Ask HN: How do you deal with getting older? - <AUTHOR> As hackers, do you feel like you can hack life and get more years out of it then the average joe?<p>Or do you feel lost in a culture that hails 20 year olds that are dreaming up the next big thing? <comment><USER2> Honestly, I feel like I've outgrown the whole "dreaming up the next big thing." I know my dreams. I am already following them.

I feel like the younger folk tend to re-invent ideas that have come and gone, and don't do enough research to see what has come before. They spin their wheels figuring out things that us older folk already know. Sure, they do it with newer toolkits than I know, and that is why I keep up on HN - because the newer technologies are where the younger crowd can teach me something.

But I don't feel lost in the culture... I feel disinterested in it.

I also think that being older, with a family, and a full life outside of work, I'm not interested in pursuing wealth the same way that young people are. I have a nest egg, I have a good salary, I also have a wife, children, a small farm that we run, mountains, deserts and oceans to explore, stars to look at, etc.

I am no longer 23 and trying to establish my life. I am 43, have built a life that works for me, and am far more concerned with raising my children than with raising my wealth. To me wealth is binary - you have enough to live your life, or you do not. At the moment, I do.

So can I hack life to get more out of it? I think I already have.

<comment><USER3> I agree people reinvent the wheel all the time, but instead of seeing it as something naive people do, I see it as fertile earth that genuinely new things can grow from.

I feel like "young developers reinvent what we already had 30 years ago" kind of ennui gets espoused here on HN a lot. To me, this is less wisdom gleaned from experience and more a preference based on shifting priorities. There's nothing wrong with not being interested in new shiny stuff, but there's also nothing wrong with being interested in it.

<comment><USER4> > and that is why I keep up on HN - because the newer technologies are where > the younger crowd can teach me something.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm 35 and overall am feeling at the top of my game. I don't envy the 20 years olds or feel lost. I've learned so much, not just technically but around user and enterprise needs, inter-personal skills, and about myself since I was 18-20 that I absolutely feel better suited for success.

I've started eating right and working out, which has helped both body and mind, and I've developed task and time management techniques that work for me. While I admit my mind might not be 100% as quick as it was when i was 20, I do feel remarkably more productive.

Although to be fair, I'm not in the SV ecosystem, and run my startup (although after 8 years maybe not a startup any longer?) from outside of Boston (a location where a strong business model still beats a profitless pitch deck), so perhaps the environment is one reason I feel the way I do.

<comment><USER6> > my mind might not be 100% as quick as it was when i was 20

care to elaborate? I'm 34 and I keep hearing that my mind is supposed to slow down but it hasn't yet. I drink 2 cups of coffee a day, don't smoke cigs, am not overweight, try to go for a walk for 30 minutes minimum each day, go to sleep by 9ish and am up by 3 or 4am. I also watch very little TV, read regularly and push myself to learn new stuff on a near constant basis (python > node > c# > cg within the space of the last 4 years, along with pixel art, a bit of 3d art, loads of 3d programming + 2d game programming - all in addition to being a web dev contractor).

The change I've seen in my brain as I've gotten older is that I seem to be learning at an accelerated rate. However there are days when my depression or stress gets the best of me and I have to just take half a day or so to "detox" (binge watch netflix, play video games etc).

I wonder if some of the slow down people feel is artificially induced, or even misperceived (it takes me longer to reply to questions, but that's because I'm considering more answers or sifting through more knowledge that I have).

edit: Alzheimers / other brain related issues are absolutely terrifying to me so I'm interested in understanding what people mean by slowing down specifically... also there's a small part of me that worries I've slowed down and just haven't noticed it yet.

<comment><USER5> For reference I drink 1-2 cups of tea most days, sometimes none. Have never smoked, drank, or done drugs.

For me it's a couple areas I notice:

I have a more difficult time remembering names, specific words, etc...

I used to be able to do relatively difficult math problems in my head without actually _thinking_ about it. Now I'm likely to use my phone to calculate three digit+ sums.

I find it harder to get "in the zone".

<comment><USER7> Maybe it's more to lack of exercising those specific skills? My language and math skills were definitely better during college but then i don't use them as much as I used too? This is something I would genuinely like to get an answer for

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Amazing. For most of us, your career begins about 22 and ends about 72. So at 50 years, the midpoint would be 47. Yet most of the comments below start with, "I'm 35 and...".

Jeez. At 35 you're still just a kid.

I'm 57 and I've _definitely_ seen brain changes. At 20 I could learn 80% of new stuff in one pass. That ended by 35, when I had to take and review notes to learn as well. Now at 57, I simply can't remember minutiae like I once could. Proper nouns are especially tough to recall (famous names especially). I don't retain entire 1000 LOC programs in my head any more.

Learning new computer languages still isn't too tough but breaking new ground in math is. My ability to see multiple perspectives of a new concept all at once is not what it once was. I have to work harder at concentrating and distractions are more disruptive. I really _HATE_ working in an open space without earplugs.

So yes, the brain ages. At age 50 I'll be much more impressed when you claim, "Oh yeah, my brain hasen't lost a step since 20."

<comment><USER9> I would argue that the issue with math and perspectives isn't so much a decrease in your raw brainpower, more like your brain has become more "specialized" to the things you do very frequently. I'm sure there is a small decrease in raw processing speed, but I expect the largest change is the reduction in flexibility.

As for your reduction in memory/recall, one thing that can help is to learn more diverse information. The connectivity of a network is a function of the diversity of its inputs/outputs, and the more connected a network is, the shorter the average path to any given node (in this case a memory).

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> 40 year olds today were the first generation to grow up with computers. 10 years ago, 40 year olds were "old" in computer parlance. The myth of the 20 year old hacker will go away over time, as more and more people grow up immersed in technology (and thus possess the necessary skillset).

I would even go so far as to say that our culture's preoccupation with youth presents an opportunity for disruptive ideas/startups, based in "wisdom and experience."

<comment><USER11> Actually, that would be people in their early 50's. Born in '64, started programming in '77.

<comment><USER12> This reads like the start of a geek update to the classic Four Yorkshiremen sketch ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1by0-nkKOTs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1by0-nkKOTs))

      "6502?"
      "Aye"
      "You were lucky.  There were 19 of us all crowded round a
       single Z80 processor with a hexadecimal display..."

      ...

      "Of course when I say keyboard I mean a 8 high voltage bootstrap
       connectors with rusty razorblades for switches.  But it was
       a keyboard to us..."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I can't write code nearly as fast as I used to. I am much better at writing less code, though. And though it took a while (too long), I've figured out that it's the code you _don 't_ write that makes you great. So I'm much more skilled and competent as a 40 yo than I was as a precocious 20 year old.

The biggest change has been values though. My values and my criteria for success are different now than they were when I founded my first business at 22. Now with a family, assets, residual income and a home, I'm far far more interested in being interested than I am in numerical 'success', and much more motivated by social justice. So I definitely don't have the hunger for startup life. I don't feel lost in that culture. I just feel that I've been there, got the t-shirt, and moved beyond, so I don't feel the need to go back for more than the odd visit.

So yeah, maybe I'm getting over the hill in some ways. But that's not a bad thing. I don't feel out-competed, I just feel like experience and perspective have made me change what I value, both in code and in business (and other bits of life: in relationships, in vacations, in hobbies, etc).

<comment><USER14>
      I am much better at writing less code, though.

In other words, your thinking is organised.

Organisation is a skill you learn through experience. No other way. You can attempt to teach a newcomer about the virtues of refactoring (basically tidying up the kitchen after you've baked your masterpiece) but I can assure you, the mind at early stages of doing new things is less interested in tidying up the process than it is about seeing the exciting outcome.

That's by nature.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> There's an (spanish) old saying that goes: The devil knows more because he's old than he does because he's the devil. (Or Más sabe el diablo por viejo que por diablo.) HTH.

<comment><USER16> Old sayings are so much better than young sayings.

<comment><USER17> Agreed. In fact this sounded a lot better than "YOLO".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Generally I wrinkle slightly more each year, moan about my joints seizing up and grow more cynical.

On a more serious note I am becoming better at what I do because I understand much more of pretty much everything in far greater depth than I used to. And while I perhaps don't have the stamina or raw LoC output ability of a 21 year old any more, I can usually achieve tasks much faster because I know what I'm doing and I make fewer mistakes.

I'm definitely much more cynical about flavour of the week languages and frameworks though. And I find it very funny that things get reinvented every few years as a new generation decides some thing is too cumbersome (often SQL or DMBSs) and needs to be thrown out, only to be slowly reinvented as all the edge cases that lead to the abstraction are discovered...

And I'm only 36.

Career-wise, no discrimination noticed yet.

<comment><USER19> This... I have the same observation and coincidentially we have the same age :)

<comment><USER20> I'm just a tiny bit older, and I thought I noticed some age discrimination last year. Do you both still have all your scalp hair?

<comment><USER19> I do still have my scalp hair :) but I have some friends that are bald since early twenties so I don't think it is a major thing.

I don't and ever have worked in USA so it might be a cultural thing though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> When I was young I told my friends that if they saw me in 20 years married and not playing music full time to go ahead and punch me in the face. I honestly thought that I would feel exactly the same at 40 that I did at 20.

At that age I probably would have looked at my older self and thought that I had lost my passion, had sold out, become uncool, etc. It didn't occur to me that I would still remember everything that I knew at 20, plus have another 20 years to figure out what actually is important to me and become twice as confident and comfortable with myself.

I felt way more "lost" when I was 20 than I did at 40. I don't think I've necessarily figured it all out. But, as much fun as I had when I was young, I like my life more now.

</comment><comment> rm_-rf_slash I am less driven by the prospect of becoming an old expensive programmer, and more concerned about missing out on gaining management experience. I have conversed with many programmers who express concern that they have no management aspirations, and yet the longer they remain pure programmers, they find they have fewer options as they age, instead, as one might imagine, more.

Maybe it's because it's harder to convince a 40-year old programmer to work bullshit hours for a few slices of free pizza.

</comment><comment><USER22> As someone about to turn 40, it's creepy reading comment after comment here and seeing A LOT to agree with.

Less lines of code per hour than when I was young: CHECK

More productive than when I was young: CHECK

Not reinventing wheels anymore: CHECK

Recognizing all the wheels I reinvented when I was young thinking I was so clever: CHECK

Keeping up with new languages/tools/frameworks: CHECK

Skepticism at the people who think this new language/tool/framework is going to CHANGE EVERYTHING: CHECK

Paying more attention to my health: CHECK

Hobbies outside of work: CHECK

A couple of things I disagree with though.

Employment opportunity:

I definitely am starting to see evidence of ageism. Job hopping is more difficult, and the quality/appeal of available jobs is no longer what it used to be. It's much harder to get the attention of recruiters now than it was 15 years ago, and I feel I'm at a negotiating disadvantage vs. younger people who have no problem sleeping at their desks and subsisting on noodles and Mountain Dew alone. Quite honestly, 90% of job postings I read are utterly uninteresting to a 40 year old. Sometimes the company or product is boring, uncompelling, or something I've already worked on. Sometimes the culture reeks of bro-grammer. Or it's full of dog-whistle words that tell me I'll be working 80 hour weeks and not be compensated well for it.

Financial position:

Software engineering has not been very financially rewarding. I guess you can always find someone and say, boy they're doing much better than I. I seem to be permanently behind the people I knew who went into more lucrative careers. I feel like I'm much less well established at 40 than my parents (who made shit as school teachers) were when they were 40. The clock is ticking and I feel it's going to run out before I'm able to retire. Time feels like a predator, stalking me and waiting to devour me as punishment for not making/saving enough.

<comment><USER20> I can't find a single thing to disagree with.

Though my financial position might be worse, due to ill-timed property purchases. Basically, the majority of my net worth was in real estate in 2007. I have had to move multiple times to find sufficiently remunerative work for a small family. So I'm just treading water now. I have been busting my ass for 16 years now, with literally _nothing_ to show for it. Everything I have ever gained has been taken back, by circumstances beyond my control.

So when I see those Baby Boomers, retiring with nice, big nest eggs from working 40 years at the same company, I just start to seethe in rage. They are the ones who started pulling all the ladders up after climbing them.

I don't think it's just software. _Everyone_ born after the Baby Boomers is worse off than their parents were at the same age. That generation just isn't giving the same as they got, because they are such a large economic force, they could get whatever they want. All I can say is that they had better fix up the nursing homes while they still have the power to do so. Gen X and Millennial won't have time to take care of them while still looking for new jobs every 2-5 years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm 25 and feels lost in a culture that hails 20 year olds that are dreaming up the next big thing.

I don't think age is the important thing here, I have worked with people of all ages (15-70 or so) that I look up to and learned a lot from. Experience is important, and it is hard to have experienced a lot of things if you are 20.

On a semi-related note, all my best bosses have been parents, having kids seem to teach you something about the value of time.

<comment><USER24> >> On a semi-related note, all my best bosses have been parents, having kids seem to teach you something about the value of time.

I once talked to an old (60) guy who was writing code down the aisle from me. He said he tried management, but didn't want to mediate disputes between children - he had his own at home. I thought his experience was probably unusual, but I've asked a number of managers since then, and they all agree that's an unfortunately large part of the job. I don't see it because they keep it away from the team - as it should be. But then when I got my first crack at "having a small team" I saw exactly the same thing. So yes, tech skills are important but parenting can also be a relevant background ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> The same way you deal with getting older in any other profession, you learn to accept that there will always be people better, faster, and younger than you, embrace the fact that you suck, but still persevere in pushing forward at your own best pace. You strip away the pride (i.e. the feeling that you somehow deserve / need to win, to be the next big thing, to change the world, to be loved / respected by everyone, to do better than your old high school classmates, and to do it all in your teens and twenties) that covers the youthfully inexperienced. And you accept that the most you can do is put yourself on the path that you can enjoy and that you hope is right and commit to walking down it clad in nothing more than simple stupid faith that eventually you can get it to work.

Non-purple TL;DR: I deal with it by abandoning any sense of pride / shame I might've had.

</comment><comment><USER26> Your comment seems to bridge two things: hacking life and staying relevant in technology. For the former, I'm 42 and doing just fine. I try to keep up with the latest trends though I don't buy into everything just to keep my sanity. I write as much code as I can. I've learned though that someone who listens with empathy and attempts to understand a business' problems will always be relevant.

For the former, I read a lot on diet, nutrition and exercise. I believe in 50 years, we will look back at the time when our diets were largely based on sugary carbohydrates and wonder what the hell we were thinking. I experiment with fasting. I do different kinds of exercises. We don't have total control over our health but so many of us make regular poor decisions that even tiny improvements have to help. Of course, I could walk out in front of a bus tomorrow but attempting to improve each day goes a long way.

From a health perspective, I subscribe to Nassim Taleb's idea of reduction instead of addition. High cholesterol? Don't start taking statins, start eliminating things like sugar and processed carbs and wheat. High blood pressure? Don't add blood pressure medicine, try exercising regularly, don't smoke, eat vegetables. Etc, etc.

Long story longer, if all you do technology and health wise is exactly what everyone else has always done or always told you to do, you'll get what everyone else has always gotten. True, experimenting and hacking may not help at all but there is plenty of evidence out there that walking a different path can get you different results.

</comment><comment><USER27> Why do you have to be 20 to be doing something interesting? Also why is it assumed that every new innovation that some 20 year old ivy league drop comes up with is good for our society and our culture? To me most start ups are just superfluous, these apps and such are created just to make our lives slightly more convenient in most cases, they rarely improve the human condition or outlook. Go ahead and glorify the startup culture but I have more respect for the grizzled old devs that have created the foundation we stand on today and the people moving things forward incrementally.

<comment><USER28> You don't. Many successful startups are started by people over 30 ([http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/235357](http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/235357)).

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Friend of mine just got hired at Apple to work on HealthKit and he's over 40. I don't understand why everyone is so preoccupied with their age.

<comment><USER30> SV has been funding the Mom 2.0 bubble where 20 yr olds provide Mom services to other wealthy urban 20 yr olds for a generally rather large fee. Look at startups that boil down to "Mom can you drive me to the mall" "Mom can you get me a sandwich" "Mom can you do the laundry" "Mom can you adjust the thermostat" "Mom can I crash in your livingroom overnight when I'm in town" "Mom can you mail me a monthly care package" etc. Not all startups in the current bubble are Mom 2.0 but enough are to make it a cultural thing.

Anyway the point of extreme youth focus in the Mom 2.0 bubble is it makes sense when you're 20 and urban and rich and have never lived away from home (aka mom 1.0), but once you're 40 and you have become the Mom (err, Dad, or whatever), then it's kind of a hard sell and you're just not going to fit in with the biz model.

There is also a mythology that kids will lock on to branding for their entire life, so the most popular group to sell to is kids. It doesn't work, of course, but its a very popular mythology and highly politically incorrect to question it. If it actually worked of course, I'd spend my lunch hour driving my Segway around to play Pog games in between gaming sessions on the Colecovision or something like that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I'm 35 and I'm not at all complaining. Career wise, I've not only learned more technically but it seems like I'm learning better/faster these days than 10+ years ago. On a personal note, it's nice to know I'm established with a decent amount in my savings and retirement.

With friends, most of my friends are younger but it's nice to be able to partner with them and go through life shoulder to shoulder. It's nice to know that I have the means to be able to help people too, that alone gives me much satisfaction and contentment.

The nice thing is, 35 seems to be a starting point for me. I've got a long way to go and I'm re-evaluating my options. I used to think that getting older meant that I would regret not having accomplished the goals I had in my youth but now, I see it as refining my goals and I'm walking into things with far more experience and knowledge which means more than just "getting it done" but "getting it done, well."

<comment><USER28> "The nice thing is, 35 seems to be a starting point for me."

Nice. I'm 34, almost 35, and I feel the same way. I'm actually seriously thinking about starting a business now whereas in my twenties, I was more interested in leisure activities. Definitely seems like a much better time to start something than when I was younger.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> To me, it seems lots of the "big ideas" dreamed up by the 20-year-olds seem to only cater to the 20-year-olds. I'm upper 30's, lots of kids, married a long time. Too much of the new stuff doesn't interest me. Maybe I'm just bored of it all.

I felt a little more comfortable doing what I do when I was younger, but mostly because I had tons of energy, no fear, and little to lose. Responsibility has made me move much slower. Plus, I've made mistakes, learned from them, and now fear the thought of new problems.

Also, I used to think about business 24/7\. Sleep 4 hours a night. Work because I loved it so much. I couldn't keep up with the new ideas, and I had to implement them ALL or I was a mess!

Now... I need 7 hours of sleep, and I have a little fishing boat parked next to the house. I'd rather be out on the lake with my wife, or the kids, and a pole. These are the moments that make my life feel full. If I don't make the "next big thing"... I'm good.

</comment><comment><USER33> > As hackers, do you feel like you can hack life and get more years out of it > then the average joe?

 _Hackers_ we'll die earlier, obese and with mobility problems, and probably sitting, while trying to hack "life". :)

I'm not a big fan of the whole "hack life" mentality. We aren't used to deal with complex systems, such as organisms or life. Despite the echo chamber we live in, the systems we deal with are simple; way simpler than life, and deterministic. Every time we think we "hacked life", we're just ignoring the complexity of the problem at hand (just think about the "hack nutrition" ideas around...).

</comment><comment><USER34> Man, what a weird question. I'm 61; been programming since 1968 (Ferranti Atlas -- [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlas_%28computer%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlas_%28computer%29) \-- the first machine with a whole bunch of stuff). What have I learned?:

* Software isn't eating the world. Software is the world. * Software has very little to do with the next 'disrupting X'. That is just VC twaddle trying to pull one over on the rest of us. Do not mistake floozy business models for solid value add.

If you want to 'hack life' then solve really hard problems (or play really hard music - your choice). Do not fixate on 20 year olds and their next big thing. Finding and solving big problems will juice your Amygdala, and said juicing will ensure a happy life hack above and beyond 'the average Joe'. Though quite why that is such an important goal is beyond me (do you really want to be the "last man standing"?).

</comment><comment><USER35> > As hackers, do you feel like you can hack life and get more years out of it > then the average joe?

Yeah, sun screen, good diet, meditation and exercise.

> Or do you feel lost in a culture that hails 20 year olds that are dreaming > up the next big thing?

I feel there's a rift.

The market is more competitive and requires people to go to school longer to stay on edge.

For me, it seem you trade your social life, kinda, for a secured or better future prospect by chasing the money instead of enjoyment of life. So the rift I'm seeing is that there are younger people that are poor but more genuine in characters and sociable. I find myself stuck being jealous, not envious mind you, but at the same time working on this aspect of myself. I'm also using my money to buy experiences such as trying new things and creating opportunity to experience things.

As I am closer to 30, soon to be 30 this year, I find myself less risky and more conservative in actions. In term of I now rather have a secure job with better work balance life than a startup job with lots of overtime.

The next big thing for me is not the big thing anymore.

It's what is good enough to bring in passive income with minimum amount of upkeep.

It's not, oh I want to be the next google, but more of I want to create a service that people want -- at the same that enable me to work little so I can enjoy more.

Sometime I feel lost or rather frustrated, the young kid in their 20s adopt bleeding edge technology recklessly and they move on to new job and somebody are stuck with maintaining their mess. Google have Mesos or Kubernetes or Big data, we need it too!

If you young people are reading, please adopt boring technology. Or research more throughly, I guess taking a risk in adoption can pay out, RoR senior are making bank. I chose the PHP route...

</comment><comment><USER36> "Hack life"...please, just stop with this. Can we coin a new phrase?

<comment><USER37> "live to the fullest"

or maybe just..."live"

so often it seems like we're so preoccupied with 'hacking' our lives that we forget to live them at all...

<comment><USER38> _survive_

<comment><USER37> are you just _surviving_? lighten up... _live_ a little.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> How do I handle getting older? I'm dealing with it by becoming a bad-ass. Age doesn't matter in the face of extreme competence. I used to just kind of wing- it and shoot from the hip, that attitude leads to problems.

Now, if I am seriously about doing something, I pull out all the stops to be the absolute best. I approach my interests like a scientist; I keep detailed notes, meticulously measure and track progress, and come up with experiments to expand my knowledge. I have an attitude of constant improvement, so I'm always looking for new things to try and new ways to excel.

I have absolutely zero worries about a midlife crisis or any sort of malaise associated with growing older. I'm killing it, and I know that as circumstances change I'll be able to change and adapt with them to stay on top of my game.

</comment><comment><USER39> I've been writing code since 1965 (yes, fifty years), run my own company, and I can still support my family doing it. Best damn job in the world.

<comment><USER6> best damn comment too. very encouraging to hear someone has been at it for this long. Only 13 or 14 years for me thus far.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I try to maintain my mental vitality by limiting nostalgia and intentionally seeking out new things.

For example, I do this thing periodically with my music collection where I create a playlist of only music made in the past 5 years. If that playlist is too sparse, I go looking for more.

A lot of what's bad about aging strikes me as almost an ideology. The cynicism of age is an ideology. It's like a belief system where you adopt a retrograde view of time -- things are getting worse, they were better in the old days, etc. This isn't how time actually works. Things _evolve_ over time. Some things get better, some get worse, but mostly there's just change.

</comment><comment><USER41> If we don't die from an acute event or illness, we can expect to live somewhere around 75 years. How many of those years do most people take full advantage of?

My heroes are people like Fred Beckey [0], who keep living fully through all their years. I've watched most people in my family stop living fully around their 40's and 50's, mostly associated with the focus on raising kids. But it's also an effect of not wanting to face the challenges of the world; I've watched many older family members retreat into their own homes, and venture out into the world less and less often out of fear of a changing world.

How do you live fully through all your years? Keep doing the things you love, especially the things that require you to be mentally and physically active. Don't give up everything for your kids. Learn new things, mentally and physically. I started learning to drive a boat on the ocean at 41 last summer, and it was deeply humbling but deeply renewing. I'm planning to pick up a musical instrument sometime in the next few years.

It's not about living longer, it's about living fully with the years we have.

[0] - [http://www.thecleanestline.com/2013/01/happy-90th- birthday-t...](http://www.thecleanestline.com/2013/01/happy-90th-birthday-to- the-master-fred-beckey.html)

</comment><comment><USER42> I'm 37. I keep getting new jobs on new technologies, but I don't think that really helps me see the larger problems. I'm a lot better at doing things than the 20 year olds I know are, even if they have some technical skills I haven't yet mastered.

What I have had luck with is in hanging out with people both older and younger than me. I am in a band with guys in their mid 60s (except the drummer, who is in his 70s... and his old band got together and was able to open up for the flaming lips this last may... how cool is that!!!).

These folks are older than my parents, but you can see how much longer you're going to live when you know that hey, people in their 70s are often still working on the same kinds of things that I work on.

It helped me realize that not only do I still (possibly) have another a whole other lifetime ahead of me to do a bunch of things that I wanted to do, but I can actually make progress even slowly if I work on things a bit every day...

it is a lot easier to spend a bit of time getting to really know a scale on the piano when you realize you still might have another 40 years to enjoy your fluency with it.

If you plan to keep getting better at things throughout your life and know that you may have the time to enjoy using a bunch of skills you acquire slowly, then that last half of a life appears to contain just as many possibilities as the first half.

</comment><comment><USER43> > do you feel like you can hack life and get more years out of it then the > average joe?

The biggest thing I've learned about all that, is the importance of eating right, staying active, and paying attention to your health. Oh, don't get me wrong... everybody KNOWS that stuff, and at least pays lip service to it. I did, for a long time. Then I had a heart attack at 41. Now I know, on a very visceral level, the importance of this stuff. And I've read and learned a lot about health topics, diet, etc. So I hope I will be able to live longer now that I understand (I think) a lot more about how to eat well, and now that I've renewed my commitment to getting outdoors and being active (which mostly means bicycle riding for me, but also running and hiking occasionally as well).

> Or do you feel lost in a culture that hails 20 year olds that are dreaming > up the next big thing?

I don't see it that way anyway. There's a bit of a stereotype about the "college kid in his dorm starting a startup" but I think that's a fairly recent invention. And nobody I know thinks that entrepreneurship / startups / hacking / etc. are the exclusive province of 20-somethings.

Anyway, I'm just going to do what I do, and I'm not terribly worried about what everybody else is doing. Although I agree with what codingdave says about keeping up with newer technologies. Yeah, I'm 42 and yeah I am most comfortable with "old" tech like Java and C++, but I spend some time on Javascript and Scala and Clojure and the like as well.

</comment><comment><USER44> Avoid cultures that hail 20 year olds dreaming up the next big thing. Outside of a few (toxic) pockets, those cultures are in the minority in my experience.

</comment><comment><USER45> Q1: Exercise, eat well, do cool things. This month, I will consult for several high-profile customers, act in a film, judge a BBQ competition, hang out with my offroading buddies, go offroading, visit friends and family, and possibly tinker with my Jeep.

Of course, it ain't all cool: I will also clean up cat shit stains in the basement (older cat having problems), deal with troublesome weeds in the backyard, pay way more than I want to to have the garage slab fixed, and get caught up on my accounting (I've been a bit slack this year).

Qs2&3: False dichotomies, poorly phrased questions. I will be 50 in just over a month. I live my life, not anyone else's.

I don't look at what others are doing and think "cool", I think about what I like doing, what I think is cool, and, provided that I can afford it financially, emotionally, intellectually, and physically, or that the loss/gain in any of those areas is acceptable, I do it.

End of story. You don't _deal_ with getting older. You live. You keep living. You live the life you want to live. The _dealing_ takes care of itself.

</comment><comment><USER20> How do I deal with it? Very badly.

When I first started in the software field, I didn't expect that it would come to resemble a brothel. But now it does, and I don't feel all that young and pretty any more.

 _Everybody_ is dreaming up the next big thing. The 20-year-old dreamers are just the ones that sell their dreams most cheaply. This whole industry seems like a continuation of the cool kid cliques in high school pretending to be the nerds' friends, so that they will continue doing all the homework. We're getting some money out of it, but no respect.

So I'm not really very motivated to "get more years out of it". The years I have had haven't been all that great. As Lord Farquad said in Shrek, "It's rude enough being alive when no one wants you, but showing up uninvited [to someone else's party]?"

So, yeah, I guess I deal with aging by shriveling up and getting bitter. The world will never lack for exploitable 20-year-olds, and I'll never be the one to get to them early enough, or with enough capital, to profit from one.

<comment><USER46> "...I didn't expect that it would come to resemble a brothel." Truer words were never spoken.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> I'm 38, and have been working as a professional programmer for 18 years, since I was 20. Here's what works for me:

\- Fitness: Eat reasonably and stay in good physical condition (I box and run). I enjoy food but eating in moderation is important as you age.

\- Other interests: I've worked as a professional musician since I was 18, a parallel career. After 20 years of working as a guitarist, I've recently embarked on learning upright bass. it's wonderful, and mind opening.

\- Varied career: I've been very fortunate to have played a lot of different roles, doing all kinds of development, management, etc. It's easy to get stuck in a rut and not challenge yourself with new experiences, don't let this happen.

\- Self awareness: I have a natural inclination to work on things I'm not good at, but have also learned over the years to play to my strengths. This is one of the great advantages of getting older.

</comment><comment><USER48> I personally think age has less to do with this 'culture'. It is mostly your attitude towards new things that surface and whether you're willing to accept the change.

Personally, I've lost interest in the past 4-5 years where there have been significant changes.

</comment><comment><USER49> I feel like my programming career gets better and better with age - I really have not felt the discrimination that others have (or worry about). I just keep on keeping on and make it a focus to spend 5-10 hours a week improving my skills and staying current.

</comment><comment><USER50> Henry Wadsworth Longfellow said it better than I can:

      For age is opportunity no less
      Than youth itself, though in another dress,
      And as the evening twilight fades away
      The sky is filled with stars, invisible by day.

</comment><comment><USER51> > As hackers, do you feel like you can hack life and get more years out of it > then the average joe?

I dunno what this is supposed to mean. I have known tons of older guys who really know their shit and have been programmers their entire career. I'll be 37 next month and feel like I'm not only more knowledgeable and on top of things than I've ever been, but also far more professional in how I conduct myself than I was when I was younger.

And based on the 20-somethings I"ve interviewed, I have zero fear that young people are going to make me obsolete.

> Or do you feel lost in a culture that hails 20 year olds that are dreaming > up the next big thing?

No because being an entrepreneur has never been my goal in life. My dad had a computer company in the 80s, and our family suffered greatly when it went under. I have always prioritized stable income over a shot at becoming a millionaire/billionaire. The company I work for now was actually started by a friend of mine over 10 years ago, and has made him rich and made me comfortable.

If I were going to quit my job to do a start up, yeah I might get passed up in favor of young people by investors, but if they truly only passed me up for another company just because they were younger a) I could sue them and b) they wouldn't be the right partners anyway.

I think if you want to stay in this industry in later years, you should set yourself up to be in a comfortable position for you, whatever that means. If that means you do your start up when you're young and make a solid business out of it, or if that means you get yourself the skills needed to be highly in demand and well paid when you're older, you should plan for where you want to be.

</comment><comment><USER52> I'm 48 and I've been developing software professionally since I was 21 years old. I think I'm every bit as sharp as I used to be, and probably somewhat more productive overall due to my experience. My only fears are degraded eyesight (I have to wear reading glasses now), and age discrimination. Don't believe the hype.

</comment><comment><USER53> That cultural description is only true in so far as you believe it.

<comment><USER54> Yes. By definition, hackers are not bound by rules others impose on them, and I don't think a person's age _necessarily_ makes any difference to having that mentality. Although age affects people in other ways. As people mature, priorities shift, and this can affect how a person perceives the world or their place in society, and this in turn could affect a person's willingness to push the boundaries.

So there's definitely a bias towards people who are younger and have less to lose, but it's not like any hard limits exist.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> I'm 40 and I think I might be the only person who really just doesn't give a shit?

I mean, I feel a bit different, sure - but do I really feel much different to when I was 20? Not really. You do some things, then you do some other things, life continues. Maybe if you stop thinking so much about it you'll feel better.

</comment><comment><USER56> I'm 37. I have been dreaming up the next big thing for 30+ years. That includes today and yesterday. Your question implies that 20 year olds have fresher ideas than myself. This is absolutely false.

Ageism is a real problem, just like racism and classism.

"Get more years out of it.. or .. feel lost..", what does that mean? Your question is ageist.

I was never really part of any culture since I generally don't integrate socially.

After a certain age, your brain chemistry or neural balance or something changes so that you have a much clearer worldview. Maybe just from thinking over and studying basic things for so long. On the other hand, I do feel that I can incorporate new information into my worldview easier than most people, including kids.

As far as 'hacking life', I think there is a limit to what exercise and diet and other 'hacks' can do for aging. Certainly of course some drugs can increase performance for both old and young. Whether there are downsides to those drugs I am not sure. However, I do believe that comprehensive approaches like SENS (as opposed to popular quick-fix ideas) to attacking root causes of aging will probably eventually yield strong results.

As far as technology selection, most younger people are actually using an outdated frame of reference that they adopted from either a few years prior when they picked up a particular technology, or from older developers that they copy on the basis of authority.

The trick to understanding and embracing the leading edge and inventing the next thing is not being young. It is having good comprehension of technology, being open, not deferring to authority or sunk costs, and being willing and able to rebuild your foundations when premises fall.

The other trick to being the next big thing is popularity (which is often quite disconnected from novelty), and for that it helps to be young and pretty, but older people can win the social network popularity contests and are good promoters also.

</comment><comment><USER57> There's an old story, the punchline of which is an invoice that reads something like this:

Pushing button: $1 Knowing which button to push: $9999

After almost 25 years in IT, the meaning is more clear than ever. Skills are great, but experience is invaluable. For better or worse, experience comes with age.

I've been pretty lucky in my career so far. I've not gotten rich by any means, but I've been steadily employed and, with a couple of exceptions, have enjoyed the work I do. I've also had the opportunity to work with some very smart people in various fields, both young and old, and have taken every opportunity to learn from them. Hack life? No. Just live it and learn from it. The only thing the average 20-something has over me is more time to learn.

</comment><comment><USER58> Granted, I'm only 30, so take my anecdotal experience as an older person with a grain of salt, but I've found that getting older isn't so hard as everyone seems to get nicer in their 30s. Life's easier when people are nicer.

</comment><comment><USER59> My body decays faster than the rate at which I change my unhealthy habits.

I have too much experience now to know that many ideas & projects will be expensive or impossible ... kids don't have that limitation.

</comment><comment><USER60> Just make sure you get better as you get older and make sure to cultivate relationships based upon mutual respect. Work should be guaranteed provided our economy is strong enough to sustain it.

</comment><comment><USER61> Each year: bigger fonts, more Advil. :)

</comment><comment><USER62> Your network matters more than you think it does. You can hire smart kids to work for you for relatively cheap (this is how it always has worked). Ignore the celebrification of the industry.

</comment><comment><USER63> The older get the more original the ideas I seem to have.

Strangely the older I get the more unoriginal and older the ideas the younger people seem to think up.. maybe its their inexperience.. but they always seem to be wasting more and more time until its a zero sum game or they give up and just have kids.. then stop doing anything.

It might explain the 10 percent phenom, only a very few people get more original with age.. the rest just degenerate and give up.

</comment><comment><USER64> I don't think of getting older as something to "deal with". Maybe if you were a pro athlete, that would be an OK way to look at it. But as a programmer/thinker/business person, I get better everyday. And so do my peers based on my observations.

Granted, I don't recognize pop culture references much but, aside from that, and needing to sit for a minute before getting out of bed in the morning, not much has changed.

</comment><comment><USER65> Aging well in terms of skills, experience and exposure to the best practices and the flow of technologies may be rewarding when teams decide strategies: been there, done that is a way to spot and hopefully avoid common mistakes. That said, reinventing the wheel is a learning process itself and success is more often singular than the result of a plan.

</comment><comment><USER66> Running. I logged 1600+ miles in 2014. I'll be closer to 2000 in 2015. I'm 48. Started running again (I ran some in high school and a little after college) when I turned 40. I weigh less than I did in high school. It keeps me motivated. Keeps me sharp.

</comment><comment><USER67> Although IQ is a debated subject there are many researches claiming that the ability to solve complex problems peaks at about 30 and remains like that until 64. Speed declines. I am good with that because I am not taking part at hackathons.

</comment><comment><USER68> It's inevitable. Why worry about it?

There's nothing about age that prevents you from understanding or coming up with the next big thing. Keep your mind open and eyes open for stuff that's happening in whatever field you're interested.

</comment><comment><USER16> Do 20 year olds feel lost when their next big thing is a derivative work from the 70s[0]?

[0] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJDv- zdhzMY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJDv-zdhzMY)

<comment><USER69> Just picking a nit here... The 'Mother of all Demos' is from the end of 1968, so the '60s. I've been about 2 months old when that happened. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER70> Old age is the single most surprising thing that happens to a person.

But I don't think getting hailed is the driver for success. What you accomplish is a lot more important. And age definitely does not prevent that.

</comment><comment><USER71> I'm 48 and I do feel that I can get more years out of life because I'm more aware and focused on making it happen. I've been fortune that I grew up playing hockey and developed an almost religious belief in the power of working out. It's the best way to stay sharp mentally, feel better physically, and stave of the effects of aging as best we can right now. We are also supremely lucky because our knowledge in this space has increased hugely; my parents had no clue about eating right, or working out, or any of that. My father at 48 looked like you would expect a 48 year old to look like; living in colorado, which is a hyper healthy state full of cross-fitters, runners and olympians trainers, it's striking how young older folks look. I often get mistaken for late 30's, and growing up it would be unthinkable that someone my age could play against 20-something Division 1 college players and be affect. I do this regularly, and I'm grateful I'm able to do it still.

I'm also a big believer in vitamins and supplements, but I know that's a major point of contention (I regularly get razzed by my surgeon buddy at hockey about spending money to color my piss). I disagree though, and I'll spare the lecture on why I believe so because ultimately it comes down to whether or not it helps you personally. I've posted in the past about the positive effects of fish-oil, ubiquinol w/ PQQ and Resveratrol in particular.

Bottom line, it depends on your goals. Mine is to live a 1000 years or so. I started telling my friends this about 20 years back, I think I'd just read K. Eric Drexler's Engines of Creation and probably one of Kaku's physics books and the written to me was clearly on the wall - progress would work in my favor, if I worked hard to keep myself in great shape, I just might make it far enough in life to see these cascading breakthrough's that will eventually propel man's lifespan into the hundreds and beyond. I do realize this is a long shot, but at the same time have nothing to lose by using this to drive my workout and health.

Regarding the 20 something culture... be careful on that... it's natural it seems as one gets older to lament how things have changed, how the 'young folks' are different and the world is changing. In reality we've changed, they are mostly the same, just as angst driven, excited for the future and full of hope and promise and probably a bit too optimistic. This is great, really, don't let it get you down and try to remember/embrace that way of thinking.

I just started a blog on all this stuff, only a bit of content so far but I plan to write a few pieces a week: [https://existentialquandary.wordpress.com](https://existentialquandary.wordpress.com)

<comment><USER72> Live long enough to live forever(ish)... my goal as well - I missed soaking up knowledge when I was younger and trying to catch up now.

In terms of diet, you might also be interested in Thrive Foods by Brendan Brazier - [http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0738215112/](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0738215112/)

<comment><USER71> Thanks I had not seen that before.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER73> I'm 34 and I believe I'm dreaming up the next big thing.

Many entrepreneurs become succesful at an older age... the famous Coronel Sanders became succesful in his 60s !!

In the tech field, Jeff Bezos started Amazon in his 30s.

</comment><comment><USER74> I'm working on a time machine. This is how I'm dealing with it.

</comment><comment><USER75> Isn't any such a question really asks "how do you deal with the fact you'll die quite soon"?

</comment><comment><USER76> I just turned 50. Get off my lawn.

</comment><comment><USER77> one day at a time ;)

but seriously, that's how i do it. i never worry about the future, it'll be right. and if it's not it's not, no point worrying about what might be

</comment><comment><USER78> I wonder how many people on this thread actively workout?

</comment><comment><USER79> I take it one day at a time

</comment><comment><USER46> Being 55 in Austin can be a real downer if you let it. I missed the last two bubbles thanks to being in the semiconductor business.

The good news: I avoided most of the insanity. A nest egg, a paid-off house (no mortgage for 6 years), my wife & dogs, my health, and the ability to occasionally travel for pleasure. We put away ~25% of our earnings every month. I go to the gym 4-5 times per week and sweat my ass off.

I've seen more than my share of layoffs so I spend _every_ _bleeping_ _moment_ learning other technologies. I won't be able to call myself a full-stack dev or a data scientist, but I know enough to get the simple stuff done. It will keep me in coffee and banh mi sandwiches when I tell my employer to stuff it.

As for "work fast and break things" culture: I know that 90% of this is fueled by the media. Don't buy the hype. Just be a good human being and ensure that your salary > costs.

I'm rapidly approaching the day that I won't have to wake up and read YC's bullshit. I'll be on a mountainside with my dogs and my wife. Good effing riddance.

<comment><USER80> I'm jealous of you having a paid off house in Austin right now as I'm sure your property value has risen significantly in the last few years.

I just graduated UT with a CS and got a nice job, but now is the time to buy a house and unfortunately that probably isn't going to happen for a little while.

<comment><USER46> It'll happen. It took me 10 years of not-so-glamourous jobs before I felt ready to buy. Don't sweat it. (Pun not intended.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER81> Get off my lawn!

</comment><comment><USER82> Acceptance.

</comment><comment><USER83> Come on man, let me give you a hug. You seem to need it. Do you feel better now?</comment>


MacRuby 0.5 Released - <AUTHOR> https://www.macruby.org/blog/2010/01/31/macruby05.html

<comment><USER2> I am excited they finally decided to push HotCocoa a bit more. I think it is an absolutely killer way to write basic Mac apps.

</comment><comment><USER3> Anyone know if Obj-C garbage collection is turned on in the iPad SDK so that MacRuby can be used to write apps for it?

<comment><USER4> No. From Matt Aimonetti's blog:

"Unfortunately, the current answer is: no. The two issues with the IPhone/iP*d OS are the lack of Garbage Collector and support for BridgeSupport (needed to define CocoaTouch constants available from MacRuby)."

<http://merbist.com/2010/01/31/macruby-0-5-final-is-out/></comment></comment>


An Everywhere Continuous Nowhere Differentiable Function, interesting proof by John McCarthy - <AUTHOR> http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/weierstrass/weierstrass.html

<comment><USER2> Another funny excercise: Find a function which is continuous at all irrational numbers and non-continuous at all rational numbers.

</comment><comment><USER3> Nice - the proof that almost all Brownian motion paths have this property is much uglier</comment>


Exotic, never before seen particle discovered at CERN - <AUTHOR> https://phys.org/news/2020-07-exotic-particle-cern.html <comment><AUTHOR> Observation of structure in the $J/ψ$-pair mass spectrum:

[https://arxiv.org/abs/2006.16957](https://arxiv.org/abs/2006.16957)</comment>


Tesseract - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesseract <comment><USER2> Yes, what about it?

If you're interested in 4D you might enjoy <http://www.superliminal.com/cube/cube.htm> (requires Java)

</comment><comment><USER3> No mention of Madeleine L'Engle's "A Wrinkle in Time"?

<comment><USER4> I also remember a short story about a guy who builds his house using a tesseract as the model. More inside than outside--- until it collapsed! :)</comment></comment>


Gift HN: 5-letter Product domain names.  Move quick. - <AUTHOR> http://cogniso.com/notes/free-domain-names?hn=1

<comment><AUTHOR> I've submitted this again because I think some HNers were being strategic about not voting this up and/or flagging it. The first submission got just one upvote (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5128948>) - but about 20 domains were registered since I submitted.

Vote it up and give others a chance. It's about goodwill.

</comment><comment><USER2> I wonder what you could use manrocket.com for?

Maybe astronaut site...

<comment><USER3> Yeah...something like that...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I just picked up one of the domains. Thanks for the gesture, and best of luck with Cogniso!

</comment><comment><USER5> vuely.com stuck out, could imagine a photo app or something being called that, someone beat me to it though. Be interested to see if any of these ever come back to HN as success stories.

</comment><comment><USER6> Just curious, to the people buying these up: are you buying on speculation or are you going to be designing an app based on the domain name? Or is there another reason?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> And again with the flagging - dropped straight off the front page. Am I missing something?

<comment><USER7> It was really useful for me. Thanks. I wasn't able to get one that suited me; it is nice to see that there are still good domain names out there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Just grabbed a few, thank you!</comment>


Ask HN: Best Language for Programmatically Transforming Large Datasets? - <AUTHOR> As part of my job I often find myself creating tools to transform large datasets. Some examples include restructuring GTFS feeds for structured consumption, or CRM migration. I come from web development so my tools of choice generally revolve around PHP and MySQL in a Drupal wrapper (for security, utilities, &c). As you might expect this approach seems slow and I know those tools aren't well suited to the task. What languages, frameworks, or apps do you use for similar tasks? <comment><USER2> I've used a variety of languages, plain SQL + some bash scripting, nodejs, python, C++, C and C#.NET to name some. Hell, I've even used bash scripts with some sed/awk/grep etc to get it done but that isn't ideal most of the time.

The factors I'd consider when picking a language:

1\. Datasource

2\. Destination datasource

3\. Number and type of translations

4\. Source language that created the dataset (typically more relevant if you are pulling flat files or custom data structures, but always on the radar).

5\. Datasize both in terms of storage size and number of records/transactions.

6\. Data location, are my source and destination co-located or across the state, country or world from each other?

7\. Data growth, do I need to keep running this process to keep up or is it a one and done ??

In general the lower the level language the longer it will take to code but it generally leads to more performant code. I usually opt for the easiest solution first and then work from there because as you are trying the easy one you'll find challenges which might push your decision a specific way. Today, I'd also look at Rust if I was doing a large dataset or working with binary data or I required more performance. I'd generally avoid PHP for this as it really isn't the right match, but if I had a small dataset and the creation was done via PHP I'd probably be tempted to just knock it out in PHP and be done (if it wasn't going to be around long).

Also, in the last 10 years or so when I do these types of projects I almost always use a mediator cache/queue like Redis or memcached + a queue etc. This gives me quick common lookups as well as I can process data in steps through the queue, survive failures and separate the code into clean sections which is nice for a lot of reasons.

I just wrote all that and didn't really answer your question with a direct answer, but that is because I don't think there is one correct or simple answer. I'd default to the easiest and work your way to the most complex based upon at least these factors, although many others exist.

There are tools that exist to do a lot of this but usually they are database focused. So if you are dealing with zip and text files etc it is hard to find COTS software to do it cleanly.</comment>


Baremetrics for Buffer - <AUTHOR> https://buffer.baremetrics.io/dashboard <comment><USER2> I'm not a huge user of Buffer, but I really like them because they've given us great insight into running a startup that's not a smash-hit-media-darling. VCs weren't knocking down their doors with truckloads of cold cash, they weren't beating journalists off their backs, etc, you get my point. They've had to stick to business fundamentals from day 1, methodically approaching issues like profitability, marketing, business development, growth, with only $500k of investment. They've been up and running for a few years now with a team of ~17 who're being paid competitive salaries. They've no doubt learned a lot and have been open about it. And this is just another example of their strategic biz dev, marketing and transparency they've become pretty masterful at.

I should add that this is also a great move by Baremetrics, who are likely to gain much more out of this.

<comment><USER3> It's been a great insight for me and helped with putting together the deck and approach that landed us some Angel funding.

The other part of it is now we want to help people too, so we've written a few posts about our own spending and metrics. Great to be able to shed some light on early stage questions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I would gladly pay for this dashboard if it were an installable product, but there's no way I would ever share our vital financial stats with some random company in exchange for pretty graphs. This is just so out there, it's beyond any discussion.

If you are reading this, Baremetrics guys, do consider making an installable version, e.g. in a form of a VM appliance. Feel free to charge monthly, but it should be in a form that allows retaining full and close control over all data your dashboard pulls off Stripe servers. Just look at what AeroFS did if you need some inspiration and validation.

<comment><USER5> Thanks for the feedback! Sounds like Baremetrics might not be the right product for you. :)

<comment><USER4> Buffer is an exception. Their openness is a part of their marketing strategy in tech circles.

I am genuinely curious whom you think Baremetrics is a right product for. Excluding companies run by your friends and acquaintances, who either trust you implicitly or just want to be supportive.

<comment><USER6> Buffer really isn't the exception. They're an exception in that they've made all their data _public_ , but my experience on both sides of the fence as someone who both _runs_ Stripe Connect services and also manages the technology for companies who _use_ Stripe Connect services tells me that most companies are not concerned about sharing their financials with trusted parties in exchange for a major operational benefits, whether that's analytics and reporting or automation of customer service operations.

As a Stripe Connect service operator (at [http://churnbuster.io/](http://churnbuster.io/)) I've only once had someone in the onboarding process express any concern that all their financials would be available to our service, and in that case they were a developer who wanted to double check with their CEO that it was OK, which it was.

Your question really isn't for Josh, it's for Stripe with regard to the entire Stripe Connect ecosystem. Sure, some people may be really concerned about sharing financial information with a third-party service, and that's totally fine, but I'm pretty sure they're the ones missing out. Speaking now as a technology consultant, I can say that the ability to plug-and-play all sorts of different and very valuable third-party services is allowing the rest of us to build businesses in record time with minimal investment and part-time resources.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I just wanna say congratulations both to Baremetrics and Buffer. You're both an inspiration to bootstrappers like me.

<comment><USER7> Thank you Peter! Let me know if I can ever help you with anything :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Doesn't this expose who their customers are (in the live stream)? I'm all for transparency, but it doesn't seem like the customer list is theirs to share.

<comment><USER9> The customer names have been changed.

> Note: The transactions you see throughout the dashboard are real, but we've > used fake customer names to keep them private.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is an absolutely brilliant move for both companies. I imagine baremetrics will double or triple their revenue by the end of summer because of this.

Well done.

<comment><USER11> Agreed. It's brilliant. The great thing is you can see if that happens by just watching this page: [http://demo.baremetrics.io](http://demo.baremetrics.io)

<comment><USER12> The link is [https://demo.baremetrics.io](https://demo.baremetrics.io) :)

<comment><USER11> Oops. Fixed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Kuddos. Honestly I didn't even you could pay for Buffer. It is really impressive they are willing to be so transparent with their financials. It probably helps that they haven't raised any institutional investment[1] and thus don't have any external pressures about releasing these details.

[1] [https://angel.co/buffer](https://angel.co/buffer)

<comment><USER13> Buffer raised $500,000

Link: [http://onstartups.com/tabid/3339/bid/98034/The-Pitch-Deck- We...](http://onstartups.com/tabid/3339/bid/98034/The-Pitch-Deck-We-Used-To- Raise-500-000-For-Our-Startup.aspx)

<comment><USER12> > ..in the end, we closed a $450k seed round from 18 investors.

As I said, they did a distributed Angel round, not a traditional investment from an institution (VC).

<comment><USER7> Indeed, we haven't raised a large single round from an institution, though we did have 3 firms put in $50k each as part of that $450k round. The board is just myself and Leo.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Thank you guys for sharing this.

I noticed 30,000 _failed charges_ in one year. I'm not sure if that's interactive failures, as in users actively trying to complete a transaction, which is much less important than the recurring failed charges, as in money you thought you were going to get but didn't, for no other reason than the payment network.

I hate seeing those failed charge notifications that go out every morning when you try to bill that day's batch for the next month of service. And then wondering how much that's pushing up your churn rate, how much effort should you spend trying to get updated billing info, etc. Buffer is mostly $10/mo, so I would imagine not much chasing is going on beyond a few automated emails... but it's enough to make you want to switch to ACH!

Does Stripe handle auto-updating credit card details when a card expires like some companies seem to be able to do? With the massive leaks lately, and so many card numbers getting cycled, it definitely hits the bottom line.

<comment><USER15> I don't think Stripe auto-updates. There's a service called Churnbuster whose sole purpose is to deal with this issue: [http://churnbuster.io/](http://churnbuster.io/)

<comment><USER14> Interesting service. Attacking the problem by trying to optimize within the constraints of the current system.

It's a problem you wish you could eliminate instead of just trying to optimize around.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The 6 month recurring revenue graph is interesting:

[https://buffer.baremetrics.io/stats/mrr?start_date=2013-10-2...](https://buffer.baremetrics.io/stats/mrr?start_date=2013-10-28&end_date=2014-04-28)

Gotta love 75% growth, and 199% yearly growth.

</comment><comment><USER16> I'm curious how big their staff is, what their burn rate is, etc. I also am curious if they have 22k paying customers, how many are free tier?

That seems like a very healthy business right there, which might be able to squeeze a bit more growth out of its free tier.

<comment><USER17> You can see their staff costs as of Dec 2013 here: [http://open.bufferapp.com/introducing-open-salaries-at- buffe...](http://open.bufferapp.com/introducing-open-salaries-at-buffer- including-our-transparent-formula-and-all-individual-salaries/)

<comment><USER16> so some quick back of napkin math makes their annual burn rate around $1.6M in salaries.

<comment><USER7> That's around the right ballpark. If you want to do the actual calculation, feel free to take a look at our spreadsheet of salaries here: [https://docs.google.com/a/bufferapp.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=...](https://docs.google.com/a/bufferapp.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AgrWVeoG5divdE81a2wzcHYxV1pacWE1UjM3V0w0MUE&usp=drive_web#gid=1)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Great dashboard.

Would love to see it work for more than just Stripe.

Perhaps for a variety of backends, or an aggregate one like Xero so that it can get insight into payments coming in from sources like PayPal and direct bank transfers too.

<comment><USER5> Right now we're focused squarely on Stripe. They make it stupid easy to build on top of (thanks to Stripe Connect). May expand way down the road, but that's waaayyyy down the road.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is a great partnership and I can't wait to see what comes next.

I've watched and enjoyed reading the Buffer story since the early days. In fact it probably played a small part in my path towards quitting work last summer and starting my own thing.

I'm considering doing an 'Open blog' for our enterprise start-up [http://www.fundrecs.com](http://www.fundrecs.com) like the guys did with Buffer.

Trying to weigh up whether it would limit us or enable us to do more. My gut is saying go for it but my co-founders aren't convinced.

</comment><comment><USER20> I stopped using buffer, but I think I will start using it again. I plan to run my next startup with as much transparency as they do.

</comment><comment><USER21> You have to respect a company thats not afraid to open up their numbers like this. I love this trend of financial transparency for startups. Numbers are the clearest way for me to crystallize things as an entrepreneur.

</comment><comment><USER22> Blog post for some more info about this [http://open.bufferapp.com/buffer- public-revenue-dashboard/](http://open.bufferapp.com/buffer-public-revenue- dashboard/)

</comment><comment><USER9> Is their revenue entirely from the "Buffer for Business" plans?

<comment><USER7> Hi Brandon!

Out of our total March revenue of $246,000 [1], 79% came from our $10/mo Awesome Plan and the other 21% came from Buffer for Business [2].

Let me know if you have any other questions :-)

[1] [http://open.bufferapp.com/buffer-update- march-2014/](http://open.bufferapp.com/buffer-update-march-2014/) [2] [http://open.bufferapp.com/buffer-revenue-growth- report-2/](http://open.bufferapp.com/buffer-revenue-growth-report-2/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> This is really helpful.

\+ I've been using Buffer for few weeks now and it's really a pain killer. Hope they can make 'locale/language' setting available for Facebook Pages tho.

</comment><comment><USER24> This looks stunning! When I clicked through the first time it said the MRR was about $250k which surprised me. On refresh it went back down to $9k.

<comment><USER15> No, Buffer's MRR _is_ 250K. Baremetrics' own MRR is $9K. Both dashboards are public. You might've been toggling between them.

<comment><USER24> ah - wow. Then I am very impressed by the $250k. You're right - I was toggling between them. Thanks for clarifying.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> This is a great marketing move. Honestly, this is the first time I've signed up for a service immediately after seeing how it works live.

<comment><USER5> Wooohooo! Happy to have you on board. Shoot me an email if you need anything! firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> $140k in refunds the past year

do you know what are the main reasons?

<comment><USER27> They focus very hard on customer service so I guess that plays a part.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Looks like George uses Buffer [http://d.pr/i/bgAS](http://d.pr/i/bgAS)

</comment><comment><USER29> Baremetrics looks awesome, but it's Stripe only. Does anyone know of an equivalent for Braintree?

</comment><comment><USER30> Edited. I didn't read the fine print.. :)

</comment><comment><USER31> This is pretty neat.

</comment><comment><USER32> Huge congratulations Josh and Baremetrics ! It's a great app and it's good to see you growing well.

The brief conversations we've had with you have been great and we think you're a really nice guy.

We've built a similar app but hope to compete with slightly different features (more details to come).

We launched our private beta today, and it's either good or bad timing ;)

Axel, designer at SaaS Metrics [http://saas-metrics.com](http://saas- metrics.com)

<comment><USER24> can't deny this also looks nice! Good luck with it. Hope to evaluate you vs OP in the not too distant future.</comment></comment>


Using Upwork? There has to be a better way - <AUTHOR> You are a founder.
You have been using Upwork for years. It's not cheap but you are used to it.
You like how it handles the payments. All your freelancers listed in a single place.
It's easy. You feel in control. Payment comes out of your account automatically. You get a weekly report with the hours they've worked. A dispute resolution system gives you peace of mind (some think it sucks though!).
And don't get you started on the fees.
Problem is…
You are now sourcing most of your freelancers through word of mouth and networks.
Vin - a .Net developer in Spain. He is a freelancer and invoices you directly once a week with the hours he's worked.
Remember you are still using Upwork, right?
Next hire: Alice - a graphic designer you found in a Facebook group. She is a project based freelancer uses Payneer.
Friday. End of week. Vin worked on your company report all week. Sends his invoice.
Monday morning. Get a text from Vin.
Oh sheeeiit! Forgot to pay him - not the first time :(
"Hey, all good but had to find more work elsewhere. Can only commit to 4 hours per week now man", he says in a funny tone.
I hear you say.
"Fk! - he was good! I need him!"
I need all my freelancers in one single payment platform. Like Upwork but just to manage their payments. That's it. <comment><USER2> This just shows your incompetent. No web platform can fix that.

</comment><comment><USER3> Are you saying that as soon as you forgot one single payment, the freelancer stopped working for you? One single payment?

</comment><comment><USER4> Many people hire a secretary (possibly part time) to do this.

<comment><AUTHOR> Exactly! In this digital era that shows that there has to be a more efficient way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Setup reminder for payments? What's the problem?</comment>


How to optimize SaaS landing pages for rapid comprehension - <AUTHOR> https://io.usabilityhub.com/how-to-optimize-saas-landing-pages-for-rapid-comprehension-40ab460780f <comment><USER2> The article shows a screenshot where a heatmap shows how users click on the "Get Started" button a lot and then goes on to state:

 _Looking at these results, the CTA variation design results are much more focused, with hardly any clicks on other elements. I'm calling this a win._

As if getting people to click this button was the goal. Which is is not, the conversion to an engaged user/customer is.

The alternative there was a email input field plus button, which also received the bulk of the clicks, and immediately resulted in commited users providing vital contact information.

For example, i would click this button to see whats hidden and subsequently leave the site anyway. Many users clicking this button as the heatmap shows are not actually engaged and converted..

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Author here! Would love to hear if you have comments or feedback,or if you've done some similar research!

<comment><USER2> Often overlooked is that not all SAAS are turn-key, where conversion is not a 2-minute endure with a stranger.

For example SAAS meant to complement (relatively expensive) hardware. Conversion is important still, but decided vastly different.</comment></comment>


The homogenization of scientific computing (2013) - <AUTHOR> http://www.talyarkoni.org/blog/2013/11/18/the-homogenization-of-scientific-computing-or-why-python-is-steadily-eating-other-languages-lunch/ <comment><USER2> I heard a saying at work: "Python is the second best language for anything." Scientific computing is a perfect example. By being close to the best, Python ends up taking over each sub-section of the SC world.

<comment><USER3> > Scientific computing is a perfect example

Just out of curiosity, what's the best one?

<comment><USER4> The quote (which I really like, though I only use Python for a very small subset of things, generally quick throwaway scripts) doesn't have to imply that there is an agreed upon best.

Bob likes R. But he'll take Python second. Ted likes Matlab. But he'll take Python second. Etc.

The point is everyone agrees Python will do. Consensus plays in to the OP; even if Python isn't perfect for the domain, it's probably good enough, and the lingua franca.

<comment><USER5> So, in other words, it doesn't excel at anything in particular but is more of a jack of all trades. Got it. Thanks.

<comment><USER6> You know, the quote actually goes:

        Jack of all trades, master of none,
        Often times better than a master of one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If python is good enough to replace R or Matlab for you, then you are using a negligible fraction of what those platforms have to offer.

R is a lot like vim or javascript. It has a lot of warts, but it's an incredibly expressive toolkit for its task. I usually buy into a language once I find a few extremely gifted developers working with it (and who seem to do so voluntarily). For instance: for vim it's Tim Pope, for R, it's Hadley Wickham, for javascript it's Mike Bostock.

Python, despite its many good decisions, is likewise full of warts. So, who are good developers to follow in the python/numpy community?

<comment><USER8> > who are good developers to follow in the python/numpy community?

Off the top of my head: Travis Oliphant, creator of numpy and founder of two companies in the scientific Python space; Jake Vanderplas, enthusiastic developer and blogger and Fernando Perez, creator of IPython (disclaimer: I work for Fernando). In the broader Python world, Kenneth Reitz, the author of requests.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> That's how idiomatic one-way-to-do-it generic languages slowly win. They raise the bar for the specialty languages so that, for example, after R the next statistical language really, really needs to shine in what it does in order to justify the trouble of learning another language over using a Python with a statistics library.

<comment><USER10> There's a catch though - once you start using numpy/scipy, there's no longer one-way-to-do-it and code becomes pretty messy.

</comment></comment><comment> vezzy-fnord Previous discussions of the same article:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7030097](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7030097)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6756430](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6756430)

<comment><USER11> Thanks. Burying as dupe.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm seeing this phenomenon in my own work. I do a fair amount of computational stuff (in the old sense of _computing something_ , as opposed to just using a computer), and I find myself gravitating more & more to Python.

Performance is, of course, an issue. But in one case I noted that the week or so it took me to write _and execute_ some Python code was almost certainly less time than it would have taken just to write the code in C/C++. I concluded that -- for this problem at least -- the extra performance I might have gotten out of C++ simply did not matter.

However, these days I do not do much with large scientific models or anything resembling big data. Performance is not the issue for me that it would be for others. And with articles having titles like "Why Python is Slow: Looking under the Hood"[1] out there, I find it difficult to see how Python can displace Fortran (or maybe C) in the realm of traditional supercomputing.

[1] [https://jakevdp.github.io/blog/2014/05/09/why-python-is- slow...](https://jakevdp.github.io/blog/2014/05/09/why-python-is-slow/)

<comment><USER13> remember there are ways to squeeze performance out of python, projects like cython for example. you can also make a python library in C... I don't know how practical it is though

<comment><USER14> If you have a C function, calling it from python is trivial. It even has great support for passing numpy arrays to functions that expect C arrays, and taking C arrays and treating the like numpy arrays.

<comment><USER13> > If you have a C function, calling it from python is trivial.

with this ?

[https://docs.python.org/2/extending/extending.html](https://docs.python.org/2/extending/extending.html)

<comment><USER14> I use ctypes with numpy.ctypeslib. The end results aren't as robust as 'real' python extensions (you have keep track of types yourself and write your own python wrappers), but it is much quicker and easier to get started. You don't have to learn anything about the python API, your C code remains 'pure' since it doesn't have to know anything about python and there is almost no boilerplate. For simple one off bindings to C functions it's great, especially if the data you're passing back and forth are numpy arrays.

There is also CFFI, which I haven't really used, but lots of people seem to like it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I think the author really needs to define scientific computing. Some people would think of that as simulations, clusters, astronomy, epidemiology and fluid dynamics. That maybe typified by a scripting language wrapper(inc Python) to C, C++ or even Fortran programs.

He himself seems to be talking more about standard stats and data analysis or prediction. In this field R is growing at least as fast as Python. R is the no1 Kaggle language and the no1 academic stats language, Python 2nd and stable there. The software carpentry movement to train scientitsts concentrates on both R and Python.

Then the biggest scientific programming field is bioinformatics - which really is a mish mash of Python, Perl, Java, C++ whatever piped CLI and a lot of R again. Here Python is growing mostly at the expense of Perl (there is a big Perl legacy) but as most software is designed for piping together in Bash scripts the diversity is not too big a deal. My own perusal of Job adverts on this area sees employers asking for "R Perl or Python" which are viewed as interchangeable.

<comment><USER16> But he also talks about document parsing and web dev. I think Python finds its edge when you have to combine things on the sciencey/mathy side of things with more user-facing software development. As the author said, it's nice not having to code switch between the a dozen best-in-field languages, when Python is highly capable across the board. Besides maybe C# and maybe Java, what other languages are as versatile?

<comment><USER15> True but have you seen most academic websites? They really aren't that into web dev. They are mainly concerned with static publication. But yes Python is growing in this area and generally as command line scripting glue. I'm not sure its got all our lunch yet though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The easy objection is that none of what he's doing actually depends on Python; those libraries could have been as easily linked to Javascript, Ruby, Lua, Clojure, etc, the critical point: NumPy does not really take advantage of any specific feature of _Python_ other than its popularity. Python isn't really taking over when most of the actual code that runs was written in C, but it's the best glue right now.

But really, just this second part is the point. Why wasn't this post written five years ago, when Python had already become a popular and established language? Well, if you look at it a little differently, it took roughly five years from the time Python took over undergrad CS courses to the time it became the lingua franca of scientific computing -- see a connection?

</comment><comment><USER18> This is a partial example of worse-is-better. No one wants to have 10 languages in their toolbelt.

I personally find I use C# for almost everything. You can find good libraries for virtually everything you need. And it has the best tooling I've found. Is it actually the best language for everything? Absolutely not, but its close enough that I'm probably the most productive in virtually everything with it.

</comment><comment><USER19> Python is such a ubiquitous language, even outside of scientific computing. It seems like mobile dev is the only area where its not present.

<comment><USER20> Python faces the same problem that Clojure does on mobile: start-up times are too slow and battery use is too high.

People have made valient efforts to overcome this issue in both Python and Clojure: Kivy, Py4A and Clojure on Android, in particular. But they still can't provide reasonable performance compared to native mobile frameworks.

It's just a product on Python implementation: too much complexity and too heavyweight objects (and almost everything is an object!).

To a certain extent, the same applies to Clojure -- there is a price to be paid for abstractions and (and in the case of Clojure) immutability, and it rears its ugly head the most when trying to fit these language implementations on resource-constrained mobile platforms.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> If I analyzed the toolset I used years ago vs. now, I'd conclude the world is moving from Python to Haskell :)

</comment><comment><USER22> I wonder what it'll take for JavaScript to start taking over Python's niches. Is there a numeric library (like Scipy/pandas) hooked up to asm.js yet? I can imagine that being faster than Python.

<comment><USER23> Javascript will need to fix the mess that is its numeric types. As it currently is, you either need a bignum library with an ungodly syntax, or you are open to losing precision above a certain level, without warning. I tried solving Euler problems with JS, but it's so painful I switched back to Python after a few.

<comment><USER24> The value objects proposal for es6/es7 might fix that:

[http://wiki.ecmascript.org/doku.php?id=strawman:value_object...](http://wiki.ecmascript.org/doku.php?id=strawman:value_objects)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Python is good for scientific computing. But this is one person's experience. Users of other languages may sleep calm.

</comment><comment><USER26> Isn't Golang slowly eating Python's stolen lunch though?

<comment><USER27> I don't think so, but should be siphoning off people that use Cython.

<comment><USER6> ::shudders::

<comment><USER27> I hate Cython that much. I mean, find it non-optimal in a disagreeable way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> What about Zope/Plone?

Not good enough, or any other reason?

I'm curious.

<comment><USER29> In the early 2000s, the Zope community felt that Zope 2.x had grown long in the tooth, so they decided to create a new, modern code base that they called "Zope 3," initially released in 2004.

Zope 3 was not backward compatible with Zope 2.x, nor with the impressive ecosystem of Zope 2.x plugins, and for years there was confusion about the direction, momentum, and relative importance of those two parallel projects. Zope 3 never gained any significant traction, because in adopting a "component architecture" they decided to use XML to connect those individual components, and it felt like you spent more time writing XML than Python. IMO this was a strategic mistake.

In 2005 the Django framework was released. In 2006, Ruby on Rails was released. After a couple years of confusion about the Zope roadmap, developers now had multiple options. You couldn't sell management on new Zope 2 apps, Zope 3 wasn't ready for prime time, and Rails was a significantly(!) more productive environment than Zope 2. (Django presumably is, too, but I have no Django experience and so cannot say.)

In 2010, the Zope community renamed "Zope 3" to "bluebream" to clarify their messaging, but that was after _six years_ of ambiguity. Developers moved to other tools and frameworks, and Zope's developer community shrank until it no longer had a critical mass of developer interest.

<comment><USER28> Thank you for that history lesson!</comment></comment></comment>


Scalable Predictive Analytics with Palladium and Marathon – Mesosphere - <AUTHOR> https://mesosphere.com/2015/03/31/scalable-predictive-analytics-palladium/ <comment><USER2> self-serve machine learning and analytics is a really cool use case.</comment>


Royal Society journal archive made permanently free to access - <AUTHOR> http://royalsociety.org/news/Royal-Society-journal-archive-made-permanently-free-to-access/

<comment><USER2> The press release naturally doesn't mention it, but I'd guess this was done at least in part because the release of the back issues for free public access became a _fait accompli_ with: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2789709>

People have been pressuring them for years to make these open-access, arguing that a non-profit society dedicated to spreading public knowledge ought to at least make the very old historical articles freely available to the general public.

</comment><comment><USER3> Benjamin Franklin's 1752 paper on experimenting with electricity from thunderstorms, collected in a Leyden jar, is not to be missed.

[http://rstl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/47/565.full.p...](http://rstl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/47/565.full.pdf)

After edit:

To answer a question raised by another HN user, the Wikipedia article on the medial s character in older printed English-language books

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_s>

is helpful about the history of printing that character.

<comment><USER4> "Make a small cross, of two light strips of cedar; the arms so long, as to reach the four corners of a large thin silk handkerchief, when extended: tie the corners of the handkerchief to the extremities of the cross; so you have the body of a kite..."

Love it.

Also, the first paper by Newton, on his new theory about light and colour. He was still just a "Mr."!

[http://rstl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/6/69-80/3075....](http://rstl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/6/69-80/3075.full.pdf+html?sid=0d477dd8-8dec-4ac3-8187-b6df96d4d670)

<comment><USER5> A Professor before becoming a Dr... Those were the days...

<comment><USER6> There are plenty of professors out there without PhDs, even nowadays.

Not at Cambridge, and not in Physics, but they exist.

<comment><USER7> In my school at least, they were not called professors if they did not have a PhD, just lecturers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I cannot adequately express how awesome having access to this information is to me. When I was younger I would read one biography from <http://www.gap- system.org/~history/> before going to bed. It is nothing short of amazing to be able to get a projection, a snapshot of the workings of the great minds of centuries past. To see them struggle and then brilliantly succeed in explaining concepts that were at the edge of knowledge, that are still non- trivial and have their work remain timeless by continuing to stand head and shoulders above modern treatments of the same subject is remarkable.

I did a search on a bunch of people - Hamilton, Euler, George Green, Bernoulli, Euler, Gauss, Clifford, Boole and more. As is to be expected not every one is there. The most interesting essays my short search found were:

A Mathematical Theory of Magnetism by William Thomson [http://rstl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/141/243.full....](http://rstl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/141/243.full.pdf+html?sid=fe65c826-aad8-409c-89d5-cd8378f605c6)

and An Essay towards solving a problem in the doctrine of chances by Thomas Bayes. [http://rstl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/53/370.full.p...](http://rstl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/53/370.full.pdf+html?sid=5a73db2e-6635-4240-a252-e54cc481c83f)

</comment><comment><USER9> The Baroque Cycle, by Neal Stephenson, has a highly entertaining historical fiction treatment of the Royal Society, Newton and other main characters.

<comment><USER10> The grotesque experiment on the dog by Hooke described in the book is outlined here:

<http://rstl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/2/23-32/539>

The Royal Society had open up their complete archives a few years ago for a period and I fished this out then.

<comment><USER4> I saw the paper referenced at the Trailblazing website. It's a nice visual way of exploring some of the most notable papers from the Royal Society.

<http://trailblazing.royalsociety.org/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's good to see hardcore academic institutions like the Royal Society move towards opening knowledge for the public.

<comment><USER12> I suppose, but they are only opening articles that are 70 years old. Which means curiosities like Darwin's geology papers are now available, but you still need to pay for anything remotely current. So it's a nice start, but unlikely to effect their bottom line, or make doing science any easier for anyone outside the first world academy.

<comment><USER11> Yes, you're right. But it's still a step in the right direction and hopefully others will follow suit. And I am really optimistic, looking at the uber-cool initiatives of the Khan Academy (<http://www.khanacademy.org/>), MIT's OpenCourseWare (<http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm>), Stanford's OpenClassroom (<http://openclassroom.stanford.edu/MainFolder/HomePage.php>) and their latest online courses in Machine learning (<http://ml-class.org>), Artificial Intelligence (<http://ai-class.com>), and Databases (<http://db-class.org>).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Anyone knows why most of the "s" characters have become "f"? eg: beft, fucceeded etc.

Interestingly, nothing else seems to be wrong (at least I didn't spot anything else). And it's not even consistent, eg: crofs (instead of cross, so only one 's' became 'f' here).

<comment><USER14> OCR software tends to have problem with the ligatures used for "s" in old fonts so often transcribes them as "f".

More expensive OCR software tends to get around this by using probability models to guess the correct word (i.e. "best" is much more likely than "beft"), but I'm guessing they're using some mid-range OCR package.

<comment><USER15> Seriously? Did you even look at the pages in question?

They are reproductions of the originals, and maintain the original fonts and orthography. This includes the long s, as well as certain ligatures (like ct), and has absolutely nothing to do with their choice of OCR software. In fact, there's no indication that OCR software was used at all.

<comment><USER14> The indexing seems based on OCR, for example try the keyword search "Tranfactions"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> You got to love some of these papers.

Account of an Elephant's Tusk, in which the Iron Head of a Spear was found imbedded. By Mr. Charles Combe, of Exeter College, Oxford, 1801.

Coming up with research topics was always an art!

</comment><comment><USER17> These are gold!

Obligatory Isaac Newton search reveals his biting answer to "some considerations upon his doctrine of light and colors": [http://rstl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/7/81-91/5084....](http://rstl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/7/81-91/5084.full.pdf+html?sid=0bd4bec0-7c12-4aa2-aa18-88ee41085e43) (note spelling of "color"). The initial phrase sets the tone: "Sir, I have already told you ..."

Too bad scientific papers have lost this rhetorical flavor.</comment>