Rapidly-Exploring Random Trees: A New Tool for Path Planning (1998) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://msl.cs.uiuc.edu/~lavalle/papers/Lav98c.pdf <comment><USER2> I simulated mycelial growth using a modified RRT for my Masters. The algorithm has some very powerful properties. It is probabilistically complete over any number of dimensions. It is biased to explore unexplored regions first. It allieviates the "curse of dimensionality" by not needing to map out the configuration space or collision zones explicitly. And it makes shapes that echo mycelium, neurons, and galaxies.

</comment><comment><USER2> The most useful application I saw published was its use for protein folding simulations. Not sure how far they ended up going with this.

</comment><comment><USER2> One exciting paper showed path finding for a theoretical robot with 1000 degrees of freedom in its movement.

</comment><comment><USER3> Was there any more progress or work done on this concept since '98?

<comment><USER4> Tons, and it seems like it's still an actively researched topic.

<comment><USER5> Could you recommended any articles for further reading?</comment></comment></comment>


Text summarization algorithm API - <AUTHOR> http://www.klipper.io

<comment><USER2> Tried some text. Didn't feel it did any summarization. Seems like it just grabbed one paragraph among full content. But I have no idea why that paragraph is most important.</comment>


Thin Air's money isn't created out of thin air - <AUTHOR> http://blog.mpettis.com/2015/10/how-to-spend-thin-airs-endogenous-money/ <comment><USER2> "While economists tolerate models that are not constrained by accounting identities because, for some reason, economists do not seem constrained by the need for their models of the economy to conform to reality, any engineer whose model for a bridge requires that two plus three equal seven would find it hard to build bridges(...)"

To choose just one of many money quotes (if you'll excuse the pun). Really insightful post.

</comment><comment><USER3> Money's essentially an arrangement between people. If say you do a sketch on a bit of paper and I buy it off you for $1m in the form of another bit of paper saying IOU $1m then in a sense you have $1m in Tim bonds and can then use that to buy a car with another IOU backed by my bonds, or cash backed by them if someone will lend you the cash. The whole thing can fall apart if one loses confidence in the value of the debts though. What you see in the markets with currency creation and crises are all essentially more complicated variations of the above.

<comment><USER4> This is a kind of an economist's version of events. It's not wrong, but it is a narrative so it's useful for thinking about things in ways that economists are interested in, not necessarily every way.

Debt as the origin of money kind of dates to the time when economists were thinking about these things more than the time when money was invented. Money was invented lots of times. A common form is when there is a lot of trade and people start trading in particular things specifically for their tradability. Those things are then money. No promises involved.

In some cases there is evidence of promises as early money. Cattle or wheat and traded for clay artifacts and traded back at will could. This allowed traders to exchange clay coins instead of actual goods which is ore convenient. But, I think this is an exception.

Modern money often evolved from promises to pay bearers gold or other currencies and eventually the promise was removed.

Back to the narrative…

For my own narrative, I think of money like this. Money is a tool for massive and complex cooperation in large groups, a fundamentally human talent. It's emergent and the behavior that encourages its emergence is massive and complex cooperation in ways that require it, trade basically. If enough trade is happening, I think money emerges in some form and it enables even more trade.

<comment><USER5> I think you just took a step backwards by declaring money as "emergent". The two models sketched before were providing additional details - what particular conditions cause money to appear and why. Saying it sort of emerges when there's enough trade is zooming out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Something that bugs me about this article is the lack of distinction between monetary and real phenomena; "savings and investment must always be equal"

I agree with that if you're talking about real goods, but not if you're talking about money because you can always invent the money such that the amount of savings at t-.00001 isn't the same as the amount of investment at t+.00001 with the difference being the amount of money created.

Similarly savings and investment must always be equal doesn't seem universally true at any one instant; it's more of a causal relationship. Only what is saved can be invested, but it is not automatically invested. As money banks have reserves which they don't invest and in real terms there are huge amounts of steel inventory just sitting in warehouses not being used (invested) in making products at any one time. It can be invested in making a factory in the future, or consumed by making say cars. But it's not automatically invested by virtue of not being consumed, it can just continue to be saved.

I'm probably misunderstanding the author, I know.

<comment><USER7> The equality remains true in the pure, absolute sense. The scenarios you cite are cases where it appears to be violated, but the equality works out anyway.

For starters, money is not investment or savings, it's a way of keeping account. If you create money and nothing else changes, there is implicit inflation as the money supply gets larger and chases the same supply of good and services.

That's really the point of the article: if you understand that the identity is true, you can parse where endogenous money'comes from': how is wealth being transferred (which depends both on the state of the economy and the form of endogenous money).

But the point remains, axiomatically, that money is an accounting unit. Do not confuse it with the goods and services it represents; that's a failure of abstraction and makes it impossible to really understand inflation, financial repression, and endogenous money.

<comment><USER6> > The equality remains true in the pure, absolute sense. The scenarios you > cite are cases where it appears to be violated, but the equality works out > anyway.

OK so if I save 5 tons of steel but I don't put it to work, it's savings but not investment, right? Or is that not how it works?

I get that all investment had to at one point have been savings (instead of consumption) but not all savings is investment is it? If I "save" those 5 tons of steel for years but then eventually end up making them into washing machines they were savings, but then they became consumption.

Maybe in these cases the steel isn't "saved" because it isn't "invested" and the only things that can be considered savings are those which are invested. OK, sure. Then what is a bunch of stuff sitting around not being consumed or invested? Is it in purgatory?

<comment><USER7> No, savings == investment because they're two sides of the same thing, like corresponding entries in two ledgers. If one entity saves (that is, produces more than they consume + invest), those 'savings' are realized elsewhere in the economy where some other entity 'spends' more than it produces. That excess spending is either consumption or investment.

Therefore, net savings == net investment, where net savings means all savings - all consumption.

To engage with your specific example: steel that sits in a warehouse is 'investment' that earns zero return; if it eventually gets thrown away it's either consumption or investment with a loss of principal. If it's turned into washing machines, it's investment that realizes a return (that return could be negative if the price of steel goes down in the interim).

Does that make sense? I'm not really the best person to explain this stuff, since I haven't studied it formally. Much of what I read assumes a working knowledge, which I've cobbled together from mpettis and others.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm getting '503 Service Unavailable'.

Just in case the site is down for anyone else, looks like the Google Cache version is fairly up to date (cached in the last 24 hours):

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:5w5by8r...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:5w5by8rRlo4J:blog.mpettis.com/2015/10/how- to-spend-thin-airs-endogenous-money/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk&client=opera)

</comment><comment><USER7> Like all of professor Pettis's posts, this one requires pretty deep background or a lot of reading to follow completely... But it's well worth it.

If you think you understand what's going on in China's economy, you should be sure to read Pettis exhaustively (Andy Xie is good reading, too).

The general punchline: expect massively lower GDP growth in China. Not "below 7% low," more like below 3% at best, _if the economy is managed correctly_. Big caveat because the government's actions lately are pretty poor.

His analysis of the Chinese economy is similar balance sheet economics. Great stuff.

<comment><USER9> > expect massively lower GDP growth in China. Not "below 7% low," more like > below 3% at best, if the economy is managed correctly

Is it possible to sum up for us _why_ this drop in growth?

<comment><USER7> Very briefly, because the bulk of GDP growth (and GDP) has been investment, either in infrastructure out production capacity (in support of exports). Great way to industrialize, but it's not sustainable as China starts to have more capacity than the world can consume, and if continued investment in infrastructure doesn't result in higher long term productivity (cf ghost cities).

The'correct' way forward is to rebalance toward domestic consumption: make the Chinese people richer, and sell more to themselves. The balance sheet argument says consumption must therefore grow faster than investment, which should probably contract (we're well past the point of a dollar of investment producing a dollar of future productivity), but since consumption is starting from a relatively small base it has to grow impossibly fast to maintain the current growth levels.

Critical to this argument is Pettis's concept of 'financial repression,' that a lot of the uneconomic behavior and investing is a result of below-inflation deposits rates that have made household wealth shrink at the expense of cheap capital for business, particularly large and inefficient state owned enterprises. That implicit subsidy meant a lot of malinvestment was rational, but also implied an unsustainable environment.

Current global contraction is maybe the pin pricing the bubble, because what's ultimately unsustainable is the world's capacity to absorb Chinese production. In other words, demand-side softness, which is a global problem.

Sorry, that's not brief, nor is it necessarily easy to understand, but it's a complex issue that manner economists and China watchers don't necessarily understand (I'm assuming Pettis if correct, just in the strength of his arguments and other references agreeing; IANA economist)...

<comment><USER9> I don't disagree, but one could have said (speculated on) the same thing 2 years ago. Also, there is still a lot of other market share China can steal from others (which of course causes GDP decline in those countries).

It's extremely complex that's for sure.

<comment><USER7> I wouldn't say there's a ton of market share to be grabbed: the global economy is suffering from a savings glut. Chinese manufacturing dominates entire industries, and already other countries in Asia are offering lower-cost alternatives for labor (e.g., textiles in Vietnam).

In practice, China has driven down the cost of many finished goods (while driving up the cost of commodities) through its investment in manufacturing capacity and infrastructure. Its latest investments were probably non- economic; in other words, they will never pay back the principal due to overbuilding both capacity and infrastructure.

On the infrastructure side, there are entire cities with almost no inhabitants. These 'ghost cities' exist as hedges against principal-robbing inflation -- Chinese households have used property as a stable store of savings since traditional bank deposits and investment vehicles return below- inflation rates of return. This has inflated multiple speculative bubbles in Chinese real estate; the actual reckoning probably has yet to arrive.

On the capacity side, it's the same story. To choose a single, specific example: over 50% of Chinese steel capacity is lying idle; there have simply been too many factories built in the past ten years. The price of solar in the past few years has dropped precipitously because of Chinese over-investment in production capacity -- just ask Solyndra. The price of solar plummeted below what anyone predicted because of China's state capitalism, and a mandate to gobble the market share in the solar industry. (In this case, at least, there are positive externalities.) Chinese solar panel manufacturers are not making profits due to the intense competition and oversupply in the market.

The list is long. So no, there's isn't much 'market share' left to steal. China needs to build its domestic consumption share of the economy, by building its service sector and stoking domestic demand -- basically by making its citizens richer and selling to themselves. That's the only way forward, at least according to Professor Pettis.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Siemens previews autonomous 3d printing spiders - <AUTHOR> http://www.siemens.com/innovation/en/home/pictures-of-the-future/digitalization-and-software/autonomous-systems-siemens-research-usa.html <comment><USER2> Impressive stuff, but also reminiscent of minority report. I'd have liked more detail about the volume that the spiders can print, accuracy, etc, but seeing that they are not printing a material that most would want to use, it's probably more a very early proof of concept which will change drastically before being produced/scanning us in our baths.</comment>


Incanter is a Clojure, R-like statistical computing and graphics environment - <AUTHOR> http://github.com/liebke/incanter/tree/master

<comment><USER2> Some of the R authors (including Ross Ihaka, one of the R founders) had a similar project, but the home page seems half deserted (the mailman link leads to a 404), and, looking at the waaayback machine, it didn't get a lot of traction (~20 messages on the ML at it's peak in may 2006).

It looks like this project has a sounder base, though. Omeaga was supposed to be it's own language, and it's pretty hard to design one properly. Clojure + Parallel Clot sounds like a clean and powerful backend for this kind of platform.

And Clojure-the-language is a good fit too. Incanter's use of the Clojure syntax for matrices "literals" is very clever IMO.

I think there might be traction towards this, from both the statistical and the scientific computing communities.

The R architecture is dated. Matlab is expensive, parallel code requires a custom toolbox, with a per core licensing scheme (and the language is clunky).

The main competitor for this project would be the Python-based Sage and NumPy, but I think that the JVM backend of Incanter makes it a better tool for this job.

<comment><USER2> Oh, and here is the author's twitter Handle : <http://twitter.com/liebke></comment></comment>


Workmates might still be reading that 'unshared' Slack document - <AUTHOR> https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/12/16/slack_filesharing_vulnerability_post_sharing/ <comment><USER2> It's ridiculous to call this a vulnerability in Slack. It's a long way of saying "if you send sensitive data to someone, they can share it with other people without you knowing it".</comment>


Remote Debugging Django (mod_wsgi) Applications - <AUTHOR> http://blueprintforge.com/blog/2012/01/16/remote-debugging-django-mod-wsgi-applications/

<comment><USER2> Apparently this sort of debugging exists for emacs now (didn't the last time I looked).

<http://code.google.com/p/geben-on-emacs/>

</comment><comment><USER3> CPAN equivalent: [https://metacpan.org/module/Plack::Middleware::InteractiveDe...](https://metacpan.org/module/Plack::Middleware::InteractiveDebugger)</comment>


Maskless EUV Lithography Emerges - <AUTHOR> https://semiengineering.com/manufacturing-bits-june-8/ <comment><AUTHOR> Is this worth watching?</comment>


A Taste of Haskell - def- https://hookrace.net/blog/a-taste-of-haskell/ <comment><AUTHOR> As for the Java bashing in the beginning I'm not saying Java is anywhere near the expressive power of Haskell but many people think different things based on Java because of features they either don't know about, outdated libraries used, or experiences with older versions and codebases.

For example most don't know that Java actually does have macro like capabilities through APT (annotation processor that will work automagically I might add). Some might say ewww its not macros but then again annotation processing might just be 80/20 good enough (aka what OCaml learned with ppx vs camlp) and that Java now sort of has traits and that its code swapping is actually fairly good (jrebel). There are even sadly people that don't know Java has lambdas, and even some (usually C++ dudes) that don't know it has generics. Most don't even know that you can combine interfaces with generic types as in: `<T extends Comparable & Serializable> void someFunc(T t)`.

Yes Java is not Rust, Haskell or even OCaml in expressiveness but it certainly is more powerful than Golang and definitely compiles fast (albeit starts up slow).

That being said OCaml is still my favorite. Compiles fast and easier for me to understand. Super mature and lots of companies use it.

<comment><USER2> It's not Java what makes Java platform one of the most popular but rather JVM. That's why Clojure grows in popularity. Because it brings the expressiveness.

<comment><USER3> Please show me how Clojure is growing in popularity. Clojure has never been more than a niche language.

<comment><USER4> A language can grow in popularity while still remaining a niche language. Haskell is a very good example of that, but I really can't say the same thing about Clojure.

<comment><USER5> [https://xkcd.com/1102/](https://xkcd.com/1102/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> That's not really the Sieve of Eratosthenes. The list data structure is not well suited for the algorithm. See [1] for a proper discussion. As someone who wants to write Haskell(and loves it) for code with mathematically well defined guarantees, the propagation of such examples, where the guarantees or behavior is not clear to the author, is not helpful.

[1]: [https://www.cs.hmc.edu/~oneill/papers/Sieve- JFP.pdf](https://www.cs.hmc.edu/~oneill/papers/Sieve-JFP.pdf)

<comment><USER7> It's the same example displayed in haskell.org though.

<comment><USER8> Totally fair point. haskell.org has a very . . . casual approach to presenting the language. It's been such an issue some people made an alternate homepage at haskell-lang.org.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I got started with Haskell recently, and I'm really regretting not having picked it up earlier. Most of what I knew about types came from C, C++, or Java; so it's a big leap.

I've been using Haskell for Mac IDE [0] while experimenting, and it's been great fun.

The thing that prompted me to give Haskell a a try was this video [1] of a guy using Haskell to generate Elm types, in order to maintain consistent types across the stack. This idea captivated my interests. I'm confident that GraphQL and Relay, or something along those lines, is gonna be the future.

My experience so far has been that Elixir feels more welcoming and beginner friendly. There's nothing wrong with the Haskell community (or my limited interactions with it so far), but so far it's just felt a bit drier.

[0] [http://haskellformac.com/](http://haskellformac.com/)

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sh4H8yzXnvw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sh4H8yzXnvw)

<comment><USER10> If you delve deep enough into C++ TMP, it's just as expressive (more expressive in some ways) as Haskell. You can actually do dependent types in C++.

<comment><USER11> From what I understand, C++ can do _anything_! But sadly, it lets you do anything.

Haskell restricts what you can do hugely. But also lets you accomplish a whole lot within what it thinks of as safety.

I like Haskell - but think it's really just a playground for trying how far functional purity can be pushed, rather than being the actual best version of that paradigm.

Probably in 10-20 years time there will be a language around which takes all those concepts and comes together as a really pleasant unsurprising friendly developer experience. Maybe it'll come from slow evolution of Haskell... stack helps a lot, and a whole bunch of GHC extensions... but it's still got a lot of very impractical elements and hangovers from the past that really need to go.

<comment><USER12> It's a far cry from Haskell but I've found Rust's type system to be a breath of fresh air coming from C++. Stuff like destructuring assignment and matching on enums (or anything really) while not as powerful as their equivalents in Haskell, are still much nicer than what you can do in C++.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Don't know about Haskell, but what really got me (a long time CSharp programmer) into functional programming was this awesome site [1] (and a man behind it with his awesome talks) - which is focused on core aspects of FP (applicable in most languages nowadays) in real-world applications.

[1] [https://fsharpforfunandprofit.com/](https://fsharpforfunandprofit.com/)

<comment><USER14> I love that site. The best part about it is that it gives you all of the common names for stuff like category theory concepts. Eg: the various ways map, flatMap, bind, etc are called across languages.

Because its a pain in the ass to learn those concepts from scratch when you're looking at code in one language but reading a tutorial in another...the concepts are language agnostic, the naming conventions however are not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Nice link. One related question : where have you used Haskell in real life. Do some top companies use Haskell to solve problems

<comment><USER16> I second this question and would like to add another one:

Where is it that Haskell shines?

<comment><USER17> There are a bunch of fussy little problems that Haskell solves nicely. One example is looking up a value in a map

        map.get("foo") // returns null

is the value of the key null, or was there no key? Different languages have different approaches. Haskell let's you build up deep structures, a list of maps of list of maps ... and you'll have an indication of what path you took down the data structure to get a result. You _can_ do this in any language, but it relies on programmer discipline, and everybody doing it the same way every time. In Haskell, it's the easy thing to do, and often the only way to do it. You'll wind up with something like

[Just ["foo"], Just ["bar"], Nothing]

The first two maps had once answer each, the final map had nothing.

Laziness means you have control of the order of evaluation. in practice you can make your own control structures without macros. bracket is a good example,

        bracket open_socket do_stuff close_socket

the socket always gets cleaned up, with an ordinary function. No try/catch.

One of the biggest hassles in programing is leaky abstractions. The type system means you can steal abstractions from mathematicians that just don't leak. There's some good stuff here [1] about the kinds of things you can say.

Purity means values can't change behind your back. there's no function to call that'll change the state of some object you're working with.

All together, it's nice for languages. You can build up parse trees any way you wish, and traverse those trees to execute the semantics. So if you can think of a dsl for your problem, you can whip up an interpreter pretty quick. If you change your mind, and want to turn it into a compiler, it's relatively painless.

It's a fun language.

[1] [https://wiki.haskell.org/Typeclassopedia](https://wiki.haskell.org/Typeclassopedia)

<comment><USER18> I'm writing a compiler in Haskell for a university class this semester. I don't think "painless" is the word I would use to describe it. Would you care to elaborate on your thoughts here?

<comment><USER17> Sure :) First, i have to say i feel your pain. Writing a compiler is hard. If there's anything left you don't understand, this project will be punishing. Just know that at the end of the semester, there is absolutely no magic left. Your mental model of computation will be spectacular. Hang in there.

There are a couple of things. First, haskell lets you build up the language incrementally. So if your parse tree is like

        data AST = Prim Op |
                   Immediate Int

you can just throw in

                   Variable String

And the compiler will tell you all the functions with non-exhaustive matches. It's tough to do this in C because you have to remember all of your switch/case statements. Also, in C those switches are going to be based on a tag in a data structure rather than a direct type. The compiler won't really help very much.

Second, the thing that implements the semantics for the parse tree can be a typeclass.

        class Semantics where
            eval (Prim op) :: Prim -> a
            eval (Immediate i) :: Immediate -> a
            eval (Var name) :: Variable -> a

In haskell, you are free to implement an interpreter which is way way easier than a full compiler. It's nice to have an interpreter for your language, because you can run the same program both ways, interpreted and compiled.

so...

        instance Semantics Interpreter where
            eval (Prim op) = case op of
                Plus l r = eval l + eval r
                Minus l r = eval l - eval r
                ...
            eval (Immediate n) = n
                ...
            -- variables need an environment, but i think you get the idea, just look up the string in the env.

Then, you can write a compiler.

        instance Semantics Compiler where
            eval (Prim op) = case op of
                (Plus l r) = eval l ++ "MOV r1 r2 \n"
                          ++ eval r "ADD r1 r2 -> r1\n"
                ...
            eval (Immediate a) = "STORE " ++ a ++ " r1\n"
                ...
            -- again, variables require an env to be passed around, it's just another arg to eval
            -- this time around though, instead of a simple lookup
            -- you need the memory address to load into r1
            -- you have to encode what lookup would do.
            -- [2] talks about this a bit.

This is a pretty crappy evaluation strategy, just sticking the last result in r1, but i'll work. You can do much much fancier things.

Another super cute trick with haskell, you can use LLVM to generate your machine code at haskell run time, and then dynamically link it [1]. This lets you mix and match evaluation, interpret parts, compile parts, and use them interchangeably. Much much easier debugging. That link should get you generating machine code for a toy language in a day. Basically, instead of loading up the dynamic library, you just make an executable instead.

Anyway, there's lots of good stuff out there. I'd suggest out 3imp [2] (warning postscript file) That's Kent Dybvig's dissertation on writing scheme compilers. The second implementation is unbelievably elegant. full support for call with continuation, so much cool stuff. It compiles to a VM rather than assembly, but that makes a lot of complex things clear.

An obvious typeclass is a pretty printer for your parse tree, so you can make sense of what a program is supposed to be doing and you don't have to swear quite as much when your resulting assembly doesn't work.

A less obvious typeclass pass is a typechecker, if someone is adding a string to an integer, you can return a new AST that injects the Int -> String conversion. Constant folding is a good one to do as well.

An even less obvious typeclass will ensure that every malloc has a free. I don't think it's possible for any C program, but you can get a lot of it, and spit out a warning when your algorithm isn't sure.

If you can handle academic papers, Oleg's finally tagless is the coolest way to swap out interpreters, compilers, and partial compilation [3] (pdf)

C won't help you with that, like at all. you can play a game with a table of function pointers, that you swap out for the various eval cases. Debugging that, imho, is hard. With haskell the compiler just tells you you're being dumb.

I guess the main thing is, a compiler has a ton of special cases. Half the battle is just mananging those special cases. Haskell eases a lot of those burdens. The other half of the battle is coming up with good algorithms for getting stuff done (like register selection above!). Haskell lets you slice things up, so you can give your algorithm everything it needs to do its job efficiently. It's not that you can't do that in other languages (clearly, there are a ton of compilers in a ton of languages) it's more that it really encourages and supports the kinds of things you need to do when writing a compiler.

Again, writing compilers is hard. you will feel stupid. You are not stupid, you're doing something very few of the 7 billion people on the planet have even attempted. It takes years of practice to get good enough to even try. You're a badass. You'll solve it.

[1] [http://augustss.blogspot.com/2009/01/llvm-llvm-low-level- vir...](http://augustss.blogspot.com/2009/01/llvm-llvm-low-level-virtual- machine-is.html)

[2] ftp://www.cs.indiana.edu/pub/scheme-repository/doc/pubs/3imp.ps.gz

[3] [http://okmij.org/ftp/tagless-final/JFP.pdf](http://okmij.org/ftp/tagless- final/JFP.pdf)

 _edit_

In retrospect that register allocator blows. any right associative operations will get stomped on. It's what i get for slapping something together at 1 am. let's just pretend this is for fourth, and you always work on the top of the stack.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I really want to warn people from using long-to-compile languages in big projects. And by long, I mean longer than C++. From what I heard Haskell has compile time issues.

You will regret it once your in that position and it is hard to get out of once your there.

<comment><USER20> It's a common misconception that Haskell is slow to compile but not really true, see for example: [http://www.shimweasel.com/2016/10/24/fast-tests-and- static-l...](http://www.shimweasel.com/2016/10/24/fast-tests-and-static- languages)

<comment><USER21> I guess it depends on your expectations. I'm working on a ~38000 SLOC Haskell program (an optimising compiler: [http://futhark-lang.org](http://futhark- lang.org)), and with GHC 8.0.1, a full build takes about 7 minutes. I can cut off a minute or two by passing `--fast` to Stack. However, even small incremental builds take a significant amount of time due to linking, which is what annoys me the most. It's still far from making me disavow Haskell, but it's definitely not among the fastest-compilable languages.

This program is also too big to load in GHCi, at least on my laptop with 8GiB of memory.

<comment><USER19> That's pretty uncanny, swift has a fairly sloc to time ratio too. The memory usage although is significantly less.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I've spent quite a bit of time with Haskell, and all the beginner text like this link are easy to grok, but where I've constantly come up short is trying to write an app with, for example, a configuration and a database connection. Having multiple levels of Monad transformers just confuses me and I never get anywhere useful. Something like:

App MaybeT IO (StateT IO (EitherT IO Text SomeRecord))

Or something. I haven't figured this out.

<comment><USER23> Use IO for everything at the beginning. Use wai/warp to run an app directly and setup handlers. Use postgresql-simple to send queries. Read the settings object once, then pass it everywhere.

You can slowly start writing generic types for your pure code after a while. For example, replace types such as `[t]` with `Functor f => f t` if the only list-related operation done in that function is `map` (fmap). Try to take advantage of the stuff here: [https://wiki.haskell.org/Typeclassopedia](https://wiki.haskell.org/Typeclassopedia)

After a while of doing this, you can start looking into how you can write your code in a way to have more generic types, then specialise it for the concrete problems you're solving

Finally at this point transformers should become easier and more obvious. Perhaps the first one would be to replace passing the config everywhere with ReaderT. Implementing a few transformers by yourself should help. Start with MaybeT and continue with ReaderT. Tip: `liftIO` magically works but you don't have to always understand how. Maybe also try free monads if transformers seem too annoying!

<comment><USER23> I almost forgot; use MVar [1] to keep mutable state around. Its seriously helpful.

[https://hackage.haskell.org/package/base-188.8.131.52/docs/Contro...](https://hackage.haskell.org/package/base-188.8.131.52/docs/Control- Concurrent-MVar.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> There are some book recommendations at the bottom of the article, which are missing the (IMHO) latest-and-greatest introductory resource to Haskell: the book Haskell from First Principles.

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

</comment><comment><USER25> I love Haskell, but if you hate Java, but still want to leverage the nice Java ecosystem, (libs, IntelliJ, JVM, tooling, etc) try Kotlin! :) [https://kotlinlang.org/](https://kotlinlang.org/)

<comment><USER26> If you love Haskell I guarantee you will not love Kotlin in the same way. Your best overall bet for Haskell-like FP on the JVM is Scala+cats/scalaz and other Typelevel-endorsed libraries. Unlike Kotlin, it gets pretty close.

<comment><USER25> I mean, if you like Scala, you'll most likely like Kotlin, there are a LOT of similarities between the two.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Started learning Haskell just a couple of weeks ago. My only complaint with the language so far is that I cannot have the same name for a field in two records in the same module.

Other than that it is amazing the confidence it gives me; if it compiles it works (r).

<comment><USER28> If you are using GHC, the newest version (8.0.1) actually supports duplicate record fields with the [DuplicateRecordFields]([https://downloads.haskell.org/~ghc/latest/docs/html/users_gu...](https://downloads.haskell.org/~ghc/latest/docs/html/users_guide/glasgow_exts.html#duplicate- record-fields)) extension. Check it out!

<comment><USER29> Nice ! Does it work well with lenses ?

<comment><USER30> So you can do something like this:

        data Foo = Foo { _bar :: String }
        data Buzz = Buzz {_bar :: String}

And derive lenses? I think it doesn't - this is more than just a duplicate record name, you also end up with a duplicate `bar` lens

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> This may sound (and probably is) quite superficial, but I am immediately put off by any language that uses syntax like this: foldr' (+) :: Num t1 => t1 -> [t1] -> t1 Why? Because of things like => and -> are just a pain to write all the time and make you chase all over the keyboard, even more so on non-english keyboards. Just my very personal preference of course, but still...

<comment><USER32> It is quite superficial. Code being easy to read is much more important than code being easy to write. I'm not saying it's a bad idea to have both, but look at Java or C# that are a pain to write without a very smart IDE (just because of the amount of boilerplate). Even they have been saved by tooling.

Also, modern popular languages tend to use arrows (Java, C#, ES6). Not to say that popularity matters, but people are used to it nowadays.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> How bad is it looking at the examples and thinking "I love that lambda symbol as a prompt. I want"

I have to revisit my base setup soon. The 1990s wants its bash_profile back

</comment><comment><USER34> How difficult is it in your experience for developers to learn Haskell while on the job?

<comment><USER35> I basically learned Haskell at my first job (writing a compiler), and it was pretty easy to productively contribute starting on day 1, especially because there seems to be less risk of breakage than in many other languages. I also helped teach it at the next job, and developers found it pretty easy to pick up, just different from what they were used to.

Prior to this, I had some experience using it for hobby projects, but there was a lot more to learn for real-world use. My colleagues and I helped each other learn new concepts and write better code, as best we could, but we did end up making some questionable design decisions. I think you still need an experienced Haskeller to advise on good program architecture.

<comment><USER36> Compilers are a bit easier to start with because you can just deal with pure functions for the majority of the time

<comment><USER35> You _can_ , but that's not to say we _did_ , haha. One of the aforementioned questionable design decisions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I tried haskell queues a while ago - under the advice of a friend and compared with a straightforward C++ queue - it was about 100x slower. Abandoned the idea.

<comment><USER38> Let me guess ... you used [a]

<comment><USER39> What are you implying? What should they have used?

<comment><USER40> The list datatype is horrendously unsuited for being used a queue. They should have used a datatype designed for use as a queue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I taught myself Haskell because people say it improves you as a programmer. I didn't see that, but I have a math PhD so maybe I'm just too familiar with abstract types to gain new insight from Haskell.

As a language, it's sterile. You can tell it was designed by committee.

<comment><USER42> > _As a language, it 's sterile. You can tell it was designed by committee._

This remark is puzzling. How do you tell if a language is sterile?

<comment><USER41> Hard to put a finger on it but it lacks a certain "playfulness" which real- world languages have.

It's like the difference between Lojban/Esperanto (artificially constructed spoken languages) and English/Spanish. English/Spanish are "imperfect" but their warts are the results of thousands of years of culture (and may not be imperfections after all, they may be a case of some kind of coding theory emerging organically)

<comment><USER43> That's surprising since "playful" is exactly how I would experience how I perceive Haskell. I guess it only goes to show how worthless subjective impressions usually are.

In any case, I think suggesting Haskell isn't a "real-world" language comes of a bit trollish, even though you probably didn't mean it like that.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Cat Herding is a bad thing - <AUTHOR> http://blog.generationjava.com/roller/bayard/entry/cat-herding-is-a-bad-thing

<comment><USER2> Some analogies are like bananas.</comment>


Founder Books - <AUTHOR> https://postmake.io/books <comment><USER2> I've read most of those books and they are all very nice and worth a read.

The fact that those recommendations are literally everything I've read in the past few years is probably another proof that we, in the tech industry, live in a big echo chamber and have no idea what the real world looks like. We all keep telling each other that every we do is great because, well, we don't know anything else.

It's a bit sad and I'd love to see some more diversity.

<comment><USER3> People are what they don't read

<comment><USER4> I have no idea what that means but had to upvote because it was so unexpected.

<comment><USER5> I read it as: if you know some stuff very well already you do not read about it and conversely that you can spend too much time reading about it instead of doing it.

<comment><USER6> Interesting! I've interpreted it as: your blind spots define you.

<comment><USER7> (Me too, and Occam's Razor makes me think it's probably what the GGGP meant.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I didn't see any sales books. Are there any good sales books? Especially on details like how to generate leads? Every sales book is like "go into the office during your key hours for selling and start making calls, then when you're talking to a prospect do x,y,z". Yeah, great, where do I get this list of prospects to call? Some books have said to look at publicly available personnel lists for places you want to sell to and then start cold calling, determine who the decision maker is for the organization from there, and then get to that person. Really? Maybe, I guess. Others wave this away by saying some other person will generate qualified leads through advertising or something. OK, what if I don't have some other guy to do that? How do I do that? Any books that make this a little less magical?

<comment><USER9> Doesnt have to be magical. Assuming for enterprise or B2B sales:

Determine who your target customers are by industry/sector ie who is your product for.

Determine who are the top 1000 companies / orgs in that sector (Linked in/ NAIC codes, SIC codes).

If you have a budget you can buy lead lists from SIC, of you dont have, plan for about 2 man weeks to put together a good starter list of companies and prospective contacts.

Once you have your list of companies - id who your prospective user is by role. e.g. who will use your product? What is a likely job title / role? Use linkedin to find folks in that role or with that Job title? work out your value propositiion for your product. Boil it down to 2/ 3 lines.

With a short subset of your initial prospect list. Either cold call / email / linkedin message your targets with your value prop and work out from there: \- which contact method works (e.g. email / phone / linkedin) \- who the buyer is - does your user have purchase power - great you know who to sell to. \- What is their pricing sensitivity? \- IF they dont have purchase power who does -either ask (best) or assume next person in the chain - who do they report to. again identify role/ title and try them.

As you do this your looking to learn how to contact your prospect; who will use your product? Who will buy your product? What is the purchase process? What is the price point?

Based on your learning and each iteration of testing your sales hypothesis– refine your target prospect role/title, refine your value prop, your sales point, your sales process (to match their purchase process e.g. is it simply they buy with credit card from your website or does it go through an enterprise buyer… )

Now go back to your full company list and iterate through using linkedin and search engine to find folks who match your target role / prospect and enter these into your prospect list.

You now have a starting sales list. Contact them, qualify and try to make sales.

If you need further reading see any of the books on this list: [https://blog.closeriq.com/2018/11/enterprise-sales- books/](https://blog.closeriq.com/2018/11/enterprise-sales-books/)

and - Transparency sale by Todd Caponi. [https://www.amazon.com/Transparency- Sale-Unexpected-Understa...](https://www.amazon.com/Transparency-Sale- Unexpected-Understanding-Transform/dp/1940858801)

Good luck.

<comment><USER10> This is a bit like r/restofthefuckingowl.

If you need more concrete guide with what exactly to say during sales calls try

[https://static1.squarespace.com/static/57daf6098419c27febcd4...](https://static1.squarespace.com/static/57daf6098419c27febcd400b/t/5b0b4dc68a922dbfa263b389/1527467516482/Entrepid_How+To+Sell.pdf)

<comment><USER9> Lol yup. very good link on how to do the actual sales call once you have a list. very Worth reading.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Wow thanks for posting this!

Some more context:

Over the past month, I must've reached out to at least 70 founders and asked them about some of the books that most shaped their professional careers. Obviously not a lot of them responded, so I started going through some book lists (Sivers' and James Clear's lists are great!), the 400+ indie hacker interviews, and personal blogs, and adding everything I can find.

I managed to get recommendations from a little over 100 founders and makers heavily involved in the tech scene — all suggestions here come from people who run or are involved in revenue-generating businesses.

Hope you find this useful! Still would love to get some suggestions from people like patio11, austenallred, etc so if you're reading this drop me a message!

</comment><comment><USER12> Looking at first 5 or so pages, I've read a lot of these. Good stuff but seems very unilateral view on the world and I think could be unhealthy for founders to focus too much on startups.

Not sure what is the right mix, but some of the most motivating reads for me were:

\- Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture

\- iWoz

\- The Soul of a New Machine

\- Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid

\- Just for Fun: The Story of an Accidental Revolutionary

\- The Mighty Micro: Impact of the Computer Revolution

\- Accidental Empires

\- The Inmates Are Running the Asylum: Why High Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity

\- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values

<comment><USER13> I know only two from your list:

\- Just for Fun: The Story of an Accidental Revolutionary

\- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values

These 2 is one of the best books about philosophy and the world of ideas I've ever read.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I think some search/browse filters could be incredibly useful too. For example, I'd be interested in a split between recommendations by founders running on VC money versus those growing a more organic business, such as Basecamp perhaps. Or maybe those working on open source products, like Gitlab, compared to closed source cloud based offerings.

I imagine that there could be interesting things to learn through comparing the books recommended through such filtering.

<comment><USER15> Agreed. I feel it would also help to know why they recommended it. One sentence, no more than two. Sum it up, Twitter stylee.

That said, allow for down-votes would also help to add value. More or less, "read it, wouldn't recommend it." As it is, 5 recommends looks solid, but what if there were 10 don't recommend?

<comment><USER11> Re downvotes: the problem with that is sometimes book recommendations can be very personal or context-dependent. Sure 10 might not recommend, but what if the recommendations come from people whose background / experience / goals better align with yours? I included profiles for each founder under every book for exactly that reason — so you can learn more about them and about what might have driven these recommendations.

<comment><USER15> Yes. But what if the same can be said for those who don't recommend? I read a lot. Most of the time it's time well spent. But I don't recommend everything I read either.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I have read or skinned most of the books on the first page. Not really sure how much I gained from them as it seems that this has become mainstream knowledge already and you hear about these ideas everywhere.

I'm currently using Joel Spolsky's reading list when I need a good book. Here's the link: [https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2005/11/22/reading-list- fog-c...](https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2005/11/22/reading-list-fog-creek- software-management-training-program/)

Lot of good books I didn't even know about.

<comment><USER17> Great list, thank you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I have a few not on first page that I thought should be

Never Split the Difference is amazing for negotiation.

SPIN selling for understanding benefit selling verse feature selling

$100 Startup is a very good summary of techniques. It the next level of granular detail from 4 Hour Work Week

<comment><USER19> > Never Split the Difference is amazing for negotiation.

I have done thousands of negotiations (for vastly different things) and have been paid to do so. [1] I have never read a single book on negotiations. I can always tell when someone else has. (Read that again). [2] I could most likely write a book myself on negotiations and my experiences. The problem is it's a seat of the pants thing. It's nearly impossible to be able to say what to do unless you are in the exact situation and reading all the signals. Also it's creative at it's core so if you are a narrow type thinker you are most likely not going to be good at it no matter what (very generally). And of course what you are negotiating for and in particular who you are dealing with and their motivations are super important to the process. That said I am sure a book can help with an adversary that is not particular difficult and of course better than nothing. But like with most other things it is in no way even close to a substitute for actual experience over time and the right base attributes personally. Some people just aren't perceptive enough of others emotions and reactions to be good at it. No way around it. Also their own emotions and the ability to control them.

[1] The largest fee I made (recently) was close to $200k and I've been paid as little as $500 (or have done it for free in some cases).

[2] Because their delivery and actions appear canned and predictably fit another pattern that I have seen in the exact same way over time.

<comment><USER20> For the inexperienced, what are a few key principles that we can take away from your experiences?

<comment><USER19> Well in brief 'stop reading and start doing'. Now think about all the ways you can 'practice' at negotiation. You can start by trying to buy things that you don't even want to buy. Go in and play games with a car dealer when you don't need a car. As impractical as it sounds try to negotiate for a job that you don't want. Do it over and over and over again. Don't want to put in that effort? Well it's like anything else you have to. You would expect to be good at tennis or playing piano without practice. Now you have to enjoy doing this. Most people don't. I guess because they don't have good results or positive feedback. And learn to read people's facial emotions and also how they reply to emails or how their voice sounds over the phone. That is a large part of the game. Reading people whatever way you can. Also importantly recognize the situations where the game is not one you will win because your adversary is a gambler and will not fall for the typical games or doesn't care if they lose.

<comment><USER21> No, don't go in and negotiate with sales people when you have no intention of buying anything. They are people, trying to make a living, and by wasting their time you are literally costing them money. It's a selfish move, and if there wasn't a stigma attached to car salesmen you probably would realize that. I doubt you would suggest people similarly hone their negotiating skills by stringing along a series of freelancers on Upwork with phantom projects that don't exist.

<comment><USER19> Oh stop already. There are plenty of situations where people knowingly waste others time. What happens when you walk into a retail shop with ZERO intention of buying something? (And in some cases you actually do?). What happens if you waste the salesman time and then later refer that salesman to someone else who buys a car? Stop making as if you (or anyone) is so pure and honest and always does the right thing. (Or is even aware of all of the circumstances and why something is done).

That said the question is do you want to get good at negotiation not 'are you a saint who thinks they would never waste someone's time' (which I dispute per my other thoughts in this comment to begin with).

Guess what? I get a ton of tire kickers for my services that are referred to me. In some cases I know right off the bat that these people can't afford what I do and are 'wasting my time'. I still handle them with courtesy and take my time (knowing that I am wasting it) to help them. In some cases I enjoy doing so and in other cases I know they will then refer others to me. Many times these are people that have been referred to me (actually most times). I don't discourage it either. I know overall it's a good thing not a bad thing.

Auto dealers spend a ton of time to get people into the showroom. Advertising to sell cars. But did it ever occur to you that just like a restaurant [1] that is busy they might actually want the foot traffic because it makes things look popular and encourages others to buy (who are there)? Ever occur to you that it's good training for the sales person (who runs deals by the sales manager)?

[1] Restaurants will often trade at less than menu rates to have the restaurant be busy (even lose on diners) so that others (that are paying full price) will feel better about eating in a non empty place.

<comment><USER21> _Plenty of situations where people knowingly waster others time_ Yeah, I agree. And it seems like a crappy thing to do. Ubiquity doesn't change that. And someone that knocks on _your_ door before they know it's not a good fit is not an apt comparison for what you're advocating.

There's a difference between tire kickers who are curious and maybe have some low level of interest, like cars, etc. They don't even take much time, because they aren't going to the negotiation stage that would be so time consuming and yet be required for what you are advocating. You're advocating for a callous desire to opportunistically waste someone's limited time for their own potential gain. You conflate legitimate albeit casual shoppers with people who are only there in a cynical ploy for self advancement.

The theoretical potential for referrals is a red herring. That same potential exists in the customer they missed talking to, who might actually buy a car, that they lost because someone thought it would be educational to waste their time. Do you know anyone who has sold cars for a living? I do. I grew up with one I call "Dad". I know _a lot_ about how the industry works, dealership marketing and promotions, all of it. So you reference _foot traffic_ as a side benefit to your plan for negotiation experience? Hardly. 5 or 6 of your students in negotiation a day would be enough to cost salesmen money without adding to that "we're busy" look the dealership may want.

Otherwise, selling cars tends to be a soul crushing grind. At times it pays little more than minimum wage for work hours that would rival a dedicated startup team. The national average places their salary between $22,000 and $45,000. _That 's with commissions counted in_ and with a work week of 60-70 hours. That's not even counting the off-hours work like delivering a car on a trade between dealerships that is a dead loss for them. Working in the industry means making your target one month only to have the dealership owner change the compensation plan because people were making too much money, and _actually tells the staff that 's why._ At least that owner was honest, most don't bother.

Yeah, some salesmen are wildly successful and make lots of money, some sell high end cars in affluent neighborhoods. But it's like the startup world: for every success like that, even a mediocre success, there are countless others that aren't.

So if you want to brush off this type of behavior as no big deal, at least understand what your really advocating people do. I on the other hand see your advocacy for this kind of behavior as emblematic of the worst impulses of "all about me" culture, and the thin end of the wedge towards condoning sociopathic behavior that looks at other people as merely transactional units there to provide you with something you want.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> mck- Ray Dalio's Principles is becoming my favorite book of the year; despite it being ~500 pages, there's so much super relevant content to company building and generally very applicable principles that help with day to day conduct.

While most books I've read are tactical or strategic, this book talks about the philosophical -- especially recommended for founders beyond the scrappy MVP stage, perhaps a team > 10

<comment><USER22> A great book, half very intelligent, half completely insane. Bridgewater must be a place all its own.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I was going to say that Kiyosaki is a charlatan and people should steer clear, but that goes for most of these authors. Keep in mind that founder books are not written by people who are good at starting a business, but people who are good at telling stories to wannabes.

<comment><USER24> Was going to say similar. "Don't dig for gold, get others to pay you to tell them that they'll be successful and cool and attractive for digging for gold."

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Read a lot of these already, would recommend against the four hour work week. Plenty of criticism online, and I agree it's fully justified. The only book on the list that left a bad taste.

</comment><comment><USER26> I find a lot of these books too abstract. I much prefer books about people and their methods and accomplishments, as opposed to books that try to distill what they perceive as common characteristics of "succesful" people/businesses. Currently I'm reading "The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation" and its quite wonderful.

"Wizard: The Life and Times of Nikola Tesla" is a good read as well.

</comment><comment><USER13> I know this is not a popular point of view, but I'm also read a big pile of these books. And from my perspective (I'm living far from the US) there is a very big gap between nice theory and the real world. I'm trying to be positive about things but the real help in my business I've got from different sources. Maybe this is my own way, but after a few years of studying books like this from "business" shelf, I barely moved to the place where I'm now.

For example, a few months with a therapist gave me more resources than hundreds of hours I've spent on videos and "startup books". Best books I've read in the last 3-5 years was Martian by Andy Weir, and Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy by Liu Cixin. Very inspiring for me as engineer. Few videos about how to organize personal finances on Youtube gave me financial ground.

<comment><USER27> Mind sharing the finance videos?

<comment><USER13> It was many months ago, so I did some research now and I think these share the same ideas. First is about the basic idea of long term financial management [1], and these two [2] close to me since we also have a big family. Probably this is a very basic level for many people, but since my parents never had positive money management habits (my parents family from ex-USSR) it was the real breakthrough for me.

1\. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJB90G-tsgo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJB90G-tsgo)

2\. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulr1HAaF_JU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulr1HAaF_JU), [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKU5bEf192A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKU5bEf192A)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> One book is missing. I've read most of these books and the one that helped me most as a startup founder is _Disrupted_ by Dan Lyons. Comedy aside it was a true eye opener.

In the startup silicon echo chamber, you hear the same things over and over until you start to believe it. In fact, when I read many of these books, nothing came as a surprise because that's all the startup world talks about anyway.

Disrupted made fun of the things that I thought were pretty normal. One example is the culture were building in our own startup. We focused so much on the right culture fit that we got some of the worst people to work with us. And we couldn't see that it was all our fault.

Get a book that has an opposing view of your world. From time to time, someone has to make fun of us or we start to take ourselves too seriously.

</comment><comment><USER29> Have people been reading the same 10 books over the last 10 years? Those are almost exclusively content-light business books with a couple insights here and there. I hope people who pride themselves on contrarianism every other day have other reading materials.

</comment><comment><USER30> I am surprised Jocko Willink's books aren't on here. His book on leadership, Extreme Ownership, is excellent. Intertwined are stories from his time as a Navy Seal leader and applications of what he learned there to the business world.

<comment><USER31> I really enjoyed Extreme Ownership especially the story about the BUDS team leader complaining about always losing because of his team, him being switched to lead the team that always won previously, and the team that kept losing making a comeback.

Great book about leadership and entertaining.

<comment><USER30> His follow-up, The Dichotomy of Leadership is almost as good, and his podcast is a constant source of motivation. I am a Marine so I feel like I am extremely biased, but, everyone I've shared his work with has felt it equally as rewarding.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> This is great. It would be awesome if (validated) people could submit summaries too!

</comment><comment><USER33> This might be off topic or contrarian but I've been reading _Company_of_One_ by Paul Jarvis and I really enjoy his thesis that not all tech companies need to grow into large businesses. You can just have a small single operator business that focuses on making a better product and more efficient process instead of growth.

</comment><comment><USER34> Startup: A Silicon Valley Adventure from Jerry Kaplan is missing. 25 years old yet ripped from today's headlines.

</comment><comment><USER35> Can anyone recommend a good book for small self-funded first time founders? I'd like a book that has substance with information about filing as an LLC, non-profit pro/cons, finding your first investor, pitch deck tips, etc. Many of these books are meant for VC backed founders with 10+ employees.

<comment><USER36> I would look at the stripe atlas guides:

[https://stripe.com/atlas/guides](https://stripe.com/atlas/guides)

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Just checked the postmake website, it's great for solo entrepreneur. Thanks for curating those lists.

</comment><comment><USER38> Few suggestions that didn't make that list: The Innovator's Dilemma (and everything by) - Clayton M. Christensen Measure What Matters - John Doerr Obstacle is the Way - Ryan Holiday Factfulness - Anna Rosling Rönnlund, Hans Rosling, and Ola Rosling Grit - Angela Duckworth

</comment><comment><USER39> How do you balance reading about craft and practicing it? Also metathinking?

<comment><USER40> Go to a city or country where public transport systems are a thing. Read during your commute in the tube.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Even more recommendations, in addition to those already posted: [https://www.productgems.io/library/](https://www.productgems.io/library/)

</comment><comment><USER42> I like the ads actually. Nice piece of content marketing.

</comment><comment><USER43> Read some of these on Blinkist. After reading several dozen Blinkist summaries, these self help / entrepreneurial books all start to sound mostly the same. I'd say each book seems to have just one or two key takeaways that differentiates it from other books in its field.

Thoughts on book summary services such as Blinkist?</comment>


The Internet? Bah (1995) - <AUTHOR> http://www.newsweek.com/id/106554/

<comment><USER3> "Yet Nicholas Negroponte, director of the MIT Media Lab, predicts that we'll soon buy books and newspapers straight over the Intenet. Uh, sure."

<comment><USER4> To be fair, now, _fifteen years_ later, the hardware to make that reasonable is only just appearing. The vast majority of people has still never bought an ebook.

<comment><USER5> I never bought an ebook but I certainly do more than 95 percent of my reading on a screen.

(Considering that many people sit in front of a screen during their whole workday and read stuff I do not think that hardware was ever the problem. I do not know why people think they would be unable to read books on a LC Display when they have otherwise no problem staring at such screens for hours on end. It's about image, availability and price, not technology.)

<comment><USER6> You're making several fundamental mistakes. First, for a lot of what you read on your screen you have no choice. Where else are you going to read it? So the equation there is whether reading on a screen is better than not reading the particular material at all. Whereas with e-books the equation is whether reading on a screen (and the other benefits of e-books) is better than reading a physical book. Given some of the less than desirable characteristics of reading text on an LCD those benefits may not be enough.

Second, you probably spend a lot more time reading on a screen than most people do. If your day job involves using a computer all day (which I'll hazard a guess to a reasonable probability of such, given that this is hacker news) then you'll already have internalized and accepted the tradeoffs of doing a lot of reading on an LCD. But to someone who uses a computer say 1/10th or 1/100th as much as you do they have yet to come to that bridge, and when they do they have a choice as to the technologies they use for screen reading, the slight benefits of e-ink may be enough for them, even if it isn't for you.

There are a lot of computer users in the world who have yet to read, say, 1 thousand words of paragraph after paragraph of text in a single sitting on a device. To them the differences between reading text on physical paper, e-ink, or an LCD may be much more significant than for those of us who already spend our days staring at monitors and feel comfortable doing so.

<comment><USER5> Reading on a LCD is definitely different (even harder) than reading text on paper. You need to get used to it.

But I would argue that more and more people are. And more and more might just be enough. A big minority in any richer country might just do the job.

I'm not sure whether LCDs will be inside the devices which finally bring digital books to the masses but I do think it's a distinct possibility. I do think they are good enough.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> While Clifford Stoll has some useful points, in particular, "What's missing from this electronic wonderland? Human contact." the majority of his essay is already starting to feel dated.

There is a fairly well known maxim (thank you google: [http://longnow.org/seminars/02008/jan/11/embracing- uncertain...](http://longnow.org/seminars/02008/jan/11/embracing-uncertainty- the-secret-to-effective-forecasting/)), that in the short term, we tend to overestimate and in the long term, underestimate.

Saffo, also has another great quote, "Rule: Cherish failure. Preferably other people's. We fail our way into the future. Silicon Valley is brilliant at this. Since new technologies take 20 years to have an overnight success, for an easy win look for a field that has been failing for 20 years and build on that."

Regarding books - Already eBooks are starting to have an impact, I'm a pretty steady reader, and the groaning bookshelves and boxes (and boxes, and boxes) of books that I used to go through have given away to my Kindle (and iPhone Kindle).

Teaching is starting to undergo a revolution with sites like <http://khanacademy.org>.

I haven't purchased a physical newspaper in 2+ years - and I'm a newspaper Junkie.

Classifieds? I can't even tell you if my local newspapers have had them for the last I don't know _how_ long - who _doesn't_ use craigslist.

I could go on and on, but the interesting thing is, we're just _starting_ in on the Internet technology curve. The tools and systems we use today are going to look ludicrous twenty to thirty years from now.

I'll let Saffo have the last word:

"Rule: Assume you are wrong. And forecast often."

<comment><USER8> Speaking of teaching revolution, there is something I'd have thought so blindingly useful and I still haven't been able to find: a site which would teach you basic English, no matter what language you came from.

It could easily be used by 4 billion people... eventually everybody _has_ to get online, and the value of the web is 1/100 without being able to read English. And yet my mother is still paying through her nose to take slow correspondence lessons, while I cringe every time I want to send her a link and can't.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> When browsing Amazon.com, who thinks to themselves, "If I only had a salesperson..."

We've become each other's salespeople. I trust the reviews of 100 people on Amazon well over a single salesperson who has a vested interest in me making a purchase.

<comment><USER10> The only problem with their review system is that paid reviews can skew things. Still, I find that just reading a good sample (especially the negative reviews) and seeing if the points brought up in them pertain to me works very well.

<comment><USER11> If enough reviewers like a product, I trust in the majority opinion even if some people where paid for their responses.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> _the network is missing a most essential ingredient of capitalism: salespeople._

Well _that_ didn't take long to change.

<comment><USER13> I was talking to my wife today about how a great many people _HATE_ being sold things.

Part of the reason is that most salespeople are all, "HEY! BUY SOME MORE USELESS CRAP!?!?" and not very "What can I do to help you, or make your experience here more pleasant?"

<comment><USER14> If you go to Whole Foods Market, all of the salespeople there are in the second category, which is why people enjoy shopping there even at the price points they charge.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> For those of you who didn't know, Stoll is the author of "The Cuckoo's Egg", his (true) story of tracking down a hacker that broke into Lawrence Berkeley National Lab's computers. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cuckoo%27s_Egg_%28book%29> [http://www.amazon.com/Cuckoos-Egg-Tracking-Computer- Espionag...](http://www.amazon.com/Cuckoos-Egg-Tracking-Computer- Espionage/dp/0743411463)

<comment><USER16> He's also the Klein bottle guy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> For several years he was able to make good bucks off his Ludditism - <USER2> some further hilarity from reviewers of his 2002 _High-Tech Heretic_ . So that the Seattle Times said:

"Stoll's long experience with technology gives him authority. . . . His claims are based on facts, logic and common sense." --[http://www.amazon.com/High- Tech-Heretic-Reflections-Computer...](http://www.amazon.com/High-Tech-Heretic- Reflections-Computer-Contrarian/dp/0385489765)

"Authority"? They forget to mention his capability as a far-sighted prophet :)

<comment><USER13> He fills a niche. The world requires a public face for every viewpoint. Alex Jones, Pat Robertson, Al Sharpton, The Crazy Guy Down The Street. Everyone with a viewpoint wants some more important authority to cite to support their viewpoint.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I think the real mistake the author made here was looking at the technology of the time instead of the potential of that technology. That would be like looking at Project Mercury and saying "Man couldn't possibly land on the moon with that." And that's right. We didn't. It was only the predecessor to the Apollo program.

</comment><comment><USER19> It took me 9 seconds to find the date of the Battle of Trafalgar vs 15 minutes in 1995. Moore's law for information search?

<comment><USER20> I just highlighted "date of the Battle of Trafalgar" from your comment, right- clicked chose "search google for..." from the resulting pop-up and had it in about _one_ second.

I strongly suspect that no nearby shopping mall has done more business this afternoon the entire internet has this month, either. Kurzweil, this guy is not.

<comment><USER21> Why a day for a shopping mall and a month for the internet? Also, why just one nearby mall? Why not the entire internet vs. all shopping malls for an equal amount of time?

Of course, we'd have to ignore the business the shopping malls do over the internet. So maybe all in person transactions at all shopping malls vs. all consumer purchases over the web, for an equal period.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> While some of his points are still valid today, it's clear the author has a fundamental misunderstanding of disruptive innovations

<comment><USER23> It's easy to see what's disruptive once it's, um, disrupted. But we all still mistake a clunky version 0.1 for the limit of what a technology can achieve.

Most recent example: Twitter and everyone saying it will never make any money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Battle of Trafalgar (21 October 1805), back when the people involved were probably _sure_ ships would never be supplanted as the preferred method of travel across the ocean.

<comment><USER25> Incidentally, I found that date in about five seconds, with Chrome's address bar even auto-completing the name of the battle.

The article is amusingly myopic, and the author is completely unable to imagine a world (not far from his own) where his little niggles are solved.

The internet is a global network of computers. Even if some of the technologies built on it are limited (as many were in 1995), the underlying network is near limitless in potential. Underestimating that potential will always be a mistake.

<comment><USER8> I like to jokingly call google "my external memory". It's fast enough that I can actually use it as such in a IM conversation. When somebody mentions something I'm not familiar with (like a movie) it's usually faster to google it then to wait for them to answer my "what is X?".

A really big thing will be when we'll be able to do the same in a face to face conversation. I really understand why google is trying so hard to be mobile. Otherwise it would miss the next few big revolutions.

<comment><USER26> Last Christmas we were playing some kind of Jeopardy in my family and of course everyone was trying to use their portable wireless device to cheat one way or another. It's really an acceptably functional "external memory".

<comment><USER27> This also works well on pub trivia machines.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Some commenters agree that the internet hasn't led to meaningful social connection, but I disagree. Many shy people find it the key to their social life. It's kept me in contact with several college friends, and I now think our kids will know each other. It's a very connective medium.

</comment><comment><USER29> ___Mad man with a moment of clarity:_ __What's missing from this electronic wonderland? Human contact. Discount the fawning techno-burble about virtual communities. Computers and networks isolate us from one another. A network chat line is a limp substitute for meeting friends over coffee. No interactive multimedia display comes close to the excitement of a live concert. And who'd prefer cybersex to the real thing? While the Internet beckons brightly, seductively flashing an icon of knowledge-as-power, this nonplace lures us to surrender our time on earth. A poor substitute it is, this virtual reality where frustration is legion and where--in the holy names of Education and Progress--important aspects of human interactions are relentlessly devalued.

<comment><USER30> Earlier today I went to the Facebook profile of a friend of mine who lives out of state. He had uploaded a video of his child singing and had it on his profile.

There are many more means of human contact than meeting at a coffee shop.

<comment><USER6> Exactly. The internet is a complement to, not a replacement for, face-to-face contact.

See also: that little known and rarely used technology, the telephone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> If you actually read the article, you'll see many of his points are valid.

<comment><USER32> He has a handful of good points (eg. the importance of human contact), but most of his examples are laughable because he picked _precisely_ the things that the Internet dominated (eg. daily newspaper).

His mistake was equating hype with falsehood—it's true that at the time people were predicting that you would do anything and everything over the Internet, and clearly that will not be the case anytime soon. However with technology as powerful as the Internet, it was crazy to assume that it would not change the way we live in any significant ways. Even trying to predict the things that _wouldn't_ change proved to be an insurmountable obstacle for this guy.

<comment><USER13> "The truth in no online database will replace your daily newspaper, no CD-ROM can take the place of a competent teacher and no computer network will change the way government works."

So he got the newspaper thing (partially) wrong. The government hasn't changed, nor has education. The truth of the education thing is this: you can learn anything on your own, but a teacher can tell you in 20 minutes what might take you a month to figure out by yourself. Government will take a long time to change. And (many) more people still rely on mainstream media outlets for their news than any other source (though they may get their news from said media outlet's online presence, rather than their print one.

<comment><USER33> The internet allows everyone _access_ competent teachers. There are so many learning resources with videos and how-to articles on a large range of topics. And the resources are extremely up-to-date. When something new is out you don't have to wait for an update to a textbook to be published or a teacher to learn it and include it in a lesson plan.

<comment><USER13> Teachers are only useful if they interact with you. Otherwise it's no better than a book.

Mentorship. That's what makes teaching useful.

I'm talking about good teachers, not cheap public high-school instructors.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> He gave a talk at TED in 2006.

<http://www.ted.com/talks/clifford_stoll_on_everything.html>

<comment><USER35> _"if you want to know what society is going to be like in twenty years, don't ask a scientist...I don't know..."_

I guess he proved himself right.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Yeah, the Internet can be the good, bad, and the ugly. The good: I provide for my family of 5 by creating and maintaining web applications (an occupation non-existent at the time of my Univ. graduation); primarily because of the Internet I have a home office where, among other benefits, I have been set free from the unproductive, soulless cube-farm. Time would fail detailing other benefits such as enhancements in maps, search, discussion and in general increased access to knowledge. The bad: too much trivial information; work is anytime, anywhere -- no hard boundaries; and temptation for attention sucking ( as the author stated "this nonplace lures us to surrender our time on earth.") away offline life.

The ugly: pornography and perversion at a click; anonymous rage;

Like just about every area of life we need discipline and balance.

<comment><USER37> What's pornography?

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> yet, everyday, we still see that kind of prediction on HN. "why google buzz won't take off" or "why the iPad is lame". People writing these kinds of title don't know more than anybody else so please stop talking about the future that way.

</comment><comment><USER39> There have been a number of predictive clangers from people considered luminaries in the field of technology. Stuff like "we'll never need more that 640K of RAM". Humans have been doing this for centuries, and we'll continue to do it. While we're more advanced now than we've ever been, we're yet to think of our best ideas. I like the fact that we'll able to look back in another fifteen years and go "...didn't see THAT one coming".

<comment><USER40> The trick is to try to recognize the patterns in the errors he is making. It is remarkable how every one of the problems he raises has made a company or organization that solved it very successful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> all of the share icons below the headline are more than a little ironic

</comment><comment><USER42> So basically reverse everything you see there and now you have everything that exists now. Way to be close-minded, some-Newsweek-egghead-writer.

</comment><comment><USER43> Into the late 1990s I knew a few people who were of the opinion that the internet was just another fad which would pass by.

</comment><comment><USER18> "I've met great people and even caught a hacker or two." Anyone else wanna puke after reading that?

</comment><comment><USER44> Hahaha, thank you for posting this! It's fun going back and reading journalists' predictions.

</comment><comment><USER45> "Your word gets out, leapfrogging editors and publishers."

</comment><comment><USER46> this makes me very very happy:

" The truth in no online database will replace your daily newspaper, no CD-ROM can take the place of a competent teacher and no computer network will change the way government works."</comment>


Tropical Babel (2014) - <AUTHOR> https://failedarchitecture.com/tropical-babel/ <comment><AUTHOR> I had two takeaways: Venezuela was once a place where people would try to build modern experimental projects, like the helical strip mall El Helicoide.

The other is a reminder that for all of the monoliths we build with the best intentions, the government can seize them and use them for human rights abuses.</comment>


What's the best e-learning platform (SaaS) for instructor-led courses? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Well, I'm biased... but my company offers a SasS math/science platform for middle and high school schools. We offer both instructor-led and individualized solutions.

Our students confront ambiguity, engage in real life problem-solving, overcome existing misconceptions, and (hopefully) appreciate the beauty of it all. We do this while covering the curriculum of several nations, and by using a well- supported pedagogical approach.

We actually have over nine million students around the world, but have only recently expanded to the US.

I've noticed that most-to-all of the current educational startups fail to offer a minimally viable product. Schools (and increasingly parents) will not consider products that are not properly aligned to standards. Products must additionally follow an evidence based-pedagogy. The large publishing houses sell exclusively on these two points, but completely fail at technological and educational innovation.

(<http://www.adaptivecurriculum.com>)

</comment><comment><USER3> What subjects/context? University-type courses (MIT's opencourseware)? Or high-school and beyond (Khan academy)? Or software/programming (Lynda for design, some programming; good luck otherwise). I'd personally be interested in video-based programming tuts that go beyond "well, here's the install and the equivalent of the first 3 chapters of any book on the topic."

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm actually looking for something that allows me to teach my own courses.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Podcast about People that Have Overcome Anxiety, Depression, etc. - <AUTHOR> https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/happyblocks/id1475727550
Welcoming any and all feedback!
Also, looking for guests, so please reach out if you or someone you know would like to come on the show.
email@example.com <comment><USER2> Thanks Arjun. I will have a listen

</comment><comment><USER3> Wow! awesome stuff.</comment>


Ask HN: PG has many essays. What's your favorite one? - <AUTHOR> I created this account around October 2014.
Nonetheless, I just started to really read HN this year, basically two months ago.
I was reading PG's essays and one of them was about what he has learned from Hacker News. After that, it was clear for me that I needed to have a look (a deeper one).
I am quite new here, but I am in love with HN's culture and content.
It would be cool to see what are the best PG's essays ever in the opinion of HN's community.
I am trying to read all of them and it would be cool to focus on the most popular/classical ones. <comment><USER2> What you can't say: [http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html)

"Do you have any opinions that you would be reluctant to express in front of a group of your peers?

If the answer is no, you might want to stop and think about that. If everything you believe is something you're supposed to believe, could that possibly be a coincidence? Odds are it isn't. Odds are you just think whatever you're told."

<comment><USER3> Absolutely agree with this, as being his best essay.

The unfortunate fact, however, is that both moderators and participants of pg's own discussion site seem to have never read it, or never taken it to heart. There are _definitely_ things you're not allowed to say here. The notion of open discussion of ideas does not exist.

<comment><USER4> > There are definitely things you're not allowed to say here.

Any example? I am genuinely interested.

<comment><USER3> Most recently, you're not allowed to discuss hypothetical police involvement in the death of Ian Murdock.

In the past, you're not allowed to talk about: \- Women/minorities in tech \- Israel \- Brendan Eich \- Crime statistics \- Immigration

<comment><USER5> I believe they have said the have automatic point penalties for things involving NSA/mass surveillance (could be remembering that wrong)

<comment><USER6> What? Why on earth would they have that?

<comment><USER5> Because it is the moderator's opinion that such content is not very relevant to HN and gets disproportionality upvoted. Basically they disagree with the enthusiasm of privacy advocates.

<comment><USER7> it's very rude to make up bollocks about other people and state it as fact.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8011987#up_8012898](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8011987#up_8012898)

> HN is not "Suppressing" all NSA-related topics.

> Users are flagging these posts. The HN community is divided. Some people > think that there are too many NSA stories; others, too few. On any issue > where the community is divided, upvotes compete with flags, and stories rise > and fall according to the tug of war.

> The HN software adds a small default weight to NSA stories. The purpose of > this is obviously not to suppress them. If we were trying to do that, it > would be a large weight and not a small one. Instead, it's tuned so that NSA > stories can still easily make the front page—and so they do. It's an attempt > to strike a balance between the different segments of the community who > strongly disagree with one another about how much NSA is the right amount of > NSA.

<comment><USER5> >It's an attempt to strike a balance between the different segments of the community who strongly disagree with one another about how much NSA is the right amount of NSA.

Because dang is the one who added the weight, the blatant implication here is that dang believes that "the balance" needs to be more towards not having NSA stories overwhelm the front page.

I don't see how you can read what dang wrote and somehow think that he is not suppressing NSA stories. He very clearly states that he is suppressing them, just not to a large degree. Just because he says "we are not suppressing them" before describing their method of suppression does not mean the are not suppressed.

Why is it necessary to strike a balance between the two sides of this conversation? As he states, the NSA stories still make it to the front page. What actual effect does this have? As far as I can tell, it simply makes the stories less visible than they would otherwise be. No amount of linguistic gymnastics is going to make me think this is not a description of suppression.

The amount of doublespeak going on here is baffling. Dang very clearly states that the intention is to lessen the enthusiasm of these topics, and it's being weighted in favor of the pro-NSA side, which is pretty much exactly what I said: Dang disagrees with the _enthusiasm_ of the anti-NSA (pro-privacy) side of the debate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I really like How to Disagree[1] which has this wisdom that I've seen ring true at startups, especially when there is loose terminology and no documented communication.

> More often than not, two people arguing passionately about something are > actually arguing about two different things. Sometimes they even agree with > one another, but are so caught up in their squabble they don't realize it.

Another great one is Startup = Growth[2] which is great for clarifying the term and setting some expectations to benchmark against.

1\. [http://paulgraham.com/disagree.html](http://paulgraham.com/disagree.html)

2\. [http://paulgraham.com/growth.html](http://paulgraham.com/growth.html)

</comment><comment><USER9> Each essay contains advice that is insightful depending on what stage _you_ , the reader, are at. Did you just discover startups, or did you just present on-stage at Demo Day? Are you struggling with co-founder issues and how to get started, or how to scale to your first 100 employees?

Somone may eventually classify them in a reasonable order. In some sense, this is already what YC's startup guide did: all the advice, sorted in a logical order.

<comment><USER10> The yc startup guide?

<comment><USER9> Meaning the playbook: [http://playbook.samaltman.com](http://playbook.samaltman.com)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I like "How to Make Wealth" because he doesn't beat around the bush, he just come out and says that "wealth" is nothing more than an "object of the desire to possess" and if you can do something that increases some else's desire-to- possess something that you have or control, then you are creating wealth.

> Suppose you own a beat-up old car. Instead of sitting on your butt next > summer, you could spend the time restoring your car to pristine condition. > In doing so you create wealth

Whether or not you agree with this "metaphysics of wealth" it is a good read because it illustrates some intuition behind economic theory.

</comment><comment><USER12> _Stuff_ is probably among the most impactful and it's especially relevant around the holidays.

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

</comment><comment><USER13> Good and Bad Procrastination - [http://paulgraham.com/procrastination.html](http://paulgraham.com/procrastination.html)

I love it; it always makes me feel better about putting aside some obligations to work on really meaningful projects. I share this with students sometimes, and it speaks to some of them as well. There's plenty of conversation about finding your passion in the world, but not so much about working hard on your passion.

</comment><comment><USER14> Sorry if I'm going too far on a tangent here, but has anyone bought his book Hackers & Painters: Big Ideas from the Computer Age [0]?

It has been on my wishlist for quite a while now. The reviews are quite positive.

[0] [http://www.amazon.com/Hackers-Painters-Big-Ideas- Computer/dp...](http://www.amazon.com/Hackers-Painters-Big-Ideas- Computer/dp/1449389554/)

</comment><comment><USER15> Definetly the python paradox

<comment><USER2> [http://paulgraham.com/pypar.html](http://paulgraham.com/pypar.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Haven't read a single one. Frankly I think some members of this community share a preoccupation with pg that borders on being problematic.

Perhaps as a reflex I actively avoid such things now.

>I am quite new here, but I am in love with HN's culture and content.

Granted, HN is a lot better than it was even just a few years ago, but the rose-tinted outlook will pass with time, and you'll see as most of us do that it is a hodgepodge of both gems and utter trash (and everything in between). People here are just as susceptible to groupthink and bias as people elsewhere.

If you love javascript you'll fit right in with said groupthink.

<comment><USER17> You impelled me to go look up groupthink: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groupthink](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groupthink)

It looks like the main idea behind the groupthink term is that it results in "an irrational or dysfunctional decision-making outcome" due to desire for conformity. I'd recommend that you read some of pg's essays, because I don't think the term "groupthink" applies here. I can't identify any irrational or dysfunctional decision-making behind the community's love of these good pieces of writing. I'd also guess that most HNers like pg's writing because it's good, not because they're trying to conform.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> do things that don't scale

<comment><AUTHOR> I have already read this in particular and is one of my favorites too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> how to make wealth [http://paulgraham.com/wealth.html](http://paulgraham.com/wealth.html)

</comment><comment><USER20> A taste for makers</comment>