinary it is. Even being at the top, everyone has their flaws. No one is perfect. Systems designed to prevent people from cheating also prevent some people from doing amazing work. But overal, it isn't a few geniuses at the level of "Mozart" that we need; it's a lot of people, doing work at a high level, but not what some might consider "genius." If you are immersed in it seems somewhat boring, but when it all adds up, it winds up opening new possibilities that were simply not available 10, 20, or 30 years ago.

<comment><USER30> > "But what would be better? How can we create a better system? And if there's > such an obvious better answer, why doesn't someone do it?"

Here's a simple answer: The better system exists, but people overlook it.

As a student, first get a Bachelor's degree.

Second, pick a field and be sure have learned it well at at least the Bachelor's level. Do this learning independently if necessary. A Bachelor's degree is supposed to teach you how to do at least this much learning independently.

Third, from that learning about the field you selected, learn some more, to 'the next level'. Likely do this independently.

Fourth, show up at any one of the better research universities and take the Ph.D. qualifying exams based on what you learned.

Fifth, stick around that university and attend some seminars and courses that are introductions to research given by experts in research. Here your work is largely independent.

Sixth, pick a research problem and get some good results, independently or nearly so. If there is any doubt about the significance of your research, then publish it.

Seventh, submit your research as your Ph.D. dissertation.

Congratulations: You are now out of school; you went all the way; you are educated. Done.

<comment><USER29> Hmm. I would love to follow this course of action. Can you point to evidence that schools will allow you to take their qualifying exams and let you get a PhD based on your independent research without being formally enrolled?

Also, as far as I can tell, most of the article is complaining about the bachelor's level, which you assume as a given. For those who haven't done that, do you have an alternative for that level?

<comment><USER31> As a math professor: why would you not formally enroll?

We have formal admissions procedures and the like, but this is not to screen out by arbitrary criteria. Grad applications are screened by math professors, not some stuffed suits somewhere who can't do trigonometry, and if you are well prepared for grad study then it will show and you will be admitted. And, typically, funded with a stipend (usually there are 10-20 hours of teaching a week you have to do, depending on institution).

I think most professors would be happy to let you sit in on an advanced class without enrolling. But doing a whole Ph.D. that way? _Perhaps_ it is possible, but I can't imagine why anyone would, and I don't know of anyone that has.

<comment><USER30> The question was, could a student without a Bachelor's just show up at a grad school, offering to take the Ph.D. qualifying exams and believing that they are well prepared, AND, without a Bachelor's degree, be permitted to do so? In particular, to take the qualifying exams, would they have to be 'enrolled' and would that be possible without a Bachelor's degree? And, although not said, maybe the student needs financial aid and hopes to get it based on their good qualifying exam performance.

So, they are ready to take the exams. But they have no Bachelor's, are not enrolled, without a Bachelor's would likely not be accepted or enrolled, and need financial aid. So, can they take the quals? If so, then how? That was the question. I suggested maybe an Associates degree, some really good GRE scores, and offering to take the quals BEFORE applying for admission.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I experienced how poorly CS classes prepared students for jobs in Software Engineering (I do realize they're not the same thing, but that's obviously the main degree we look for). I interviewed people who have a masters degree with an emphasis in Java, yet they were unaware of even the simplest details about how the JVM works (implementation details of String class, JIT compilation).

I felt bad for this person, I wonder if it's too late for them to get refund on that degree because it sure as heck didn't increase their earning potential.

<comment><USER33> I too have a degree in CS, which required me to 'play' with Java. Most students on the course did not have the basic concepts of Strings and ints let alone JIT. Most left with the ability to "avoid programming and CLI at all cost" and are still working in jobs they could have done without a degree paying £16-21K with zero career progression and / or training.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Dupe: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=737616>

</comment><comment><USER35> > As the Chinese say, I have lived in interesting times.

Nitpick: this is not a Chinese saying.

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

</comment><comment><USER36> A string vibrates on me when in the online course about Machine Learning a voice said "you don't need to know what a derivate is ..."

</comment><comment><USER37> Final year CS student in a British University here.

I can certainly see where the author's coming from, although I don't find the situation this dire. I'm not British so I don't know that much about how Universities worked and were perceived in society in the past and I guess I might have a slightly different mindset. Anyway, let me explain myself.

We have this modular course structure at my school. Yes, you can pick courses varying from "Developing web applications with Java" to hard CS stuff like compiler design and advanced algorithms. As far as I can tell, no course has been dropped because it was too hard - because students like challenges and take them. The same goes for final year projects, I've seen a student saying that she won't be doing any programming for her project (yeah, WTF), but I also know of more serious engineering projects (like a guy refreshing the electronics and more importantly, the software of a popular home-build 3D printer - and using the capabilities to do some stuff I'd really like to have on my 3d printer), or more experimental projects like mining Twitter for medical drug information (like perceived effectiveness, side-effects, usage patterns, etc).

What I'm trying to say is that there might be some easy paths you could take, but the students which always pick the easiest choice are usually the ones who end failing or dropping out. Sure, some of them graduate and I have mixed feelings about having the same degree as some of my fellow students. The author says that ' By pre-1990 standards about 20% of the students should have been failed.'. Well, in my school about 20% of the students are failed - <USER2> year.

Another topic is grade scaling. Yes, most lab and coursework grades are scaled in the first year and some in the second year. Exams are never scaled! But here's the thing, scaling is always down. It can be argued that labs are too easy if you need to scale the grades down and it is frustrating to do a perfect job and end up with a 70 something percent mark. But grades are never scaled up to 'turn a fail into a II'.

Finally, some people argue that a formal CS education is useless and out of touch with reality. I definitely don't agree. Knowing algorithms and data structures can give you an edge even for simple programs, knowing that some research areas and approaches even exist helps you avoid a lot of easy mistakes, labs will help you design better and faster because you sort of develop your own process and you get to know common pitfalls, reports and presentations train you to communicate better and using the proper domain language, having a clear image of how computers work from the grounds up is great when you're debugging.

TL;DR: Formal CS education still useful, just more chances to shoot yourself in the foot. (Yes, I consider getting a first without learning too much to be shooting yourself in the foot.) Study the fundamentals and the hard stuff and you should be better off than a self-taught person.

<comment><USER26> It's more than 20 years since I graduated with a CS degree and I think my advice these days to anyone considering the subject would be to avoid CS _unless_ you want to go on and do research level work in academia or industry. Of course, that's what I wanted to do before going to University and I did end up working as a researcher in academia for six years before co-founding a startup.

People keep thinking that a CS degree is a vocational training program for developers - they didn't used to be and if that's what they have turned into then it's no wonder that they are doing a terrible job.

<comment><USER38> Then what do you suggest wantrepreneurs should study,if anything?I think this argument whether CS school is useless has been debated far too much.I do see value in developing the way of thinking and surrounding yourself with top people,considering you do manage to get in a top college.And this whole debate about the very high prices of the colleges is ridiculous,because even for a person coming from a really poor family like me,there are enough possibilities to get free or very cheap education in most of the world's top 20 CS schools,if they do believe you're worthy enough candidate.

<comment><USER26> Personally, if you can get into one of the very top universities that have a track record for being the places where succesful startups come from then I'd _strongly_ recommend it.

<comment><USER38> Would you mind sharing which in Europe are those?Because I've read quite a lot of founder stories and the only college I'd put on that list is Stanford.UIUC also seems to have a lot of tech entrepreneur and VC alumni.

<comment><USER26> I'm not sure if there are any in Europe! [NB I'm in the UK]

Note that I'd love to be corrected on this point - I graduated in '88 and co- founded a startup after working in academia for 6 years and the help we got from the University we worked for was laughable (they asked if we wanted to lease a building!). However, we did meet our first angel investor through the university - he had done the same CS degree as me about 20 years earlier.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> The conclusions are unfortunately correct, it is the student who is being made to pay for this policy. Bad course modules and bad degrees de-value the whole system and do NOT help those who scrape through but who are then unable to follow the level of skill required through to the workplace.

As an employer who has interviewed and employed countless computer degree candidates, this has simply devalued the word 'degree' to a point where it may no longer get you even to the interview ahead of say a non-degree candidate with a tangible track record of real project work or experience behind them.

This is not just a British phenomenon.

<comment> UK-Al05 What are you looking for in a candidate? Are you looking for computer science? Or Software Engineering?

I hear people interviewers are expecting cs graduates to know the MVP pattern or similar things and shocked when they hear they don't know. That's software engineering and not computer science.

<comment><USER10> If a candidate has applied for such a position then I don't think it's unreasonable to expect that they've tainted their pristine porcelain skin with -gasp- a few run-of-the-mill software projects.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> The SHOCKING Truth about a pootly organised educational system by a hugely unsuccessful government. Living standards in the UK are good due partly to the NHS and the private sector jobs, but the corrupt government attitude of take take take yet give back little is turning this country in to a 'toilet'.</comment>