"Don't fuck up the culture" – A letter to the Airbnb team - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/p/597cde9ee9d4 <comment><USER2> After a handful of times of getting burned, I've come to interpret any official executive statement on values or culture as a sign that things are seriously screwed or about to become that way, and that it's time to bail out.

To me, culture is something that happens organically and not via directive. Leaders can shape company culture but only through their own personal demonstration of it and not by decree. Once I hear someone saying "this is how it shall be henceforth," I'm gone. They're either hopelessly naive or trying to construct a happy edifice while behaving badly.

<comment><USER3> Reminds me of the Twilight Zone movie back in the 80's, the kid who can wish anything he wants and it comes true, and he wishes all these strangers to be his "family" and traps them in the house with them.

I'd love to hear about one of these emails reading "Hi employee, person who is totally dependent on my whim and fancy for sustinence and shelter, I've been thinking a lot about what me and my 2 friends stand for, and even though I'm not totally sure, and can't necessarily articulate it, its extremely important to me, and from now on its pretty damn important that you start standing for it too. You are an extension of me. That's why your office looks like my old apartment. Your identity has been subsumed, and to prove it I'd like to point out that your livelihood is now in a great part dependent on your allegiance to my completely undefined and arbitrary value system. So we're in this together. I am writing you to tell you everything will be fine, as long you don't. fuck. this. up. Thanks! I'll be back in touch with more specifics, or not, in the meantime just act natural."

<comment><USER4> I feel like you missed the context. My understanding was "We're about to spend time discussing our culture (Core Values) at our next all hands/meeting. Let me just give you some brief background on why we as a company are doing this exercise." I don't think the goal of this note was to go into detail. That would be overkill and steal thunder from the upcoming event. It was just to contextualize why they're going to cover it a) Number 1 reason investors put huge gobs on money into AirBNB b) It's what we'll be most remembered for etc.

<comment><USER3> No.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> In my experience, this is the first sign that a company culture is about to be fucked up.

The reason is that a company culture is organic and highly dependent on the people that make it. When a company is very small, it's easy to have only the best people who also happen to fit in to the same culture, because those people naturally gravitate together. In the beginning, the company is small enough that they are not hiring for very specialised and disparate skills so much as "a bunch of smart people that work well together".

As teams get bigger, inevitably things get more structured and by trying to hold on to that initial culture, you inevitably kill it.

Personally I believe the best thing is to have small autonomous units within the business that have a set remit and are allowed to have their own culture, with the company as a whole acting to promote cross-pollination between units. There really doesn't have to be one single "culture" guided by the "core company values" because those are two different things that invariably do not mesh once you get past about 30 people. So when companies hit that awkward "teenage" size and try, they usually fail.

I also find that the claims about company culture made by most mid to large sized company are inevitably false. There might be a particular culture within individual teams (the IT team in the basement, for instance), but usually it does not permeate the entire business to the extent the HR team wishes it did.

<comment><USER6> I agree that company culture's _are_ organic (changing) and highly dependent on the people that make it.

Having said that, the _people_ that are there are determined by the culture. If the culture of a company is well known, articulated and understood, there's a self-selection process that happens. A given culture attracts certain kinds of people -- so it becomes self-reenforcing.

I also disagree with the notion that a culture cannot permeate across groups. There is certainly a sub-culture that can (and does) exist within groups (this exists everywhere people of like mind or activity aggregate), but that doesn't mean there can't be an overarching culture that is shared organization wide.

I've given a lot of thought and calories to this topic. My company (HubSpot) has grown from 2 people to 800 people and like Brian (OP from AirBnB), we think about this culture thing a lot.

Just because you hit the "awkward teen" size doesn't mean you are predetermined to fail at trying to have a functional , shared culture.

<comment><USER5> >If the culture of a company is well known, articulated and understood, there's a self-selection process that happens. A given culture attracts certain kinds of people -- so it becomes self-reenforcing.

That's essentially my point about gravitation, except my assertion that it doesn't scale. After a certain point, it becomes more important to hire the people the company needs, not just the people that want to work there. Below a certain size it is _much_ easier for those to be overlapping sets.

> that doesn't mean there can't be an overarching culture that is shared > organisation wide

I think inopinatus is on the right track in terms of breaking "culture" down into different things. There can certainly be certain values and principles of "how things are done" that span the whole company (note: I'm not saying processes either - perhaps 'ethics' is the right word). But that's not enough to make a culture, and trying to force one out of those relatively small commonalities is where things generally fall down.

Again I think the most important thing when it comes to scaling out is having representation in place at various levels and listening to what people at the lower levels actually want, rather than trying to dictate things in a top-down manner. It is very likely that as teams become more specialised, they will have much more individual needs that might not fit with certain aspects of the original culture. There's no reason that the shared culture can't evolve and stay beneficial to everyone - just expect the size of that shared part to shrink if you are doing it right.

The sad fact is that it's much easier to get company culture wrong than it is to get it right. I'm not going to say I have some magical solution to this because I don't, but I do wish you the best of luck with HubSpot - and the same to AirBnB of course. Just because something is an ominous sign doesn't mean anything is predestined.

One thing that I do think is quite important is that the company culture in a small business tends to be the way it is because the management structure is pretty flat, everyone has a set of shared goals and cooperation is easy. That's another thing that doesn't scale. It's very easy to break a company culture with things like poor management structure, skewed employee incentives, etc., which tend to foster a dog-eat-dog culture and company politics that very often do not exist in smaller companies. Personally, were I currently scaling a business to around 800 staff I'd be worrying most about the management structure and trying to create an environment where cultures can grow organically, while ensuring what remains consistent are the shared values, goals and company vision.

I think by focusing too much on the company culture at the top level, it's easy to lose sight of the forest for the trees. In macromanagement there's only so much you can directly control and culture isn't one of those things. That means getting the outcome you want by indirect means, even if it doesn't look exactly how you might have pictured it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's a fine sentiment but blunders over the meaning in a rush to confirm the wisdom of the original epigram.

I don't know if this because the author of this memo doesn't understand culture analytically or felt that explaining what was meant didn't have a place in this memo, but dismissing process was a mistake. A more nuanced perspective breaks culture into multiple domains:

      # Values
      # Norms
      # Routines

Notice I didn't say _processes_. That's because processes are a subset of routines. They are the routines written down. The author seems to be terribly proud that AirBnB's routines aren't written down. I was left cold by this. It doesn't matter that much.

Values are the fundamental beliefs that people cherish. The thing about values is that they are, as a result, near impossible to change quickly. Five to seven years and you'll have to change the CEO and the hiring policy to achieve it.

Norms are the units of behavioral control. Norms are group-level social pressures such as bringing a plate for morning tea or writing good commit messages. These are the real interesting pieces because they shift readily in response to incentives. (If you're ever looking for easy goals in an organisational change effort, fiddle with the norms)

Norms generally help keep routines-that-aren't-written-down (some might say "the unwritten processes") steady and reify new ones in response to externalities.

So when Thiel was saying "don't fuck up the culture" I take away two things:

      * Don't bother wittering about values. You're stuck with them anyway.
      * Don't fuck with the incentive structure

But contrary to a major point in the article, you can write down the routines as processes if you like, just remember to capture the why as well as the what.

<comment><USER8> I enjoyed reading your breakdown of culture and its malleability. Any good books or links that discuss these ideas?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> > Ever notice how families or tribes don't require much process?

Interesting, I've observed the opposite. As someone single, I've been surprised at how much _process_ there is among many married or cohabiting couples. Lots of discussion and planning around everyday routine chores, such as going to the grocery store.

These couples have assured me with confidence that this is very important to the health of their relationships.

<comment><USER10> My personal experience is the opposite. I feel like dysfunctional couples need a lot more talking and planning and negotiating than more functional couples.

"Hey, do you mind helping me clean the kitchen?" "Sure."

Also, my favorite working environments have been similar to a family of peers.

"Hey, do you mind pushing your changes this morning?" "Sure."

<comment><USER11> I feel like many men sometimes aren't aware of how little they help around the house with chores and taking care of the children, so I am proactive and plan stuff with my wife. I don't wait for her to ask me. That isn't dysfunctional.

There's also a lot of process in families. Some you can automate now, like paying the bills. Some processes are routines. Getting up, getting our child dressed, walking her to school, picking her up, taking her to her after school activities. Doing her homework with her.

There's also process with checking things around the house. Checking the fire alarms regularly, scheduling dentist appointments, making plans for seeing family. These are all processes.

The whole original article came off as ignorance and out of touch. As someone with an academic background in Anthropology and Sociology the author doesn't seem to understand what culture is or how hierarchy and unbalanced power relationships in the office place work. It's not a very sophisticated treatment of the topic in any regard. And in that vein, my opinion is that as long as the times are good and you're not hiring a bunch of dickhead managers your culture will be fine. If you take your culture to mean don't hire old people because they don't play the video games your 20 somethings do then your shit is fucked. In the end, when things go bad in the business, culture will sour.

<comment><USER12> There's a difference between process and discipline. A lot of what you're describing is discipline: you have an internal compass that keeps you oriented on the stuff that matters: helping your wife with the house and kids, doing home maintenance, and taking care of periodic tasks. Basically, you make a to- do list and execute on it.

Process, at least in the corporate context, is about a bunch of stuff you do regularly to check on whether on not the stuff that matters is being attended to. Getting your kid dressed is not a good analog to the 'process' that is being referred to in this sense. Process is a tax on hiring people that don't have that internal compass, or on operating in an environment that stifles that internal compass. If the to-do list isn't there, isn't being followed, or doesn't work in some other way, process exists to find out that there's a problem so everyone can sit down and talk about what to do to fix it.

Put simply: you're defining a culture in your household that is healthy. It's exactly what the author hopes for in a company, and that's not process, it's discipline.

<comment><USER13> Process isn't about stifling the internal compass, it's about making sure that everyone's compass aligns. I've known many engineering teams where _individually_ everybody is incredibly smart, hard-working, dedicated, and focused on what matters, but what matters is different to every person. As a result, the team got nowhere. Process is essentially shared discipline: it's getting everybody aligned so that when they focus and work hard, they get somewhere as a group instead of undoing each others' work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > Ever notice how families or tribes don't require much process? That is > because there is such a strong trust and culture that it supersedes any > process. In organizations (or even in a society) where culture is weak, you > need an abundance of heavy, precise rules and processes.

I think it's disingenuous to say tribes and families don't "require much process." The processes are just more implicit than explicit. When you ask your parents for a new toy and they evaluate whether to say 'yes', that's a process - just an informal one. The only reason that's really possible is because the relationships are much more intimate and fewer.

When you start to scale into numbers where it's just infeasible for "everyone to know everyone" then formal processes have to take the place of those informal ones. I can't evaluate Jim's request for 10 additional storage disks informally because I don't know the first thing about Jim.

Coordinating lots of people is really hard. I would guess Airbnb is getting about the size where keeping the culture intact will require a sizable time commitment from the top level. Airbnb keeping that same culture at 20,000 employees would probably be a sociological feat all on its own.

<comment><USER15> I like the Henrik Kniberg definition of culture, 'culture is the stuff people do without thinking about it'. E.g. you could codify most things as processes (which is basically the entire point of things like value stream maps), but a company culture is infuses the kind of things you don't need to make explicit, because they become self-evident.

Think Netflix travel policy ("be responsible") vs more traditional companies with rules and travel agents for implicit vs explicit, or cultural vs process driven.

<comment><USER14> You actually brought up an interesting point that I was going to address: Netflix also has a legendary policy of expedient, rapid termination (see: The presentation that circulates around every so often).

The caveat to my statement was that you can keep that kind of culture at scale if you're brutal about either ensuring people are good cultural fits, whether that's by stringent hiring processes or swift termination.

Not that I think Netflix necessarily has the wrong approach here - it's a tradeoff to avoid having these explicit processes. But it's food for thought, nonetheless.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> "Our next team meeting is dedicated to Core Values, which are essential to building our culture."

Having meetings about culture and "core values" is a sure sign your culture's fucked. The fact that he thinks having a meeting about culture might in some way help fix some culture issue indicates to me he's really not the person to impart pearls of wisdom when it comes to company culture.

tl;dr that's mba-speak, bro.

<comment><USER17> I think it's a sign, but not a sure sign.

One company I consulted at, maybe 200 people, went through a substantial internal process to make their values explicit. I wasn't there for it, but I understand everybody participated, and there was a lot of discussion about what they really wanted in a mission statement and a set of values.

When I was there, it amazed me to see employees at all levels actually pulling out the list of values when hard decisions were happening. They used it to remind themselves of what really mattered to them.

Admittedly, I've only seen it once, but it really appeared to work. It's definitely something I'm keeping in my pocket the next time I'm at something that crosses Dunbar's Number.

<comment><USER18> That sounds amazing to me too. What you described is really the only way that making lists of "core values" could possibly achieve something useful. I just never thought it could happen. Usually people just remember the core values as a list of things that sound good, and they're too abstract to offer any real guidance for a concrete situation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> To me the most interesting thing about this blog post is that Brian doesn't actually say what defines AirBnB's culture. Perhaps he did so in some other internal document or meeting, but it doesn't make sense to say that you shouldn't fuck something up when you haven't clearly defined what that thing is. I much prefer Ben Horowitz's post on this topic:

[http://www.bhorowitz.com/programming_your_culture](http://www.bhorowitz.com/programming_your_culture)

I like the fact that he makes it clear that there are many different ways to define a company culture and that, if possible, leaders should make a conscious choice to choose among them.

      * Move fast and break things.
      * Take pride in the work we do.
      * The customer is always right.

Any of these (and many more) could be cornerstones of company culture, but they're all pretty different. If you're just defining your culture as "work hard and do a good job" then you haven't really said much. Everyone wants to do that.

<comment><USER20> You have managed to articulately put what so many of us are pointing out that, he didn't really say what it is that he wants to preserve. Yes, culture doesn't need to be defined in a formal document, but it can be hinted at with a few words

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I have this pet theory that the best companies in the future will be those that act more like cults (putting the "cult" in culture) than companies. As the jobs that actually need doing become more and more ambiguous (how specific is the job description of a "growth hacker" compared to the median job in the 50's?), companies will have more and more trouble hiring for specific skills(reading anything about hiring developers will evidence this). So the differentiating factor will be culture fit rather than specific skills.

Does this sound like it will have problems? Yeah, I think so. But does the current system have problems? (Left as an exercise for the reader)

There's one more tidbit that comes to mind: what happens when the "core values" indicate that it's time for the company to close up shop? I'm not sure there's a catch-all answer, but this is a question for anyone who pays lip service to the idea of culture to ponder.

</comment><comment><USER22> According to many Glassdoor reviews their culture is fucked up I guess.

[http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Airbnb- Reviews-E391850.htm](http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Airbnb- Reviews-E391850.htm)

<comment><USER23> Is there a single company that has primarily positive Glassdoor reviews? I've only ever heard of companies having lots of negative reviews, and I think it might just be the same as apartment buildings, where nobody actually bothers to go on Glassdoor to write a review unless they're unhappy and looking for another job.

<comment><USER22> Let's look at Square that is very similar to Airbnb for example.

[http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Square- Reviews-E422050.htm](http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Square- Reviews-E422050.htm)

It seems that good companies really have good reviews in general.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> _Also unrelated_

What happens in small tourist towns when all of the available property gets bought by outsiders wanting to 'Airbnb'?

Let's face it, 'Airbnb' isn't about letting out the spare room or the flat whilst one is away for some pocket money (whilst helping some weary traveller out). Airbnb is about buying places specifically for rental.

So, what happens?

The few real 'Bed and Breakfast' hotels have a hard time of it and local people (not on big city wages or the money for a deposit) get pushed even further down the housing ladder.

So, even if the culture is not messed up in the hip Mac-book Air stuffed office of AirBnb, the culture could be messed up in some far off town.

<comment><USER25> That describes startup companies in general. It's about taking over a market that is run by small companies and driving them out of business by using Wall Street money to generate efficiencies of scale.

<comment><USER26> So a pox on those who seek to reduce costs through scale and redundancies?

It appears there is a lack of short-stay housing supply. AirBnB facilitates that market. Short-stay property owners should seek to spread their operating costs across multiple properties. This will drive out mom-and-pop operations - that is good business. The added wealth from leaner short-stay operations should make up for the temporary displacement.

The displacement is a process our political process has to manage. But spitting on markets for eroding the incumbent's edge is an old game for tired societies.

<comment><USER27> _It appears there is a lack of short-stay housing supply. AirBnB facilitates that market._

AirBnB undercuts existing hotels by sidestepping required regulations. There isn't a lack of short-stay supply; AirBnB just works more cheaply because it has fewer expenses.

 _The added wealth from leaner short-stay operations should make up for the temporary displacement._

The point of the parent comment is that that wealth is not kept in the town, but siphoned off somewhere else.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> EDT: To me, this post comes across as vacuous and pompous because it does not explain at all what 'culture' means in this context. An IMHO great reply has already been written before this post appeared:

'What Your Culture Really Says': [https://medium.com/about- work/e8ab06c3b75f](https://medium.com/about-work/e8ab06c3b75f)

> Let's examine popular startup trends that are being called "culture" and > look beneath the surface to find the real culture that may be playing out > beneath it. This is not a critique of the practices themselves, which often > contribute value to an organization. This is to show a contrast between the > much deeper, systemic cultural problems that are rampant in our startups and > the materialistic trappings that can disguise them.

<comment><USER29> > The critique of startup culture that came in large part from the agile > movement has been replaced by sanitized, pompous, dishonest slogans.

You and that article nailed it for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> One of the indications that I was going to have to quit a company (that I co- founded) was when a new person was brought on to "maintain company culture."

<comment><USER31> "VP of Culture" sounds like a dystopian business card title.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> "The stronger the culture, the less process a company needs."

This sentence finally made it click for me. Culture is not about making people happy. It is the set of principles on which you convince people to base their decisions and actions that affect the company. If those principles can be made uniform without hierarchy and approval processes, that makes a company unequivocally more efficient.

<comment><USER33> Culture is, to a degree, about harmony, and therefore to an extent also about making people happy, in providing a sense of belonging to and identification with a group and a purpose greater than oneself.

I believe there's a fundamental difference, however, between culture as an emergent property, subject to its members' needs and changeable by its desires, and 'culture' as a set of metaphysical properties determined by a company's founders, to which one must either conform or find themselves terminated. A culture which you have no influence over isn't really a culture to which you can belong.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I'm of two minds here.

Mind one: Cultures are stupid. They're artificial and require buy-in. This either alienates people, or indoctrinates them, and in either case, you end up with something artificial, stupid and derivative.

Mind two: Cultures are organic and incredible. They "become" because they are reflective of a small (VERY small) subgroup of people and their own rarely synchronous core values. Because of how humans only accept the idiosyncrasies of others if they're reflective of more than one person, cultures help to expose idiosyncratic tastes and behaviors to people who might not otherwise be exposed to them.

Now that that's out of the way, at some point, your company will not have the clout or draw to be able to pull in the talent you want 100% of the time. Candidate A might be perfect on paper, but maybe doesn't like surreal humor. Candidate B might be the best Javascript gal you've ever seen, but she's not big on noise rock.

These sound like stupid and trivial things, but the heart of a culture is the enthusiasm that lives alongside finding people who all march to the beat of the same drum. Who, for whatever reason, all were fans of The Gilmore Girls or who have a weird fascination with whale sounds or maybe like fighting with broomsticks.

You will lose culture, so long as you're willing to bring on people who aren't _exactly_ like you.

</comment><comment><USER35> I found this cliche and unoriginal.

I would have liked to see more concrete examples of what they do want to do, what they want to avoid, and how exactly they're going to "execute" at getting culture right.

</comment><comment><USER36> Families and tribes can of course also be suffocating, difficult, dramatic, abusive, controlling, insular, xenophobic, and so on. Process is not a bad thing, as in e.g. the idea of "due process." It can be a way of making things fair and transparent.

</comment><comment><USER37> Nowadays there is a lot of talk about "inclusion". What about "including" people who dislike profanity? "Don't mess up the culture" would have conveyed the same message without the bad language.

<comment><USER38> I have no qualms with profanity, but I admit I had a negative reaction when I saw "fuck" so prominently leveraged in a blog post about company culture.

For someone who wants to have a certain level of _professional_ decorum at _work_ , the use of "fuck" in your CEO's blog post about your company's culture would certainly be exclusionary.

It's also quite likely to drive away even-tempered contributors in favor of a "bro" audience.

Perhaps that was the point: [http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Airbnb- Reviews-E391850.htm](http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Airbnb- Reviews-E391850.htm)

<comment><USER4> Ben Horowitz has an interesting chapter in his recent book "The Hard Thing about Hard Things" that talks about profanity. Apparently early on at LoudCloud (or Opsware) at a company meeting some employees raised the issue that there was too much profanity in the office. Ben acknowledged that he was the worst culprit so this was most likely aimed at him. He slept on it and decided that it could be used but never in a sexist or bullying way. He rationalized it based on the assumption that it was already an inherent part of many tech companies and not allowing it might restrict their access to the best talent. I thought that weird. Either way I think the end result is that it does seem to be an important part of the culture and as a future or current employee it should factor into your decision to work there.

<comment><USER39> That book is 80% great, but his opinions about profanity are part of the other 20%. There's no meat to it. All we learn is Ben's belief that adding the word 'fucking' to a sentence communicates intensity more effectively than any alternative, and his belief that great employees want to work amongst torrents of profanity.

To put it in a way that Ben might understand, it's fucking bullshit. It's not the worst part of the book to be sure, but there's no value to it, the reasoning is weak, and the evidence is non-existent.*

* The worst thing is when he espouses the importance of work/life balance for the CEO, and then talks proudly of a death-march that he put his employees through. A death march which he says must be good because a grand total of one employee told him it was a great experience. A death march which didn't result in the loss of all his employees not because Ben is a great leader (he ain't), but because the economy was such a catastrophe that even a shitty, abusive job working for a profane and self-congratulatory motherfucker was better than the alternative.

<comment><USER4> I think you pretty much nailed it. I thought it was 80% great and that section on cussing was basically the worst rationalization in the book. "Let's see. I love to cuss. And I'm going to continue to curse. But how can I rationalize it in a business way?"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> AirBnB's culture is to do whatever it takes to get (er, "hack") what you want, rules and agreements be damned, so they certainly should only make rules for the purpose of giving people practice bending them.

<comment><USER41> Why would known spammers feel the need to put their employees through a charade of having values? Surely they've noticed how our industry fails to deter sociopathy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> That's great advice. I've been to the AriBnB offices a few times (before their most recent move) and I definitely noticed a distinct culture. Most of my cultural experience from AirBnB was though their tech talks. You get speak with engineers, other team members and you get food from their amazing executive chef. Even though their engineering team was relatively small, they created a great resource for engineers to meet and talk tech. It was something that I tried to create at the company I worked for at the time, but it was a totally different culture.

<comment><USER43> Free food is not culture.

<comment><USER44> It's a cultural practice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Not to mention that having a toxic culture is the fastest way to lose your very best people.

</comment><comment><USER46> > Culture is not a good or bad thing. It's a shared thing. I sometimes hear > people say "they aren't a culture fit" as if it's a bad thing, or others > feel bad pointing this out as if it's an indictment on someone's character. > It's not. I am not a culture fit at probably any other company, which is why > I had to help start one!

This (which is one of Brian's notes in the article) is one of the best ways to think about culture that I've encountered. A company can't have "good" culture or "bad" culture. It just has a certain shared way of doing things that may or may not vibe with you.

On a related note, Tony Hsieh of Zappos believes what your culture is doesn't matter as much as having a strong identity. Just figure out who you, as a company, are and the rest will follow:

 _"...one of the really interesting things I found from the research is that it actually doesn't matter what your values are, what matters is that you have them and that you align the organization around them. And the power actually comes from the alignment not from the actual values"_[1]

[1] [https://blog.kissmetrics.com/zappos-art-of- culture/](https://blog.kissmetrics.com/zappos-art-of-culture/)

<comment><USER47> My main issue with the "culture fit" thing is that it's a very new-school style of business that has been shoehorned into an antiquated process (hiring) that hasn't adapted nearly enough to changing attitudes about workplace priorities. I'd imagine it's difficult for someone to hear that their personality was what failed to get them the job after 30 mins - 1 hour of interaction where skills are still supposedly the number one priority.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Preserving the culture is about staying true to some of the core ways things are done right now, despite the pressures to adjust how those things are done as the organization grows.

On the surface 'culture' is just the way things are done (currently).

Deepen engagement and understanding of your values by collecting and writing down organizational folklore.

The best way your can preserve your current culture is to, as the leader, document your thinking and define and explain in your own words key unique and important ways of doing things.

Disney and Sony were both good at this. Both companies later experienced drift from their original core way of doing things. It was referring back to these early papers written by the fonunder (often many years after they were gone) that enabled these companies to constantly rediscover their roots when they got lost. Write as if you were about to die and wanted to leave instructions and guidance for the next leaders.

</comment><comment><USER49> As a person who is not white, I look at these efforts curiously. They seem generally like a way to hire people like "us", people who like the same music, people who will go to the same bar after work, fundamentally people we are comfortable with...people who will not change the culture.

Fred Wilson's blog had a related topic; The Role Of Personal Chemistry In Investment Selection -- [http://avc.com/2013/10/the-role-of-personal- chemistry-in-inv...](http://avc.com/2013/10/the-role-of-personal-chemistry-in- investment-selection/)

There is a slippery slope of exclusionary behavior associated with this line of thinking -- where some way of being that is foreign or different doesn't get hired or potentially doesn't get funded.

</comment><comment><USER50> It should be said that maintaining a corporate culture that brought success isn't always sufficient for continued success, and sometimes isn't even compatible with it. HP and DEC both had a strong and much-admired culture and way of doing business and then wallop.

<comment><USER51> You could argue HP lost the culture first, at least at the top when Carly Fiorina who was a marketer rather than an engineer put into run a company that had always been about great engineering. Then wallop as you say.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> "Passion"? check. "Core Values"? check. Not a single specific of what those core values or culture is? check.

</comment><comment><USER53> I have a simple saying: "People live lives. Companies build products." To me, maintaining a free lifestyle is an important goal, more than money. If the company is building something worthwhile, it will eventually get there. That's why I am a big proponent of setting up clear autonomous systems and processes, and placing less blame on people. As long as things get done, I don't care who the person dates or where they live. If things aren't getting done, then we review what the problem is. Half the time it's not the person, but the process.

One thing this article gets right: there are tools and there are culture. Tools determine the process, which has an effect on the culture, but the culture develops organically depending on who's in the team. If you are super culture heavy, you'll hire A+ superstars (like the recent article about building a cult). But as for me, I don't want to be a cult leader. I want to build better tools to empower people to help each other and make their own decisions. Both in our company, and in the rest of the world.

</comment><comment><USER54> > The stronger the culture, the less corporate process a company needs

and

> Ever notice how families or tribes don't require much process? That is > because there is such a strong trust and culture that it supersedes any > process.

I think both the above are more related to being small than having strong culture.

> Culture is simply a shared way of doing something with passion.

having a shared way is natural and easy when you're small. Trying to continue that as you grow is a good goal, but it's just hard, which is why there's so much thought and research around how to lead, manage and how to make organizations thrive. It's not an easy problem, and saying, "hey everyone, just be vigilant and keep the same small company family culture even though we're growing" likely won't cut it.

</comment><comment><USER55> After reading the article I wanted to come and comment that it sounds good but I couldn't tell if it really meant anything. Then I read the comments and they make a lot of good points, but they are all conflicting and it's hard to distill any real takeaway.

At this point I'm convinced of only one thing: company culture is magic. Everyone influences it, but there is no controlling it. When you're a tiny little startup of course the culture will reflect your values as a founder or early employee, when you're bigger it will change on its own. You can hire for culture, and you can talk about it, or even wax poetic, but ultimately it's a chaotic interaction of individuals and you're a fool if you think you can control it.

</comment><comment><USER56> Culture obsession is a little silly. If you hire smart individuals then the culture will work itself out as will pretty much everything else. Plus, whenever anyone mentions culture they either can't define it or it ends up being the definition of the hive mind, i.e. it is all around you and within you but you can't really know what it is until you are part of it. In other words I have learned literally zero things from this post other than Peter Thiel invested in Airbnb and told them to not fuck things up. Which I guess you can do when you give someone $150 million.

<comment><USER57> > If you hire smart individuals then the culture will work itself out as will > pretty much everything else

Culture is about people getting along, being motivated towards the same goals, and working in the type of environment that they enjoy. Not all smart individuals have the same culture desires. Google is the posterboy for culture discussions, and they are very open and blunt about denying some extremely smart interviewees. They very carefully prune for cultural fit, and it has a large impact. Google's culture is a multiplying factor on the productivity.

A bad culture fit for an employee or employer is an < 1 multiplier to productivity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> In case any first time founders out there are basing some of their own management ideas on this letter, please remember:

"Families and tribes" (a) get by fine without explicit processes because they are small groups, or (b) they do have the processes but they don't need to be written down because they are taught implicitly from birth.

Arguments of the form "We don't need [insert any concept from management text books] because we are smart, technical people" are the flags on areas of your company that will break the worst.

</comment><comment><USER59> It would have been much more helpful if he had actually defined Airbnb's culture or shared some values. While I admire the note to employees and I'm sure it spurred a discussion at the company, there was no reference to what their culture was before or after the letter.

<comment><USER60> Its's an internal letter, hopefully everyone who received it already _knows_ the values and has a sense of the culture. Having to spell it out for everyone (assumingly again) would have meant things were much worse off.

<comment><USER44> It's being published externally, so it's a fair criticism.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> 10/10 love the point of this letter. As evident by the comments here, culture can mean different things to everyone. More accurately, I would just say its the belief in the product and same passion that every one should have in a start up. Thats the "culture" IMO.

</comment><comment><USER62> > "Don't fuck up the culture"

Bro-Investor

</comment><comment><USER63> Nitpick: "to Joe, Nate, and I" should be "to Joe, Nate, and me."

<comment><USER64> This is starting be very widespread and it is embarassing because the primary cause is a vague idea that it is "more educated" to say "I" than "me", which of course backfires horribly when you reveal publicly the fact that you don't know that "I" should only be used as the subject of the sentence.

<comment><USER63> Exactly. As you may know, the general phenomenon is called [ _hypercorrection_ ]([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypercorrection](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypercorrection)).

<comment><USER64> _...linguists Rodney Huddleston and Geoffrey K. Pullum claim that utterances such as "They invited Sandy and I" are "heard constantly in the conversation of people whose status as speakers of Standard English is clear"; and that "Those who condemn it simply assume that the case of a pronoun in a coordination must be the same as when it stands alone. Actual usage is in conflict with this assumption."_

It may take me some time to calm down after reading that.

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> Are there any associated blogs which outline the core values of AirBnb culture? What do they consider the tenants of this culture?

</comment><comment><USER66> I hope AirBnb's other communications aren't as ugly as that heap of sentence fragments.

</comment><comment><USER67> _It 's a fine sentiment but glosses over the details...

Interesting, I've observed the opposite...

I think it's disingenuous to say...

In my experience, this is the first sign that [X] about to be fucked up...

I hope [company X's] other communications aren't as ugly as that heap of sentence fragments...._

___________

These are the first 1-5 comment's on HN. Is this the work some 4chan Meme propogation software?

</comment><comment><USER68> If the culture is one of arbitrary profanity, sign me the fuck up!

</comment><comment><USER69> "fuck" is an edgy word.

</comment><comment><USER70> Nice try but "culture," "family," "our values," and all that crap goes right out of the window when things go south or when the company decides to save a few bucks. Seen it a lot of times to make it a trend.

</comment><comment><USER71> TL;DR: Dunbar's number

</comment><comment><USER72> Too late for that.

I don't live in my AirBNB's. I don't want to be friends with all of the people who stay at my places. I am running hotels where maid service is your responsibility, or you can pay an additional fee.

I have really nice places. They are cheaper than hotels, and you get way more space. I would love to stay at their equivalents in other places. But I don't want to make friends with all the people who stay at my places, or the places I might stay.

If AirBNB is going to work, it needs to be looking at ways to be more like TimeShares that you buy on a moment's notice, and less like a couch surfing site.

It needs to be mainstream, not more hippy.

Yes, it needed that hippy core to get started, but to really grow it has to transition from the hippy core to mainstream. You can't be a $10B company with a target audience that is only people who all want to be friends. That may be sad, but it is the truth of business.

<comment><USER73> How is that related to the content of this article?

<comment><USER42> They obviously didn't read the article, just the title.

<comment><USER72> I read it.

Have you talked to the support people there? My phone support people have sounded stoned, made inappropriate jokes, and been horribly unprofessional.

They are slow to respond, and worthless if anything goes wrong.

How many changes have you seen to the website over the last 100 days? How many of those had a positive impact?

AirBNB needs to grow up, they need to think mainstream, and they need to learn how to deal with real people at scale.

<comment><USER74> It sounds like you need to be using Hyatt or DoubleTree's online franchised timeshare offering. What, there is none?

Then be thankful that the culture you hate has created something you value. You sound like the complaints that Google doesn't offer phone support, just correct software and a knowledge base.

If you want to deal with a traditional, huge, corporate juggernaut, feel free to check out their offerings. Let us know if you find anything.

<comment><USER72> The difference is Google mostly works. And yes I hate that Google has lousy support.

AirBNB's corporate culture is based on the idea that nobody will care because the users would do it for free but it is nice to get paid.

When you raise 500M on a 10B valuation, people start to care more that your stuff works. If you get a moldy muffin at a bake sale you say, "no big deal that was a nice guy". If you get a moldy muffin at Starbucks you get a lawyer.

I am now a "Starbucks Franchisee" and so people expect more. I am also betting big on AirBNB with multiple properties, so I need them to do their part.

As to the "dig" that I should be using Hyatt or Doubletree to do this... I expect I will soon. You don't expect them to stay out of the market do you? I expect Expedia to be in the space in the next 3 years as the legality of running a hotel (and that's what I do) gets shaken out in NYC and SF.

<comment><USER74> Well, you are clearly doing more than they communicate to you. I read you as being a franchisee in a franchise program that doesn't exist. Do they actively support buying apartments to lease out using Airbnb?

So while I understand that you are already using them, that you see that they've raised money, and that you expect more from their franchise program than non-existence - indeed, you've set your stake down and established yourself in it - it strikes me as less than fair that you would show this level of entitlement toward a non-existent program.

It's a bit like complaining to a bakery that your customers no longer wake up to the nice fresh smell of croissants in your apartment upstairs from them, now that the bakery get their croissants delivered from another baking location. Well, okay. But that's not their model.

This is what your tone sounds like to me:

"Dear airbnb: I've taken it upon myself to set up as a franchisee in your non- existent franchise program. And as an airbnb franchise owner, boy am I pissed. Your level of support for what I'm doing is appalling. Orders of magnitude worse than what I would get from a program that exists. As a $10B company, you cannot afford to stop supporting what I'm doing. It's a travesty. Make no mistake, I am upset and fully intend to abandon you and start using your competition - just as soon as it starts existing. Your days are numbered."

I understand that you think they should go in the direction of supporting you (which may not even be legal!) but I would seriously consider the level of entitlement you show when making these requests. At the end of the day, you're not entitled to be a franchisee if they don't have a franchise program.

<comment><USER72> When you look at the "rent a castle" or many of the featured locations it is clear I am not a minority. It was this change that made them a $10b valuation company instead of being what ever valuation all the other couch surf websites are.

There are other services for furnished short term rentals. Few of those let you do 3 day rentals. I am on some of the ones that allow 1 week rentals. So there is competition in that space, and has been pre-airbnb.

So yes, they have a "franchise" this analogy is falling down because they are more like Amazon and I am more like one of the providers who lists on them. Or, Ebay listing my car for me.

When Amazon, or Ebay have support issues, or performance issues, or "image" issues it effects those "self entitled" sellers who are trying to make a living on their platform.

And yes, just as ebay and amazon if you don't do a good job the providers of what is sold will leave.

<comment><USER74> Some of what you've written makes sense, but you can't appeal to their $10b valuation for why they should support what you're doing more explicitly. They have a certain approach they're doing, and this only supports you implicitly. You can't take it but complain they're not doing something different, just like Google Search users can't complain about a lack of phone support. (And Google is a $363B company.)

I actually didn't mean "self-entitled" in a general way (like, about your personality), or anything - rather just entitlement about something in this particular relationship. For example, the same level of entitlement that you show might be absolutely fine when you deal with Starbucks, for example. (If I read correctly that you're a starbucks franchise owner). It's just that you're showing this particular entitlement about airbnb, and there is nothing to justify it, as they don't operate the same way or make the same sort of promises about their relationship with you.

Anyway it wouldn't hurt to ask nicely, saying, pretty-please, wouldn't you consider doing something different/ more explicit, better business support than what you're doing now, for this and this reason. They might not want to do that - then don't use their business. I wouldn't operate an eBay store for example, because of the terrible things some eBay store operators say about eBay and their policies. I just wouldn't use it as a business front.

I think if you don't want airbnb to just ignore you, you should consider playing at their level, with constructive feedback about what to do and how to do it, and if they _don 't_ want to do that - then to make a hard decision about whether you want to do business on their terms, or make a living somewhere else.

You can't get them to change their behavior by starting to behave as though they already promised to do that or set the relationship up like that. They aren't DoubleTree opening a franchise program. It's just a different sort of organization.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Anyone migrated from one engr field over to software dev? - <AUTHOR>

Anyone here transition from a different engineering background (Chemical, Civil, Mechanical..) to software development ? If so, how long did that transition take you until you were proficient enough to be employable? Were you still working during your 'ramp up' ?
I'm really enthused about becoming an iOS dev and have been self learning all year long - from time to time I wonder if it'll actually happen. I've only had one opportunity to get hired as an iOS dev but the job location ended up in another state rather than the my town (LA) as originally discussed. I've had a recruiter tell me I have a strong engr background but not what their clients are looking for.
Given I have 5 years experience working not as a SW dev, and only a pair of iOS apps, am I too risky too hire? <comment><USER2> I have an electrical engineering/signal processing background and, except for a few internships and the first year of my job, I have really been doing software development all the time. The fields are quite correlated but still I haven't really got a lot of formal training in Compute Science. I got the feeling that due to the nature of Internet, it is much each easier to learn and experiment with software, than say civil engineering. (But maybe because I have not looked close enough)

Software is eating the world anyway. Every field you have cited, and you can add education, healthcare,..., would benefit to have better connected, mobile, tools. I don't know your personal history, but if you want to have an edge you probably need to find an intersection between your own field and sw development. To take an extreme example, if you have been working for 5 years in day care, you are better prepared to create the "Uber for daycare" than a random guy with an idea.

I actually know lots of people who came from different fields and end up in software engineering because of the insatiable need of more sw everywhere. And more often than not, people with passion are better than people formally trained. I remember a guy who had a formal education in biology/horticulture but was writing some program in his spare time when he was a teen, and he was a terrific sw dev.

<comment><AUTHOR> if you don't mind me asking, did you start doing SW dev at your employer during that first year when you were still doing EE work? Or did you pick it up on your own outside of your day job ?

<comment><USER2> I evolved gradually at my first job, so it was probably easier that doing things on my own.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Having an engineering degree/experience is a plus . . . as far as iOS experience . . . if you can create your own apps that's a good first step . . . I would keep your day job and try to find some freelance iOS projects you can work on . . . just be cautious by padding your deadlines so you have plenty of time since this will be nights and weekends work . . . have a contract . . . invoice/review incrementally . . . so you know the client's happy along the way . . . my degree is in engineering . . . you learn lots of skills as an engineer than can help you as a developer, project management, etc . . . plus your education is a plus . . . so 5 years wasn't a total waste of time . . . but you'll need to get more projects/exp. under your belt to get hired full time as an iOS dev so get some freelance exp. and keep your day job. Keep up with the latest, trends, tutorials, start writing tutorials/blog posts get involved with meetups in your area. Connect with some other iOS devs and they can help you get the right skills to get hired. Good luck with the transition.

</comment><comment><USER4> I graduated with a BEng Civil Engineering but I've always loved to code (started with my TI85 calculator). Even while working as a CE I was automating AutoCAD with Lisp and C# to make my design work faster. But I finally decided to become a full time programmer after 7 years and boy was that a defining moment in my life!

I had the same problem with recruiters, telling me that I couldn't do this because I didn't have that etc... So I decided that if nobody wanted to employ me I would employ myself and start my own consultancy. I haven't looked back since and my only regret is that I didn't make this decision earlier.

Don't let anyone put you in a box. Do what makes you happy and blaze your own trail!

If you feel that you need a CS degree then nothing stops you from doing an online masters in computer science. They're great because they enable you to work while studying.

Good luck

<comment><AUTHOR> Inspiring! Glad it worked out for you

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> _Many_ of the H1Bs from India studied a field of engineering.</comment>


Lightning Strike Triggers Amazon EC2 Outage - <AUTHOR> http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2009/06/11/lightning-strike-triggers-amazon-ec2-outage/

<comment><USER2> Can't those people just spin up new instances on different servers?</comment>


All Signs Point to Russia Being Behind the DNC Hack - <AUTHOR> http://motherboard.vice.com/read/all-signs-point-to-russia-being-behind-the-dnc-hack <comment><USER2> I have no idea if it came from Russia or what, but I have noticed that politicos have chosen to take this point and run with it rather than discuss the actual contents of the leaked documents.

<comment><USER3> This is a case where the source of the information does matter - the article notes that a number of files were edited and that tampering with information isn't new for Russian intelligence. That's not to say the leaks are false, it's just that skepticism is a prudent response.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> * Russia couldn't break into Clinton's home server and steal emails

* Russia broke into the DNC's network and stole emails

Choose 1

<comment><USER5> Why wouldn't Russia break into both?

<comment><USER4> * that's the point

<comment><USER5> OK, I'm a little slow. I didn't get it (do now). :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Edward Snowden was the source of leaks exposing the massive and illegal snooping on U.S. citizens by our government.

The vast majority of U.S. citizens did not focus anger on the leaker -- only the exposed facts mattered.

It really doesn't matter who the whistle-blower is. The facts and the wrongdoing matter.

The people who villify whistle-blowers "can't handle the truth."

<comment><USER7> It kinda does matter if the official security organs of another nation are messing with our elections. That's double plus ungood. It would be even more ungood if evidence were uncovered demonstrating that the manager of one campaign with connections in the region colluded with the Russians (see also: Kissinger, Vietnam; Poppy Bush, Iran). (Obviously, the US's hands aren't particularly clean here, what with the CIA having intervened in foreign governments repeatedly)

<comment><USER8> The DNC manipulated their elections. The hackers (if a state actor or a lone amateur) are setting the record straight and are doing a great service to the american public. They haven't found yet strong evidence of the election manipulation at the hacked servers, but this doesn't mean it didn't happen. So far the Clinton Foundation leaks alone should be enough material for treason.

<comment><USER7> The Clinton Foundation levied war against the UNited States, and/or gave aid and comfort to its enemies?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> An interesting contract with the Sony hack, which the president was quick to publicly blame on North Korea with much less evidence. But officially, the administration has not accused Russia directly in this case. (This isn't stopping it from becoming a campaign issue, of course).

</comment><comment><USER9> There's also a lot of evidence that NATO is being prepped to get more aggressive with Russia, and that Hillary wants a major escalation with Russia.

Given that the DNC emails provide enough rope to hang themselves, Russia would be stupid to NOT do this.

If it comes down to: Trump - friendship with Russia, Clinton - war with Russia, I know which way I'd vote.

<comment><USER7> If by 'friendship with Russia' you mean 'let Putin take whatever territory he wants'.

<comment><USER9> You mean like how we respect the borders of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and Syria?

<comment><USER10> Putin has made it clear that his goal is to turn Russia into an authoritarian police state (a goal he has largely accomplished) and regain all the territory that the old USSR controlled, including Eastern Europe. Is that what you really want? Do you really think that would make the world a better place?

<comment><USER7> Trump has made clear he wants the US to be an authoritarian police state, so they agree on that.

<comment><USER11> >Trump has made clear he wants the US to be an authoritarian police state

How so? I have not been following Trump much. What are his policies that will turn the country into a police state? And how does he plan to go around Congress and the Judicial Branch to implement his police state?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> it's possible that more than one entity hacked the DNC server(s). i'd say it's very likely. that's going to make attribution even more difficult

</comment><comment><USER4> I thought Trump was going to start ww3 with Russia.

<comment><USER13> You aren't paying attention. Trump is friendly with Russia. Clinton is hostile with Russia. Remember how "Bush lied to invade Iraq"? I see the same thing happening here with Clinton camp blaming Russia for the DNC e-mails leak. President Hillary is preparing the American people for a possible WW3 with Russia. She's clearly showing her intentions.

<comment><USER4> A Trump presidency right now would be a perfect recipe for World War III [1]

Would Donald Trump start World War 3 by accident or on purpose? Does it matter? [2]

[1] [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/matthew-d-taylor/donald- trumps...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/matthew-d-taylor/donald-trumps- recipe-for-_1_b_9527534.html)

[2] [http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/5/23/1529460/-Would- Donal...](http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/5/23/1529460/-Would-Donald-Trump- start-World-War-3-by-accident-or-on-purpose-Does-it-matter)

<comment><USER11> Those article are ridiculous.

Trump, like any President, will only use nukes, as a last defense, to protect America. It's only for self-defense.

To claim that Trump wants to nuke the whole world, yeah. Those authors are delusional.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


C++ Core Guidelines - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/isocpp/CppCoreGuidelines/blob/master/CppCoreGuidelines.md <comment><USER2> I wish they were more specific about when to use and not use exceptions. Truth be told I really hate exceptions and I strongly feel that they should only be used in the most disastrous situations. I'm messing with the 0MQ C++ wrapper now (which I will probably move off of) and they use exceptions for freaking everything. For example the send(msg) method returns true if the message is sent, false if EWOULDBLOCK is returned by the C api, or throws for any other error.. Like guys shit happens on networks all the time, just give me an error. Instead I have to try to track down all the damn exceptions and figure out what throws and what doesn't..

I actually really liked the way Apple did it for Objective-C. Don't use exceptions unless something is really going sideways, instead use NSError. I'm not saying this is the correct pattern for C++, but I don't personally think exceptions are the correct pattern either.

<comment><USER3> Exceptions are a mistake, plain and simple. They should have never been added to the language. They break the notion of programming as a sequence of events. With exceptions, now you have two sequences, the happy path and the 'wherever the hell the exception is caught' path. No matter how you slice it, exceptions are still a goto under the covers. If they are truly exceptional, you might as well call exit() too.

Go got this right. If there is an error, return it to the caller. The error can be a function, and the caller can call it when they want. This returns programming to a single sequence of events.

<comment><USER4> > They break the notion of programming as a sequence of events.

It's never been that way. What's a page fault?

> No matter how you slice it, exceptions are still a goto under the covers.

"break" is also a goto. What's your point?

> If they are truly exceptional, you might as well call exit() too.

That's completely unacceptable for robust software. Programs can recover from almost all errors and make forward progress, usually via staging some kind of rollback. Tearing down a whole process in response to error is a ridiculous extreme that works only in a few narrow domains.

> Exceptions are a mistake, plain and simple.

Is that why almost every language ends up adopting them in some way? Even languages that start out vehemently anti-exception, like Go and Rust, end up with the full try-and-catch exception toolkit. That's because, despite protestations, exceptions are extremely useful.

<comment><USER5> > Even languages that start out vehemently anti-exception, like Go and Rust, > end up with the full try-and-catch exception toolkit.

Rust (and as far as I know, Go) have pretty much remained the exact same with regards to their implementations here. Go uses panic/recover a bit more liberally than Rust uses panic/catch_panic; using panic for control flow is not idiomatic, and so is not done. Since you can turn them into an abort, it's not something you can rely on when writing a library, and so I'm not aware of any significant libraries that do so. You couldn't even catch panics for a long time, and the possibility was mostly added to prevent UB with regards to extern functions.

<comment><USER4> I find it amusing and sad that the Rust ecosystem, via this "panics as abort" feature, replicated one of the worst parts of the C++ ecosystem: -fno- exceptions, which, in C++, turns throws into aborts.

In both language environments, the availability of a compiler option that breaks a language feature doesn't erase the existence of that language feature.

<comment><USER6> I started out as a rust True Believer and still am active in the Rust community. But I don't use it anymore for new projects because it really doesn't bring anything new to the table. At my current job, I'm knee-deep in C++.

<comment><USER7> > because it really doesn't bring anything new to the table.

What about the built-in memory and concurrency safety?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This quote from Kernighan should be at the top of any C++ guideline: "Everyone knows that debugging is twice as hard as writing a program in the first place. So if you're as clever as you can be when you write it, how will you ever debug it?"

Writing supposedly smart code seems to be a weird culture thing in C++.

I've lost count of the number of C++ devs I've worked with that get the "Mmmm, donuts!" reaction to templates, and leave a stinking pile for everyone else to debug. I'm sure I'm included in that group of programmers, but I hope, not as much.

<comment><USER9> You've obviously never written any C++. The point of templates is precisely the fact that they make debugging easier, by replacing runtime assertions and bugs with cryptic compile-time error messages.

Figuring out a compiler error is _significantly_ easier than having to debug a malfunctioning test.

<comment><USER10> You've obviously never tried to debug template heavy code. They are like ugly black boxes - you get an answer (maybe correct maybe not) or you get pages of incomprehensible often useless error messages.

If c++ wanted a meta language, they really should have created one long ago instead of continuing this template madness.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm going to dissent on this. While the Core Guidelines "raise the floor" for code safety, I think the may be lowering/hardening the ceiling[1] as well. One problem is that, they impose an (inflexible) standard for function interfaces that is still intrinsically unsafe. For example, they direct you to standardize on std::shared_ptr for objects shared between threads. But this prevents you from using (even) safer smart pointers that, for example, do automatic mutex locking[2].

Presumably the alternatives to a standardized, intrinsically unsafe interface are either a standardized, safe interface, which would require introducing safe alternatives for unsafe elements like std::shared_ptr and raw pointers. Or a more felixible interface standard. For example, making your public functions function templates when necessary.

[1] shameless plug: [https://github.com/duneroadrunner/SaferCPlusPlus#safercplusp...](https://github.com/duneroadrunner/SaferCPlusPlus#safercplusplus- versus-the-core-guidelines-checkers)

[2] [https://github.com/duneroadrunner/SaferCPlusPlus#the- problem...](https://github.com/duneroadrunner/SaferCPlusPlus#the-problem-with- stdshared_ptr)

</comment><comment><USER12> Ugh, so much wrong with this. There is C++, as implemented by every compiler, and then there is fantasy C++, as seen by the committee... See, e.g. this trainwreck:

        https://groups.google.com/a/isocpp.org/forum/#!topic/std-discussion/rt2ivJnc4hg%5B1-25%5D

Also, e.g.

> P.6: What cannot be checked at compile time should be checkable at run time

Great! I want to do it! later...

> F.4: If a function may have to be evaluated at compile time, declare it > constexpr

Ok. You can't put static_assert in constexpr function. You can't put runtime assert in constexpr function. You can't put debug print in constexpr function. How do you even debug that?

<comment><USER13> I agree, e.g. they recommend not using `#pragma once` because:

> It injects the hosting machine's filesystem semantics into your program, in > addition to locking you down to a vendor. Our recommendation is to write in > ISO C++

Erm. What. Compiling anything other than a one-file program "injects the filesystem semantics into your program". I mean... your program is stored in a filesystem. #include uses a filesystem. What utter tosh.

And as for locking you down to a vendor, even niche compilers that you've probably never heard of support it.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pragma_once#Portability](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pragma_once#Portability)

I'd take anything from there with a boulder of salt.

<comment><USER14> Hrmf, what I think they tried to say is that #pragma once causes your code to compile differently depending on which file it's stored inside. This can cause problem with some tooling (e.g. precompiled header generators, some distributed compiler tools, etc.) which concatenate header and source files to generate an amalgam.

So it's not "tosh", it probably just doesn't correspond to your way of writing C++ code.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Discussed in 2015: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10239962](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10239962)

<comment><USER16> Ignored 4 months ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15540452](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15540452)

<comment><USER15> Yup. The convention here is only to link to the posts that received discussion, since users get ornery when they click on a link and nothing's there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Small annoyance (I haven't read the entire thing, but I have strong feelings about this): gsl::index is disgustingly verbose. If you use stl, just use size_t. If you're using something else, follow the conventions they use (be it size_t, int, or whatever). Their examples [1] conveniently omit size_t to push their alternative.

[1] [https://github.com/isocpp/CppCoreGuidelines/blob/master/CppC...](https://github.com/isocpp/CppCoreGuidelines/blob/master/CppCoreGuidelines.md#Res- subscripts)

<comment><USER18> I think you're missing the point that gsl::index, unlike size_t, is signed.

<comment><USER19> Ssize_t then. Or ptrdiff_t.

<comment><USER20> `ssize_t` isn't standard C++ (it is required by POSIX); `ptrdiff_t` is only one character fewer than `gsl::index`.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I recommend the tl;dr version from Kate Gregory at CppCon 2017, "10 Core Guidelines You Need to Start Using Now": [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkDEzfpdcSg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkDEzfpdcSg)

<comment><USER22> Haha. I have it opened in my browser waiting for some prolonged work interruption.

I guess I have to dedicate and report 1h for learning and self-improvment during next week.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Anyone know what these guidelines are talking about when they refer to a 'final_action' object, or the function/keyword 'finally'? I'm referring to E.19. I could not get the example below to compile even using the newest gcc with -std=c++1y at godbolt.org. It seems potentially useful, if it actually exists.

[https://github.com/isocpp/CppCoreGuidelines/blob/master/CppC...](https://github.com/isocpp/CppCoreGuidelines/blob/master/CppCoreGuidelines.md#Re- finally)

<comment><USER24> It's supposed to be part of "Guideline support library", see this section: [https://github.com/isocpp/CppCoreGuidelines/blob/master/CppC...](https://github.com/isocpp/CppCoreGuidelines/blob/master/CppCoreGuidelines.md#S-gsl)

The only implementation so far seems to be from Microsoft: [https://github.com/Microsoft/GSL/blob/master/include/gsl/gsl...](https://github.com/Microsoft/GSL/blob/master/include/gsl/gsl_util)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Not to threadjack, but: I never really learned C++, just C and then started using C++. And I haven't used C++ much in the last decade+, but would like to get back into it and learn how to do things The Right Way.

What are some good online resources for learning "modern C++", for someone who already knows several languages?

<comment><USER26> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16535886](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16535886)

<comment><USER25> Oh wow! How did I miss that? Thanks!</comment></comment></comment>


More Millennials Are Having Strokes - <AUTHOR> https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/more-millennials-are-having-strokes/ <comment><USER3> Iron deficiency anemia (IDA) has been associated with strokes in young people. IDA doesn't necessarily have pronounced symptoms and a diagnosis with a blood sample is simple and cheap. It is often considered a "female disorder" but it's only slightly more common in females than males.

tldr: Have your blood checked.

[1] [https://www.hindawi.com/journals/crinm/2012/487080/](https://www.hindawi.com/journals/crinm/2012/487080/)

EDIT: As most follow up comments seem to center around diet as a cause, I wanted to point out that there are several other causes.

<comment><USER4> Various deficiencies are definitely a problem in my friend population, where many of them are vegans.

The vegan diet is a diet of deficiencies, and since none of them are particularly careful about what they eat, I worry that it is making them all worse off. Iron and B12 may be the most obvious, but also D3, calcium, zing, animal based nutrients like creatine, and I'm sure others.

Unfortunately, this becomes a touchy subject with them very quickly, and most of them believe "being vegan is healthier," but are uninterested in engaging with or supporting this claim.

<comment><USER5> This is surprising to me, as in India a large part of the population is vegetarian. We don't seem to be susceptible to the same problems.

The move away from Milk products & Eggs seems to open a huge nutrient gap that the vegan population hasn't adequately identified how to fill.

<comment><USER4> Some vegetarians in developing countries do not have a B12 problem (which also causes anemia) because their food and water are more dirty, and there (B12) bacteria producing. For those vegans at least, their best bet is to accidentally eat enough food contaminated with bacteria or feces to consume decent quantities of B12.

Source: The Dietitian's Guide to Vegetarian Diets, 3rd edition, 2011. See page 192.

[https://books.google.com/books?id=eJ10HoYQ2woC&pg=PA183#v=on...](https://books.google.com/books?id=eJ10HoYQ2woC&pg=PA183#v=onepage&q&f=false)

<comment><USER6> This comment was both disgusting and enlightening. Wow, who would have thought some people derive nutritional value from feces-laden water?!

<comment><USER7> I feel like I have come across similar concepts. There is a theory for instance that developing countries get fewer auto-immune diseases because they are exposed to more germs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Possible reasons: Diet (any non-red meat eating diet for nutrient deficiencies, or too much meat due to reliance on fast food), drug/stimulant use (YOLO culture?), More sedentary lifestyle (Desk jobs, social media for 'entertainment'), Lack of resources to take time off from work (too many hours + high rents = no time/money to do have non-home hobbies)

The interesting statistic was the urban regions were less pronounced than the suburbs, which may indicate something either cultural or economic that may drive this change.

Either way, it's unfortunate. We're living in the best possible time in history, and many millennials are being impacted by something which - in some cases - may be completely avoidable.

<comment><USER9> What does not consuming red-meat have to do with anything? Consumption of red meat is at an all time high and is growing every year.

<comment><USER10> According to another comment here, iron deficiency is a common cause of strokes in younger people. Diets low in red meat often lead to iron deficiency. (Of course, this can be addressed with a supplement, but not everyone who avoids red meat also takes iron supplements.)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14683737](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14683737)

<comment><USER11> Excess iron in men also elevates cancer incidence, so I don't think one should take an iron supplement if there's no need. A blood test is necessary. If you look closely at the men and women's multivitamins that are sold in stores, you'll see that there is no iron on the men's multivits.

Excess iron can be reduced by donating blood.

Also important: cast iron cookware introduces a non-insignificant amount of iron into cooked food, which can be detrimental (or beneficial) depending on the subject.

<comment><USER12> High iron also correlates to an increased risk of heart disease, liver disease, diabetes, and more. [http://www.webmd.com/men/features/too-much-iron- in-your-bloo...](http://www.webmd.com/men/features/too-much-iron-in-your- blood) That's one reason why I donate blood regularly. They check my iron levels, then bleed off a bunch I don't need.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> A couple potential causes:

Increasing incidence of morbid obesity, HTN, type II diabetes, which are risk factors for strokes.

Increased incidence of IV drug abuse, which sometimes leads to endocarditis, leading to septic emboli (I see this very often).

<comment><USER14> Yes. We need to stop subsidizing and normalizing obesity.

<comment><USER13> Honestly, I think the opioid epidemic is really what is driving this more. Unfortunately the article doesn't bring it up.

Though I do agree with you in general that we need a fundamental cultural change or we are going to see the average life expectancy.

Every morbidly obese child you see has s good chance of not living past 50-60, and their adulthood is going to be marked by early disability.

<comment><USER15> In fairness the article actually does bring up the drug angle twice, but in passing.

>in our data we saw this [youthful stroke] increase independently of that," says Brett Kissela, professor and chair of the Department of Neurology and Rehabilitation Medicine at the University of Cincinnati, who headed the 2012 work. It is likely drug use among the younger adult population also plays a role, he says

>Ralph Sacco, president of the American Academy of Neurology, notes that "data has been scant" about strokes among younger people. "There has been mounting evidence from different studies suggesting that even though the incidence and mortality of stroke is on the decline, the rates may not be dropping quite as much—and even [may be] increasing—among younger populations," Sacco says. "The reasons for these trends are not entirely clear but there are concerns about obesity, diabetes and physical inactivity having a greater impact in younger stroke victims." Drug use may be another factor, he adds.

<comment><USER13> Thanks, I did miss those references. I do wish they had mentioned IV drug abuse specifically because that is far and away the largest factor. I would wager stimulants like meth and cocaine as as second, followed by vasculitis caused by levamisole laced cocaine (used to be really common when I trained).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Sleep deprivation is known to cause strokes, take a look at how many millennials are expected to put in 80-100 hours for a 40 hour check , extreme high competition overtime just to hold onto their seat.

<comment><USER17> OK, ready to get out of my bubble. How true is this? The only people I know that work more than 40 hours a week still work less than 60. This is in "office", food, and service jobs.

<comment><USER18> I know people that would work 80 hour weeks. They were engineers in the gaming industry and a couple crunch weeks were not uncommon.

But that's a really specific situation for a short period of time.

<comment><USER19> I starting working in games in the early 2000s. The first game I worked on (Black & White) had me working 16-20 hour days, 6-7 days a week for 9 months. It destroyed my health and turned me into an agoraphobic for at least a year, with related conditions lasting much longer. I've seen people have to check into mental health institutions after shipping games.

At one place I worked, there was a "crack board", where they would have sweepstakes on who was going to come apart at the seams and lose it. Who knew mental health issues could be so fun? "lol".

Needless to say I no longer work in games, it has done damage to my body and psyche for very little return..

<comment><USER20> Do employers ever get sued for having an abusive work culture?

<comment><USER18> Having a culture of ridiculous work hours is not a crime.

And as long as thousands of developers handle/enjoy the game industry environment, there's no compelling reason to change.

<comment><USER20> > Having a culture of ridiculous work hours is not a crime.

But it should be, per labor law. At a minimum, its wage theft.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> From what I understand, strokes are caused by the same thing heart attacks are - atherosclerotic plaques, and APs are caused by high blood cholesterol - <USER2> are literally constituted of cholesterol/foam cells. Has the consensus changed?

<comment><USER22> More commonly from dissections of the internal or external carotid or vertebral arteries, which for some bizarre reasons happens less as you age.

<comment><USER13> Don't take this the wrong way but your statement is incorrect. I don't have time to type out all the various subsets of strokes but Wikipedia is a good initial source. Dissections are fairly uncommon. Far more common are emboli strokes from afib, small vessel atherosclerosis, for example.

Interestingly, dissections as you mention cause ischemic strokes by (generally speaking) flicking off clots that mess things up downstream that form within a pouch made by the dissection (low blood flow + body trying to patch things up = pro-coagulation). Note in this case there is a tear in the artery wall but the wall remains (ie, no blood exits the artery).

This is different than an aneurysm, when the arterial wall bursts and you have bleeding within the brain. That is termed a hemorrhagic stroke.

Source: hospitalist physician for 7 years who has cared for 100s of strokes at a hospital that specializes in neurology.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> my wife had a stroke at age 30. 4 strokes actually, 2 bleeds and 2 clots. accidental overdose on stims.

<comment><USER24> What do you mean by stims? Like adderall?

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> 2 months ago:

"Researchers Find Gut Bacteria Can Trigger Brain Lesions That Lead to Strokes ; Another connection between the gut and the brain."

[http://www.sciencealert.com/researchers-find-gut-bacteria- ca...](http://www.sciencealert.com/researchers-find-gut-bacteria-can-trigger- brain-lesions-that-lead-to-strokes)

HN: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14315355](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14315355)

</comment><comment><USER26> I couldn't find the separation by kind of stroke (arterial/veinous, ischemic/hemorrhagic).

</comment><comment><USER27> I enjoyed reading this, and was surprised to learn it was written two decades ago in (1998). I wonder what we've learned since?

</comment><comment><USER28> Almost doubled in some areas since 2003. That's huge.

</comment><comment><USER29> Stress of being slaves to a bank for the rest of their lives when wages and jobs in those areas are shrinking, and while they watch the planet being trashed.

</comment><comment><USER30> My longshot theory: Molly.

I've watched brilliant brains literally get ruined by the overuse of that garbage. I would bet anything that it's more dangerous than any of its users want to admit.

<comment><USER31> Do you know what a stroke is?

<comment><USER30> Yes, do you?

Funny how the downvotes and attacks come when you discuss the possibility of drug-induced brain damage in Millennials to a website full of.... drug- defending Millennials!

<comment><USER31> I think molly is stupid, and would never try it. BUT molly-induced brain damage is usually hyponatremia, or a subtler form of damage to the serotonin system. not stroke.

<comment><USER30> The absence of proof is not the proof of absence. Also, did I not mention "longshot theory"?

I stand by what I said and will double down in fact. Too many people melting their brains with that crap and there are almost definitely unforseen consequences of doing so.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's mostly obesity. If we allowed for obesity as a reason to deny health coverage, then health innsurance would be affordable.

And since it costs nothing to lose weight, it seems fair.

<comment><USER32> > since it costs nothing to lose weight, it seems fair.

This is only a half truth. Starving yourself is free, but losing weight while still eating a variety of foods (most people can't stomach 24/7 lentils) on extreme financial (including preparation equipment) and time constraints (prep time, time to get ingredients) is nontrivial. Look at the nutritional content of the cheapest and most readily available food you can find (fast food, walmart-brand sausages, etc etc etc). It's typically full of fat and sugars. Higher-quality readily available foods are typically more expensive and harder to come by in poorer areas. Higher-qiality food you prepare yourself is an option, but learning how to do as such is nontrivial and the time investment to prepare these foods can be a major challenge for some.

<comment><USER33> It's not that hard with proper planning (I did it, I lost 70lbs).

Takes 20 minutes for oven to eat up and 12 for pizza to cook.

In 32 minutes you can cook a healthy cheap meal with variety.

I ate porridge for breakfast, cottage cheese and salad for lunch and and chicken/veg, fish/veg for evening meal.</comment></comment></comment>


Virginia woman sued over Yelp review - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/crime/2012/12/04/1cdfa582-3978-11e2-a263-f0ebffed2f15_story.html?hpid=z2

<comment><USER2> That's weird...I know of a local business guy who got so angry on a known person who reviewed about his business and gave a slightly negative feedback. Wonder how all the other business owners feel when they get a bad review from a known person.

</comment><comment><USER3> Wouldn't it have been better for her to contact a lawyer instead of escalating the issue and probably damaging her cause by publishing her side of the story?</comment>


Ask HN: Already incorporated, want to give part of company to cofounder. How? - <AUTHOR>

DE C Corp. I own 100%. Want to give % to new cofounder. <comment><USER2> My first advice is, you should get a lawyer to do that (I'm not a lawyer).

If you're a C-corp, ideally you haven't issued all stocks you're authorized to. Usually you're authorized to issue 10M stocks and you then limit the number of shares outstanding. If that's the case (say you have less than 5 million shares), you can just make your co-founder sign a stock purchase agreement on the # of shares you want to give her/him.

If that's not the case and you own all 10M shares, the company will have to buy back shares and then transfer them to your co-founder (via stock purchase agreement). The downside is that the company will have to pay for those shares (usually we're talking about a few hundred dollars).

</comment><comment><USER3> Who did you incorporate with? Usually you can ask them for these type of forms (stock grants, offer letters, contractor agreements, etc).

<comment><AUTHOR> incorporate.com or something. I'll check it out thanks</comment></comment>


SES-10 Launching to Orbit on SpaceX's Flight-Proven Falcon 9 Rocket - <AUTHOR> http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160830005483/en/SES-10-Launching-Orbit-SpaceXs-Flight-Proven-Falcon-9 <comment><AUTHOR> More also on LA times [http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-spacex- rocket-20160829...](http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-spacex- rocket-20160829-snap-story.html)

It's really exciting to see how this develops going forward. This whole landing rockets thing was deemed not possible (or worth it) only some years ago, and now SpaceX is landing rockets left and right. The next step is to re- fly them - which is still deemed not worth it by most. Let's see if there is a pattern.</comment>


Double Tap to Wake on smartphones: A story of Wizards and elves (and muggles) - <AUTHOR> https://www.quora.com/How-does-double-tapping-your-smartphone-to-wake-up-work-Will-it-consume-more-battery/answer/Vineeth-Raj-1?share=1 <comment><AUTHOR> An attempt to explain to the layman, how the Double Tap to Wake feature works in smartphones.</comment>


Customs police seized $900k in counterfeit money – all in $1 bills - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/28/us/cbp-seized-shipping-container-trnd/index.html <comment><USER2> Any confirmation it's not Joss Paper?

It was just New Years and it's suspicious CNN don't show a whole note, where the "Fake" would be.

Same in Australia (with higher notes)

[https://www.afp.gov.au/news-media/media- releases/counterfeit...](https://www.afp.gov.au/news-media/media- releases/counterfeit-cash-warning-ahead-chinese-new-year)

<comment><USER3> That was my first thought as I clear international freight through customs and see shipments of it every now and then. Looking at the image though that's definitely supposed to be counterfeit currency. The printing looks pretty decent based on that one photo but the paper immediately stands out to me.

I should add that I'm quite familiar with counterfeit coinage, and 'in another life' saw quite a few counterfeit bills of larger denominations when I was involved with an 'ultra lounge' as bars and clubs are common places to try and pass counterfeit bills. There are guides on the clearnet and DNMs that even suggest you use bars/clubs to convert it to real fiat due to the fact bartenders are often quite busy and are in poor lighting. Never any dollar bills though.

Here are a bunch of fake specimens of coins and bullion /r/silverbug members have seen over the years that I've been curating [https://www.ryanmercer.com/ryansthoughts/2014/8/22/fake- silv...](https://www.ryanmercer.com/ryansthoughts/2014/8/22/fake-silver.html)

Back to that money though because I'm curious and am gonna do the maths so might as well share it, US currency bills are are 2.61 inches wide and 6.14 inches long; they are 0.0043 inches thick and weigh 1 gram. You have 20,000 per box if it's an even 900k. An inch is 232.55 bills, let's call it 232 bills with the paper wrapping per inch.

Each of those boxes should be 0.8~ cubic feet or so if they were optimally packed. If that's a 40"x48" pallet those boxes are probably more like 0.96~ cubic feet.</comment></comment>


Typography in 8 bits: System fonts (2011) - <AUTHOR> http://damieng.com/blog/2011/02/20/typography-in-8-bits-system-fonts

<comment><USER2> I've got a soft spot for the MC6847, who needs lower case or an glob-star even when you have semigraphics!

[http://members.casema.nl/hhaydn/howel/Acorn/Atom/atap/charse...](http://members.casema.nl/hhaydn/howel/Acorn/Atom/atap/charset.png)

I even made it a pcf, from my notes:

      $ convert charset.png -crop 256x48+0+0 +repage c6847.png
      $ convert c6847.png -crop 8x12 +repage +adjoin 'c6847g%02x.png'

Need to make B&W:

      $ convert c6847.png -threshold '1%' c6847.gif
      $ for p in c6847g??.png; do convert "$p" -threshold '1%' "`basename $p .png`".gif; done

Got gif2bdf

      $ curl -O http://czyborra.com/unifont/gif2bdf

Looked at it, decided it was safe, and patched it to hackishly get around some issues.

      @@ -5,20 +5,19 @@
       # into a handier bitmap distribution format font

       $[ = 1; $chars=$#ARGV; undef $/;
      -
      +$dec = 32;
       for (@ARGV)
       {
      -     $dec = hex ($hex) if ($hex) = /([0-9A-F]{4})/ || next;
      +     $hex = sprintf("%04x", $dec);
            $_ = `giftopnm $_`;
            s/^P4\s(\d+)\s(\d+)\s/$wid=$1,$nib=$wid>>2,$ht=$2,''/e;
            $_ = unpack ("H*", $_);
            s/(.{$nib})/\n$1/g;
            $header ||= print "STARTFONT 2.1
      -FONT -Unicode-Charts-Medium-R-Normal--$ht-${ht}0-72-72-C-${wid}0-ISO10646-1
      +FONT -c6847-fixed-medium-r-normal--$ht-${ht}0-72-72-C-${wid}0-iso8859-1
       SIZE $ht 72 72
       FONTBOUNDINGBOX $wid $ht 0 0
      -STARTPROPERTIES 4
      -COPYRIGHT http://www.unicode.org/unicode/copyright.html
      +STARTPROPERTIES 3
       DEFAULT_CHAR -1
       FONT_ASCENT $ht
       FONT_DESCENT 0
      @@ -33,7 +32,10 @@
       BITMAP$_
       ENDCHAR
       ";
      -
      +     $dec = $dec + 1;
      +     if ($dec == 96) {
      +             $dec = 192;
      +     }
       }

       print "ENDFONT\n";

Made fonts

      $ ./gif2bdf `ls c6847g??.gif | sort` > c6847.bdf
      $ bdftopcf c6847.bdf > c6847.pcf

</comment><comment><USER3> A fun tangential fact about the original Macintosh's system font, Chicago: it was the typeface used by Squaresoft in most of their 16-bit era Super NES RPGS (Final Fantasy VI, Chrono Trigger, etc)

<comment><USER4> They modified the upper case characters to shave 1 pixel off the height tho - presumably to fit it in an 8x8.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The Sharp MZ80k had an interesting font which included a bunch of "graphics", which were available feom the huge horrible keyboard.

[http://www.1000bit.it/scheda.asp?id=101](http://www.1000bit.it/scheda.asp?id=101)

<comment><USER6> That keyboard is wrong on so many levels.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I recently restored an ADDS Regent 25 terminal; it has an 8085 inside, so I'll claim it as an 8-bit system font :-)

Sorry I don't have a better picture:

[http://i.imgur.com/4jR8izX.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/4jR8izX.jpg)

Its close to the 'Speccy' font included in cathode:

[http://www.secretgeometry.com/apps/cathode/](http://www.secretgeometry.com/apps/cathode/)

<comment><USER4> It is an interesting font although very different from the Sinclair Spectrum font. (I added a bunch of those to Cathode)

<comment><USER7> Just to close the loop; a better picture:

[https://flic.kr/p/nMA6kz](https://flic.kr/p/nMA6kz)

I quite like the 'l' and 'i', but the 'V' is worrisome.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Wow, so the Amstrad CPC font is very very similar to the IBM CGA font.

And to think all these years I'd thought they were using CPCs on TV :/

</comment><comment><USER9> So much nostalgia. It's funny but looking at these fonts reminds me of the good times programming these machines.

</comment><comment><USER10> I love the commodore one!

</comment><comment><USER11> missing: profont

<comment><USER12> The Macintosh had a 16-/32-bit CPU, and so custom 3rd-party fonts for it do not qualify for inclusion on a page of system fonts from 8-bit systems...

<comment><USER11> I find it fits pretty well and to me it beat all the fonts listed in the article

<comment><USER13> _How_ do you find it "fits pretty well"? This is an article (a quite interesting one) about system fonts for 8 bit systems. Profont is not a system font on any 8 bit system. It makes no sense to discuss Profont in this context.

<comment><USER11> [http://www.tobias-jung.de/pics/profont9pt.gif](http://www.tobias- jung.de/pics/profont9pt.gif)

yell at me all you want, you know what I mean.

"DON'T CALL THE SKY BLUE, SCIENTIFICALLY IT HAS A CERTAIN WAVELENGTH WHICH YOU TOTALLY IGNORE"

<comment><USER13> I'm not yelling at you, and I genuinely don't know what you mean. Are you simply saying you really _like_ Profont? It's been discussed (along with several other programmers fonts) several times over the years here at HN. I'm not being pedantic, I'm just confused why you believe Profont has any relation to 8 bit system typefaces.

This is an article about history of typefaces on early personal computers. That's a cool thing to read about. There have been similarly interesting articles about programmers fonts, and I tend to read those, too. But, it's OK for us to discuss one without pulling the other into the discussion. It's simply a non-sequiter.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>