Unit Testing: A False Idol - <AUTHOR> http://rethrick.com/#unit-tests-false-idol

<comment><USER2> Given that high code coverage numbers (85% +) have historically resulted in significantly fewer code defects in projects, why should we try to have fewer UTs and move away from TDD? I generally prefer to pay the quality cost upfront and not have to bother with debugging weeks or months down the line.

And yes, obviously unit testing doesn't diminish the importance of integration / system testing.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's not about unit testing but rather testing properly. With powerful mocking frameworks like Typemock Isolator or Isolator++ <http://www.typemock.com> many of these issues can be dealt with even for those who don't do TDD</comment>


White House: SOPA "must not inhibit innovation" - <AUTHOR> http://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/worst-sopa-out-white-house-outlines-opposition-bill

<comment><USER2> _While the White House statement stopped short of pledging that President Obama would veto SOPA should it pass, it make clear the Administration has embraced many of the opponents' central concerns._

It recall the Administration embraced many of central concerns about the NDAA. Then approved it.

</comment><comment><USER3> Well, the SOPA supporters never acknowledged SOPA would inhibit innovation either. So who's to say they won't do the same again the "new and improved" bill, even if it does inhibit innovation.</comment>


A Fleet of Taxis Helped France Win World War I - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/war-is-boring/a-fleet-of-taxis-helped-france-win-world-war-i-7f60cebcae2f

<comment><USER2> If you stopped before this line, you really should go back and read the rest:

> That's the story, but the story is mostly myth.

I also really recommend this related post on Medium, about Valiant Hearts, a really great game from last year: [https://medium.com/war-is-boring/valiant- hearts-is-a-fantast...](https://medium.com/war-is-boring/valiant-hearts-is-a- fantastic-world-war-i-story-6c1a85627fce)

</comment><comment><USER3> Folks interested in the first month of WWI should do themselves the favor of reading The Guns of August by Barbara W. Tuchman

[http://www.audible.com/pd/History/The-Guns-of-August- Audiobo...](http://www.audible.com/pd/History/The-Guns-of-August- Audiobook/B002V5CUFK)</comment>


Kishore Mahbubani: Can Asians think? The gulf between the East and the West. - <AUTHOR> http://www.salon.com/books/int/2002/03/25/asians/?x

<comment><USER2> This guy's opinions are most appalling, he gets so many things wrong! I'd like to write a long comment about it, but for now this easy one caught my eye:

"Do Asians think that Western societies have a lot of problems?

Yes. The concept of obligation to family is very different. I'm not saying one is right and one is wrong. American families are so strong. But if you look at the number of children born out of wedlock ... that's the sort of thing that Asian societies don't want to see happen. "

What a simplistic comment to make!

<comment><AUTHOR> read the whole thing. don't jump to conclusions.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What are you trying to accomplish? - <AUTHOR>

Title says it all. What are you trying to accomplish in life? Big scale (make a billion dollar) and small scale (eat healthier). Also, do give advice to others on this thread whenever you've got experience.<p>(I've seen 1 thread similar to this. It's been a while though, and I think it's an inspirational topic.) <comment><USER2> I'd like to have enough money that I can provide the sort of life my parents gave me to my kids. Even though I went to college on a near full-ride, my parents were ready to pay out of pocket for tuition if need be. Even though I worked from the time I was 15 on, my parents never required me to - school was my job. Even though I probably could have gotten into a good college with a public school education (and the schools where I lived weren't great by any stretch), my parents homeschooled me and then paid for me to go to the best school in the area when I knew more than they could teach. As I've grown older, I realize what a great advantage that was, and I'd like to give my kids the same. Even if they don't do anything with that chance, I don't ever want anyone to be able to say "yeah, Barton - but you didn't do <blank> for your kids."

That's my paramount goal. I have subordinate goals to that, but they're expendable given the greater good. For instance I'd like to get better at math and eventually get an M.S. in math of some sort to complement my M.S. in CS. That would open the door to what I consider more interesting work, but there's no guarantee it would be higher paying than the sort of work I do now. I'd also like to eventually run my own business doing work in scientific computing or some other highly technical arena, but that entails a degree of risk that makes it more of an endgame plan for me. I'd like to finish the marathon I was training for before I tore my PCL in 2005, but I don't have the time in my life now for the training regimen I was on (75 miles a week). I'd like to be fluent in Latin again like I was 5 years ago, but again - there's too few hours in the day for something that doesn't get me closer to my primary goal. I'd like to get what I assume is a case of mild Asperger's under control so that I can be a better husband to my wife and so I don't have to live in near- constant fear that I'm not being emotionally available enough.

Since I don't know anyone well who has died, I'd like to make peace with death. The wisest person I know is my grandfather, who has a Ph. D in aeronautical engineering from Stanford, taught math there for a while and contributed to the analysis of the Tacoma Narrows disaster (he worked out some aspects of a phenomenon called flutter in his dissertation). He solves the cryptograms in the paper almost by sight and does the New York Times crossword without writing answers down - his solutions are kind of a zero-knowledge proof where you just ask him enough clues until you're satisfied his answers are consistent and correct. I have seen him read the answer to a cryptogram nearly as easily as if it were English. He's 85, and I am perpetually astonished at how sharp his mind is. It's going to be an enormous loss when he eventually passes, and frankly I'm not sure how I'm going to handle the fact that, when he goes, all that knowledge and skill will be gone as well. I need to figure that out.

I've got lots to live up to, and lots to accomplish.

</comment><comment><USER3> Trying to figure out what to accomplish.

So my deal is: I'm a 23yo CS student, hopefully getting my masters degree summer 2012. I've been employed as a (part time) student programmer at a GTS* institute for almost 3 years now. Fantastic place to work for a student, as I'm not just a codemonkey stuck away in the basement: I actually get to talk to clients and users, get an equal say in discussions (technical/architectural as well as non-technical/design), work with anthropologists, the financial- guys etc. and get a fair amount of responsibility (depending on the project). Working part time as probably had a small (negative) effect on my grades, but I wouldn't trade what I've learned at this job for straight A's (and I hope that my future employees feel the same way).

My first "problem" is to figure out what I want to write my thesis on. I'm fairly certain it will be in the HCI field, but that is as close as it gets right now.

A bit more long-term: I feel like I have all the opportunities in world, all roads are open.. I just don't known which one to take. Two things I know though: 1) I don't want to end up as a non-technical project manager, only pushing paper and not writing a single line of code. On the other hand (2) I don't want to only be a programmer---I love developing, but I need other challenges too. I've considered staying at my current company (upgrade the job-title though), but on the other hand I feel like the world must be bigger than that, and that I need to see it. If I can get an idea I'll be burning 112% for, I'd like to do a startup.

It is frustrating to no end, not knowing what I want to accomplish.

*GTS institute: non-profit, government authorized research institute. Clients are private businesses and public (inter)national authorities.

</comment><comment><USER4> Big Scale: Build an organization that is capable of doing crazy shit (e.g. software company that opens a school) with the time flexibility built in to imagine/execute on crazy shit.

The fundamental requirement for doing this is that you make enough revenue off of certain products/services to allow you to feel comfortable doing crazy shit, and have enough staff that are well paid that no one is scared of losing their job by doing crazy shit.

You also probably have to avoid investors, as they may not like you doing crazy shit. It's possible that they'll be ok with it, but not likely. Of course this makes it harder to build the company up to a point where it's making enough revenue to do crazy shit.

Anyways, I've gotten started on it: <http://www.irrationaldesign.com> \- but it's slow going...

</comment><comment><USER5> Big: NO idea. 19, soon to be 20, year old college student. I'd like to make some money, but I haven't made up my mind up yet. Maybe apply for YC if I have good people to work with in a few years.

Small: See how far I can take treeowls.com. Learn how to make pretty websites. Win back a major business project a professor has tried to steal from me. Get through freshman year.

Also: making a billion dollars is easier than eating "healthier". At least with the money you have a set numerical value. 110% guarantee: anybody who tries to eat "healthier" will never keep it up for forever.

<comment><AUTHOR> Just to clarify, those aren't my goals, I'll be writing those down soon. They're just randoms.

EDIT: and what you say about clear goals is very true.

<comment><USER5> You can thank Tim Ferris for that little idea. Pretty smart dude when he isn't tooting his own horn.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Small scale: get out of bed earlier. It might sound as a weird goal, but it really does make me feel good when I get out of bed at 6 instead of 7 (I leave for work at 8.) Taking time for breakfast/slow start of the day is amazing.

Big scale: build discipline. I feel like all my problems would be solved if I only had some more discipline.

</comment><comment><USER6> Big scale: Trying to move out to California and work as a software engineer at a start-up or one of the big companies. I am a sophomore in college on the east coast, any advice or suggestions?

Small Scale: Become a better rock climber

<comment><USER3> > I am a sophomore in college on the east coast, any advice or suggestions?

Get work experience. Get a part time (student) programmer job, internship, work on open source projects. At least, that is the advice I've been given (CS student).

> Become a better rock climber

Hold on tighter? :)

<comment><USER5> >>Become a better rock climber

>Hold on tighter?:)

...he would never get anywhere.

<comment><USER3> Touché!

Hmm.. the two (climbing and holding on tighter) aren't mutually exclusive are they? When he holds on to something, is when to hold on tighter.

<comment><USER5> Fact: most witty statements tend to break down when you look at them closely.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The end of sales and marketing.</comment>


Salary transparency at Stack Overflow - <AUTHOR> http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2016/07/salary-transparency/ <comment><USER3> At my self-assessed skill level and years of experience, they're offering $11k/yr more for a "Developer" than a "Site Reliability Engineer". I find it interesting that they value someone in a "Developer" position higher than someone in a "Site Reliability Engineer" position. Having been an Ops person for my entire career and at the same time a competent developer in numerous languages and environments, I find this unsurprising but still a bit off- putting.

It does seem to be an industry-wide phenomenon, but at the end of the day it makes no sense to me why a company would value an employee less that is expected to keep their services up, rain or shine (which presumably make them money) vs someone who is presumably focused mostly on adding additional features (may make them money). This is especially vexing in light of the fact I've never met a highly qualified Ops person who wasn't also a skilled developer. Mostly I've found the opposite, developers (skilled or otherwise) who have next to zero understanding of systems concepts, networking, or automation.

<comment><USER4> This is the profit centre vs cost centre problem. Companies are incentivized to spend more on developers, since developers build features, and features drive sales, and sales drive profit.

SysOps folks keep the site up, but once you start hitting >99% reliability, throwing more money at sysops isn't going to increase revenue.

<comment><USER5> From a "job security" lens, the sysops crew needed to keep the site up will be the last to go during downsizing.

<comment><USER6> There are plenty of managers with the "why are we paying them when everything just works?" mentality.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, firefighting is a more visible show of "value" to those not directly involved than reliability is, because nobody at too many places likes to ask why we're always fighting fires in the first place.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Before everyone inevitably piles on about how such-and-such a salary "seems low compared to That One Guy At Google I Know That Makes $300k", keep in mind average Bay Area salaries for software people in the Bay Area are not as large as you think. T.O.G.A.G.I.K. makes several standard deviations above the self reported mean of $100K-$105K [1][2] and BLS reported median [3][4] (around ~$125K or so depending on job function).

1: [http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Software_Engineer/Sa...](http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Software_Engineer/Sa..).

2: [https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/san-francisco-software- en...](https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/san-francisco-software-en..).

3: [http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_41940.htm#15-0000](http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_41940.htm#15-0000)

4: [http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_41860.htm#15-0000](http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_41860.htm#15-0000)

<comment><USER9> I'd also like to point out that...we're a largely remote company. We don't index our salaries to the most expensive time and place to hire developers ever. We don't have to support Bay Area rent, or duel it out with AppAmaMicroGoog to keep our people from getting poached. We hire people everywhere in the world and through that lens, we're competitive. I live like a king in Buffalo, NY.

<comment><USER10> SO is based in NYC, right? Do you not have trouble retaining local devs there on these salaries? Or do you just have no one who actually lives and works in NYC?

<comment><USER9> We have offices in NYC, London, and Denver. If I'm remembering correctly, I can count the number of developers who've left the company on one hand. We currently have ~20 engineering staff in the NYC office. Retention doesn't seem to be a huge problem.

<comment><USER10> Is there significant compensation not captured by this tool (bonus, equity, amazing benefits)? $132K for a "2" with 10 years experience just seems really low in NYC. $171K for a "5" seems really low, too, since that person would be principle at Google or Microsoft.

<comment><USER9> This is the standard stuff from our company page ([http://stackoverflow.com/jobs/companies/stack- overflow](http://stackoverflow.com/jobs/companies/stack-overflow))...

20 days vacation (to start)

Flextime

No Copay Health Insurance

Whatever workstation you want (PC/MAC/Build Your Own), Monitors out the wazoo. Seriously, I have 128GB of RAM and a GTX 1080, we don't skimp here.

$3,500 a year + 3 days conference budget

Gym Reimbursement Tuition Reimbursement

In NYC and Denver we have in house chefs

Unlimited sick time

Fully Paid Parental Leave

...but our people team is pretty empowered to make you happy.

And yeah, there's equity.

<comment><USER10> Interesting. So you have good benefits, good vacation, and some equity (of questionable value, since it's not publicly traded), but nothing that adds another 30k in value to the package over your competitors. If the numbers from the calculator are accurate, I don't know how places like Google aren't vacuuming up all your senior+ devs. A principle dev at Google in NYC must get paid at least $200k. I'd bet the bottom end there is more like $250 with bonus and (tangible) equity grants.

Good for you guys for managing high retention. Something is keeping your devs happy and it's not the money.

<comment><USER9> Not everyone wants to work at Google. I know I don't.

<comment><USER10> Google was just a proxy for software engineering employers who pay well. Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon all pay similarly. So do a number of other companies. The finance corps in NYC probably do too, but I wouldn't really want to work there either from what I've heard.

Regardless, I certainly would not encourage you or anyone else to leave a job they love if it pays them an amount they are happy with. Going to Google or anyone else for a 20% pay bump is a bad deal if you end up less happy overall.

<comment><USER8> It's good to keep in mind that "software engineering employers who pay well" don't necessarily pay everyone that well, or even most of their employees. My guess is that very few Googlers get that mystical $200K (although no doubt someone will reply here with an example to "prove" me wrong). Always comparing your salary (or as a business owner, what you offer your employees) to what Google pays the top 0.1% of their talent is bound to leave you disappointed.

<comment><USER11> Interns at Facebook make about $100k, and they get free luxury housing. I know people at Google at Facebook. New grads make about 170k per year (total compensation), next level is about 220k, and the next (which is Senior) about 300k. One level above that (ie Staff Engineer) gets into the 400-500k range. $200k is definitely about average pay for Google engineers (maybe $150k is more accurate for offices outside MTV/NY/SEA).

<comment><USER12> This is mostly consistent with what is posted on Glassdoor [1] and on this authoritative H1B website: [http://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=GOOGLE&job=SOFTWARE+ENGINEE...](http://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=GOOGLE&job=SOFTWARE+ENGINEER&city=MOUNTAIN+VIEW&year=2015)

Your figures are about $15k higher than what these sources report, which I think is close enough.

[1] [https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Google-Software-Engineer- Sa...](https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Google-Software-Engineer-San-Jose- Salaries- EJI_IE9079.0,6_KO7,24_IL.25,33_IM761.htm?filter.experienceLevel=ONE_TO_THREE)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> As someone in recruiting and hiring, I love the concept of salary transparency on many levels, and I hope more companies at least make attempts like this to provide insight.

That said, salary ranges and transparency can create two obvious issues.

1\. Negotiations - I can tell you from vast past experience that when you tell an applicant "the salary range for this position is 80-100K", in almost every case any offer below 100K is considered a slight regardless of the experience of the candidate. "...but I thought you said the position paid 100K?" is a common thing to hear. Candidates hear the top of the range, and apply/interview with that expectation.

This is only an issue when a candidate's true market rate is at the bottom of a range. A minimally qualified candidate doesn't typically see himself/herself as 'minimally qualified'. So even if 80K is true fair market rate for this candidate, and 80K is offered, the offer still has a good chance of being rejected simply because of the emotional attachment to the higher number and the feeling of "leaving money on the table".

2\. Internal employees - Stack Overflow said this has been available internally for a bit, but when employees find out what others are making they are inclined to compare their own efforts/abilities vs others. It can lead to people either asking for raises to match their co-workers, or perhaps feeling slighted and seeking other employers.

Being that it's not easy to truly measure productivity in most environments - other than perhaps consulting (billable hours) this is likely to cause issues. The next step is being prepared for how to handle those issues when they arise.

<comment><USER14> "2\. Internal employees - Stack Overflow said this has been available internally for a bit, but when employees find out what others are making they are inclined to compare their own efforts/abilities vs others. It can lead to people either asking for raises to match their co-workers, or perhaps feeling slighted and seeking other employers."

One nice thing about being transparent and consistent with salaries is that you can have an objective conversation with someone about the reasons that they're making less, versus having to rely on vague, irrelevant, or harmful explanations like "he was making more at another company," or "he negotiated harder." If someone thinks they should be making what another developer is being paid, they need to make the case based on clearly laid out criteria.

There's no compensation system that makes everyone happy, and there shouldn't be. You want a system that leaves people knowing where they stand, what it takes for them to make more, and management that encourages them to grow into that amount.

<comment><USER15> it sounds a bit too idealistic. How about if someone is hired at a hire rate because "well we needed someone with his skill set ASAP, so we agreed to pay him a premium" (but we can't afford to pay everyone at that rate) or "We desperately needed someone quickly with skill set X and he was the only person available"

And sometimes comparing people and their skill sets is really apples to oranges. If one guy is an expert on some very specific top, and thats important for your business (and is therefore an expensive hire) - it doesn't mean you should create an incentive for other employees to learn his skill set (maybe you only need one statistician or expert in COBOL or whatever)

"There's no compensation system that makes everyone happy"

Sure, pay people way above market rate and don't allow them to compare wages. They will not feel ripped off and they don't develop a sense on inadequacy

<comment><USER16> > Sure, pay people way above market rate and don't allow them to compare wages

That sounds illegal. Can you really not allow your employees to compare wages?

<comment> Nick-Craver In the US at least (I can't speak for elsewhere), preventing this is illegal. Companies discourage it through various ways and it's practically an embedded culture thing at this point throughout the country. But: you cannot legally prevent it.

The National Labor Relations Act of 1935 is what you're looking for here - <USER2> provides employee protections for such discussions.

<comment><USER17> Yeah, it's interesting. They can't prevent it, but if you do it, you can guarantee you'll be fired. They'll just eliminate your position for some other reason.

<comment><USER18> You don't want to work for a company that operates that way anyway, if you can avoid it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> A couple of things that stood out.

1) I'd imagine stock options are part of the job, but I don't see that anywhere. Do new employee's get stock options? I'm guessing they keep this hidden as it allows them a bit more flexibility on offering signing bonuses to entice employee's they want to hire?

2) I don't see any section for bonus on the calculator. Do stackoverflow employee's not get bonuses?

3) Why are years of experience factored in at all? Shouldn't ability matter more? I mean you seem to get a different salary if you have 15 vs 16 years of experience. This just seems very arbitrary. Wouldn't a more granular bucket be better?

As to transparent salaries...

I've worked at two firms for the past 10 years and both have complete salary transparency. The sky hasn't fallen, and I don't hear very much complaining, though there still is some complaining, the upside of the complaining is that its over actual salary numbers rather than guessing numbers.

We allow people to pick from a couple of buckets of salary and bonus multipliers. You can chose a lower salary and get a bigger bump on your bonus vs a large salary and a lower multiplier on your bonus. This lets risk adverse people get more upfront and leave a bit of the upside on the table and people with a higher risk tolerance to bet on themselves a bit more.

Has anyone actually gone with salary transparency and seen a downside?

<comment><USER20> My company has transparent salaries since the beginning 14 years ago.

Funnily, in the words of one of the co-founders, it's more a mere accident than a clear will from the beginning : "we did not really plan it that way, but back then, it was easier to let the document listing the salaries open for everyone than restricting its access to a few persons" and they decided to keep it that way ever since :) We always ask a new recruit which salary he/she wants publicly (by that I mean in front of a not insignificant part of the company, we are 50) and show them salaries of other people in case it does not really fit.

We are also experimenting with allowing people to choose their salary after 3 years in the company (there's a process and some caveats of course).

And we did not really see any downside so far

<comment><USER21> > We are also experimenting with allowing people to choose their salary after > 3 years in the company (there's a process and some caveats of course).

Why wouldn't everyone ask for the maximum amount your company is willing to give? I don't really _care_ if Mark from billing is getting paid 1/3rd of what I'm asking for, what I care about is if you'll give it to me...

<comment><USER22> Hey I know who is coming in Saturday to fix the prod bug, the guy that picked 500k salary ;)

Although maybe for some people they would want the extra work for extra money and it could be a win win.

<comment><USER21> Uh, hell yes I'd come in on Saturday to fix that bug if you pay me 500k.

<comment><USER22> How about current salary plus 10k? 20k? Everyone has a price :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Yeah so this seems great, except that's not what should be setting the price of developers. Supply and demand (for the most part) sets the price (and should, IMO) of developers, and that's what I want, not some rubric.

Outside of transparency, this strikes me as no different from the "grade" systems at various big companies like HP, IBM, etc. If you want to pay me fairly, pay me what the market says I'm worth.

Things also get super messy when you get people to try and review/make objective assessments of their own skills and others'.

"Most of us are a 1 or a 2" \-- aiming high is great and all, but I would be pissed if I was the most consistently good engineer in the company yet didn't get some multiple of my salary because the "best" at the company is a 2 because of the ridiculously high bar that is set. Also I can definitely see a system like this trampling all over developers who should be paid more but THINK they're not that valuable, or afraid to assert themselves.

This calculator just makes me think it serves as an effective way to pay people less than what they're worth, and convince those same people that they're getting treated fairly. You should not be counting on your company to pay you what you are worth, regardless of whatever rubrics or whatever they show you.

<comment><USER24> There's a pretty strong connection between the numbers the tool has and market rates - it's not like the numbers are pushed top down, they come from actually participating in the hiring market.

The calculator normally gets a few revisions a year, one of the things that prompts that is market rates changing (others are things like hiring for new skills, or new roles being created).

What's nice about the calculator is, if the market rates change, everyone gets a raise (and knows they should). It's not just the new hire (who's mostly recently on the market), it's everybody in the same skill track.

The calculator also keeps us honesty about what matters for compensation. When the yearly salary review comes around, you can point at things you've done in the last year _and_ at where it says they should matter. It means fewer surprises, less frustration, and less fear that you're being too aggressive or too passive in salary discussions.

<comment><USER23> All of what you're saying is reasonable, but I think the premise is wrong -- what you can do doesn't determine how much you are paid, at the very least it's not the most important factor.

You could be the greatest COBOL programmer with the best people skills, but if there are no COBOL jobs, the rubric is 100% wrong (assuming your salary is 0 because you're unemployed). In the same vein, you could be a completely average developer (even a bad one, however you measure that), but if the market is absolutely starved for developers, you should (and likely will) be paid a lot. I think SO's appraoch obscures that fact.

There's no way they can update it enough to keep up with market (and it's arguably in the company's best interest in the short term to do this), and I'm worried that how this is being presented is lulling developers into a false sense of safety when they need to be on their guard.

But it's also likely that I'm being overly pessimistic/exaggerating the danger here. SO seems like a company that has enough breathing room to truly care about it's employees, and as such I think they will do their best to revise the calculator to benefit their employees. However, I really do think that the logic you're using equally applies to all the usual grade/level yearly review based systems... That's exactly how it works in larger companies (not that it's a bad thing) now, I don't think the rubric is a differentiator.

My point is that if you're one of the people that isn't a new hire, but aren't thinking critically about your salary where it is in relation to the market for people with your skills (whatever they are), please do. Don't leave it up to any company, however well-intentioned, to pay you what you should be making.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Slightly OT: it may sound like a good idea to increment browser history with every parameter change, but in fact it's not, as after a few simulations/tests one needs to hit the return button many times to go back to where they were.

<comment><USER26> Thanks! It should be doing that, if it's not, it's a bug. Drop me a note at matt at stackoverflow dot com, with a repro?

<comment><USER27> Use history.replaceState instead of pushState: [https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/API/History_API](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/API/History_API)

That will still change the address in the location bar without filling up the history so it takes many back button clicks to leave.

<comment><USER28> This reply would be much more comical if you linked to a stackoverflow thread about history.replaceState. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Great to see this spreading throughout the industry!

Here is some more clickary for those in the new:

[http://buffer.com/salary](http://buffer.com/salary) [https://youtu.be/N8u9H6JDAzo](https://youtu.be/N8u9H6JDAzo) (Travis CI, How we replaced salary negotiations with a Sinatra app) [http://location.rkh.im/](http://location.rkh.im/) [http://rkh.im/move](http://rkh.im/move)

</comment><comment><USER30> The salaries generated by the calculator while transparent are not validated by the market and are laughably low.

Given the elasticity of supply and demand the salary mush be constantly evaluated against the market. This seems like just another trick to suppress wages for a qualified engineer.

In today's market, a person with multiple offers would command at least twice the listed compensation at any of the software majors.

<comment><USER31> > In today's market, a person with multiple offers would command at least > twice the listed compensation at any of the software majors.

StackOverflow is probably OK with missing out on these comparatively rare beasts. For me, their formula would give me almost a 20% raise (if I could stay in Dallas), and that is not counting my six years of non-software engineering experience.

<comment><USER32> I'm in Seattle, and to match my base I would need to be a few levels above where I am (4 years, probably about a 1).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> TIL I'm very glad I don't work for Stack Overflow and feel very bad for the underpaid devs who do. Apparently, with only 5 years experience, my salary has eclipsed a maxed out 25 year veteran of "5" skill. Not to mention my salary is only about half of my total compensation. I don't say this to brag, but to help raise awareness to the underpaid devs out there. You have to stand up for yourself, realize your value and fight with these companies to pay you what you are really worth.

<comment><USER34> where do you live and where do you work?

<comment><USER35> Notice this question has been asked 3x and not answered. 150k remote gets you a lot further than 300k in SV unless you want to live with 10 of your best friends.

<comment><USER34> I did notice. People lie about this stuff for their own ego boosting. Which is weird because, you know, its the internet and its anonymous. They're only lying to themselves really.

<comment><USER35> He doesn't even need to be lying. He could have a huge salary offset by a massive cost of living, so we only discuss the first number for appearances.

It's sometimes envy-inducing for me to look at what other data-oriented directors make and compare it to my own comp. But I also live in Maine, and somehow, in walking distance to the beach and "only" 90 minutes to Boston. Cost of living matters massively, especially once you have a family, kids and want to own instead of rent. Even if I ditch the coastal part, I'm not sure I even want to look at what a comparable 3 bedroom, 2000 sq ft home would cost anywhere near SF or Silicon Valley. Screw it, I'm gonna look:

[http://move2siliconvalley.com/tag/real- estate/](http://move2siliconvalley.com/tag/real-estate/)

Let's pick Campbell because it's somewhere in the middle, I like Rancid and Lars Frederiksen. $648/sqft, and generally under a quarter acre lot. You got 1.3M I could borrow? That's like 5 of my houses. Roughly $6500 a month (78k a year) factoring in property taxes. Suddenly 300k a year doesn't seem like a whole lot once you pay your taxes and put a roof over your family's head.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> If I try to max out everything (engineering manager, 25 years of experience, max expertise), I still only end up with $210k. Are there stock options on top of the salary to provide a larger upside?

That being said, thanks for the transparency. It helps all of us.

</comment><comment><USER37> With 4 years of experience, even if I rate myself as a 5 on self-assessed skill (I'm certainly not), the salary offered for New York is far, far below anything I'd consider, and significantly below even what other start-ups offer (not including equity) in New York.

I do not understand how they are able to hire experienced workers who agree to face the cost of living of New York at these salary levels. It is simply too low to be worthwhile.

</comment><comment><USER38> Just for fun I put in a developer with skill level 5 and 20 years of experience living in the San Francisco area.

[http://stackoverflow.com/company/salary/calculator?p=1&e=20&...](http://stackoverflow.com/company/salary/calculator?p=1&e=20&s=5&c=1)

It calculated $198,220

I would guess that type of developer in the San Francisco area could earn a double or triple that amount (included bonuses and stocks) at one of other companies.

<comment><USER39> What is ridiculous is not necessarily the salary but the portion of it that is for "Location Adjustment", $18,020. $20k extra to live in the Bay Area or New York is pretty ridiculous. For me in Houston TX I can live half as cheap, so 20k is nothing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Very cool. Salaries seem on the low-end of the industry standards from what I've seen. $120k for 5 years of experience in the Bay-Area is pretty insulting.

<comment><USER41> Location, location, location; I live in .nl and with about €55k, I'm at the upper end of the job market here (14 years experience).

<comment><USER42> You are right but you have to also consider US working hours. Apparently it's not unusual to work 60 hours a week while here in Europe we have ~40 hours working weeks. If I have to choose I would definately stay on my UK salary that is about half what this calculator is showing for my experience and keep 40hr working week.

<comment><USER43> I used to work with a CTO who had worked in the Valley and in the UK and he said he got no more work out of people in the US than the UK.

And bear in mind in the UK this was British Telecom with civil service type holidays and perks - working there did remind me of the Laundry Files :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> A long time ago, I was a software engineer at Boeing. The local SPEEA rep had a chart posted outside his cubicle with the salary (grouped by years of experience) for all the DS-9s in the office.

There were enough people that you couldn't identify your peers exactly, but it gave you a very good sense of what everyone else was getting.

I would love it if more employers would do this.

</comment><comment><USER45> Either I am vastly underpaid or the numbers are very high for newer developers. Even with 0 experience and 0 skill, it quotes $86k.

<comment><USER46> If you are a developer worth your salt and not even registering on that scale, then I'm going to go with "Underpaid". Unless you live in like Bumstump, TX where you can buy a 4 bedroom 3 bath home on 2 acres of land for 60k.

<comment><USER47> I think you hinted at the real reason: Location.

Stackoverflow is largely based out of NYC, so their salaries are going to be based on that starting point.

The average developer salary in the US is $80K but when you start going state by state you can see that NYC/California/et al are throwing that figure WAY off.

<comment><USER48> This is correct. Outside of the big two hotbed areas, developers are definitely NOT being paid in the hundreds of thousands. When you factor in the NYC/California cost of living tax, you're not actually coming out that far ahead. The experience gained is obviously the big benefit however.

<comment><USER49> Depends— if you're a single adult in NYC, a decent bedroom in a share can be had for $1000 with heat and gas included (and that's also a normal way of living for successful adults), and one doesn't need a car, so bills needn't be that high. Transport is either an unlimited Metrocard paid pre-tax or provided free by your employer, or a bicycle— so that's around $70/month, plus whatever you want to pay for cabs (but rarely need to). The upper limit on entertainment costs is extremely high— but there's also way more awesome cheap/free stuff happening than one could possibly do.

Of course, if you're trying to raise a big family, the math works out a little differently.

<comment><USER48> Sure, but who wants to live in that $1000 apartment, shared with other four other people? When you start making those big six figures, no one wants to deal with that crap. You want more luxury. That's the point of moving up right?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> There is something not right with both having a salary system like this and having it available to the public. I know I personally would not like to work at SO just because of this.

It seems demoralizing, because it reduces your relationship with the company down to rules, shifting responsibility away from people. It may seem attractive on the surface, but in the long run I don't think it will serve the employees or the company well. People are so much more than just skill+experience+cost_of_living.

<comment><USER51> The 1-5 rating system is where personal judgement/responsibility come into play. If I were a very good developer but poor at negotiations, I would find this system to be the opposite of demoralizing.

<comment><USER50> Consider the other possibility, where you are the best, period (which is how you should really think of yourself IMHO).

You get two offers, one from a company like SO, based on a system of rules, and another one based on personal judgement (it might still be based on a system of rules, but that aspect will not be advertised to you, which is key). And if the two offers are about the same, you will likely choose the latter, simply for the slight difference between " _our system_ values you at $$$" vs " _we_ value you at $$$".

<comment><USER16> Everybody should think they are the best? Isn't that how we got into this into the first place?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> These salaries seem SUPER low. Engineering manager with 15 years experience < 150k? Try 200+k here in NYC.

<comment><USER53> These salaries seem SUPER high. Developer with 10 years experience at 120k? I'm making less than half of that and don't feel particularly ripped off.

(I guess both of our comments don't help a lot in general, except to show that you personally don't seem to consider an application at SO while I'd love to do just that)

<comment><USER54> but where though?

<comment><USER55> Probably Germany.

<comment><USER56> Yes, Germany.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> Similar feedback, starting salaries seem about right, but beyond that seem low, the rating system isn't science and the CoL adjustment only for SF, NYC and London misses other expensive cities.

For instance, like for like (new construction in the most desirable neighborhoods), Boston housing is just as expensive as SF and in general your money goes further in SF.

<comment><USER10> > _For instance, like for like (new construction in the most desirable > neighborhoods), Boston housing is just as expensive as SF_

No it's not. It's not even close. The median home in Boston is less than $500k. That's a gut/teardown in SF, where the median is $1.1MM.

If you pick brand new construction in the most desirable neighborhoods in Boston, I'm sure you could easily spend north of a million. If you pick comparable new construction in the most desirable neighborhoods in SF, I imagine you're looking at multiple millions.

[http://www.zillow.com/boston-ma/home-values/](http://www.zillow.com/boston- ma/home-values/)

[http://www.zillow.com/sanfrancisco-ca/home- values/](http://www.zillow.com/sanfrancisco-ca/home-values/)

> _in general your money goes further in SF._

In what way?

<comment><USER57> Notice that I said like for like. If you compare new construction in the most desirable neighborhoods _in both cities_ [0][1] SF comes out cheaper and/or your money goes further. ie, SF might be slightly more expensive but your building has 24/7 security, roof top pool, common outdoor space, etc.

EDIT: A further comparison of the age of the housing stock, looking at properties currently listed within both city limits, ~33% of them in Boston were built before 1900, 8% of them in SF were built before 1900. To me this means overall the housing stock is more modern in SF which likely benefits the homeowner in energy costs, modern systems, safety, total square footage, etc.

[0] [https://www.redfin.com/neighborhood/293571/MA/Boston/Back- Ba...](https://www.redfin.com/neighborhood/293571/MA/Boston/Back- Bay/filter/sort=hi-dollarsqft,min-year-built=2005)

[1] [https://www.redfin.com/neighborhood/11212/CA/San- Francisco/S...](https://www.redfin.com/neighborhood/11212/CA/San- Francisco/SoMa/filter/sort=hi-dollarsqft,min-year-built=2005)

<comment><USER10> SoMA is not the most desireable area in SF. Many areas in SF are considerably more expensive. Presidio Heights is one of the top neighborhoods, and has a home price index on Zillow of nearly $5MM. You can't even compare new construction because there is none for sale.

[https://www.redfin.com/neighborhood/2197/CA/San- Francisco/Pr...](https://www.redfin.com/neighborhood/2197/CA/San- Francisco/Presidio-Heights-San-Francisco-CA/filter/sort=hi-dollarsqft)

For the record, doing the "most expensive" or "most desirable" comparison is pointless anyway. The most expensive neighborhood is not representative of the typical home price, or even the typical desirable home price.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> Salaries, job-titles, and all things related to hiring are _INTRINSICALLY_ subjective and that's the way it should be (and really the only way it can be).

Even though the stackoverflow folks are using "a formula", there's still a lot of subjective judgment in scoring the skill-levels and stuff like years of experience (5 years at company-X isn't necessarily the same thing as five years at company-Y).

As far as I can tell, stackoverflow is successful at their mission, has a good reputation and doesn't have retention problems. That's great for stackoverflow and the folks that work there. And while it is better than most places, other companies are doing just as well and don't have transparency in their salaries. Is transparency _really_ that important? I don't think so.

</comment><comment><USER59> The mere act of an employer being so open and transparent about this would make them a more interesting option to me than any competing slightly better offers.

</comment><comment><USER60> This data actually has the impact of me not applying for a job. I'm thinking of looking around - been at my current gig as a senior engineer for years and I have about 15 years experience. But at my current comp at a major Corp in nyc, I'd need to make about $225k minimum before stock options (including perks mentioned in a comment here ) to switch. I'm not a manager just a senior dev.

Maybe I'm the type of candidate they are trying to weed out, but I'm not looking for like 300k or something. Just market rate for my skills. I've got a family and it's expensive to live in the nyc area

<comment><USER37> Not only that, but to me that entire rubric for the self-assessment of skill is extremely off-putting. It's also baffling to me that the salaries they peg against are salaries of start-ups and certain VC-backed companies.

Why isn't it the case that you base your salaries against _every other place in the world trying to hire the same people you are_? It's not defensible to say, well we pay $130k for that kind of developer because AZ companies also pay in that range, and so does Blue Apron, ENSO Financial, and Spotify (or whomever). That's silly. Because DE Shaw, Google, Coatue, Two Sigma, Comcast, Capital One, Amazon, Facebook, or a host of others might be willing to hire _that same developer for that same type of role with similar benefits_ and they are certainly paying more than this.

You're always competing for talent against anyone else trying to hire the same people. Not against one particular niche set of companies who are similar to you in some superficial on-paper ways. That just seems like a very unfortunate way of determining what their idea of a "market rate" is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> Seems like they pay very poorly for experience and skills

</comment><comment><USER62> The url shows a "Couldn't find blog.stackoverflow.com" error and a, albeit cute, picture of a panda.

Did they take it offline because it was causing a controversy?

</comment><comment><USER63> Does anyone have an opinion self reported salary websites like glass door? Do they skew high or low? What about other online salary websites?

<comment><USER64> Considering the sheer number of fake reviews on Glassdoor, I'm not inclined to trust them with anything, including salary numbers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> these salaries are really low for the bay area for someone who performs at their equivalent of level 5 (which is near impossible according to the doc)

</comment><comment><USER66> I'd say these are low for NYC. I have no experience, came from a bootcamp and live in NYC. I'm starting at $85K. With a year of experience I'm looking for $110K. In 5 years I'd be looking for $150K on the low end based on talking with others.

</comment><comment><USER67> > For our experiment, we redesigned the Stack Overflow Jobs ads to display > salary ranges. We were curious: just how much effect does this information > have? [...] We expected to see an improvement, but we were surprised by the > size: a 75% average increase in clickthrough rate (CTR) when we showed a > job's salary range.

I'm surprised they're surprised :P. I'm not actively looking for a job, so when I search I am mostly searching to get a feel for what skills are in demand and what salaries are like. For someone like me, seeing a wage in an ad would get me to click it so I can see what is expected of that wage in that region.

</comment><comment><USER68> The salaries in the US seams very high compared to here in Sweden, seams like i am missing something from the equation. Possibly something our insanely high taxes.

I have to divide the number i get in that calculator with 2.5 to get to my salary.

</comment><comment><USER69> These types of calculators were incredibly helpful while looking for developer / quantitative positions out of grad school, especially since I'm wrapping up a phd in psychology. I was so clueless in terms of what kind of salary I should expect when I started looking--like, at 65% of what ended up seeming reasonable.

The calculator is basically a window into the prospective-employee calculus a company is doing. You can also invert things, and use whatever someone offers you to think about what level of skill they may think you have (from SO's perspective).

</comment><comment><USER70> Are these closely aligned with their actual salaries? Less than $10K of cost of living adjustment for Bay Area positions?

<comment><USER71> Yes. The calculator is almost exactly what my current salary is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> I wonder if data provided in the calculator is later used to serve you ads.

</comment><comment><USER73> The calculator is fun to use but it doesn't - and can't - take into account many factors. For example, the level of competency, productivity, brainpower, personality, and so on.

</comment><comment><USER74> I wish they also shared the salary of their managers. That's way more interesting..

<comment><USER10> It's there. Change the "position" drop-down to engineering manager. There's a small bump in pay.

</comment></comment><comment><USER75> Having a boolean check box for location is not very fair.

If it's going to be taken into consideration at all, cost of living adjustments should apply to everybody and should be looked up by zip code or postal code.

</comment><comment><USER76> Love the skills grading scale, totally Ivy League material:

A+++

A+

A

B

(There are no A++ players)

</comment><comment><USER77> Link is down:

> Couldn't find blog.stackoverflow.com

> The Q&A site blog.stackoverflow.com doesn't seem to exist…yet.

</comment><comment><USER78> Link is dead... Taken down? Did transparency throw feces at the impeller?

</comment><comment><USER79> This is marketing, not transparency. Show me the books and I'll believe you.</comment>


Powder 1.7 Now Shipping - <AUTHOR> http://blog.soylent.com/post/154513593367/powder-17-now-shipping <comment><USER2> I actually liked 1.6 and didn't think it was too sweet but I'm glad they figured out what was making people sick</comment>


Ask HN: Any programmers with ADD? Share your experiences. - <AUTHOR>

A little about myself: For the first 5 years of my professional life, I was a web designer but then found myself intrigued by coding. I didn't immediately know I had ADD. I knew something was different, just couldn't put my finger on what it was specifically. I started to suspect at around 21 years old that I had some ADD tenancies but I didn't pursue the diagnosis right away.  I could never hold my concentration on projects that became tedious or too complex. To me, it felt like I was coming off as lazy to others. The truth was, I wanted to do a good job. I wanted to love every part of my project. I just couldn't. So I started to investigate...
A year ago I was officially diagnosed with ADD (inattentive sub-type) by my doctor and have been taking Concerta (methylphenidate derivative) - which has made such a big difference. My ambition now has a target. And for the first time in years, I have the motivation to work on a few ideas I have longed to work on.
Do you have ADD? Think you might? Do you program or work in the tech industry? Share your experiences! I would love to hear them. <comment><USER3> Holy crap, I had no idea that the way I work might actually be a medical condition.

In any case, I tend to work on 3 or 4 things at a time, and take a few days off a project when I need to. As long as I have the ability to switch-hit between at least three things, I generally keep up.

The down side is that I tend towards forgetfulness and disorganization - <USER2> have forgotten entire projects before (not for long, but long enough to be a problem).

I've quit jobs where I was working on something awesome, just because I couldn't work on something different.

Damn...

</comment><comment><USER4> ADD = Attention Deficit Disorder</comment>


The World's Most Efficient Languages (2016) - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2016/06/complex-languages/489389/ <comment><USER2> > But does this mean a different way of experiencing life?

What is noticeable, at least for me, is a different approach to naming things. E.g. in German technical things are usually named by what they are or do (descriptive), while in English many things are just named "randomly" after e.g. people or who/where it was first used. Consider: Elastitizätsmodul vs. Young's modulus; Steilkegel vs NMTB taper; Tellerfeder vs Belleville washer; ...

<comment><USER3> When programming, I name all my functions after myself ;)

<comment><USER4> This reminds me of someone who named all of his variables after vegetables... I wouldn't want to inherit that product

<comment><USER5> Actually I use this in one particular case: in Android there is an event callback "onActivityResult" and it's first parameter is integer. In all demos online you see officially looking name like SDCARD_WRITE_PERMISSION and when noobs copy paste it and try to compile it they can't find in which library it is defined, so when in demo code I use BANANA it's little bit more obvious that they have to define it yourself. But MY_SDCARD_WRITE_PERMISSION also works.

Banana makes it obvious that it's not official and on which two places it is connected together.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > In a Native American language of California called Atsugewi (now extinct), > if a tree was burned and we found the ashes in a creek afterward, we would > have said that soot w'oqhputíc'tainto the creek. W'oqhputíc'ta is a > conglomeration of bits that mean "it moved like dirt, in a falling fashion, > into liquid, and for real." In English, we would just say "flowed."

I realized something like that in English when translating. The word "slay" means, according to a basic dictionary, to kill (violently). But to an English speaker it means much more. I wouldn't say that a school shooter slayed the children, rather shot. The Boston bomber didn't slay the runners, but rather bombed. I would consider slaying to be an act done by a sword. But, in the case of a terrorist stabbing people, I would call that a stabbing, not staying. I would say that slaying is only appropriate if the sword attack was going across a body and not directly into, like with stabbing.

<comment><USER7> "Slay" is a funny word. I think of it mostly having a connotation of a _just_ person killing something _evil_. So I could slay a dragon, but not a chicken.

It has connotations of heroism.

<comment><USER8> Chickens can be proper evil buggers. Slaying is júst the word you are looking for.

<comment><USER9> "And lo, it was an evil chicken before my eyes. And as he was evil, I slew him."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The article briefly touches it but doesn't really expand on "the", which is every bit as weird to outsiders as German genders or Karbadian "I mean it".

So, "the father" is something like "Not just any father, but a particular father, and we can assume that we both know which particular father we're talking about."

Next time anyone says "language X is so weird, they have an expression for Y!" think about how to explain "the" to, say, speakers of Mandarin. :)

<comment><USER11> There are equivalent articles in Chinese.

a -> yige "一个"

the -> zhege "这个"/ nage "那个"

And of course words like "my", "our" which are used in place of articles are there as well.

You might not need the articles when the context is very clear (which causes problems for Chinese speakers when they try to learn English), but the concept is there. I believe it's the same in Japanese. Can't comment on other languages though.

<comment><USER10> I'm sure there are Chinese words that can serve the same purpose. The point is that they aren't mandatory.

So, to an English learner coming from these languages, a sentence like "I was cleaning attic and found book" is perfectly understandable. Exactly what attic and what book we're talking about should be apparent from context.

On the other hand, in actual English, "I was cleaning the attic and found a book" portrays a different picture from "I was cleaning an attic and found the book." Use one when the other is warranted, and it sounds weird and confusing.

<comment><USER12> But then we have "I was cleaning house and found Kevin." too.

Both "a Kevin" and "the Kevin" would feel weird, especially "the Kevin". One might do it on purpose as a sort of joke, implying that Kevin is an ordinary inanimate object.

More oddness is that "cleaning up" doesn't involve an "up".

<comment><USER13> "You'll never guess who I saw?"

"Who?"

"Elvis"

"Elvis? _The_ Elvis or _a_ Elvis?"

" _The_ Elvis"

The doesn't imply someone is inanimate, it just means that they are a specific one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> There was a Reddit thread about something like this and some bilingual people said the language they speak changes their personalities to a degree.

For example someone raised in a language - say French in France - and then learnt English and moved to the US and finding than he is being more assertive or direct when speaking English than when speaking his mother tongue.

<comment><USER15> A more reasonable explanation than "languages influences personality" is just the change of context. You speak different languages in different contexts.

<comment><USER16> You do, but, when you're in a context where you're speaking a language, you're also _thinking_ in that language. I wouldn't be surprised if that has an influence on one's thought processes.

Concrete example: I have less of a tendency toward hyperbole when I'm speaking my 2nd language. The reason why is simple: I don't know many hyperbolic idioms in that language, so I lack the ability to express myself hyperbolically. But I think it goes a step further: Lacking the vocabulary, I have a hard time even having hyperbolic thoughts when I'm thinking in that language.

(That said, I don't want to suggest that this is somehow an aspect of the language itself. It seems more likely that native speakers have about the same range of expression as native speakers of any other language, and I'm just lacking it because of my limited familiarity.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> No mention of Ithkuil, a conlang notable for attempting to maximize efficiency of expressiveness.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ithkuil](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ithkuil)

<comment><USER18> Leibniz also dreamed of something similar: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Characteristica_universalis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Characteristica_universalis)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> More on Whorfianism and why it's (mostly) wrong, if this article piqued your interest: [https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/linguistics/#Who](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/linguistics/#Who)

</comment><comment><USER19> "Languages differ, not in what they can express, but in what they must express."

(Roman Jakobson, I think)

</comment><comment><USER20> IMVHO the most efficient language is the one all involved parties in a communication speak, understand and can use to express as clearly as possible anything they want.

So IMO German is the most efficient one for Germans native speaker's between them, French for Frenches etc. The thing we really need is an international, artificial language, as simple as possible for anyone in the world to be used ONLY for docs and international communication alongside their native one to avoid advantage a country above others.

</comment><comment><USER21> > Other languages occupy still other places on the linguistic axis of > "busyness," from prolix to laconic, and it's surprising what a language can > do without. In Mandarin Chinese, a way of saying "The father said 'Come > here!'" is "Fùqīn shuō 'Guò lái zhè lǐ!'"

The writer seems to have copy pasted the phrase into Google translate. The phrase 'Guò lái zhè lǐ!' is simply incorrect grammar in mandarin. I'm unsure of how accurate the rest of the piece is.

<comment><USER22> For non-speakers, 'Guò lái zhè lǐ!' translates to "Come here to here", which is definitely a bit awkward. Usually `Guò lái` is sufficient since "here" is implied, similar to how you can simply say "come" in English.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Something that hasn't been brought up yet is sign language.

In New Zealand Sign Language, the sign language that I know and use, it is possible to reduce "go over to the other side of the room, pick up that suitcase, and bring it back over here to me" down to simply pointing at the suitcase, imitating picking the suitcase up by its handle, and then pointing downwards in front of oneself, all whilst looking at the interlocutor, possibly with eyebrows raised towards the end of the sentence.

To actually see it, it's a very efficient way to express not only a command but what object is desired without having to actually name it, where it should go, who should carry it out, and the eyebrows might imply that it is a request.

That said, it can be cumbersome and inefficient in many use cases; I would rather read English text when trying to quickly find a piece of information in an article than rewind or fast-forward through a video of somebody signing the article. In a real-time visual modality, though, it's very efficient.

</comment><comment><USER24> McWhoter has fascinating podcast on Slate.com (sans the #$&*() Slate ads) All a couple of great popular science books on language.

</comment><comment><USER25> All languages are complex in some way or other.

Japanese is rather simple in many ways (e.g., number of sounds, syllabic alphabets) but very complex in others (Kanji, counters, and so on).

Spanish too has few sounds, a Latin alphabet, simple accent rules, there's generally only one way to write any word you hear pronounced... but it has thousands of irregular verbs, four regular kinds of verb irregularities, and irregularly irregular verbs.

English has more sounds, spelling is a mess, has no diacritical marks so you just have to know how written words are to be pronounced, and has developed or and imported hundreds of thousands of words, but its verb conjugation is simpler than most every major European language.

A language without verb tenses can still express complex time relationships -- it's just done differently than in a language with verb tenses.

</comment><comment><USER26> Seems to me that there's room for improvement in this article. For example, the author does not try to compress any written language samples. If you wanted to find a "most efficient" language, you'd compress samples, maybe normalize them with the uncompressed length because it's hard to get the same thing written in different languages. My guess would be that natural languages would compress quite a bit, with English close to the least compressible. Artificial languages like Ithkuil and FORTRAN would be much more compressible, putting lie to Dembski's assertion that "natural" information is more likely to be incompressible.

EDIT: I think English would be least compressible. But I suspect that all written languages would compress quite a bit.

<comment><USER27> Why do you think English would be least compressible? Is that based on conjecture or have you investigated this? Why would artificial language be more compressible? That seems completely orthogonal to me (by definition, an artificial language can be designed with whatever properties you choose). Fortran may be more compressible due to its limited set of keywords, but it's my impression that Ithkuil is by design more information dense and thus harder to compress than English.

The most efficient language is the least compressible language only in a narrow and arbitrary sense of efficient. There are many considerations such as what is efficient for the speaker, the hearer, redundancy to noise, efficiency with respect to particular purposes, etc. We can assume that natural languages will generally make a good trade-off across these factors, and searching for the most efficient language in one particular narrow sense is not very useful. Moreover, compression of text focuses only on surface form, completely ignoring the dimension of meaning.

<comment><USER26> I live in the USA. We get labels in English, French and Spanish so that products can be sold in Canada and Mexico. The English labeling is almost always visibly shorter than the French and Spanish. So I hypothesize that English would compress less.

My conjecture is that artificial languages will be more compressible because they haven't had time to get honed down, like English losing "thee" and "thou", that personal mode of address. Esperanto and Loglan are completely regular, which natural languages are not, and thus has a lot of use-cases where the regularity doesn't matter - they haven't had time to lose the mostly-unused features.

For better or for worse, compression of text only uses the surface form to compress, because that's the level that compression works on - letters or bytes or some other unit. You can't compress meaning. Meaning doesn't exist per se: colorless dreams sleep furiously, after all. That is, you can use perfectly sensible words and letters and even legitimate syntax, and still create strings devoid of meaning. A document consisting of perfectly spelled words, and legitimate syntax, yet without meaning like the colorless dreams sentence, will compress identically to ordinary text with the same orthographic and syntactical validity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Umberto Eco's "The Search for the Perfect Language" comes to mind

[https://www.wiley.com/en- us/The+Search+for+the+Perfect+Langu...](https://www.wiley.com/en- us/The+Search+for+the+Perfect+Language-p-9780631205104)

</comment><comment><USER29> "Moreover, anyone who has sampled Chinese, or Persian, or Finnish, knows that a language can get along just fine with the same word for "he" and "she.""

English (at least in en_GB) can coerce _they_ into a gender neutral form of he or she. Sometimes it will need a bit of sentence re-arrangement and other tricks but will still be natural.

I was chatting to my aunt and they said: "Ooh, you are awful." My dad looked at me and said "crack on". In the first sentence they is substituted directly for she and in the second sentence he is dropped entirely from: "and he said".

I'm sure other languages have similar tricks. In this case I don't think it is even breaking the rules.

<comment><USER23> Depends on whose rules and to what extent those rules are being enforced.

I think 'they' as a gender-neutral pronoun is widely accepted in speech and may have greater acceptance in writing than once it had thanks to modern conceptions about inclusiveness in language, especially by those who challenge/have challenged the notion of gender as a binary.

For me, that use of 'they' shall remain incorrect in writing (by virtue of introducing ambiguity relating to number) except in reported speech and prose that intends to invoke a casual, perhaps intimate, feeling in the reader; but perfectly acceptable in speech itself.

That makes it different to the other languages where gendered pronouns don't exist at all, or are so limited in actual use that they might as well not exist.

<comment><USER30> > I think 'they' as a gender-neutral pronoun is widely accepted in speech and > may have greater acceptance in writing than once it had

Well, _less_ than it had before the Victorian effort to forcibly re-engineer English in the image of Latin, but _more_ than it had at the height of influence of that effort, whose influence is still waning.

> For me, that use of 'they' shall remain incorrect in writing (by virtue of > introducing ambiguity relating to number)

The ambiguity of number ship pretty much sailed with "thou".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> What I find fascinating is that NLP tools today can learn to translate between two languages even without a dictionary or a parallel corpus. That says something about the relations that exists between languages.

[https://code.fb.com/ai-research/unsupervised-machine- transla...](https://code.fb.com/ai-research/unsupervised-machine-translation- a-novel-approach-to-provide-fast-accurate-translations-for-more-languages/)

<comment><USER32> Try using that thing against Bahasa Indonesia, the fastest language I'm aware of, and let's see how intelligent it really is.

<comment><USER33> As a speaker of both Bahasa Indonesia and Mandarin, I'd say Mandarin is faster.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> mh-cx Reminded me of analytic vs synthetic languages:

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

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

</comment><comment><USER34> This article made me wonder about not just the density of information in words but time. Just as with compression with computers, you have to balance compression ratio with the speed to compress and decompress. So a slightly more verbose language might actually convey more information per unit time because it's easier to understand and speak.

<comment><USER35> This sounds a lot like what people say about computer code. Write it to be understood, not to be "clever" with a minimum lines of code.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> 0\. Take all concepts, modifiers and verbs

1\. Make a histogram of their usage

2\. Huffman encode them based on what sounds/inflections/etc. are easiest to make and most distinct

3\. Add an ECC syllable to each word or phrase

4\. Set straightforward, simple semantic rules so that it's mechanical, obvious and unambiguous

Relish in the glory of the next Esperanto.

</comment><comment><USER37> How would this be translated into Riau?

"Sorry, Charlie. Starkist doesn't want tuna with good taste, they want tuna that tastes good."

<comment><USER38> It's been an hour and no one's provided a translation, so I'll take a stab at it:

 _Maaf, Charlie. Starkist enggak mau ikan tongkol yang canggih, tapi mau ikan tongkol yang enak._

I'm not a native speaker so what I wrote above is probably riddled with errors, but it won't be long before a native speaker or someone with a doctorate in the Riau dialect of Indonesian comes along and corrects it. This is the Internet after all :)

<comment><USER39> Yeah this is not one of the Riauan dialect, it is in THE high prestige Riau- Johor dialect that became Indonesian though.

In my everyday language, modern Jakartan: Sori Charlie, Starkist gak mau tongkol yang dipilih-pilih, tapi tongkol enak aja.

[How do you translate with good taste?]

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Linguistic relativity</comment>


Show HN: A Bitcoin Christmas - <AUTHOR>

Link:  www.SpreadtheCoin.com
A few weeks ago I wanted to give my parents and brother, (who had all heard about bitcoin on the news) their first ever Bitcoin as a gift for Christmas and educate them along the way.
Amid the recent China crash there has been a lot of negativity in the Bitcoin community and the news... My buds and soon-to-be-teammates thought that what I was wanting to do for my family was just what the Bitcoin community needed.
So we put together a certificate, graphic designs, and cards to make the "Spread the Coin Bitcoin Christmas package". The idea being that if we all spread a little Bitcoin cheer this holiday season and share any amount you wish with our friends and family that together we can grow and enrich the Bitcoin community.
You can find us at www.SpreadtheCoin.com
Feel free to give us any feedback on the idea, designs, or the website. We are wanting to make this Bitcoin marketing project crowd-sourced very soon! <comment><USER2> I have a very similar product in development, but security concerns have made me cautious to release it so early. I notice you are not even using a self- signed SSL cert on your site. Can you describe any existing security measures and plans for security? With the recent Bitcoin 'disappearances' I think this issue is paramount.

Also, how do you plan to mitigate exchange pricing and support, considering Coinbase seems overloaded with orders. Or are you dealing strictly in Bitcoin for now?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey Doublerebel! There is no actual implementation of a Bitcoin wallet on our site - nor will there be. It's a static website that offers images and assets for printing.

The idea is that people want to gift Bitcoin to others -- there are many means for doing that -- and we don't want to supplant those options with a new wallet service.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Is the PDF version working right? I don't see anywhere for public or private keys. You also need a paper wallet address generator. Coinbase wallets look like this: [http://i.imgur.com/BPwIAra.png](http://i.imgur.com/BPwIAra.png)

<comment><AUTHOR> The PDF Certificate relies on the browser's built-in print-to-PDF. It is a really simple page, but has been tested in each major modern browser. There was a client side library called JSPDF which looked really cool - and would provide a <button> to click on, but it was huge, didn't support CSS, and I didn't feel like I could trust the library without understanding it.</comment></comment>