Being a web startup shouldn't be good enough for you - <AUTHOR> http://www.startupnorth.ca/2009/12/28/being-a-web-startup-shouldnt-be-good-enough-for-you/

<comment><USER2> _In the long term however, aggregators arise, and distribution gets consolidated. This same race is the one that killed movie producers decades ago, and indie game developers more recently._

Maybe I don't understand what he's saying here, but it seems to me that indie game developers are doing better than ever. With platforms like Steam, XBLA, and the iPhone, it seems much easier to get your game distributed than in the past. I agree that it may be more difficult to get noticed as an individual game/developer, but it seems like more indie developers/games are getting the chance to be on the level with bigger games/developers than ever before.

<comment><USER3> The problem is that these aggregators become saturated with so many options that the ability for these indie developers to build a sustainable and long- term business around these distribution channels becomes difficult.</comment></comment>


DMT drug study investigates the 'entities' people meet while tripping - <AUTHOR> https://bigthink.com/mind-brain/dmt-beings <comment><USER4> Some friends of mine did some tests with DMT entities. Apparently they can't solve math problems.

I never believed they were anything other than hallucinations, but they were still some of the most positive and meaningful events in my life. I hope one day we'll know enough about consciousness to understand why DMT causes the formation of these seemingly other selves.

<comment><USER5> We are capable of holding more than one identity in our minds and switching between them. Some people use that ability to create "characters" (tulpas: [https://www.businessinsider.com/hearing-voices-in-your- head-...](https://www.businessinsider.com/hearing-voices-in-your-head-real- life-versus-movies-tulpa-psychiatry-2018-2)) that they interact with or even allow to take over their bodies. Apparently some people go as far as replacing themselves with a tulpa they've created (they call this ego-suicide).

<comment><USER6> We are also capable of realizing directly that personal identity itself is also construct, a mask we put on to make sense of the world. Seeing through this illusion can be deeply unsettling, as well as deeply liberating. E.g. Buddhist insight into anatta, or non-self.

Shinzen Young's description on the nuts and bolts of Shingon Buddhist deity yoga practice is simply fascinating.

[https://alvinalexander.com/personal/shinzen-young-shingon- sh...](https://alvinalexander.com/personal/shinzen-young-shingon-shinto- winter-meditation-training/) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_VizlDWcTA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_VizlDWcTA)

<comment><USER7> This is cool, but I've always felt buddhists make this too big of an issue. Yeah, the ego is just a process, like any other, but it was probably created as a result of some selection mechanism.

I'm pretty sure in a situation of conflict, it's beneficial to kick the ego in higher gear. Sure, when things calm down, relax that thing. I feel pretty strongly that's the evolutionary reason for having an ego to begin with.

<comment><USER8> It doesn't matter how it was created, it's still poison. Practicing Buddhists don't "make a big deal" of the ego out of some neurotic compulsion taken too far: the ego is seen clearly as an essential link in the chain of suffering and is dropped, breaking the chain.

I invite you to directly experience it for yourself; come and see.

<comment><USER7> I don't think we would have survived as a species in an "egoless" state. It's very nice while you have it, but it lacks all strength and drive that are necessary for great achievements or for putting up a good fight when necessary.

For full perspective: I've practiced various meditation techniques my whole life - Orthodox Christian, various flavor of yoga (mostly Raja and Kundalini related stuff), even some Buddhist techniques (mostly Zen). I'm fairly familiar with the Buddhist doctrine, and Christian, and the Hindu Dharma. I've had my share of experiences, including some that looked quite ego-free - <USER2> yeah, it's awesome.

I'm just saying, we shouldn't draw absolute lines here, or anywhere. The danger of narrow dogmatism is always present. And there's room for, and value in, the inner fire, the energy that builds things up and pushes things forward. That, too, is what we are.

You live in a wonderful, immense house; don't confine yourself to a couple rooms only.

<comment><USER8> It doesn't matter if we would have survived as a species or not. Our great achievements can be summarized as a continuum of suffering done in the name of I. Even now a billion people live in the most abject daily torment of survival while the richest of us pack our noses with a stimulant that destroys whole swaths of the natural world.

You're confusing the relative world with awakening and then making it out for wisdom. All of man's great achievements can be summarized in a few passages from "Ozymandias": gone tomorrow.

'Even if a whole mountain were made of gold, not double that would be enough to satisfy one person. Know this and live accordingly'

We should absolutely make out for wisdom what is wise and point out unskillful pursuits where we see them. Buddhist teachings aren't a postmodernist mash-up of whatever you like. It can sound rude, even condescending but it's not what you make it out to be. The suttas are there to offer wisdom, Right Understanding.

Practicing various meditation techniques your whole life sounds like you haven't made up your mind yet or haven't seen one through to the end. I know exactly how that feels and I'd trade the decade I spent sampling for depth in any one.

<comment><USER7> > _It doesn 't matter if we would have survived as a species or not._

That is a point of view completely detached from reality. Have a nice day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've never tried DMT, though it's something I'd like to try. I did have an experience with entities and salvia though. I've smoked it a few times and there was always things there...it always felt like to them I was an ant they'd suddenly noticed were aware of them and they just seemed kind of amused.

But one time, I tried smoking a small amout of it while chewing on some extract. I'd read that south American shamans would chew the leaves rather than smoking them.

It was a totally different experience. After about ten minutes I had this extreme sense of derealization, like everything in the world was flat and 2 dimensional the like backdrop of a play and if I tried I could have just ripped it all down to see everything hidden behind it. It was a really strange feeling.

Shortly after that though, was when the entity showed up. At the time, I was fairly addicted to minecraft. Like would spend ally free time playing that game.

All of a sudden there was a voice screaming in my head that i'm wasting my time and life...something made...I really don't know how else to describe it, stand up and start walking into the wall over and over while the voice kept going see, this is what you've been spending your time doing. If you've ever played minecraft, it involves a lot of walking into walls to mine blocks.

At that point, I started getting this overwhelming urge to go outside for a walk. I remember arguing with the thing saying it would be a bad idea to go outside. It ended up relenting and left.

The whole experience was strange...I swear that must be what it feels like to be possessed or something. I know it's like just a hallucination, but it sure felt real and even remembering it it feels real.

Real or not, I stopped playing minecraft after that. Haven't played more than a few hours since.

<comment><USER10> I have no desire to ever try salvia (heard too many bad things about how dysphoric it can be), but the 2D nature of it is really fascinating. You hear that same type of thing from many people. I wonder what the mechanism is that causes that to happen.

<comment><USER11> >heard too many bad things about how dysphoric it can be

I tried Salvia once (35x extract which, yes, was incredibly dumb for a first timer), and my experience was so nightmarish and traumatic that I've never tried anything stronger than coffee since.

Salvia is its own deterrent.

<comment><USER9> Yeah to agree with you and the parent commenter, salvia's not fun. It's interesting, but not fun. It can be fairly terrifying and i'm not a big fan of the body feeling. It's certainly not something you start craving or wanting to do long term. That was all years ago and when I finished everything I bought, I never replenished it. But, it was interesting.

And just so I don't have to write a second comment, to the above poster.

The 2d effect was one of the strangest things i've ever experienced. I've tried my fair share of hallucinogens, but nothing's been quite like that. It lingered a while longer than everything else. Again though, it wasn't the most pleasant feeling, my girlfriend and roommate were with me and even they had that 2d not real seeming look to them which was kind of disconcerting.

Overall it wasn't really something I regretted and feel like breaking my game addiction was a good outcome, but it's not an experience I'd like to repeat. Even after years, the memory of it all is still pretty vivid.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The geometric patterns are interesting to me because we can generate them as the effect of feedback loops, recursion, and iteration in pretty much every physical and logical domain. When you introduce a delay or discontinuity into a continuous process, it causes echoes and periodic patterns we would interpret as "geometric" as well. Think effects pedals on musical sounds, or modelling queues.

The underlying presumption seems to be that there are barriers to understanding a truth that can be "unlocked," which seems like a leap fraught with baggage. Even though using a poison that impairs the ability of our brain to reconcile its sensory inputs with its memory of itself is an out of "self" experience, this idea of viewing it through the lens of an enhancement or impairment yields different interpretations. A functioning society and civilization requires that people can be acted upon by - and respond to - <USER3> artifacts of language, so something that impairs that is going to raise hackles among people who think about those sort of things. But to grow it and survive we also need things that originate outside of it, so the insights people get from these trips can also be very valuable.

DMT elves I can't explain, but geometric patterns, just generate interrupts on a signal that has feedback. If they do exist, I'd have to assume they're some instantiation of tech support, as something is going to detect the signal jitter and check it.

<comment><USER13> I've seen geometric patterns and it's very similar to tie-dye fractals that kind of pulse and move among itself. A friend and I had very similar experience of the patterns (no elves wasn't DMT). You'd see them only when looking close up at something, not your entire visual field. They conform to the object you are staring at. A cardboard box wilth all its micro texture and creases "generated" the patterns and your brain would interpret it moving, pulsing, distorting, adding color.

(I am not saying this as some kind of allure of the drug's effects, just interesting to think about why and how the perception change happens).

I think maybe it has to do with your brain trialing new pattern recognition algorithms.

 _warning more musing below_

I mean what is to say _how_ any signal from our perception should look or feel internally? Visually the input in just raw EM radiation. And our brain makes this vivid picture out of basically a field of numbers. In this case you could argue that the extra pulsing or moving is not from a signal in reality, but we also can easily be tricked with visual illusions into seeing a static image move while completely sober. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusory_motion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusory_motion).

There is no "right" perception of reality, or at least ours is subjective to begin with. I think drugs just allow new patterns or patterns recognition "algorithms" a trial run. Our biology ended up as it is to keep us alive; it is not "poison" or wrong to try to re-jigger it temporarily to see what else is possible - as long as you are in a good situation to do so. (Or not, who am I to judge).

<comment><USER14> You may find that with enough experiences like this, you can perceive the same type (but not degree) of fluctuations when looking at any kind of textured or patterned material, such as asphalt or a woven rug. Try gazing at a surface in a slightly unfocused, highly "relaxed" manner. I expect that to your point, your brain filters or corrects for this type of perception.

<comment><USER15> I actually have this pretty much constantly, as well as after images on lights and what not.

<comment><USER16> Have you had it all your life?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> From infinity converging onto me: a neon hued triangle. Three beams shoot from its vertices, which have sprouted eyes. The laser beams scan my body and enter into my soul through my eyes.

WHO ARE YOU

i'm... me?

WHO IS I?

i am... ?

Reality breaks down as colors rush over me. Intense joy suffuses my hitherto depressed existence. I return from the trip shivering and crying tears of joy.

Strong shit.

Years later, during a music show, I close the time loop by going out of body and becoming that triangle, letting my past self know everything will be okay, and life is worth it.

DMT... yeah.

<comment><USER18> Mine looked like hanging drapes closing in around me, but completely non- threatening. They were bright white, green, and brown stripes, and rhythmically pulsing, like breathing. I had the strongest sense they were non- threatening and watching over me. I never thought they were anything but hallucinations though.

<comment><USER17> It's pretty remarkable how overwhelmingly intense and yet benign the experience can be.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> It's so great that there are actually people dedicated in scientific studies about DMT! I have a degree in CS and work in the field for 10 years. For 6 years now I've been participating in those mediunic rituals with ayahuasca and everything that comes to me is love, greatefulness and a contact with my inner self. When it comes to God we are actually talking about a more intense contact with our inner selves which already can be explained by psychology, but then it comes the interesting part: it feels like technology is inside my mind in such a way that when I'm under effect of ayahuasca the "beings" that I encounter are very much like "elven" machines but I don't see them, I feel an energic presence and the visual manifestation of that energy in my brain reflects in the form of patterns thus this "machine" looking visuals. Something very interesting about me being on DMT is that I'm able to render those voxels words indefinitely and visualize everything with sound like the sound is the code behind those renderers in my mind. I believe guys like Tesla, Einstein and so many others did have this same capacity to interact with their inner selves / sub consciousness and fully use their mental capacity in such a way that the "energic entities" (read the energy in your own brain parts) were able to describe to them the factories of the universe in the middle of a dream. You may actually follow up on this work with convicted man in Brazil: [https://revistatrip.uol.com.br/trip/presos-de- rondonia-usam-...](https://revistatrip.uol.com.br/trip/presos-de-rondonia- usam-cha-de-santo-daime-e-terapias-alternativas)

<comment><USER5> Thank you for sharing your experience.

> I believe guys like Tesla, Einstein and so many others did have this same > capacity

Sometimes when reading quotes by people like them, I get a similar impression, like they were "connected to the source", or "enlightened", and they intuitively followed that connection towards their achievements.

It also reminds me of a part in a documentary about Steve Jobs when a friend of his says "Steve was enlightened, and he blew it", hinting at him using that connection or "power" for what she felt was the wrong purpose.

<comment><USER20> What's the name of the documentary?

<comment><USER5> Can't remember, it seems like it's "Man in the Machine", and the friend was also Jobs' former girlfriend and mother of his first daughter: [https://mashable.com/2015/03/15/steve-jobs-man- machine/](https://mashable.com/2015/03/15/steve-jobs-man-machine/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The most common emotions were "joy (65%), trust (63%), surprise (61%), love (59%), kindness (56%), friendship (48%), and fear (41%) during the encounter experience, with smaller proportions reporting emotions such as sadness (13%), distrust (10%), disgust (4%), or anger (3%)." Interestingly, 58 percent of respondents said the being also had an emotional response, almost always a positive one.

Wow!

<comment> non-entity Wow I wonder if this is just luck in the respondents having a good setting / proper preparation, etc. or innate effects of the drug. Ive had other psychedelics kick my ass more than a few times with anxiety / paranoia.

<comment><USER22> The difference to other psychedelics is the nature of the DMT trip - it is extremely "fast", short, and overwhelming. There simply is too little "idle" time in the trip (none, actually) for the rational mind to start developing paranoia or anxiety about what is happening.

It also helps that the whole thing is so otherworldly, the thinking mind is simply awed into silence. It takes a while before you could even begin to develop a conceptual interpretation of what is happening, and by then the whole thing is over and you are back to your sober self.

With other, long-acting psychedelics, there is plenty of time and opportunity for the mind to develop its own "spin" on the experience, and produce anxiety. Not so with DMT - it's like being shot out of a cannon and then coming back to earth just as fast.

It sounds terrifying and it is, when you're reflecting on it outside of the container of the trip. Somehow, while it's happening, you don't even have time to think about how terrifying it is, and as a result of that it ends up being OK. Tells you a lot about the nature of anxiety, really.

<comment><USER23> See, that logically sounds like the outcome you'd expect but the time dilation from enough DMT can make the experience feel like hours, or potentially even an eternity if you start looping or time stops.

You are no longer player by the normal rules, so you can throw deterministic time measurements out of the window lol.

<comment><USER22> Might be for someone, but I never had that experience. All my experiences have been very very rapid, and there was certainly no sense of being somewhere for hours or even minutes.

Really I can't even speak of time in this context. It felt more like a series of moment instants, and usually, before I even located "myself" in the experience, it was over.

I'm going to be bold here and say that if someone speaks of experiencing time dilation or loops on DMT, it is more of a question of the rational, linear mind, trying to make sense of a timeless, or non-linear experience of time (which it is not able to comprehend), by imposing familiar, linear concepts on it post-facto.

So, someone might speak of a time loop _after the trip_ , but while you're actually having a DMT breakthrough experience, there simply is no "observer" there to generate the thought "oh, I am stuck in a time loop here". Therefore, the feeling of anxiety or terror, which might normally be associated with such a finding, will not arise.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I did quite a bit of DMT (smoked) as a teenager and absolutely loved it every time. Friends of mine also got some of their own at the time, and was REALLY interesting how similar everyone's experiences were.

At first I thought maybe the whole "friendly elves" (for lack of a better phrase) thing might just be because my friends and I had read the same things about the experience and as such were predispositioned to that experience. However, a few friends that had literally never heard of DMT tried it and had virtually the same experience. Everyone I know personally that's tried it has the same "friendly fractal elves trying to show you something" or "fractal basketball" (that's what we called it) story.

It's a delight and I'd at some point in the future like to try ayahuasca, but I'm very leery about MAOIs. I think a lot of people may not be aware of the very real risks associated with them. DMT itself may be relatively safe, but harmala alkaloids can be incredibly dangerous depending on the person. There was a Netflix show (I think called Wellness maybe?) that touched on the possible dangers of ayahuasca but didn't go so far as to describe the possible problems of inhibiting an enzyme (monoamine oxidase) that performs vital functions in your brain and body.

I'm really glad that more and more researchers are spending more time and resources on psychedelics in general and look forward to advances that may be made in this area.

<comment><USER25> Where did you find DMT as a _teenager_?

<comment><USER24> The internet. I haven't done any sort of drugs in nearly a decade for personal reasons and couldn't help you with that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Anyone interested in this should check out Towards a Science of Consciousness conference going on right now. Selen Atasoy just spoke, Dennis Mckenna, Paul Stamets, Robin Carhart-Harris, and lots of other really great Psychedelic scientists. + Many many other avenues of Consciousness [https://consciousness.arizona.edu/](https://consciousness.arizona.edu/)

</comment><comment><USER27> The study: [https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/02698811209161...](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0269881120916143)

</comment><comment><USER28> Never encountered a being while using DMT. The closest thing I recall was looking at the moonlight through clouds and hallucinating that it was all made out of skulls watching over me.

<comment><USER29> I had the same experience of skulls on mushrooms. The moon seems to induce the strongest hallucinations for me for some reason. I've also seen it sprout wheels and drive down a mountain on acid. On ecstasy I saw perfectly symmetrical flower petals around the moon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I believe this shared motif is some default mode pattern matching in our unconscious mind.

i.e. We have a built in "entity" template and DMT puts us in such a state that we fill in that template

<comment><USER31> Or there is no such template by default, but DMT causes it to be created in a similar way across people taking it, and the differences in what people experience are filled in according to their personality/life/...

Sorry, too busy too look up the exact terminology and hypothesis now, but IIRC there's these 2 major theories on how the mind/drugs work: one camp (a bit like your statement) says things are built-in and certain feelings/states/thoughts/.. exist by default but in a 'normal' sober state the neural pathways to them are not active, and drugs just open the correct gates to be able to access them; the other camp (more like what I wrote) says drugs alter enough things in the brain to create those feelings/... from scratch i.e. not opening a gate, more like creating a gate then opening it and keeping on creating what lies beyond.

I can recommend the thought experiment of trying to figure it out which one it is, especially when on drugs, it's rather interesting :) Personally I settled for believing it's a mixture of the 2, mainly because I find it hard to believe the circuitry for some of the things I experienced is readily available whereas at the same time once you have a certain experience it can have a lasting effect and the neural connections remain somehow, making it much easier to have a similar experience next time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Long ago when I used to do maintenence on video consoles and pin-ball machines. The pin-ball machine was built with a standard desktop motherboard with additional circuits for the display and sound. If you wetted you finger and ran it along the tracks on the PCB, the audio circuit emitted strange avant garde sounding music. I figure it was the machine equivalent of a DMT trip :]

OH WOW: self-transforming fractal machine elves ;]

<comment><USER33> This could be a good analogy to what our brain experience. We do compartmentalize things, for efficiency reasons. (I.e. a book is a book. we have concrete models of the world to reference; like a PCB board has concrete functions it performs)

Then...one can swipe the board with a wet finger that produces unintended non- negative consequences. Same could be said of DMT and the brain. Great comparison Stierlitz!

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Related fiction: "Universal Love, Said The Cactus Person" [0]

[0] [https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/04/21/universal-love-said- th...](https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/04/21/universal-love-said-the-cactus- person/)

</comment><comment><USER35> I've always wanted a comprehensive entity guide, broken down by drug type.

With that we could schedule PPV events like Mescalito vs ShadowPerson cagematches.

<comment><USER36> In my experience that guide needs a dimension of personality type or at least character traits. Most papers that analyse psychedelic experiences show that clustering by personality traits is a better or equal predictor of the type of experience than dose and (when appropriate) setting.

<comment><USER37> Incredibly interested in diving deeper into this. Can you point me to the best papers you've read on the topic?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Reading the comments on this was thrilling. I don't normally go for hearing about trip experiences but something DMT stories makes them so much more fun to read vs. LSD and Psilocybin. Love the comments here.

</comment><comment><USER39> I would argue Ayahuasca ceremonies, a group setting, with experienced individuals who are already open and have very heightened senses and higher than average sensory ability, and cataloguing the experiences individually - and then matching to see if there were shared experiences with specific entities or other beings - would be the research necessary to start creating proof points.

</comment><comment><USER40> Reminds me of this episode of tales from the trip: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1h9OjS8NTw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1h9OjS8NTw)

This one too (sees the same entity as his friend): [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHLpB38LNg4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHLpB38LNg4)

</comment><comment><USER41> I would love to read some fiction where a study such as this leads to discovery that people are encountering the same concrete entity(ies).

<comment><AUTHOR> [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6137697/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6137697/) : meditation probably contributes to mental states that arent unlike DMT induced ones.

we are chemical soups sloshing around within our meat sacs.

i am interested though.. in the imaginary friends children make...could it be that when we are children, the brain releases 'DMT like' chemicals or signals that make them hallucinate our imaginary friends. children lose this ability when they grow up.

same with ghosts and alien sightings. i think ..on a more diluted level..people with synesthetic proclivities. many religious and spiritual experiences can also trigger meeting 'other entities' not from our plane. angels and such. fairies etc.

finally, could be seizures. certain kinds of epileptic episodes can trigger hallucinations and visualizations.

<comment><USER42> Do kids really think their imaginary friend is real? When I did it as a kid, I knew there was no one there, but pretended and in a way role played situations. Normally this was only in between long gaps where I didnt get to hang out with other kids. I've never known any kids who truly think their imaginary friend is real or see them. I thought it was just a lame movie trope.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I remember the entities. Or in my case a singular one. I went into it with zero expectations or knowledge of what other people experience and I'm glad for that. It's amazing that the common thread of the descriptions is so similar.

</comment><comment><USER44> The Default Mode Network codes for your sense of self in time and with others. DMT basically turns it off and that's why you feel that sense of oneness with everything right?

</comment><comment><USER45> > The form and nature of these beings vary in reports, but one thing remains > curiously constant: People tend to rank these encounters among the most > meaningful experiences of their lives. For some people, these encounters > change their beliefs about reality, the existence of an afterlife, and God.

Wonder how much of this is simply the fact this is a highly illegal and hard to obtain drug. By definition it would be an unusual experience for anybody and people tend to assign more meaning to the not-mundane. I sincerely doubt you'd be hearing all these stories if you could get these drugs in a grocery store.

</comment><comment><USER46> This is a classic DMT video (starts at 2:00)

[https://youtu.be/awChThLHAKQ](https://youtu.be/awChThLHAKQ)

</comment><comment><USER47> There's an interesting book about encounters with the entities:

DMT Dialogues: Encounters with the Spirit Molecule ( [https://b-ok.cc/book/3688170/74a672](https://b-ok.cc/book/3688170/74a672) )

It really does seem like there's whole other levels/dimensions of reality and these things are real and independent of the person.

<comment><USER48> There are two competing theories: There exists another dimension that can only be accessed during hallucination, or people hallucinating hallucinate. One of these requires fewer assumptions.

<comment><USER49> I know what you're saying, and agree. But I think it's worth pointing out that the explanation of "people hallucinating hallucinate" doesn't end the conversation. Can you answer the question of "what is a hallucination?" with still fewer assumptions?

Maybe you can, but I think if you're acting in good faith you'll find you have to discuss the nature of consciousness and its relationship with the natural world. Now, this may still come to a simpler explanation than one involving extra dimensions but I think it's a lot more complex than "people hallucinating hallucinate" if you're being fair in your investigation.

<comment><USER50> >Can you answer the question of "what is a hallucination?" with still fewer assumptions?

Not the OP, but I think google's deep dream provides a nice analog to the process of hallucination that goes on within us on psychedelic drugs. Essentially our brains are wired to detect certain patterns in the world; our neural wiring is isomorphic to the structure found in the world. What these drugs do is increase the excitability of some neural structures, which structures are excited correspond to the kinds of experiences different psychedelics induce. The fact that DMT seems to universally induce encounters with "entities" suggests the areas of the brain that are excited.

<comment><USER49> Yeah, that's true but still doesn't really explain a hallucination. It's like seeing an infrared video of a complex machine like a car. Ok, so the main heat seems to happen in the front part. Does that explain it?

As one who has hallucinated intensely, the experience is not just about what your senses create for you while certain neural structures are excited. Often times it's about what is left when your senses have gone off the deep end. For many it's a deeply spiritual experience, some experience a total ego death. Others experience lifetimes in different bodies, working jobs and having families that never existed here.

So while it's interesting to know something about what the neurons are doing, I don't think that gets us any closer to an explanation.

<comment><USER50> But none of those things you cite are intrinsically outside of neural structures. To be clear, explaining a hallucination doesn't require that one explains consciousness. Consciousness is a background assumption. But given consciousness, hallucinations are merely abnormal patterns of neural excitations, some of which influence conscious experiences. What is "left over" after a psychedelic experience could be due to new memories that give one a fresh interpretation on typical experiences, or new connections made in the brain from the over excited state that induces new patterns of thinking.

<comment><USER49> But you don't actually _know_ none of the things I've cited are intrinsically outside of neural structures. Nobody actually _knows_, except the very religious. It might be a reasonable assumption, but at that level I'm not sure it's simpler an assumption than that there are things about the universe we don't understand that many naively file under "extra dimensions".

If you want to compare two explanations for the experiences of one who is hallucinating where one invokes extra "dimensions", and the other invokes "hallucinations mean you hallucinate", and you want to say one is obviously simpler than the other, from a certain perspective you might be right but from where I sit you're leaving a lot of potential discussion on the table.

<comment><USER51> > But you don't actually _know_ ...

An interesting observation I've had is that there seems to be something about the nature of human consciousness such that people are ~literally not able to fully grasp the idea that they often/usually don't _actually_ (!) know what they think they know, with high accuracy. With some people, depending on the topic (it seems) of conversation, they are sometimes able to switch to an abstract mode of thinking and realize and admit that yes of course, they do not _really know with 100% certainty_ that "<X> is True"...but often only if this abstract notion is pointed out to them by a third party. But upon resuming the object level discussion, this knowledge that existed mere minutes ago often seems to once again become inaccessible. And with some people, they seem unable to accomplish (or at least admit) this _at all_ , and even more curiously, seem strongly motivated to resist even discussing the idea that they may have made an error.

On one hand, you might just write this off as people "being people" who want to "win an argument" and that sort of thing, and surely that's a big part of it, but _is that all_ there is to it? As a terrible analogy, consider how difficult it is to say, recite song lyrics while doing mildly complex math in your head - considering this, is it so hard to imagine that the mind may also be sub-optimal to an unknown degree when it comes to reckoning about the complex reality we live in _at the object level_ (physical reality and events), while concurrently executing a "proper" abstract background process to do things like evaluate logical consistency and epistemic soundness of the primary object level processing, particularly on sensitive topics?

Just pondering the general notion, I tend to lean strongly towards the intuition that I'd be surprised _if we could do this_ in a skillful and accurate manner, rather than being surprised that we cannot (which seems to be the overwhelmingly default opinion), and observations of internet discussions (regardless of community) tend to strongly support this theory as far as I can tell. Might this help explain how do so many people believe so many diametrically opposed things (increasingly, as the complexity of the world increases), while also having an extremely strong self-perception of objective correctness, even despite objective correctness often being literally impossible for the topic being discussed?

How this relates back to the original topic, is that a lot of people perceive a dramatic increase in the ability to think (in more ways than one) deeply about extremely complex topics while under the influence of psychedelic drugs, and fMRI tests are now starting to illustrate some changes at the neurological level that may plausibly explain why this is, at least in part. I think it's quite philosophically interesting to consider what the real-world consequences might be if the situation is that our _perception of reality_ is not 100% consistent with _actual reality_ \- might this possibly result in sub-optimal decision making at both the individual and societal/national levels from time to time? And what if it's not off by just a little bit here and there, but by a lot all over the place? If so, might this perhaps help explain the counter- intuitive human behavior and general state of world affairs that I've been reading about on the internet lately?

<comment><USER49> > is it so hard to imagine that the mind may also be sub-optimal to an unknown > degree when it comes to reckoning about the complex reality we live in at > the object level (physical reality and events), while concurrently executing > a "proper" abstract background process to do things like evaluate logical > consistency and epistemic soundness of the primary object level processing, > particularly on sensitive topics?

Agreed. To add to the point, one can't help but consider given what we know of the evolution of the tree of life of which we are a part the particular factors that do and do not lend themselves to survival. Namely, "reckoning about the complex reality we live in at the object level" is probably not a skill needed for survival in the way that developing hunting, language, and social skills probably were- not to mention "while concurrently executing a "proper" abstract background process to do things like evaluate logical consistency and epistemic soundness of the primary object level processing"

In my own experience, had my experience in a severely altered state of consciousness persisted for more than maybe a day or two, I would have needed a lot of assistance for basic survival things. In that state I perceived the world differently, if not more objectively, but was not well equipped for survival.

So, no, I see no reason to think the mind is well equipped for that kind of reasoning when evolution might select against that kind of adaptation.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: You privately received $24M. What would you do? - <AUTHOR> Generic question yes, but I believe it's a good thought experiment to sort out some macro objectives/priorities and at the same time ask ourselves: "Why am I not doing this yet?"
It would be very interesting to know your thoughts on the subject.
PS: Why $24.000.000? Say you hypothetically have 100 years ahead of you, then this would be equivalent to receiving $20.000 per month. <comment><USER2> It depends on what I would be expected to do with it. If used wisely, it could last at least 2-3 years if nothing more was earned. Personally, if I was just given it and told I could do as I please, I'd probably invest it and put it into a bunch of stocks to let it grow, and continue working to make money.

<comment><USER3> Have you mis-read this? It's 24 million ...

<comment><USER4> 24.000.000 is not 24 million.

24,000,000 is 24 million.

<comment><USER5> > _24.000.000 is not 24 million_

There are many conventions for thousands separation [1]. 1.000; 1,000; 1 000; and 1'000 can all mean one thousand.

[1] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_mark](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_mark)

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point. I can't edit the main post anymore, so it might cause some confusion still. To make it clear, the purpose was to express 24 million dollars

<comment><USER2> My bad...sorry about that, I did mis-read the post. I've seen period use, but normal operations in $US transactions is not a period, but commas. $24,000,000. I originally mis-read it and thought $24,000.000 so I was thinking twenty-four thousand.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> One could start the companies doing the things you see the world needs, are cool and you could contribute to.

</comment><comment><USER7> a medice college, with brain specialization, then invest on human-computer interface(but wisely and slowly), it requires experience that no one has(one might call but it is not experience when you cannot write a undergraduate textbook).</comment>


Ask HN: What is your favorite Christmas fable? - <AUTHOR> Hi HN,
I love fables and stories for kids. Here is a quick list of the most famous Christmas stories worldwide IMHO:
1. A Christmas Carol - C. Dickens (timeless Skroutz!)
2. The Little Match Girl - H. C. Anderson
3. The Elves and the Shoemaker - Brothers Grimm
4. A Letter From Santa Claus - M. Twain
5. The Gift of the Magi - O. Henry
6. Papa Panov's Special Christmas - L. Tolstoy
7. The Nutcracker and The Mouse King - E.T.A Hoffman
8. The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle - Sir A. Conan-Doyle
9. The Snowman - Raymond Briggs
10. The Steadfast Tin Soldier - H. C. Anderson
I would be extremely interested lesser known local, national largely unknown stories/fables related to Christmas from various countries/cultures/religions/etc.
Merry Christmas to every single one of you, may the force be with you! <comment><USER2> I posted my favorite yesterday; link to MP3 in the entry: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10781019](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10781019)

(Alan Maitland's reading of Frederick Forsyth's "The Shepherd")

<comment><AUTHOR> Good, I will read it tonight, thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Your #1 is the same as mine. I don't know any of the others except for The Gift of the Magi, that's a good one also. I'm a huge fan of The Year Without A Santa Claus and this guy: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbfgVEk- mxQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbfgVEk-mxQ)

I know that's not what you meant but I love, love, love it.</comment>


First Month on app.net – Charts and Stats - <AUTHOR> http://diegobasch.com/first-month-on-app-net-charts-and-stats

<comment><USER2> I don't get the point on app.net. They seem to be an alternative to twitter, just without ads and user funded. Ok, so far, but why should a developer trust their plattform more than any other one? App.net isn't open source like status.net/identi.ca, so if they close developers will be still screwed. I don't see any reason why I should pay money to finance a closed source plattform, sorry. Also the most people are on twitter, so it wouldn't make any sense to change to app.net. Maybe I'm wrong about it, but I don't trust them more than Twitter.

<comment><USER3> Why do you need to trust them? It's a commercial relationship like any other. I don't even think about the issue of trust.

For me it's very simple: I pay to have fun with the service. I've spent more time playing with app.net in the past month than I spent watching Netflix in the past year. How many people like me are out there? Who knows, that's the X million dollar question.

To your second point, Twitter is not Facebook. You cannot replace Facebook easily because you'd have to convince your friends and family to go elsewhere. On Twitter I follow a bunch of interesting people who tweet news, links, thoughts. I don't need _the same_ people to be at app.net. As long as there are 100-200 interesting and active people for me to follow / interact with, that's good enough.

<comment><USER4> Their ethos is trust. From their site:

> Our most valuable asset is your trust.

That's always been my issue with app.net. I don't think they're positioning themselves to deliver on their own brand promise. It's an entirely separate issue than if they'll be successful and how much value their users derive.

But that really has me wonder...what the hell?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Does anyone know how these numbers compare to identi.ca / status.net?

Has everyone who has signed up for app.net used status.net and found it lacking; have people not heard of status.net or does app.net do something I don't know about?

<comment><USER3> It seems that the people who paid for app.net (myself included) are very motivated to get their money's worth. There's a group of people who seem to be posting all the time. Some have thousands of posts already.

I spent $100 to have developer access. For me it's fun to observe the community develop, and see what interesting insights I can get from the data. In my case I don't feel the money I paid is significant. The time I spend online is the real cost. I suspect it's the same for many other people there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Stats are great and all, but what is the _use_ of App.net?

Last week during Hurricane Isaac, most of NOLA was without power, our street was flooded, and my only communication with the outside world was via text messaging and Twitter. Twitter kept us up-to-date re: storm projections, conditions of the city, and everything else we needed to know. I did some searching of App.net for Isaac-related posts, and didn't find anything useful.

This is the moment that I realized that App.net is (at the moment) nothing more than a toy and novelty. Twitter is a UTILITY and it was indispensable during Isaac.

Even immediately post-Isaac, it was how we learned what stores (and bars) were open, where to get gas, and the status of roads and the utility companies. Hell, we even tweeted photos of road hazards to @nolaready and they were taken care of.

I'm a backer of App.net and I hope this reverses, but the current state is very clear.

</comment><comment><USER7> 20k users -- does that mean they've broken the $1 million annual revenue threshold? Nice!

<comment><USER4> 20k paying users as fast as they acquired them is absolutely amazing. TBH I don't see the appeal other than leaving Twitter for something new or niche. Perhaps that's enough? I'm not sure.

Part of me says Dalton is on to something. The numbers seem to be evidence of that. Another part of me can't wrap my head around the value proposition. But it exists somehow. If I'm right then the numbers represent people who are signing up out of sheer curiosity and wouldn't renew (unless it's automatic). That would infer (to me) that the community might not be sustainable.

It's fascinating nonetheless.

<comment><USER8> I've always found the value proposition to be rather clear. In fact, I was one of the really early ones to back App.net because I liked the idea so much. I think it can be compared to a free gym versus an expensive one. The free gym is nice, because it doesn't cost me anything, so I go there. But since it's free there're all kinds of things that bug me: There're way too many people, I always have to wait till I can use a device, the devices are old and of bad quality, and especially since it's free I don't feel very inclined to really use it. I go there a couple of times, and that's it. Now the expensive gym is top class everywhere, the devices are great, the people I meet there are really interesting, and since I pay a lot per month, I'm also interested in using it as much as possible. Loss aversion makes me actually go there quite often in order to not get a bad conscience (since I paid so much for it). It's the same with app.net I think: All the people there actually care. The quality of discussion is really good, people are friendly, there're tons of interesting things going on, the API is really good and we as developers get a say in how it should be changed. They actually ask and listen for advice to make the best API possible. I've worked (a lot) with the Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram API, and in all these examples, there're always things that suck, and you can't do anything about it. On ADN, there's actually a good chance that it'll be fixed.

A good API, on the other hand, means that there'll be huge innovation on the client front. Not now; right now, most things look like Twitter, and there're many clients which are all a tad basic. But give it some time to evolve. Soon, ADN will have quality discussions, quality clients, and lots of innovative features since it is so open to changes (as opposed to Twitter, who at some point became _very_ opposed to changes).

If you ask me right now, I'd say the big value proposition of ADN is the quality of the discussion, if you ask me in 5 months, I guess I'll answer that it's the fantastic client ecosystem.

EDIT: I thought I should mention that I'm the author of the ADM Mac client #appetizer (<http://www.instadesk-app.com/appetizer>)

<comment><USER4> That makes sense. Perhaps I under estimate the market size for it. People do pay for services on the Internet but they're typically services that offer tremendous value, can't be found for free or has an element of importance (security for a service that handles money).

In my opinion, there are free alternatives to ADN (namely, Twitter) and the value of simply participating in a community isn't one that I believe a large # of people would pay for.

Keep in mind, ADN is a venture funded business. I'm just not seeing it.

All that said, I hope they figure something out. I have talked to Dalton and one of my friends works on it. I hope you're able to do something with the #appetizer as well.

<comment><USER8> Personally, I think that the funding success for ADN is showcasing that there could be a market for non-freemium and non-free services. Another contender here is the economist, which is one of the very, very few journalistic products that makes money with a pay wall. The reason, again, being that they offer very high quality.

I would also pay for an online newspaper that lacks advertisement and employs really good journalists to paint a picture that is as close to the truth as possible. The less ties between a newspaper and any industry, the less the chance that a story is pulled because the company in question places lots of advertisement in the newspaper.

It's true that most people wouldn't want to pay for a community, many people on Twitter only use it to read what celebrities are up to. However, I don't think that a social network needs to be as big as Facebook anymore to be successful - or Twitter, or Instagram. As long as there's a vibrant community, that is dedicated to the service, and solid growth, everything is fine.

Especially since Facebook (at least for me) already satisfies the 'friends' kind of social network. I have all my contacts there, so for engaging with them, I go to Facebook, I don't need another service. If I join another service, then because the value proposition is not about friends, but about something different. Badoo is a success because their value proposition is about dating, and Twitter is a success because they offer many-to-many friendships and open celebrities. Again, Instagram was a success because they changed the mapping, instead of friends -> content they went for content -> friends.

As long as a network doesn't compete with Facebook on their core values, i guess they're fine.

On Twitter, I don't care if there're 10Million or 100Million other users, I can only see so many. So as long as there're _enough_ users on ADN I'd guess that I'm happy there.

Oh, I'm also just trying to explain what I think about where this is going, I'm not trying to defend anything, sorry if it sounds like that :)

Thanks, Appetizer is in many ways a side project right now, but it's fun working on it. Also, while we're at it, I like the OpenPhoto approach, I really want to install it once I find some time. Had it on my todo list for months now. I'm unhappy with most current online photo solutions, and having them on my own server sounds just about right. I wish you best of luck there :)

<comment><USER4> I truly hope you're right. I wouldn't personally pay for ADN (I don't think) but I do wish there were more services online that were funded directly by customers. I think the web would be a better place if more of those sites existed and users got more accustomed to not having everything for "free".

There are a couple online services I absolutely love paying for. I wish there were more. ADN seems like it might be that for a larger number than I had originally thought.

Here's to the future of everyone using Appetizer to post photos from their OpenPhoto site ;).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Is it possible to read app.net posts without being a member? Is there a firehose of tweets? If people need to pay to read tweets it would be really counterproductive...

<comment><USER3> Yes, for example:

<https://alpha.app.net/global/>

I don't think you can read the posts programmatically (including metadata) unless you pay for developer access to the api.

<comment><USER9> Thanks! It reminds me of Twitter a lot, somehow :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> i say we take this discussion on at app.net. The thread view there is the key difference here :)

</comment><comment><USER11> I already see spam (with t.co links) on the alpha.app.net page. Surely nuking spam and spammers shouldn't be hard for a paid, centralized service like app.net?

Identi.ca also appears to be full of spam. Basically nothing will kill a public space faster or deader. There is a certain set of users who will stick around in a chat room/feed/forum/whatever full of spambots, but it's not a high-quality audience and doesn't tend to grow much.

<comment><USER12> That's not spam, that's people cross-posting from Twitter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I was dismissive at first of app.net, but I think its great they are getting some build up of users. To have an alternative to Twitter can only be a good thing.</comment>


Build a Focus System for Better Work/Life Balance as a Web Developer - <AUTHOR> https://raddevon.com/articles/focus-for-better-work-life-balance-as-a-web-developer/ <comment><USER2> I feel like while all of these productivity "hacks" and systems (like Pomodoro) may have some merit, they're completely unnecessary.

It's really not too hard to:

* Work.

* If you lose focus, be mindful of the fact that your attention is wandering, and focus on your work again. This part takes some discipline. Discipline takes time to develop. Be patient.

* If you feel that you cannot focus on your work, get up and walk around. Go to the bathroom. Step outside for a moment. Take yourself out of the work, then return to your desk and immediately dive back in.

* Accept that you're a human - not a robot; that 100% efficiency is unattainable; and that it's a waste of your only life to try to attain 8 hours of productive work in an 8 hour day.

I don't need a timer. I don't need to develop Pavlovian responses to a mysterious ticking noise. I don't want the overhead of "productivity management applications". I just want to put my hands to work, until the work's done, and then do the next thing.

[edit:formatting]

<comment><USER3> > It's really not too hard

What's hard for others may not match what's hard for you.

<comment><USER4> Also, what counts as "work" might not match up. For some people, "working" means just sitting in front of a computer for a set amount of time. Especially with intellectual work, it's hard to balance the amount of time thinking about how to solve a problem, vs. actually implementing the solution. For all we know the person who says "you just have to have discipline" spends 95% of their time falling into random rabbit holes, and 5% actually coding, and so never gets anything done. Or otherwise, maybe they spend 99% of their time coding, but never actually stop to think about ways to solve the problem better.

I'm not saying that productivity tools solve all your problems, but I find that it makes it easier to choose how much time I spend on each thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm curious how work and breaks are set up in other countries. In Sweden we have a long tradition of 2 hour work, short coffee break, 2 hour work. Lunchbreak 30-60 minutes, repeat.

The long break has to be latest after five hours and is not counted towards working time. You are allowed to leave the workplace.

The shorter breaks _is_ included in your work time but has no forced length other than it has to be adapted to the workplace and rythm. It can also be 5 minutes every hour. Up to the company. The longer break is supposed to be minimum 30 minutes but I don't think that is in the law. Unions usually recommend 60 minutes.

Taking a coffee break is almost mandatory, even the boss will look funny at you if you skip it. This is where you talk about the day, plans ahead and other things connected to work or life in general. While of course drinking that all important coffee which is also almost mandatory. This is where most youth learn to drink coffee, at their first job. Most likely learn how to cook it too :-)

<comment><USER6> > Taking a coffee break is almost mandatory, even the boss will look funny at > you if you skip it. This is where you talk about the day, plans ahead and > other things connected to work or life in general. While of course drinking > that all important coffee which is also almost mandatory.

In my experience Americans took this concept and turned it into the brutally utilitarian daily standup. Chop chop no chitchat get to work meetings are a waste of time!

Then they said you know what this is taking too long. Let's just do standup via Slack.

I miss the morning coffee from my first jobs in Europe.

<comment><USER7> I'm in Melbourne, Australia where we pride ourselves on the ridiculous number of coffee shops on every block. So I know what you mean.

American coffee from their TV shows has always looked revolting to me... black, stagnating in a pot all day, with cold, unsteamed milk poured in at the last second, or some powdered artificial whitener.

I wish I didn't get a terrible, irritable downer later in the day from caffeine. The boost of happiness it provided every morning made it _so_ much easier to get thru the day (Still slugging thru IT support while I try to find time to get a coding portfolio going. I sometimes find a few hours a week!). That feeling of being lifted, up, everything becoming easier and more exciting and less stressful... One large coffee was a good hour of euphoria, and something to look forward to - 'In an hour I get my coffee!'. If it was a weekend sometimes I would code like a madman.

Unfortunately, the lunatic huddled on the floor I become at 6pm wasn't worth it. It fries my brain worse than any other drug - and a drug it is. It's really quite ridiculous to me that one drug is so acceptable while all others are considered the worst thing you could possibly do.

<comment><USER8> the worst thing about living overseas was not being able to find brewed coffee. everywhere you go, they'll call it an americano, but it's not American... it's garbage and it tastes like demonpiss.

also, I'm with you on the artificial creamer... what sort of terrible bastard came up with that?

that said, I really enjoy powdered coconut creamer.

(side note: nationalist fervor for coffee is also an American thing... I'm sorry, they teach it in Boy Scouts, it's just who we are)

/s : _

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Shameless plug for [https://www.rescuetime.com/](https://www.rescuetime.com/) which is probably the single greatest productivity/focus-encouraging tool I've ever encountered... and all it really does is give you transparency into your own habits

<comment><USER10> > transparency into your own habits

Truth. This is why counting calories works for dieting, too; most people aren't aware of how their perceptions differ from reality. There's a huge difference between "I check HN a couple times a day when I bored" and "wow, Rescuetime says I spent 2 hours and 38 minutes of my workday on HN."

<comment><USER8> 2.5 hours of subsidized web surfing... not bad!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Isn't the word "Web" in the title completely unnecessary? I couldn't see anything in the article that was specific for web development compared to any other kind of software developer!

Or is "web developer" used almost as a synonym for "software developer" now, as a way of disambiguating from e.g. a "brand developer" or "property developer"?

<comment><USER12> Ya I was super confused by that too. Scrolled up and down to see if I missed web specific suggestions.

<comment><USER8> it's "web" because the recommended app only works on chromebooks

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Rather than setting a timer + starting/stopping music, I'm a huge advocate of Focus@Will[1], which is basically a combo of the items mentioned in this article: No need to select music (they have an extensive library). You just set a timer and you get a "ding" to start work, which is oddly effective at getting you into the zone.

I've found it also helps to build a list of tasks _before_ you start working for the day. Then you can do your focused sessions 1 after the other, without wondering "What's next?".

[1] [https://focusatwill.go2cloud.org/SH3f](https://focusatwill.go2cloud.org/SH3f) (Affiliate link. I'm a happy customer and longtime advocate.)

<comment><USER14> It's not dispositive, but googling "go2cloud.org" does not reinforce legitimacy, i.e. "risky click."

<comment><USER15> Dammit, I thought YC was a safe place. After signing up I guess I can now expect some spam in my inbox.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I've found that [http://mynoise.net](http://mynoise.net) offers better sounds for concentration than most music.

Using [https://brainaural.com/](https://brainaural.com/) with brainwaves at about 13.5 Hz - 14 Hz also seems to help my concentration. (I have no idea whether it's a placebo, tied to habit.)

<comment><USER17> I haven't tried these sites yet, I'll take a look. Do you use noise-cancelling headphones? The best feature I've found with my QC35 is not so much the noise cancelling but the _combination_ of noise cancelling and audio. Obviously with noise cancelling on, I can hear most of what's going on around me, just a bit dulled. But add in a VERY small amount of quiet music and the rest of the world disappears in a way it doesn't with just NC.. or that requires MUCH louder music without NC.

<comment><USER16> I do use noise-cancelling headphones. I use some inexpensive Sony headphones that have basic noise cancelling, and they have helped a LOT in the open office.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I find it a struggle to use pomodoro in an office environment. Too many meatspace distractions. Pomodoro is best when you are working by yourself on something.

Of course office distractions are a problem in more than just that way. Hard to stay in the zone when things keep yanking you out.

</comment><comment><USER19> These articles seem to popup with some frequency on HN. Can someone post their results? How has your output/productivity changed before/after using these techniques?

<comment><USER13> I generally have 2 kinds of workdays:

1\. Those where I work on whatever is in front of me for however long it takes me.

2\. Those where I start the day by listing out the tasks for the day, then use chunks of 45 mins with non-distracting music (no lyrics, simple, constant beats) to knock out the tasks in the order I set them up. I take breaks between.

The days where I adhere strictly to #2 are my most productive. Having a routine and triggers to focus has changed how much I get done. So yes, these things do have an effect.

<comment><USER19> Well I am not denying that they have an effect. I simply would like to see some metrics that would help quantify the effect. People have pet peeves about using bug fixes or lines of code or whatever, so they're free to use whatever metric they like. After all, there must be _something_ objective that they notice has changed before/after the use of the technique.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I have all notifications off permanently except for texts and calls. If something is really urgent, people know how to get ahold of me. 99.9999% of the time, tasks are async, and don't require immediate attention.

<comment><USER2> I've not taken measures that drastic, but by severely limiting how many notifications I get on any given day, I've noticed a significant decrease in anxiety.

Notification fatigue is very real.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Focus is nice, but it'll only get you so far. Much more useful is prioritizing your work, and avoiding unnecessary work.

Focusing on bad implementation: a waste of time.

Focusing on bad solution: a waste of time.

Focusing on solving wrong problem: a waste of time.

Choosing the right problem, the right solution, and not wasting time during implementation (e.g. by spinning wheels without asking for help) will give you order of magnitude improvement. Focus will get you smaller improvements, though it is useful.

More here on what it takes to be productive here: [https://codewithoutrules.com/2017/10/04/technical-skills- pro...](https://codewithoutrules.com/2017/10/04/technical-skills-productive/)

(And my personal take on staying focused, which is a lot more about goals and less about distractions: [https://codewithoutrules.com/2017/08/03/stay- focused/](https://codewithoutrules.com/2017/08/03/stay-focused/))

</comment><comment><USER22> These are all the usual advices for remote workers (not saying it's bad advice, there's just nothing novel about them). It really depends on how each person is able to manage they're own work.

One a side note, about the phone thing, I read this [https://hbr.org/2018/03/having-your-smartphone-nearby- takes-...](https://hbr.org/2018/03/having-your-smartphone-nearby-takes-a-toll- on-your-thinking?referral=03758&cm_vc=rr_item_page.top_right) the other day and I totally agree with it. Having my phone close, even when it is turned off, still causes some level of distraction to me. So lately I just leave my phone in a different room when I'm working and I just check it when I take a break, etc. Obviously this wouldn't apply to, say, an assistant, who will probably _need_ the phone to make/receive calls.

</comment><comment><USER8> My best productivity hack is: don't try to be productive without a clearly defined goal.

</comment><comment><USER23> Productivity is a personal journey, yet everyone who writes these articles feels they have the holy grail and everyone should know about it. Worse is that most likely a few months down the road, they could (and probably will) write a different post because everything they wrote about previously has changed. The only things which stay the same in my work environment is my text editor and maybe my chair.

</comment><comment><USER24> idk.. every time I open a page like this I think "what are they going to try and sell me this time"

Everyone is different. For instance I have productivity phases, and non- productivity phases.

I have about 2-3 weeks of hardcore 12-14 hours / day coding sprees and then I just can't even if I try and sit there for hours, nothing good or much happens. So I do other, fun stuff, not work related, useless wastes of time. And then I see something or get reminded of something and BAM I'm back on the coding spree and I dare you to interrupt me. I order food, at most I take a 30min walk out the house for bare minimum health, but the rest of time is dedicated to getting the job done. And then... relaxation phase.

And something else. If my mind feels like it need to wander off, then it should. You don't sprint all the time, you also sit down somewhere and enjoy the scenery. That wandering mind thing means you need a break and maybe should end work soonish and do fun things.

</comment><comment><USER25> About the music, I find that noise cancelling headphones in the office are mandatory if I really want to block out distractions. Now that I work from home though, I crank the music up complete with subwoofer, which is a treat I could never get working in an office.

Focus music, plus great sound (w/sub) is so effective for me.

</comment><comment><USER26> I could _never_ be productive in software using the Pomodoro technique. In order to make progress on most of the things I work on, I need 3-4 hour windows of uninterrupted focus where I don't get out of my seat. If I was interrupting myself every x minutes, I wouldn't get anything done.

<comment><USER8> for the last few weeks I've been working from a kitchen counter in a small studio apt. it's about the perfect height for a standup desk, within 5 paces of a toilet and the refrigerator. I've managed to set it up with a 2nd monitor & I'm really impressed with the "flow" I've found. in a week or so, I'll move on to the next spot... let's hope it can be as successfully productive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> > As far as what you should listen to, I'd recommend something without vocals.

I highly recommend "Drone Zone" on [http://soma.fm](http://soma.fm)

"Deep Space One" and "Space Station Soma" work too.

<comment><USER8> "Music for Programming" podcast is pretty solid.

[http://www.musicforprogramming.net](http://www.musicforprogramming.net)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> TL;DR Pomodoro</comment>


The Best Programming Language (or How to Stop Worrying and Love the Code) - <AUTHOR> http://blog.fourthbit.com/2014/03/01/the-best-programming-language-or-how-to-stop-worrying-and-love-the-code#.UxRMIIfvkjI.hackernews <comment> V-2 Based on the code snippet, I'm not surprised he thinks C# is "verbose" with "lots of boilerplate" and "resembles Java", because the snippet is written as if it WAS Java, or at least written 10 years ago. Compare his GetFrequencies implementation with idiomatic, LINQ version: [http://pastie.org/8834650](http://pastie.org/8834650)

<comment><USER2> I know nothing about C#, but I keep hearing announements of Groovy-like features in C#, and to me, Groovy is what Java should be (but with better performance). If C# is really like Groovy with better performance, then it should be a very nice language indeed.

<comment><USER3> I've tinkered with Groovy (writing custom event handlers etc for Jira). If I was going to spend any serious time writing stuff to run on the JVM then Groovy would probably be my choice. C# has been my primary development language since 2002. Fell out of love with it for a while until LINQ and then dynamics appeared. Oddly, this week I am writing nagios plugin code in Perl, which I am getting a weird kick out of, I haven't used Perl in anger since 1999.

<comment><USER4> A few tips for the infrequent Perler:

If you have a more recent Perl available, use it and it's newer features (use 5.014; at least, hopefully). It's a small thing, but being able to call keys/values/shift/unshift/push/pop on the reference versions of their subject is very nice. There's _useful_ new features in every new version now.

Additionally, Function::Parameters (or some other module that does similar, take your pick) will make your life much, much simpler if you tend to write a lot of subs.

Use Moose (or at least Moo or Mouse, if you want it lighter weight) if you are using objects.

Enjoy!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Some nice angles in the article, but now I feel obliged to defend C++ (and actually C# and F# too, but I'll let that to others as I'm sure it will turn up in the HN comments) since the author seems to make no _real_ points to support his view of it as a monster.

First of all, it's not because x [1] and y and a bunch of others say that "a == true", you can safely use it as a fact or a way to support your view (those logical fallacies are called Bandwagon Fallacy/Appeal to Authority).

Second: I don't know where those code samples come from, but that is not exactly how you write good C++, as it is called in the paragraph. And a paragraph lower there is mention of the dreaded _C /C++_ \- a thing that does not exist, never has, and never will. Some might say that adds to the author's points (as in, it's so hard he doesn't know how to write it properly), but you might as well say: sorry, but if you don't know how to write it properly then you do not really have the bagage needed to start criticizing it let alone calling it a monster.

[1] esecially when x is called Linus and he's in one of his rage moments where every single being that does not think alike is violently insulted and reduced to the dirt of the earth, with or without arguments making sense :]

<comment><USER6> i guess maybe now is a good time to repeat this request - does anyone know of a good, recent book that describes how to write correct, modern c++ using the latest standards and staying with the subset of the language that expert users recognise as elegant and powerful?

<comment><USER7> I always recommend Effective C++ by Scott Meyers. It does not cover C++11 but is still relevant to anyone wanting to learn the good c++.

<comment><USER8> I would have to second that. Scott's book is great (and he's a fellow Brown alum)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> V-2 I love how F# is among the "unreasonable languages". Why? Because it's "Microsoft trying to be cool", "many of us have learned to keep away from Microsoft the hard way" and "we have enough company-sponsored languages already". That's it.

<comment><USER9> I was surprised by that one, as I have not tried it, but it does sound like one of Microsoft's nicer efforts when I read about it.

<comment><USER10> I have only played with it a little, but so far - it's like OCaml, with a "MS Approved" badge.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> «The first true object-oriented language. But it seems to me Smalltalk is pretty much a forgotten language.»

Why do so many people kill Smalltalk so fast?

I could give so many URLs to illustrate how Smalltalk has a stable and growing community, with so many open projects and people making a living out of it, teaching it in universities and using it for research, but I think these two links sum it all up:

[http://forum.world.st/](http://forum.world.st/) [http://smalltalkjobs.wordpress.com/](http://smalltalkjobs.wordpress.com/)

<comment><USER12> > Why do so many people kill Smalltalk so fast?

Because it doesn't have curly braces. Entirely unfair, but it seems like if you want to sneak in an innovative language it needs to be a wolf in sheep's clothes. (IE: it need to vaguely resemble C)

<comment><USER13> I could make an argument for the exact opposite.

If a new language has curly braces is instantly reviled and deemed as "not innovative" by part of the community.

<comment><USER14> I think both are true, because "the community" is not one thing. It's a bunch of people, each with their own viewpoint. And a bunch of people have strongly- held views (in both directions) on curly braces.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> > First of all, a disclaimer: unless you've developed in 30+ languages, and > suffered the code of others in all (or most) of them, you can't really be > objective. So yes, I'm biased. Like most of the people writing about this > topic. Actually, I believe that this topic becomes absurd as soon as you are > well-versed in many languages.

I fully agree with this sentiment and I wish more people either already had 30+ languages experience or at least realized that most of what they say now will sound stupid to them once they got this experience.

</comment><comment><USER16> No mention of Lua? I guess the author hasn't tried it yet, either. (I haven't, but I was curious about his opinion on the language.)

<comment><USER17> After years in the C++ swamp, programming Lua feels like being a world-class sprinter. Sure, there are places where it could be less verbose (the 'function' keyword, if-then-end), but overall it's liberating to have so much power with so little typing. Ok, it's a visceral (not technical) impression, but there's plenty of places to read about Lua online. I highly recommend giving it a try.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> For OCaml, there are many more companies using it than just JaneStreet. Facebook and Bloomberg being some of the well known ones.

[http://ocaml.org/learn/companies.html](http://ocaml.org/learn/companies.html)

<comment><USER19> Including Microsoft, which many aren't aware of.

<comment><USER18> They're also a member of the OCaml Consortium, too

[http://ocaml.org/community/support.html#TheCamlConsortiumatI...](http://ocaml.org/community/support.html#TheCamlConsortiumatInria)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Have you ever seem a simple Prolog program solving the 'four coloring problem'? Try programming that in anything else. Prolog or something similar like Lisp with pattern matching is the tool of choice for speech recognition programs. Why these tools get dismissed in a world of tablet devices using Siri or Google is beyond me.

<comment><USER21> I'm not sure I agree with this line of reasoning.

The computation model of Prolog is fairly simple, relies on few primitive, and could be reimplemented in many language without much hassle. The abstract interpreter fits on a 1/4 page.

With unification and backtracking, you're into nondeterministic programming. It's great for some problem, and I agree it should perhaps be more regarded than it is, but it can be emulated inside other languages to solve such problems. You also have to be quite careful when using non-determinism.

That being said, my main point is that I think the "simple Prolog program solving" X is misleading. Of course a solution to a problem that requires exactly the model of computation the language provides is going to be simple in that language. But that model of computation isn't exclusive to that language, and I don't feel the implementation of the model in other languages suffer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> It's a bit sad that we keep reading these articles and keep falling into the same trap of rush-to-defend-your-favorite-language and rush-to-complain-that- your-favorite-language-was-omitted. I find these articles seldom thought- provoking and the comments they inspire even less so. It's like reading "10 best ski runs in the country" or something. It's entirely subjective and hardly anyone will agree for any decent set of reasons.

</comment><comment><USER2> No Groovy? If you want to address which is the best JVM language, you've got to at least mention Groovy. Its advantages include being trivial to learn for the vast hordes of Java developers, while making programming a lot more fun in a Ruby-like way.

When to use it? When you want the JVM, and productivity is a bigger concern than performance.

<comment><USER23> > If you want to address which is the best JVM language, you've got to at > least mention Groovy

You could make that argument for all of the many ecosystems mentioned in the article, e.g. because for Unix/Linux scripting only bash is mentioned, you could have opined _" If you want to address which is the best Unix shell, you've got to at least mention zsh"_.

Groovy's just a dialect of Ruby anyway, except being specific for one platform and having a different syntax. All the functionality underneath the syntax is based off Ruby, and even its two applications with any traction are based off Ruby versions. The MOP was put in in 2005 specifically for Grails, which started off as a launder of Rails.

<comment><USER2> Grails is a bit more than simply Rails for Groovy. There are a few things that Grails does very differently, partly due to it being built on top of Spring and Hibernate.

Also, Groovy+Grails is far more enterprise-ready than Ruby on Rails. Something as basic as proper unicode support is still very recent in Ruby, for example. Also, multithreading comes as naturally to Grails as it comes to Java, but not to Ruby on Rails.

They are absolutely very similar, but there are important differences that go a lot deeper than just the different syntax.

<comment><USER23> > There are a few things that Grails does very differently, partly due to it > being built on top of Spring and Hibernate.

Back in 2005 Grails didn't add much to Groovy, Spring, or Hibernate. It was just a thin wrapper around software products from other companies (e.g. SpringSource, JBoss) so the training consultant behind it all could muscle in on the training and consultancy markets for their products. In 2006 Grails was renamed and promoted as _Groovy on Grails_ to sound like _Ruby on Rails_. He started a company, G2One Inc, in 2007 and quickly shopped it around among the various companies whose products he bundled, successfully fooling SpringSource into buying it 12 mths later.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Progress is when languages move from the unreasonable list to the reasonable list. I was happy to see Haskell there. I don't think it would've been 5 years ago.

</comment><comment><USER25> This was an excellent article. Agree with the author on many points. Some notable mentions:

\- Scheme: One of the best languages. A shining example of the beauty of simplicity. I personally envy folks that got to learn programming with SICP. Unfortunately, I didn't crossed with the SICP as a kid, when I would probably had devoured it.

\- Haskell: possibly the most advanced programming language, with the downside of having way too much syntax.

\- Opinions on programming languages are biased most of the time. Significant experience with dozens of languages is required, to diminish the bias.

<comment><USER26> Haskell too much syntax? That's a very weird claim. Haskell's syntax is one of the leanest around.

You could even argue the lack of syntax can be confusing sometimes. Beginners often mix up types, patterns and expressions, because there isn't a huge syntactic difference.

<comment><USER27> Yeah, that surprised me as well. There are declarations of types and classes etc which are a bit confusing at first, and then there are `do` and `case` and the like. Certainly not a lot though, compared to say C++ or Scala. I think what might make it appear more difficult is that it's just so different from almost anything else out there, so it's not just that there's a bit of new syntax to learn, but that almost nothing that you've learned in other languages will be applicable.

<comment><USER25> That is more or less what I mean by Haskell having too much syntax. Let me start by saying that I am far from an expert, and I am just expressing a subjective opinion. I would welcome if anyone shows me that I am wrong. Haskell is a brilliant language. Yet I have this personal and completely subjective opinion. When using Haskell, I get the feeling that the different syntax constructs, just don't fit too well conceptually among them.

The language on the whole is far superior to most others. Yet the syntax constructs don't feel to fit elegantly to me. It is not just that purely functional is a completely different paradigm. It is that the actual implementation lacks a global conceptual elegance. I am going to give an actual example: Take pattern matching. That is a nice conceptual idea. You can pattern match in function, and it is great. But then, you can also pattern match in list comprehensions. So patter matching can be combined in two completely different operations. This does not feel elegant, it feels awkward. It is not very obvious where pattern matching can or can not be used. Haskell is full of things like this.

This lack of overall elegance, makes it harder to mentally handle and become agile with the language. It takes more effort, so it feels that the it has a substantial cognitive overload. Maybe this is completely fine, and is required for the benefits of purely functional programming. Or maybe there could be a different, more elegant implementation of a purely functional language.

Or maybe I'm just biased by a lack of extensive experience with dozens of languages. As a fun note, let me add that as a side project, I am currently at work on a programming language, that address these things that I see as problems. It is not a purely functional language that aims to compete with Haskell, but it happens to address the issue of lack of overall elegance, that I am describing here. I currently have a conceptual design for a type system that specifically aims for conceptual elegance within the whole language. Also it happens that this language will be a graphical language, instead of text based. At worst it will be a great learning exercise for me. I hope that it at least end being an interesting curiosity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> > If there is something that could debunk C is a low-level language with great > support for concurrency. Or maybe a mythical language with the properties of > Haskell and the pervasiveness of C.

So, Rust? :) (Minus the pervasiveness, right now—but you do have the low-level control.)

</comment><comment><USER29> If by "F" the author means F#, he has no idea of what he's talking about. The language is open source with an Apache license.

<comment><USER16> Yup, it was F#.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> The bash-example is not very bashy. It is sh, like the header says. Bash fully supports a native for:

      for i in {0..5};do
          echo "$1"
      done

<comment><USER31> Interestingly, this comment states that Bash is not available in all POSIX. Here is where I get lost. [http://blog.fourthbit.com/2014/03/01/the-best- programming-la...](http://blog.fourthbit.com/2014/03/01/the-best-programming- language-or-how-to-stop-worrying-and-love-the-code/#comment-1268486352)

<comment><USER30> Yes, that is correct. Bash has additional functionality (and the for-loop I showed could very well be a part of that). If you want posix, better stick to dash, the code he showed.

But bash with its additional features (like associative arrays) is much more comfortable, so if you know you can use bash - because the target is GNU/Linux - it is a good idea to use them.

<comment><USER32> Sh has for; it does not have the {a..b} construct. But you can write it as:

        for i in `seq 0 5`; do
            echo "$i"
        done

and that will work perfectly well on dash.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> wes-exp I'm sorry Common Lisp is not elegant enough for the author, but it has a great community and library support. (At least compared to scheme)

Efforts are also underway to spruce things up a bit. [https://github.com/fukamachi/cl21](https://github.com/fukamachi/cl21)

</comment><comment><USER33> Whenever someone says PHP is useless I know that they have no idea what they are talking about. Being ugly is one thing, being useless is something quite different and in case of PHP this could not be further from the truth.

<comment><USER34> Strange, this article doesn't call PHP useless.

<comment><USER35> It does. Every line about PHP was sarcastic :)

<comment><USER36> As my comment above ;).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> C, or how to keep your job safe as security consultant.

</comment><comment><USER37> A bit surprised by how much attention this article is getting here. Someone nailed it by saying it has much breadth but little depth. A speed dating synopsis of competing programming language to speak. Obviously the author likes brunettes with fair skin.

I recall reading the "Design and Evolution of C++" and found it quite enlightening. One wishes this type of book was a mandatory delivery for all Language authors...

</comment><comment><USER38> Clojure is definitely __NOT__ a sibling of Scala. Being a sibling of scala would mean that it is something like C to C++ or Java to Ceylon.

<comment><USER39> It's a half-sibling, since they share a parent (JVM).

<comment><USER40> More like roommates, because they share a house.

<comment><USER41> It's more like a brothel.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> That's a big list. A relatively inexperienced programmer looking for advice on what language to start with would probably be overwhelmed. How to choose what language to learn next? There's a dozen languages they've never heard of on there.

Glad to see Bash on there, even if his example code was sort of misleading. Sure, you have to be able to read that stuff, but if you can rely on Bash being there, you can use better syntax.

Anyway, Bash (and other similar shells) is special because it's the glue that ties a Unix system together. No other type of language can construct the same kinds of pipelines and filters so concisely or interact with the filesystem so easily. For a certain set of problems, Bash is by far the best option. The ugliness is partially legacy, but mostly just necessary to allow the same language to work at the command prompt without overloading everyday CLI usage with a ton of pointless syntax. It's all about tradeoffs, kids.

</comment><comment><USER43> People should first decide what they want to achieve, produce mobile, web, or desktop applications, etc.

Then they should find the best framework to achieve their goals. The language is usually force upon you by the framework unless you're working on something cutting-edge.

In the past, when I set out to learn a programming language, I would always get nowhere. You learn the syntax from some book, do the exercises, then what? Without a solid goal to hack toward, pretty soon, you will forget everything you've just learned.

</comment><comment><USER44> Regarding the Go vs. D argument and Google beeing behind Go, Facebook seems to be using D [http://www.drdobbs.com/mobile/facebook-adopts-d- language/240...](http://www.drdobbs.com/mobile/facebook-adopts-d- language/240162694)

<comment><USER45> Sure, but that doesn't mean both organization are equally committed to each language. Google has an entire team that works on Go full time and all their work is donated to golang.org which is opensource. Its not clear that Facebook is more than just a D user at this point.

I also have a seeking suspicion that Facebook never considered using Go because of Go's close Google ties, maybe if they didn't feel Google was a competitor they would have went with Go over D- we will never know.

<comment><USER46> As I understand it, they didn't 'go with D over Go' so to speak. They employ a fanatic of the language who wrote a piece in D, presumably with approval, and used it. There's nothing wrong with any of that, and I hope it works well for them. But I wouldn't say it was exactly chosen in advance for its merits, other than having an awesome programmer in the language, which can be one of the biggest reasons at times.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> No love for mumps?

GREPTHIS() NEW SET,NEW,THEN,IF,KILL,QUIT SET IF="KILL",SET="11",KILL="l1",QUIT="RETURN",THEN="KILL" IF IF=THEN DO THEN QUIT:$QUIT QUIT QUIT ; (quit) THEN IF IF,SET&KILL SET SET=SET+KILL QUIT

<comment><USER48> (grumpy cat) NO

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> "[Java]'s used for everything, from web apps to games. Almost everything except embedded device software, and perhaps high performance parallel computation software."

Apparently hasn't ever heard of Embedded Java or Hadoop

</comment><comment><USER36> First time that i ever heard that Scheme compile to c and js.

</comment><comment><USER50> I thought the best programming language was the one with the libraries I need (usually from the hardware vender of the card I need to interface with).

</comment><comment><USER51> Nice read, pretty entertaining round up. I like the use case lists (I think they added most of my entertainment), and overall tone of the article.

</comment><comment><USER52> I wrote a context switch in assembly pretty recently, so,, it's not entirely unused. It's still in quite a bit of our C code.

</comment><comment><USER53> tl;dr

Author loves javascript.

<comment><USER36> Your point?

<comment><USER53> His opinion is biased and he doesn't know what he's talking about.

<comment><USER36> Because he likes javascript?

<comment><USER54> To the exclusion of other things he doesn't know anything about

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> If you actually want to make things you'll still can't avoid learning C, C++, Java and/or Objective-C. Other languages just don't offer a broad enough ecosystem.

<comment><USER56> You can get very far with Ruby or Python before having to learn a bit of C for extensions. I've been using Ruby for years and I've yet to run into a situation where I need it, though admittedly I stick to web stuff.

<comment><USER55> Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of high-level programming languages. But things like threading, graphical interfaces, multimedia, embedded programming, binary distribution etc. just isn't very well supported. Partly because of technical challenges, but mostly because there isn't a critical mass of people doing those things.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> Surprised that Lua did not make the list.

</comment><comment><USER58> I'd use Clojure over Common Lisp any day of the week, but I'd never call CL a "dinosaur language". It's still getting a lot of use, and it's still a better language than what 90% of programmers have to use in their day jobs.

I like one point he made about Clojure's real killer strength: it works for exploratory code _and_ in production. You don't have to use one language for data analysis (e.g. R) and another one for your production servers (e.g. Java) which means that the data-science/production-engineer impedance mismatch need not be as severe. Here's a presentation I gave on that aspect of Clojure (note the Venn diagram): [https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/15-7qFy6URdE7Owi2Litk...](https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/15-7qFy6URdE7Owi2LitkQI_OHBu1AFWPUwHxgBc-O4E/edit#slide=id.g17bb5960b_10315)

On Haskell, he says: "This language truly feels as a more advanced thinking tool than the others in this list. It has libraries for almost any need and it has a hard-core community."

You know, a few years ago I looked into Haskell and thought, "this language is _amazing_ " but wrote it off because (a) it didn't seem to have the libraries for "practical" corporate programming (CRUD apps) and (b) the political fight to get to use Clojure at your job is at least _theoretically_ winnable due to the JVM; for Haskell, it's not winnable until you _are_ the architect or boss man. I like static typing a lot (I used Ocaml at Jane Street for a year and a half) so Haskell always seemed appealing, if not practical for "most kinds of work".

I'll probably stick with Clojure and Scala, because I'm not yet at that point in my career where I can use/do whatever the fuck I want, but I'm inspired to look into Haskell more.

A few people recommended I check Haskell out again. The community has made major strides (or, to put it more directly, it's kicking ass). I spoke to @cartazio about it the last time I was up in New York and he made a really convincing case for Haskell being ready to tackle the hardest of the hard problems (e.g. machine learning problems where performance _and_ high-level code are both needed).

<comment><USER59> > I'd never call CL a "dinosaur language".

It's a dead horse and people can't help but beat on it as they pass by.

I wouldn't call it a dinosaur language either. The specification of Lisp that we call, "Common Lisp," was ratified by ANSI in 1994 -- putting it almost neatly between ANSI C (1989) and ANSI C++ (1998). Common Lisp just has a longer history than those two languages so it tends to get flack from the young'uns and ignoramus' for being, "old and crufty."

It's a small community but there are plenty of libraries, tools, and compilers under active development.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> «[Smalltalk] The first true object-oriented language.»

Simula-67 would like to have a word with you...

</comment><comment><USER61> Please check your facts before posting to avoid being a clueless moron: C# is not just a static language it supports dynamic typing, C# is not just an object-oriented language it's a functional language as well.

The post is downright offensive to C# developers.

EDIT: ok, I figured it out - it's a troll post to stir the HN community a bit. Lot's of other good languages get undeserved bashing.

<comment><USER62> For PHP he comes out of the gate saying "Don't just assume PHP is horrible."! Apparently the ONLY redeeming quality of PHP is the vast number of developers who know PHP?

<comment><USER63> Yes PHP is horrible,but it is usefull,otherwise nobody would use it.It has excellent libraries for "traditional" user facing websites. It's clearly not meant to do anything else.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> Wow, amazing article! Thanks!</comment>


Automatic Facebook Photo Tagging Makes a Comeback - <AUTHOR> http://facebooklogin.net/features-news/automatic-photo-tagging-makes-a-comeback/

<comment><USER2> Yet again, Facebook throws privacy to the wind and decides to reintroduce potentially infringing features without any sort of warning or notice.

This is getting ridiculous. I think it's time for me to close my Facebook account.

Again.</comment>