After 180 Websites, I'm Ready to Start the Rest of My Life as a Coder - <AUTHOR> http://blog.jenniferdewalt.com/post/62998082815/after-180-websites-im-ready-to-start-the-rest-of-my <comment><USER3> I don't know why she has never mentioned someone she worked with at all. I commented about this about her 70 days ago.

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So let's see her repository ([https://github.com/jendewalt/jennifer_dewalt](https://github.com/jendewalt/jennifer_dewalt)).

This girl not only became a competent front end developer in 100 days, but looking at the Gemfile, she knows how to use capistrano, redis, capistrano, paperclip, omniauth and devise?

She knows the best practices for Rails perfectly. She not only grasped to use MVC perfectly, but also organized asset codes perfectly in like 50 days.

I forgot to mention that she knew Rails from like day 1.

Additionally, she knew better to hide sensitive information about secret tokens for maybe AWS in the config folder and other Rails environment info.

Really? Is Hacker News this gullible? If you really want to see what actual beginner struggle with for 10 hours a day, go take a look at StackOverflow. Beginners are struggling for hours to create hoverover effects and persistent footer.

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Edit 1.

While rereading this blog post, I found that she made the first simple Rails app on day 69. So who was it that set up all the Rails dev environment for her starting day 1. I don't understand why she still wouldn't disclose how someone else helped her.

<comment><USER4> I've been a pretty hardcore PHP guy for 3 years now, and know exactly how long it would have taken me to do all of this: probably 200 days on my own.

My biggest issue is stuff like this. Take a look at the JS from day 1-8, then look at day 9.

Day 8: [http://jenniferdewalt.com/more_drop_shadow.html](http://jenniferdewalt.com/more_drop_shadow.html)

Day 9: [http://jenniferdewalt.com/bouncing_ball.html](http://jenniferdewalt.com/bouncing_ball.html)

That's a pretty massive jump in coding proficiency in a delta of one day.

This has nothing to do with marginalizing skill, it just seems like there was some outside help here, and that should probably be credited.

edit: I see a lot of different indent patterns on the JS as well. That kind of points me towards n different coders with at least two different text editor configs, or a good deal of copy->paste from SO.

<comment><USER5> I know I shouldn't even get involved here, but I looked at day 8 vs day 9 very carefully and day 9 clearly builds on day 8 (e.g. the disableSelection code is carried over). The indentation that bothers you is feature testing code cut- and-paste from [http://api.jquery.com/jQuery.cssHooks/](http://api.jquery.com/jQuery.cssHooks/). The additional JS code for the ball animation is totally reasonable for someone to learn and implement in a short time.

TL;DR: there's no red flag here.

<comment><USER6> TL;DR; people make whatever justifications they want from the code to support their stance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is fantastic. Especially inspiring to me, more than the fact that she learned how to code, is the fact that she dove into something that she had no background in, and after 180 days she came out with a solid understanding of the basics of programming; enough to do stuff on her own (and, combined with her graphic design/illustration skills, probably enough to do freelance webdev or get a junior level position in a tech company).

If you're a programmer, think about following a similar, inverted journey: spend 180 days learning how to paint, or how to play the guitar, or writing poems- delivering a concrete outcome every day (and log it in a journal so you can trace back your progress; making that journal public, like she did, is optional but has benefits).

I have many programmer friends (and myself!) who complain that they cannot draw/write/paint/cook for nothing. Those skills, just like programming, can be learned- and while becoming a master at any takes years, if not decades, learning the basics and being "functional" with any of them is a matter of a couple of months.

Of course, taking 6 months to do just that is a bit radical (but, if you're young and in tech, totally doable- saving 6 months worth of expenses on a tech salary when you have no dependents is trivial) - but if you take 1 day a week, you'll only be 7x slower. If you take 2 hours a day instead of 8, you'll only be 4x slower. If you can work part time to keep a minimal income while working on becoming a master painter on the side, only 2x slower (of course you can nitpick with those simplifications, but the core idea is there - if you spend 2 hours a day learning the guitar, you'll go from total novice to enlightened beginner pretty fast).

Thanks to the internet, it's now really hard to not find resources about learning anything- there are sites and forums and youtube videos on _everything_. Additionally, never underestimate the power of your social circle - trading skills is very fulfilling. (for example, my girlfriend's sister's bf is in a band, signed to a label, etc. and loves video games. He'd like to learn how to program basic little games, and I'm the only programmer he knows. That's pretty great, because I've been dying to get a talented guitar instructor).

And learning those skills can make you even more valuable professionally- if you make entertainment apps, learning an instrument will allow you to compose your own music. If you're a freelance web developer, learning graphic design will allow you to build higher quality products and charge much much more. If you like to program video games, learning how to draw will enable you to design your own assets.

<comment><USER8> There are two type of people in life.

The first type graduates from college and their learning stops for the most part. They say to themselves, "well, I studied for four years and got a job, now it's finally time to sit back and relax." So they put in their regular 9-5 and then come home and waste their lives away by watching TV shows and playing video games and going out and getting drunk on weekends. Essentially, they "settle" into a middle-class lifestyle, where they earn enough money to get by and may be save a little too. They may be content, but they are also always stressed about the prospect of losing their jobs, because at their level of skill and ambition, they are almost always employees, rather than employers. Eventually, that's exactly what happens as the work they do is automated and they find themselves unemployed with little savings and no other skill that they can contribute to the economy.

The second type has a perpetual hunger for knowledge. They see college as the "launch pad" for a lifetime of learning. So they graduate and get jobs, but on the side they continue to read, discuss, listen and apply. They hang out with smart and successful people who also read, discuss, listen and apply. They look for problems and opportunities, and figure out what they need to learn to be able to work on them. These are the Jennifer Dewalt types whose ambition and discipline set them up for a continuously upward trajectory. They are the ones who refuse to settle, and therefore end up as leaders in organizations that innovate and change humanity.

It's funny because over the years I have developed what I think to be a very reliable method for predicting someone's future success. The method involves asking the person what they do in their spare time. Based on their answer, I can picture where they will end up in five to ten years.

<comment><USER9> I can just imagine how smug you were writing this, it's making me cringe.

<comment><USER10> A lot of "you should do this" posts on the internet can be summarized as, "people like me are pretty dang great."

<comment><USER11> People who judge others are the worst kind of people.

<comment><USER8> You have the right and the duty to judge the people in your life. This doesn't make you a bad person. On the contrary, it's part of the human experience.

People who say they are not judgmental are the worst kind of liars, because they lie not only to others, but also to themselves.

<comment><USER12> > People who say they are not judgmental are the worst kind of liars

You need to meet more, nicer people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> "The project certainly hasn't given me a comprehensive understanding of software development, but it has laid a broad foundation for me to jump off of"

No it has not, and no it has not.

Don't get me wrong A+ for the effort... but it is a very small niche oriented effort.

Comprehensive? Watch Rich Hickey talks ([http://www.infoq.com/author/Rich- Hickey](http://www.infoq.com/author/Rich-Hickey)), try reading and exercising data structures (b-tree, rb-tree, bitmaps, and a long etc), try different problems like database reporting and read "Code Complete" AND "The Nature of Code". You are up to a great start, but got a long way to go to call it "Comprehensive"

Broad foundation? not really, no. Just today's popular areas of front end development. And today's popular is actually a very small area, common and with a lot of hype, but just a relatively small section of front end development

Great project... keep going, there is much to discover!

<comment><USER14> Not it has not, yes it has. Web development is for many intents and purposes now the equivalent of software development. That there are other areas of interest (embedded, systems software, application development and so on) does not detract from the fact that if you want to do software development web development is more than likely your point of entry and it's a field wide enough and deep enough that you could easily lose several careers in it.

So for her it is a broad foundation to jump off of, more so than assembly language programming or toying around with clojure.

<comment><USER15> I hate the argument that you have to dive into some complex language to really "understand" programming --

Some people just like to build stuff; much akin to someone who might just want to change the oil in their car. You would never ask them to build an entire transmission for their first project.

<comment><USER16> Sure, you don't "have to" but you most likely do.

To understand something implies some grasp of scope and size. And if you're continually working on toy problems, you'll never encounter problems of the appropriate scope or issues of scale.

So that's kind of what people mean when they say you need to work with something complex. To understand a complex system is to know which parts are important and which aren't and at which levels of examination.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Congratulations, Jennifer. I really appreciate the lessons learned here.

Like my favorite college professor (and I'm sure many others, as it is a fairly popular quote) would say: Sometimes you have something that looks really ugly and gross. You can liken it to having to eat a slimy, bumpy frog. The best way to eat the frog, is just to swallow it. Once you get in the habit of swallowing your frogs, the rest of your day looks great.

I think I'm going to apply the 180 small projects in 180 days to many different ideas. For example, I enjoy cooking. I will probably start a project to cook one meal from every country on earth every day for ~180 (196) days. I've done it so far on weekends, but I think speeding the tempo will help significantly. It forces me to practice, saves me $$ I would otherwise spend eating out, and grows my spice cabinet.

Who knows, I might continue it with bread, websites, meditation, or whatever else.

<comment><USER18> I linked this above, but it's so directly relevant to your idea that I thought I should re-link it here: check out the Julie/Julia project, which was one woman doing approximately the same thing with cooking, albeit on a more focused topic:

[http://web.archive.org/web/20021217011704/http://blogs.salon...](http://web.archive.org/web/20021217011704/http://blogs.salon.com/0001399/2002/08/25.html)

(As a side note, I _love_ this idea, and would cheerfully jump into doing it myself were I not already rather overcommitted... From having cooked various world food banquets, I can tell you that you'll learn a HELL of a lot very quickly from doing this. Great idea: blog it!)

<comment><USER17> You know, I might as well throw it up on a blog. I need writing practice, photography practice, food shopping practice and cooking practice. It also helps keep me motivated!

Thanks for the Julie/Julia project link. I have been considering going through Thomas Keller's great books in a similar way as well. I have Bouchon Bakery, and I've made probably 20% of what's in there. I haven't found anything that disappoints yet.

<comment><USER18> Cooool. Oddly, Keller was the person who sprang to mind for me too.

If you do this, definitely blog it and let me know - hughhancock on Twitter - I'd love to read about how it goes.

<comment><USER19> > Oddly, Keller was the person who sprang to mind for me too.

Then you will probably enjoy [http://carolcookskeller.blogspot.co.uk/](http://carolcookskeller.blogspot.co.uk/) whose author made every single recipe in the French Laundry Cookbook. (Good writing, too.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Dunno how good a coder she is, but she has it locked down as a marketer. How many HN #1s this woman has?!

</comment><comment><USER21> The project was an awesome undertaking, and completing it successfully is brilliant. Jennifer clearly has an aptitude for taking an idea for a small website from conception to completion quickly. That's a heck of a skill.

But it's not a skill that makes a good web developer. Web development is, in the most part, the easiest kind of development. In 15 years of doing this stuff I can state with some authority that 99% of websites are simple CRUD applications. Web development doesn't challenge your coding skills much. Occasionally it does, but only if you get in to either a product company or an agency that does fun things. Most don't.

The most important skills for a web developer are the ability to talk to a client, see a good solution based on an existing platform (Wordpress, Magento, Pyro, Backbone, etc), and implement it in an organised and maintainable way. Skills most coders see as dull. Spend the next 180 days learning how to do the "boring" side of business analysis, project management, simple _admin_ stuff and then you'll be a brilliant web developer. Most of the people in the industry are terrible at that stuff.

<comment><USER22> >>>But it's not a skill that makes a good web developer. Web development is, in the most part, the easiest kind of development. In 15 years of doing this stuff I can state with some authority that 99% of websites are simple CRUD applications. Web development doesn't challenge your coding skills much. Occasionally it does, but only if you get in to either a product company or an agency that does fun things. Most don't.

Quite baseless, actually. While you just think web development as general CRUD but there are many aspects of web development that are challenging. It might not challenge you for smart algorithms, low level optimizations, or a clever recursion but what about a elegant UI, thinking about user experience, optimizing server performance, reducing page load time and many more.

Saying that "X programming is easy, real programming is Y" is a bit immature to be honest.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I think the coolest thing about watching the project is that some of the ideas are like, actually good ideas. Maybe not huge ideas, but they're good ideas. I especially like Open Note. I always thought the bottleneck for Jennifer would be thinking of 180 ideas in time to make them into websites, but nope!

<comment><AUTHOR> I really like Open Note as well and it's definitely on the table for a more fleshed out reboot in the coming weeks.

Toward the end of the project, I started having trouble coming up with ideas that I could do in just one day. I started getting really excited about building bigger, more involved projects. That's when I knew 180 days was exactly the right time-frame for the project.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> The fact that she achieved her goal is just amazing enough...but this quote from the OP leaves me even more awestruck:

> _Keep coding! The end of my 180 websites in 180 days project marks the > beginning of the rest of my life as a coder. The project certainly hasn't > given me a comprehensive understanding of software development, but it has > laid a broad foundation for me to jump off of. I plan to work on a couple of > more complex websites that take more than a day to complete._

I know people who've taken a semester basic web dev class, built a few sites, and already think they've got a handle on things. Jennifer made so many things, in so many ways, that she's learned not just how to build websites, but that she still has a lot to learn.

A really stellar example for web devs of all skill levels.

</comment><comment><USER25> Wow, this is the total opposite of me. I just spent weeks setting up the perfect development environment, instead of getting actual work done. I need to rethink the way I work.

<comment><USER26> I feel you there buddy, gotta get the whole (yeoman, bower, grunt, angularjs, batarang, postman, karma, typescript, git, git deployment, ci, visual studio support, assorted js librariers) setup ready to kick some ass.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> This is incredible. I've been coding for more than 10 years and have been going incredibly slow, only coding when having a good idea. I just wish I had the time to do this to learn node.js and backbone...

<comment><USER28> There's always time! Wake up an hour earlier, get more disciplined, stay up an hour later, reorganize a weekend to squeeze in a few more hours there.

If you truly want to learn something, you can make the time for it. I went from being a PHP programmer, to learning Scheme, to learning Erlang, to learning Haskell, to now looping back and leveling up on my Mathematics education and writing abilities (all while holding full-time jobs, building a startup, etc...)

Next up is learning how to design websites artistically (I'm not a designer!). Learning how to sketch, combine colors, make vector graphics, etc...

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Okay now build an e-commerce web site that can handle thousands of transactions on a daily basis and can talk to internal systems like CRM, warehousing, and manufacturing.

I'll be honest here. Coding was fun when I was young, but now I code for the money. So stay young Ms. Dewalt - don't become a cynical bastard like me (us?).

<comment><USER30> Evidence of why I tend to lurk on HackerNews. Some of you lot are insufferable sometimes.

<comment><USER31> Agreed. This tendency has been really noticeable lately. No constructive criticism, no insight or analysis. Just pure negativity.

I really think that what OP did is great and very few people could have done something similar.

<comment><USER32> Some of the insanely pretentious people on here drive me crazy. It's like the guy who sat next to you in class and always derailed class with someone inane humblebrag or argument with a professor or classmate.

It's like a lifelong inferiority complex that manifests as the need to constantly promote yourself and never be happy for anyone else.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> One quote springs to mind, given Jennifer's background as an artist, and the fact that key to her success has been finishing things and releasing them to the world, over and over again:

 _" Real artists ship."_ \- Steve Jobs

</comment><comment><USER33> I seriously wish I could do this. Does she ever talk about how it's possible for her to afford to do this? 10 hours a day learning sounds great but really isn't feasible for (I'm guessing) a very large majority of people.

<comment><USER34> One way I've heard personal/professional development described is as follows: "You have two jobs (three if you have a family). You put in ~40 hours/week for your employer, and ~20 hours/week for yourself. In those 20 hours, you work on yourself (both physically and mentally). Exercise, read books, learn new things, develop new skills, improve yourself. Ten hours per day is probably not realistic if you work full time (unless you can overlap your time somehow). An hour before and after work, along with some free time on the weekends should be enough to get started.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> She coded an iOS app called ruHot in 2009. Lot's of dedication getting 180 sites done in 180 days. Not a whole lot of dedication to honesty though.

<comment><AUTHOR> I drew the graphics for the splash screen and donated my iPhone to the cause. My two friends did the coding.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I'm confused about the word Coder. I have found most website developement is just following directions, and memorizing a lot of man made terms.

If you put out a lot of ROR websites, or write Java scripts you can call yourself a "Coder", but I still feel that the term Coder belongs to Programmers. I can put up a website, but programming from scratch, is beyond my attention span, and maybe intellect?

I don't know why we need to glamorize the things we learn in life: Coder=website developer, automotive technician=mechanic. I once hade a girlfriend refer to herself as a Professional Photographer, but she never took a picture without moving from the little square setting.

She was beyond irritating at dinner.

I appalaud this woman. I applaud the person who paid for the apartment. I'm still a bit skeptical though. I have a feeling she might have had a live in coach? I'm sorry, but I've met too many people who leave out details. As I once told a customer, I've never net a women who was interested in reballing a Nvida Chip in a faulty motherboard.

Save, any masoginistic claims. It's more about our society, and the need, or quest for a title in life. "What do you do?" is played out, and trite. I've known peope who spend their whole life looking for a title. You will probably have many titles in life if you took a few chances.

So if you ever bump into me in a bar please don't ask me, "What do you do?" I might respond by throwing up on your trendy Sneakers?

<comment><USER37> Coder != website developer, methinks. There is a world beyond the web, after all.

At any rate, the word "coder" is just so... _ugh_... you may as well get right to the point and simply refer to yourself as a brogrammer. "Coder", "coding", all of that, it just sounds so wannabe-hip. I cannot possibly be the only person who feels that way.

<comment><USER38> "Coding" has history:

[http://catb.org/jargon/html/C/code.html](http://catb.org/jargon/html/C/code.html)

code 2. v. To write code. In this sense, always refers to source code rather than compiled. "I coded an Emacs clone in two hours!" This verb is a bit of a cultural marker associated with the Unix and minicomputer traditions (and lately Linux); people within that culture prefer v. 'code' to v. 'program' whereas outside it the reverse is normally true.

<comment><USER37> Thanks for the background. I understand that there is more to "coding"/"coder" than I implied, it's just seems that the words have become so appropriated that I now instantly associate them with the whole "brogrammer" thing.

<comment><USER38> Well, I'm gonna try to hang on to it; it's what my parents used when I was growing up.

<comment><USER37> Lucky you :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Give her some time and she will eventually create a simple app that blows up. Obviously, she is extremely disciplined, focused, creative and most importantly, she has a story (fully documented)... and the press eats this shit up.

</comment><comment><USER40> I unfortunately have some doubts about the authenticity of the claims made. I know other people have already shared a similar opinion but I'd like to candidly provide my own in the event a beginner, intermediate, or even aspiring programmer happens to read this.

I often teach programming. Not formally in school, but to friends and family who come to me to learn. When any of them begin to learn, there are always, always trivial roadblocks that the student seems to hit.

My brother, who is a very smart person, was beginning to learn Python, and going through Codecademy. He must have spent at least tens of hours on it. The simplest things he just didn't grok immediately. For example, the different between variables, strings, and symbols. He would type, for example:

        print hello world

or

        name = john
        message = my name is + john

That's only the beginning. The idea of data types, the concept that "truth" and "falsity" could be encapsulated in a manipulable piece of data called a "boolean" (which he would pronounce Boe Lean) were definitely not within arm's reach. Functions were even more troublesome.

It wasn't just my brother. I was explaining to a friend, who is a very competent hardware guy, what a lambda function is. The idea that functions can be seen as data themselves. He eventually got it, but it took lots of explaining. And even after that, the small programs he wrote employing his newly found knowledge were riddled with bugs, formatting issues, style issues, and so on.

It wasn't just my students, it was me as well. My first programs were something like

        10 REM MY FIRST PROGRAM
        20 PRINT "WHAT IS YOUR NAME?"
        30 INPUT N
        40 PRINT "HELLO ", N
        50 GOTO 10

In fact, this program didn't even work in whatever BASIC implementation I was using. I just didn't get why. It turns out I needed to add the '$' sign to my variables to denote that they're strings.

When I was writing code for doing arbitrary precision arithmetic, I was representing the numbers as strings of digits: "12345". I was translating between digit characters and decimal value using the CHR and VAL functions of the language. When I was first introduced to ALLOCATE, typed arrays, etc. it simply did not click and took a while. Pointers, the heap, the stack, BYREF, BYVAL, FREE?

If I haven't made the point clear, there are a lot of things even we professional programmers take for granted, and things that we have long forgotten were hard, which those starting out with programming have major issues with, and almost deny the possibility of making something substantial in even a single day. Since I regularly teach programming, I am constantly reminded of them.

While I suppose it's possible to achieve the amazing feat that Jennifer claims on her own and without personal instruction, it just seems unlikely. If it's true, it's great for self-promotion of course, but I don't want it to give the aspiring programmer the idea that they should be able to reasonably accomplish the same things she did. What she accomplished wasn't just picking up programming, it was:

        * programming in multiple languages & paradigms
        * understanding how they relate to each other
        * setting up programming environments
        * setting up and understanding 3rd party frameworks and libraries
        * being able to effectively communicate with programmers
        * understanding source control and deployment

and then a lot more application specific things. That is a really tall order.

If the work was genuinely done by an artist with no technical background with little outside help, then I would consider achievement incredibly brilliant. If it was not—which is how I feel—then I think the audience deserves a bit of honesty.

<comment><USER41> I find this perspective odd because as a self taught programmer I didn't bother learning or trying to learn any of the formalisms you mention like 'variables, strings, and symbols'.

I learned by having a concrete project goal motivated by personal desire that I wanted to accomplish by any means possible. This usually came down to copy/pasting existing code from the internet and fiddling with the values via trial/error without necessarily understanding the inner workings.

I've had the experience of walking through the "Learn X the hard way" programming books, as well as Codecademy, with some non-programmer friends who ostensibly 'want to learn coding' and they invariably make extremely slow progress like you describe, because without their own self-motivated project it's just blind symbol manipulation.

<comment><USER40> With respect to the formalisms bit: I didn't expect him to understand deeply about those kinds of formalisms. I don't expect most beginning programmers to care, even. But the conflation of the ideas was apparent in his (faulty) intuition of them, and it impeded comprehension. In order to use a string, you must, at some level, have some sort of understanding that it is data. How your understanding manifests itself is different.

The copy/paste/fiddle process can work when you have some sort of understanding _what_ to copy, paste, fiddle, _and_ search for. Developing that understanding so quickly also leads me to doubt.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> This is really impressive, not just the speed and quality of the learning, but the stamina!

</comment><comment><USER43> It's cool and inspiring, but having clicked through some of the sites I think it is actually an arts project, rather than an attempt at learning coding. As an art installation it works very well, and Jennifer said she is an artist originally, so I suspect that is what is really behind it.

I'd reconsider learning coding that way, though, because too many sites seem to have little enduring value. I suspect by tackling a "deeper" project for 180 days one could learn coding just as well, but have more to show for. Unless you are an artist, in which case this result is great.

The most inspiring aspect for me is actually the sticking to a plan for 180 days.

</comment><comment><USER44> Inspiring. I definitely have a tendency to try to do everything at once n my private projects. I'm using 2 week deadlines to help me keep focus, but after those two weeks, I've got a few features of the project, not the entire thing.

Getting a finished thing out the door every day would be a tremendous challenge. With my background, I should easily be able to do a single website in a single day, but I don't think I've ever done that (I've done it in 3 days once).

Maybe I'll give this a try. Maybe just for two weeks. 8 simple but finished sites.

</comment><comment><USER45> It's a great start.

Jennifer has started her journey with a bootstrap training. Now she has to learn, try, apply, fail and success again and again. After years with failed gigs, succeeded gigs, great works , bad works, half works, long works, short works and many other types of works done looking back and seeing what a rookie she was, she will laugh and tell herself, "Shoot why did I ever started this career" :) Nope just joking. She will just tell herself "I was zero then and still approaching 1"

Well done Jennifer. Good luck on your new journey.

</comment><comment><USER46> I'm reluctant to reference a scene from a film because it seems too cliche. But it's analogically relevant so here it is (Matrix: Neo vs Morpheus):

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j82GKTgVDkw](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j82GKTgVDkw) (check the relevant quotes down below)

it's relevant because what we do on the Web is _virtual_. What we create for others to experience and use can seem magical. Every time someone creates a new product, a previously unthought-of experience, we're baffled, in awe. We're in shock even though we live a bit at the forefront of development (relatively). We feel empowered knowing that the Web is the one place we can potentially be Batman.

What she set herself to do is grandiose and beyond what she thought to be capable of doing. Yet she shook off the negative inner chatter and kept trucking along. So I think there's something positive to learn from this for _all of us_.

The work we do as product developers will always have a mundane or labor intensive component. This is where most of us take the "perseverance cap" off and start procrastinating. Not all the work is going to be fun and exciting. But the reward is awesome and packed with a healthy dose of endorphin.

Relevant quotes:

* Don't think you are; know you are!

* Come on! Stop trying to hit me and hit me!

* do you think that's air you're breathing now?

* Do you really think me being strong or faster has anything to do with my muscles in this place?

</comment><comment><USER47> I am wondering how does this compare to attending a university's semester? (I am saying semester and not course since 180 days are 6 months)

Please don't answer with the obvious "she didn't study algorithms or computation complexity", we all know she didn't. I am asking about the core issue.

</comment><comment><USER48> I would encourage her to try things other than web development. Make a desktop application, or a program in C, or do some performance coding on an embedded system, or write a webserver from scratch, or wrestle with writing a program with multiple threads. You might say this is too much to expect from a beginner, but _no one_ would have said that 20 years ago. It only seems hard because of how easy web development is today.

Nowadays we have so much scaffolding to work from that it's easy to mistake results for software engineering skill. Many of these projects are mash-ups.

I do admire her dedication, it's a rare quality, but I can't help but think this is the easy way out. Or maybe I'm just getting old.

<comment><USER43> It's getting difficult to justify coding anything else, though.

<comment><USER38> No it isn't.

<comment><USER38> There are a lot of things to do that have value that aren't web. There are a lot of things to do that you can be paid for that aren't web. There is some overlap. If it's hard to justify working on any of these things, the parent is going to have to explain why.

<comment><USER43> Mention some of those things, then.

I suppose programming Microcontrollers for appliances, but I have never seen job postings for that (although they must exist). Might be because I didn't look at C jobs, though.

What I meant is also that most apps these days can be coded as web apps, and it is difficult to justify not doing so.

<comment><USER38> Well, I'm working in HFT - not very many exchanges speak HTTP.

Web browser tech itself quite obviously can't all be built as a web app.

A lot of things _could_ be built as a web app but it's plain silly to - <USER2> don't want to lose access to my text editor when I lose networking (I could run a server on my local machine, but that's several layers of abstraction that clearly aren't necessary and I'm not confident they're helpful).

To be sure, there are lots of things where a web app is quite appropriate - but a view that that's all there is seems myopic.

<comment><USER43> I'd argue those are pretty niche. I certainly wouldn't focus on browser development unless I worked for one of the three or four big browser vendors.

Text editors have been moved onto the web, and probably more and more text editing is being done online, for example in Wordpress blogs.

Nothing against "native" text editors, but again, how promising would it be to start out developing a new text editor these days? It still happens, but it is rare enough to get the top HN slot when it happens.

<comment><USER38> Here's a secret - the vast majority of programming done in this world is "niche" for some niche, web and non-web. It doesn't mean the relevant skills are niche.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Non-tech BA/PM dude. This is the more inspirational (or actionable / get my ass off and just get some projects loping around in my head done) that is bookmarked vs all of the brain-dump 100x links of "how to" build _x.

The semantic argument of "coder" | "programmer" | :developer" | "computer scientist"| versus "built some cool stuff in ~1/2 a year, and now am continuing the journey", is hilarious in juxtaposition of "everyone should code" as a meme or call to arms.

So, should only specific persons of an aptitude to sophistry be admitted as "positive" related to "learning to code"?

</comment><comment><USER50> _I found learning to code a little like putting together a giant jigsaw puzzle. You can grab one tile and study it very carefully, but it's not going to tell you very much about where it goes or how the whole puzzle looks. You've got to start collecting a bunch of tiles and piecing them together for you start to get the big picture._

This is quite interesting. I think I do this sometimes. When I started working in finance and I remember getting really confused about how people use the word 'exposure'. Looking back it feels like I obsessed too much over one piece of the jigsaw.

</comment><comment><USER51> I too have went a similar journey - I went from my first programming job as a junior frontend dev to senior frontend dev (with full stack capabilities) in ~10 months. I'm pretty happy to see that someone else has taken the initiative to learn & grow.

Does it matter that she had help? No, the end goal is what matters. Some public acknowledgement would probably be good as a thanks to those who have helped her, but I don't view it as a huge deal - that is between her and them, and they are probably savvy enough to come forward if they want to.

<comment> FLUX-YOU If I may ask, what skills and how many projects did you have when you joined as a junior?

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> This reminds me of a recent story on China's twitter alike website. A girl (actually a model) decided to start learning python. She kept posting progress, asking questions and sometimes a photo of her. A ton of coders followed, gave advice and answered the questions everyday. One month or two later the girl became someone's girl friend. He is probably the only non-coder guy among those followers.

</comment><comment><USER53> Thanks, my years of steady learning seems so lackluster now :P

Ryan --- [http://www.radiumcrm.com](http://www.radiumcrm.com)

</comment><comment><USER54> Please post your resume on LinkedIn and stop talking about you ! The motto is "stop talking, start doing". What you did is not extraordinary, you just had time to lose and that's what you did. Basically you just procrastinated 180 days. If you want to code, then do useful applications, not another tic tac toe.

</comment><comment><USER55> I wish I could create awesome things via copy and paste. They almost always seem to come out awfully wrong.

I think I'm more mentally wired to learn things incrementally, than to act as a a prism as Jennifer has done, so gloriously in 180 days.

Thank you for sharing this, I think HN has needed something like this.

</comment><comment><USER56> Very impressed with the notion as a whole and indeed some of the 1 day projects.

I'd be very interested to see how you would adjust to a "professional" web development environment. I suspect well.

If you are ever in London looking for a job give me a shout.

</comment><comment><USER57> The idea of more fine art people moving into coding is definitely exciting for me.

I've been trying to encourage my friends in the sciences to learn code too. We'll definitely all benefit from the expanded perspectives.

</comment><comment><USER58> Hey Jen, did you ever do a blog post on your hosting setup for 180 websites which mix simple html/css/js + Rails + Node? That would make an interesting blog post too.

<comment><AUTHOR> I haven't written anything about it but I will definitely consider it. That would be a good way for me to fully internalize how the stack actually works. I bet I've come across a few weird things given my unconventional use, too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> Jennifer, did you documented your journey? It could out sell some of the big names in the training niche. If you documented then would you like to share that with HN community please?

Thanks.

<comment><USER60> She did: [http://blog.jenniferdewalt.com/archive](http://blog.jenniferdewalt.com/archive)

<comment><USER59> Thanks. When she was at 115 days, she wrote a blog post and it pretty much summarises her learning path.

[http://blog.jenniferdewalt.com/post/56319597560/im- learning-...](http://blog.jenniferdewalt.com/post/56319597560/im-learning-to- code-by-building-180-websites-in-180)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> It will be really interesting to see how Jennifer manages the transition from learning to working in the industry. Hopefully she will update us on that part of the journey.

Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER62> This is very inspiring and makes believe I can do it now. Thank you for sharing and thank you even more for the discipline it took you to do this.

</comment><comment><USER63> Very good stuff. Don't let up!

</comment><comment><USER64> Congrats to Jennifer. Much respect.

</comment><comment><USER65> Fantastic commitment. Gives me inspiration to roll up my sleeves and start my next project.

</comment><comment><USER66> Major props goes out to Jennifer. I agree. The best way to learn is to JFDI. Good stuff!

</comment><comment><USER67> Awesome, someone needs to make 180 Android apps within 180 days now. :)

<comment><USER68> [https://code.google.com/p/android-30days- apps/](https://code.google.com/p/android-30days-apps/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> Congratulations on getting the 180 websites done.

</comment><comment><USER70> That's just down right cool

<comment><USER71> Too bad it is most likely not true! But it's a down right cool PR move

<comment><USER72> Why do you say that?

<comment><USER73> Because it's completely unrealistic that a person who has no programming experience, even worse even no basic HTML experience will have familiarity with a Gemfile, how to hide access keys from a repository, etc.

If you think that that information is something you can understand, internalize and actually make work in less than 5 days you're delusional.

<comment><USER61> It doesn't say she understands it, could just be a copy paste from a tutorial right?

<comment><USER73> I highly doubt that. When I first started programming it took me upwards of a day to have a simple Windows Form that had two textboxes and displayed a Message Box saying "Hello" \+ textBox1.Text + " and " \+ textBox2.Text. Even copy and pasting didn't work.

<comment><USER61> Perhaps the state of tutorials and online help (stack overflow etc) are much better than in your day. I know they are compared to mine.

Perhaps she coppied the whole project and then just went back through it, changing things and if they didn't work reverted.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Inspiring. Thank you.

</comment><comment><USER74> lol

</comment><comment><USER75> Her ability to attract attention was remarkable. She should become a marketer or spokesperson, not a coder.

<comment><USER76> Your ability to be a dick is remarkable. You should be a mall cop, not a coder.

<comment><USER77> Careful champ - that was not necessarily a snarky comment. A more charitable reading would be that the andyl thinks that the OP could make more money / have a better career by focusing on what is clearly an intuitive gift that is highly valued in the employment market...

<comment><USER78> The phrase "not a coder" at the end of the comment signals snark pretty heavily. Suggesting that someone who spent the last 180 days coding should not be a coder is a very rude and dismissive. The OP could have easily praised her marketing savvy without suggesting she should not be a coder.

<comment><USER6> >The OP could have easily praised her marketing savvy without suggesting she should not be a coder.

If someone is training to become a janitor and they have excellent marketing skills, it would not be rude to say he/she/it should not be a janitor and should be a marketer instead. You are trying so desperately to be offended by something that doesn't have to be offensive.

<comment><USER79> Nailed it

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER80> This is like watching some n0ob at the gym do warm up reps with my maximum weight. I'm impressed, inspired even, but also feeling like I'm underachieving. Good for her.

<comment><USER6> So to continue the analogy, she will now get bored with it and move on to the next interesting thing. Don't feel bad unless she continues at that pace for the next 5 years.

It's easy to be excited about something new. It's not so easy to be excited when you've picked all of the low hanging fruit and you have to do the dirty work for a living.

</comment></comment><comment><USER81> This is so far beyond couture and glam-show that it's ineffable how lame it is. HN, grow up. Lets see hacking posts, not posts by "hacks."

<comment><USER82> Really? HN is full of fluff, and this post is decidedly un-fluffy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER83> If a man did this, would it generate the same publicity? I am genuinely wondering, I'm not trying to troll.

<comment><USER16> Yes and no, depending on your metric. If you look at it from the "hobbyist does cool hobby thing, gets a lot of upvotes" then yes. But if you look at it from the "minority does X cool thing" then the answer is no.

I think there is some novelty that gender is being wrapped up into this. But I don't think a man doing the same thing would be completely ignored.

I'm in the middle of studying a foreign language, so I am quite sympathetic to the "must do something every day" challenge. Man or woman it's quite commendable, no matter how small the feat.

</comment></comment><comment><USER84> I know I'm changing this by posting, but heh.

[http://i.imgur.com/4s4tlwr.png](http://i.imgur.com/4s4tlwr.png)</comment>


Colleges Want Students with Character, but Can't Measure It (2014) - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/12/feedback/colleges-want-students-with-character-but-cant-measure-it <comment><USER2> There is a famous old military quote on this topic:

"There are clever, diligent, stupid, and lazy officers. Usually two characteristics are combined. Some are clever and diligent -- their place is the General Staff. The next lot are stupid and lazy -- they make up 90 percent of every army and are suited to routine duties. Anyone who is both clever and lazy is qualified for the highest leadership duties, because he possesses the intellectual clarity and the composure necessary for difficult decisions. One must beware of anyone who is stupid and diligent -- he must not be entrusted with any responsibility because he will always cause only mischief. "

The qualities of a student and an engineer vs. say, a good hacker or product manager are wildly different. For a large organization, you need reliable and focused people to keep it running, where for a startup, you need to find and actualize outlier potential.

<comment><USER3> > qualified for the highest leadership duties

The problem is that it's hard to stay lazy when everyone wants you to make more decisions and you're not clever enough to event an AI to do it for you.

<comment><USER2> Lazy can be fixed. The others, not so much.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> "class-neutral" sounds like code-word for "the most direct measure of competency doesn't serve our agenda, so we will throw it out". Should colleges find people who have integrity, honesty, grit and determination, commitment to ideals? Sure, but I'm not sure that is what this is, because they wouldn't need to use "class-neutral" in that case. Talent at mathematics is class neutral, though prior training for it might not be.

If you want to raise a generation of mathematicians, scientists, and engineers, then "higher education" is for continuing the education they have already received and adding to it. Parents from different classes give their children different opportunities and levels of education, fact of life, higher education is for research and extending human knowledge beyond what normal institutions do, some classes may not be at that level, and that is okay, they should receive as much education as possible, but not at the expense of driving the state of the art. If you want to find those who are prodigies at mathematics, test their skill at that and hone their gift, regardless of what class they are.

<comment><USER5> > Parents from different classes give their children different opportunities > and levels of education...

I don't think this is true, at least they way you've worded it. Typically the only parents that have any control over their child's "opportunities and levels of education..." are those in the uppermost classes.

<comment> barrow-rider > opportunities and levels of education...

Plenty of opportunities and education without being sent to a private school. IIRC there was a study on kids and race and found that black kids and white kids did the same through most of elementary school, but the white kids get sent to summer camp, have an easier time scoring par-time jobs, are around people with broader vocabularies, and family and friends in different places which can score educational or employment opportunities down the line.

I didn't grow up particularly well off, but my dad had a subscription to The Economist, Time, and the local big-city newspaper. He'd read us articles at dinner and then we'd discuss, or just let us read them later -- which definitely had an impact. Grandma bought me a chemistry kit one year in middle school, which helped my science grades later.

None of this stuff was super expensive, certainly no where near private school costs, but it can absolutely make a difference.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Grit is not unknown in business and has similar problems with hiring. I helped a start up ran by some executives trying to pitch B average state school engineers as they reach senior status significantly faster than more competitive school graduates. HR depts in most tech companies pushed back as they like to hire top school candidates. Similarly as they pivoted to produce advanced hiring processes to recommend these students, HRs refused to lower their days and days of interviews that have low completion rates.

HR is almost always the failure in hiring and I am sure the recruiting/admissions will fight against whatever 'grit' factors and measurement is figured out as they still feel good personally about good grades and test scores.

<comment><USER7> That's because HR does not have the same incentives as the business has, any hire that's even slightly below average can be blamed on HR, and spending more and more resources on "the difficult job hunt" also justifies their budget.

When people setup departments that definitely dont have each other's best interests in mind, its not surprise that fight.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> "Grit" is basically just Big 5 Personality Traits repackaged in a way that sounds good, but doesn't predict success better than established things like trait Conscientiousness or IQ.

Here's one article that summarizes some of the problems: [https://digest.bps.org.uk/2017/09/15/lets-dial-down-the- hype...](https://digest.bps.org.uk/2017/09/15/lets-dial-down-the-hype-about- grit-new-paper-finds-no-association-with-creative-achievement/)

</comment><comment><USER9> So. Much. Bullshit.

Colleges want students that would pay the most money which is why they are heavily recruiting out of state and international students -- out of state paying out of state fees but potentially qualifying for some scholarships while international students paying a total rack rate for tuition + housing + meal plan with no scholarships.

The rest is sprinkles.

<comment><USER10> Sorry, no, I work in higher education and that's not how higher education works. We recruit international students because we want a more diverse class. Some of them even get merit scholarships from the college.

Right now, the drive is for Hispanic students from the southern and western states, because that demographic is where the growth in college students will be domestically.

<comment><USER9> Hispanic students for Southern and Western states pay out of state tuition unless they are resident of the same states that colleges are in. So TX university recruiting a Hispanic student from AZ is recruiting an out of state student that pays out of state fees.

Merit scholarships issued to international students are akin to mattress stores discounts - increase list price via fees and discount those fees not to mention that as a condition of college scholarship one agrees that all additional money he or she gets as scholarships obtained separately from a university or a college that money goes back into repaying the scholarship that was offered by a college.

So say that tuition is $30k a year, room and board is $20k a year and fees are $3k a year for a student from Poland ( for in state the rate is $20k/$12k/$3k - room and board is $12k because the school wants in state students to live on campus and it knows that the dorms are 400% more expensive than the off campus housing that the parents of the student would be able to easily find out). Merit scholarship ( 5, for all 679 international students but with that 5 the school says it offers merit scholarships across the board ) is 50% discount on tuition. So the international student now has to pay $15k+$20k+$3k to come to the school vs in state student with no merit scholarship paying $20+$12+$3k. Oh, look, we diversified and we got more money per student! And we also got the student to sign that should he or she _get_ a scholarship from some other organization, the first 15k of it would go back to replenish the merit scholarship fund of the school.

Source: personal experience.

P.S. I _cannot_ wait until the college system in the US collapses. It would be glorious to watch everyone who participated in a financial rape of 17-18 year olds and their families being financially ruined in their 40-60s.

P.P.S. Next time during the college administration all hands make administration answer why the college has different tuition rates for in state, out of state and international students and why it does not offer scholarships/grants/discounts uniformly to everyone.

<comment> barrow-rider > why the college has different tuition rates for in state, out of state and > international students

Because if it is a public state university then the in-state tuition rates are subsidized by the state. The state legislature can also adjust these rates, set caps or minimums for in-state students, and enforce other rules as they see fit -- they're paying the bills, after all.

> why it does not offer scholarships/grants/discounts uniformly to everyone

My state did offer a grant to everyone -- a small one, but one nonetheless.

Outside of that, why would you offer grants or scholarships to folks who a) aren't eligible, and b) who aren't residents of your state or country? Why would Texas give money to someone who is going to go back to PA, or WA, or China after college? They have subsidized Unis in their state, and if they don't want to go there they can help subsidize the schools in a different state by paying the non-resident rate.

Why would you get access to a scholarship for, say, black students if you're not black?

That out-of-state and international tuition is higher than in-state isn't new, and arguably isn't the issue. The issue is that costs, for all parties, ramping up dramatically while the benefit of the degree (salaries) in the work place are diminishing.

<comment><USER9> > Because if it is a public state university then the in-state tuition rates > are subsidized by the state. The state legislature can also adjust these > rates, set caps or minimums for in-state students, and enforce other rules > as they see fit -- they're paying the bills, after all.

GP's claim was that it is all recruiting is in the name of the diversity of the student body and future student demographics. That's trivially observably false.

Colleges and universities are concentrating their recruitment offers on the most profitable students, which are the international and out of state students because for every non-state student they get to charge more money.

That's why the TX university is interested in recruiting AZ students, rather than TX students: student with the same demographic from AZ will bring more revenue to TX university vs the TX student.

<comment><USER10> >GP's claim was that it is all recruiting is in the name of the diversity of the student body and future student demographics. That's trivially observably false.

>Colleges and universities are concentrating their recruitment offers on the most profitable students, which are the international and out of state students because for every non-state student they get to charge more money.

I work at a private university, our tuition is the same regardless where you come from. Nevertheless, we recruit heavily from domestic students and international students, each of which have special populations we incentivize to make a class more diverse, whether it be economically or ethnically.

You're welcome to believe what you want, and, certainly, in the divestment of the public interest in funding higher education, public schools are feeling the financial pinch and may be seeking out more students who pay the full rate, but private (not-for-profit) colleges and universities for the most part do not engage in such tactics.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> village-idiot Grit is an extremely important personality trait, the most important imho, but you only get to see it when you see someone fail or struggle. It's not easy to determine with an individual, let alone with a population.

<comment><USER11> Kids don't struggle and fail? I think we all know who's who on the Grit scale, by the time they reach college.

<comment><USER12> I don't think that's true. When I arrived at college I was in a group where most, including myself, had coasted to being one of the top in their previous classes with minimal effort. Now we all had to actually work. My class of 80 was reduced to 40 by the end of the first term.

<comment> village-idiot I see that a lot with kids who were labeled as talented or gifted early on.

The question is: can you develop grit, or is it natural? Did you respond to the new pressures in college, or were you uncovering a latent skill the remaining 40 did not have?

I genuinely don't know.

<comment><USER13> I'm pretty sure it's a skill to be developed, although certainly some find it easier to develop, and some use the new freedoms of adulthood to choose not to develop the skill.

Based on my experience, and that of my peer group, I've decided it's important to try to make sure children have some experience with things that are hard, so they can start developing skills to handle it. For some (most?), this may not require anything extra; for others, it requires extra effort to provide activities that are actually a challenge, but also engaging.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> "[Applicants] shouldn't be discounted because [they don't] have one exceptional skill, nor should [they] be propped up because this lack of one exceptional skill misleads us into thinking [they are] succeeding only through [their] own effort like some sort of [academic] Horatio Alger character. It's bad for [applicants], it's very bad for [applicants] of color who never get the same breaks, and it's just bad for [education]. Period."

[https://www.draysbay.com/2018/8/13/17678388/tampa-bay-ray- jo...](https://www.draysbay.com/2018/8/13/17678388/tampa-bay-ray-joey-wendle- hustle-stereotypes-racism-and-white-privilege-in-baseball-broadcasting)

P.S. Headline should read, "Colleges Say They Want Students with Character..."

</comment><comment><USER15> So, in summary, these organizations are struggling with two related factors: 1) How do you predict the future? 2) How do you do that at scale?

In regards to 2) many of these educational places have decided for the past few decades that test criteria makes some sense. However, they have recently discovered that the testing metrics have been gamed. Therefore, as the metrics have become the goals unto themselves, their ability to accomplish 1) has been diminished to the point of uselessness. They are back at square one (or at least they were in 2014 when the article was written).

We all know that you really can't predict the future, that black swan events override all the metrics you could ever come up with. So, the article is talking about 'grit' as a metric that they could use instead, as it seems to predict the future a bit better than the SAT. Of course, we all know that the 'grit' metric will be gamed as well. There's a neuron firing somewhere in my head that is saying: Godel's Incompleteness Theorem, but I think it's a bit more base than that. The issue is that these higher ed places would LOVE to really dig deep into a person, but they've not the time or money to do that at scale.

I think, that like in many militaries and corporations, the issue is not the selection process, but the construction process. Given the right resources and support, you can actually turn lead into gold. It's that these institutions need to support, mentor, and trust their students. However, that is _very_ expensive and takes a long timeline to measure if it works at all. Let alone what to fix or improve upon. Inherently, it does not scale either. It's messy, personal, and complex. It's real and not well reflected in charts and tables, hence the bureaucrats dislike it as it has a null/negative effect on their careers.

Some good examples of such a process that actually does produce results are the Free Democratic Schools [0] though they tend to be very liberal arts focused. Specifically, I'd love to call out Deep Springs College [1] as a _prime_ example. St. John's College [2] is also structured well in the 'nurture' aspect.

[0][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_democratic_schools#Uni...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_democratic_schools#United_States)

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

[2][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._John%27s_College_(Annapoli...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._John%27s_College_\(Annapolis/Santa_Fe\))

</comment><comment><USER16> Maybe you really can't measure 'grit' unless you put the student through several orthogonal tests and see how he does for the worst.

e.g. to determine whether the monkey or the fish has more 'grit', ask the monkey how deep it can dive into the ocean depths, and ask the fish how high a tree can it climb.

<comment><USER17> You can measure grit. The military routinely does. It takes an ordeal like BUD/S.

<comment><USER18> eh, I would assume (hope) that the 'grit' required to do something physically unpleasant and the grit required to do something mentally unpleasant would be different sorts of things.

Some of the best tech workers I've known have been... pretty out of shape.

<comment><USER19> I saw a documentary about SAS recruits. (British special forces.) The instructors said that many recruits were in pretty bad shape and that it was still hard to tell who were going to make it. In the end, those who _just wouldn 't quit_ made it through.

<comment><USER18> Yeah, gym teachers love to express the same set of beliefs.

I personally think that's a lot like saying anyone who studies hard enough can become a great programmer. I mean, sure, in both cases, someone who doesn't try hard isn't going to make it, but most of us aren't going to become SEALs or Donald Knuth no matter how hard we train.

Really "someone who doesn't try hard enough isn't going to make it" is true of both and pretty important. From that perspective, if you know some of it is effort and some of it is innate, but you cant properly measure the innate part, you are best off telling everyone whatever it is that makes them try hardest.

(this, of course, is only true if you don't have to pay the cost of failure. Both businesses and sports coaches are really only concerned about picking out the very best. the washouts are on their own. An externality)

<comment><USER20> I think the SEALs analogy is a good one as I believe, absent cognitive or other significant impairment, that nearly anyone of average intelligence or better and a sincere drive to become great can become an excellent programmer.

Imagine what a BUD/S training might look like for programming. It would make struggling with SICP or the Dragon book look like a walk in a park.

SEALs represent about 1% of active duty Navy. That's elite but not singular level. Think about the vast swaths of terrible workers you find in any field, including ours. Whether they're poorly trained, lazy, just going through the motions, doing just enough to not get fired, I think you'll find it's easy to beat the bottom half of any cohort with a tiny amount of talent and modest amount of dedication.

I believe that when we come across the 1 in a million outlier (Knuth, Carmack, Gosling, Ritchie, et al) that those people combined a lot of raw talent with a lot of hard work.

But just getting to the 1 in 100 level? Hard work will take you a long, long way down that road, because most people simply aren't willing to put in that work.

<comment><USER18> >But just getting to the 1 in 100 level? Hard work will take you a long, long way down that road, because most people simply aren't willing to put in that work.

Tell me, do you have a 1 in 100 income? if it's all effort, why not?

<comment><USER21> Among developers? Adjusted for cost of living? Maybe? What's the number.

<comment><USER18> Hm. I was trying to make the point that it's difficult to get to the top 1% of anything competitive. I was pointing out that just getting to the top 1% of income among all americans is pretty difficult; but I think you are looking at around $421,926 a year, according to the first few reasonable-looking hits.

which kinda blows my point up; I know a bunch of married couples who do better than that in software, (I think it's a per-capita number) and even a few single earners (though in my circle, that's pretty rare) It's just not that much money compared to here and now.

Of course, I also think that you can't be a software developer at that level without an IQ approaching two standard deviations above average, but I recognize that's a pretty controversial view and I don't have supporting evidence.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Plenty Of Zip Codes For Form Auto-Completion - <AUTHOR> http://www.zippopotam.us/

<comment><USER2> Not everywhere has postal codes, please do not require them.

Love,

People-in-Ireland-tired-of-typing-fake-postal-codes

<comment><USER3> In theory, with an api like this you could easily figure that out and then customize the fields as needed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I wrote a gem for postal/area codes in the US that does mostly the same thing w/o the web request <http://github.com/jgv/area>

</comment><comment><USER5> Looks good. Just like ziptastic and all the others, but with international support. That's a real advantage.

I've always wanted to use such a library for my checkout forms and whatnot, but unfortunately it doesn't fit the typical UI paradigm.

If you _need_ the address info, you'll (almost) never ask for the zip code before the city and state, so the information has already been filled in before the user gets that far... and the country comes last.

Users are used to entering the address info in that natural order: street, city, state, zip, country (usually pre-set to your biggest userbase). I think the cognitive overhead of mixing that order up actually exceeds the effort of having them fill in all 3 fields.

The only place I could see you using something like this is if your are tailoring your services to a US-only userbase (so you can guarantee that a zip code is there and that the other info will not need to be manually entered). For example, we use ziptastic (at the server side for cross-domain reasons) at <http://gastomorrow.com/> which is a US-only service to guess the price of gas tomorrow in your area.

<comment><USER6> At least one user, me, is tired of your "typical UI paradigm" and tired of entering redundant information. 1\. Ask for country (if not known) allow user to override if it was automatically detected. 2\. Ask for zip, or other country specific postal code. 3\. Look up zip. Fill form in with details.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I find this very interesting, just being now into internationalizing a site of my own which requires specially this. One question for UK residents: is lack of "out codes" a problem?

Also, to the author(s) of zippopotam.us, if they're reading: \- How can we trust you're not going away any time soon? I don't see any pricing, so I assume this is all free? \- Related to the first point, I assume you don't want to be used by any high traffic site, since you probably don't have a lot of server power behind this. What's the plan?

<comment><USER8> What are you trying to do with the UK postal codes?

Address lookup or just validation?

For validation, there's an official regex (archived, but still useful) [http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/govtalk/schemasstandards/e-g...](http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/govtalk/schemasstandards/e-gif/datastandards/address/postcode.aspx).

For address lookup there are a couple of ways to go about it.

1\. You can buy the rights to the Royal Mail's database. You get to parse the sucker yourself. <http://www.poweredbypaf.com/end-user/products/paf-raw-data/>

2\. You can use a third party system, either over the web, or choose a solution you can host internally. Depending on the type of system you buy you pay by the lookup or by the user (mostly internally hosted systems).

<comment><USER9> You can get postcode/easting/northing for free using Ordnance Survey's Code- Point Open product [1]. That'll let you check a postcode exists, but it doesn't help with address auto-completion, as it doesn't give you a street name.

[1] [http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/oswebsite/products/code- poin...](http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/oswebsite/products/code-point-open/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> For Slovakia, the db doesn't seem to be complete. When I was looking for some source, I've found one one that has almost the same number of rows and also misses the ones I tried to find. There was also packed a db that is more complete and it might be a great idea to process and use that one. Both can be found here: <http://www.posta.sk/subory/322/psc-obci-a-ulic.zip> (zip contains 2 xml files)

<comment><USER11> In case your intention is to contribute zip codes, please go through the github repository <https://github.com/crowell/zippopotamus>

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I currently use Geonames to map ZIP codes to locality names, and find nearby ZIP codes/localities given a ZIP code. Can you explain why your service is preferable for me?

<comment><USER11> Not every website wants to go through the effort of collecting zip codes. We used geonames as our primary seed and its a great source but it isn't free.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Thank you to whomever did this. I'm always annoyed by any form that wants my zip and city and state. Why? Once you have the zip, then you have the city and state.

<comment><USER13> Some zip codes have more than one municipality within them.

For example: [https://tools.usps.com/go/ZipLookupResultsAction!input.actio...](https://tools.usps.com/go/ZipLookupResultsAction!input.action?resultMode=2&companyName=&address1=&address2=&city=&state=Select&urbanCode=&postalCode=21702&zip=)

<comment><USER14> The Cupertino zip code (95014) also brings up Monta Vista and Permanente, but I've never seen these two "cities" on a map nor met anyone who claims to be from there. I don't know if this is some artifact in the USPS database or they know something I don't.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> If anyone is interested in developing a similar service, then you can use the (free) zip code information provided by the US Census Bureau:

<http://www.census.gov/geo/www/tiger/zip1999.html>

However, please note that some information may be outdated. The US Postal Service now maintains the zip code data sources, but I'm not sure if you must pay for it.

</comment><comment><USER16> UK post codes are two part, something like A1 1AA. A1 identifies a geographic area, 1AA identifies a set of postal address in that area (its designed so each post code gets roughly the same amount of mail, so big organisations have an address to themselves).

Zippopotam.us only seems to deal with the first part, which is only of marginal utility.

</comment><comment><USER17> The JavaScript example uses CORS, which doesn't have universal browser support. (Older Opera, Old IE: <http://caniuse.com/cors>)

Any reason there isn't JSONP support?

</comment><comment><USER18> Spelling mistake in the header of the country-specific pages: Zippoptamus (e.g. <http://www.zippopotam.us/static/sample_us.html>)

</comment><comment><USER19> best name ever :)

</comment><comment><USER20> Thanks, Mate.</comment>


Jobs for Americans in Europe? - <AUTHOR> Hello everyone!  I thought if I didn't ask the collective of smart people in the tech world that I wouldn't be doing my proper due diligence.
I need to move to Europe for love, for adventure, for a change of pace.  I currently work for Cisco in Silicon Valley, and my experience is focused on QA of technology for big keynotes that Cisco does.
I'm currently working on developing my own iOS & ATV app as well as starting on python for the back end.
Does anyone know a company that would want to help bring an American with this sort of business first, tech savvy experience to Porto or Lisbon or Copenhagen?
Where would you suggest me to look?
Thank you! Will
P.S. If you want to see one of the keynotes I worked on: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEE8iM0uqbk <comment><USER2> The Americans I met who visited different part of Europe were not comfortable here. They said about different culture, everything is too slow, shops close too early, it was like moving to Mars to some.

It would be easier if your company provided help, but much harder without that help. Try to learn from those American people who visited Europe and read both positive and negative feedback they left.

You work in one of the best places.

</comment><comment><USER3> Hi Will,

My wife and I moved from the US to London back in July for the sake of adventure and it has been great. In fact, I'm answering this from Sorrento next to my wife who has already fallen asleep from a day hiking around Pompeii. I highly recommend London as a city both to travel from and to explore in its is right.

I'd be happy to hop on a video chat to give you more in-depth advice, but the short answer to your question is that yes, there are a number of companies tho are hiring and willing to sponsor visas. GoCardless, the company I work for does and the engineering team there is pretty great.

There are also a couple recruiters I know who are ethical, knowledgeable, and communicative.

As far as your specific background, am I correct in thinking that you doing network/telecom programming right now and you are looking to do more web/mobile?

<comment><USER4> How's the work/life balance compared to US companies? I'd expect it to be much better?

<comment><USER3> It is significantly better than the particular US companies I've worked for, but I've only got a sample size of 3.

<comment><USER4> Appreciate the reply!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Every now and then I (in France) see positions that require being a native English speaker, so you might try looking into that. There also is a community of expats who sometimes post open jobs or in generally can share their experiences of finding a job. However, due to quite high taxes and complicated hiring process, many American companies choose to open their offices in the Netherlands, Germany, Poland, etc.

</comment><comment><USER6> (sorry for english mistakes)

Before start to search for a job in europe you must decide WHERE you want go. Europe is a bit different from America...we're a union but every country has his own immigration rules and culture.

You are ok with the cold and snow of denmark ? or you prefer the sun ? you know spanish(this could help a bit to learn portuguese quickly)

Btw isn't very diffucult for an american that has lived and workex in silicon valley find a job here(see the HN job offers thread)

Wish you the best.

</comment><comment><USER7> Hi Will. I don't really have advice for you, but there's a very useful subreddit: [https://www.reddit.com/r/IWantOut](https://www.reddit.com/r/IWantOut) . The people there are really helpful and know a lot about the various immigration procedures.

</comment><comment><USER8> Try Netherlands, a few American companies here (including Cisco) which should make transition easier.

</comment><comment><USER9> For Portugal, check [https://landing.jobs/](https://landing.jobs/). But not sure if there's many QA jobs around here, and even then, the payment is not what you usually see in places like Silicon Valley..</comment>


Oxford college provost faces backlash after trying to abolish formal traditions - <AUTHOR> https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/11/12/oxford-college-provost-faces-backlash-attempting-abolish-formal/ <comment><USER2> The End of Evan- I mean Harry Potter.</comment>


Marketing law: Words & phrases to avoid, w/ safer alternatives - <AUTHOR> http://www.techlawnotes.com/marketing-legal-review-some-words-and-phrases-to-avoid-with-safer-alternatives/

<comment><AUTHOR> Disclosure (from OP): This is self-submitted; it's something I wrote up last week, and thought it might be useful to HNers.</comment>


Our broken peer review system, in one saga - <AUTHOR> https://familyinequality.wordpress.com/2015/10/05/our-broken-peer-review-system-in-one-saga/ <comment><USER2> "In a world with limited space for publishing research – which is not our world – this would be a good reason to reject the article."

LOL - so essentially: "printing/copying of PDF is cheap, so Y U no publish this 'study' of a regression that a first-year stats student could do with an interpretation of that regression that is devoid of any scientific method?"

Yes, if your paper is weak to begin with, you need to jump through more hoops (i.e., sell your research better).

Look, getting your papers published sucks sometimes, but if anything, the OP _confirms that peer review works_. Or maybe what it shows is how it fails in that when people take weak research and just keep submitting to journal after journal until one is tricked into accepting.

(the further I read on the page, the more I'm convinced we're subtly being trolled here: "The new knowledge was all created two years before it was published." "new knowledge"? A regression on a publicly available data set with the main dependent being an ambiguous 3-option question on a highly contentious and nuanced topic; and some 'discussion' which the authors _admit_ in the first paragraph is unverifiable and basically an opinion piece?)

(edit: typo)

<comment><USER3> A scientific conclusion does not become intrinsically less interesting just because all it took was a regression a first-year stats student could do. Simple and obvious is often better.

The suggestion in the linked article that, "hey, we ran a regression so now we can just come up with whatever interpretation we like" irked me as well, but you really do have to read the comments of the peer reviewers: one is peeved by the fact that they don't talk about his/her pet topic, another that they don't include this or that kind of historical context, another tries to be smart about statistical methodology but in the process shows their incompetence (a beta coefficient _is_ a measure of effect size, you dummy)... when all the authors want to do is to point at the fact that opposition to pornography has declined over time. You can argue that this is not interesting, that this is obvious, but the whole point of science is to not accept things just because they seem obvious.

A new journal launched recently, by the way, which is aimed at exactly this sort of finding: [https://sciencematters.io](https://sciencematters.io) The idea is that scientists will be able to publish empirical results without the requirement to craft an entire story around it. Science needs theory but it also needs facts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> My impression from the reviews is that most of the reviewers thought the study was too easy to run (just grab a widely known data source and press the "regress" button in some statistical analysis package), not novel or interesting enough, and with a fairly speculative analysis relative to the data. [Personally I have no opinion about the importance of the paper, which I didn't read.]

It's hard for reviewers to politely articulate "we just didn't think your paper was cool enough for our journal" or "we thought your analysis was weak", but most of them did seem to be trying. My impression is that the author didn't really take the criticism to heart, and had trouble reading between the lines.

These journals surely get _many_ similar paper submissions, and this authors' opinion notwithstanding, they can't publish them all.

I agree that the system is too slow, too arbitrary, and too high-stakes though. It's tragic that quantity and venue of published papers is the main way academics are judged.

It would indeed be nice if scholars could (as an option) publish their papers without as much oversight, and then have more of the discussion back and forth about the paper's relevance take place in public. Then if the paper turns out to be significant, it could be republished in a leading journal.

<comment><USER5> The problem is the use of which journal a paper is published in as a measure of the quality of the paper. Until moronic hiring and tenure committees use a better measure of research quality than the journal a paper is published in then these sub-optimal practices will continue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> To play devil's advocate for a moment, I'm not sure that the paper is complete as it's described. The authors do a fairly straightforward statistical analysis on an openly-available dataset, and that's that. I see many reviewers asking the question, "yes, so what?" which is exactly the question that we should be asking as scientists.

To go back to basics: start with a theory or model, make a prediction based on that model, then test to see if that prediction is correct. In this work, the authors explicitly stay away from anything other than a hand-waving explanation of their results, and seem surprised that the reviewers keep asking them to "frame" their results in a broader context.

It would be as if Newton published an observation of fruit falling off a tree, and failed to mention gravity. An interesting observation, perhaps, but not an advancement of science.

<comment><USER7> Yea, it seemed like a pretty typical fight to publish an interesting but thin finding. Not that the publishing system isn't broken, but this story doesn't seem to highlight why very well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The arXiv is an immediate solution to the author's concerns. Preprints have a long history in physics; the journals are the official stamp of importance and plausibility, but most timely results appear first on the arXiv.

If you put a paper there, and someone reads it/finds it useful, or if someone does a literature search on the subject, the arXiv entry will get cited.

<looks at arXiv, notes lack of a sociology section>

I don't know why arXiv hasn't broadened its scope outside of the natural sciences, but I'm certain that a) Ginsparg has a good reason, and b) they're happy to help others implement similar systems.

<comment><USER9> There are actually a lot of solutions to the problem, and the author seems aware of them, as discussed at the very end of the article. There are pre- print servers like arXiv, there are mega journals that have a slightly different type of peer review (what I'd call methodological review as opposed to"importance" review) like PLOS One, PeerJ, SAGE Open, etc. And yet even though the author is aware of these options, he acknowledges that it all comes down to how his publication will be perceived by his peers, and the non- traditional options simply don't yet have enough reputational weight. So fundamentally even though there are lots of other options, they aren't realistic because of the politics of academia.

To be fair, most of these non-traditional systems cater almost exclusively to hard sciences and don't focus on sociology.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Makes me glad I am not a sociologist!

The same basic problem occurs in all fields in that many reviewers and editors are basically idiots. When you get a rejection you look through the reviewers comments for the useful suggestions (mostly these are about spelling or grammar, but occasionally you will get a real gem) and send it out again. Whatever you do do not change the paper to suit the reviewers or editor. Just shoot it out again as quickly as possible.

<comment><USER10> This is a risky strategy - your paper can end up back in the hands of the same reviewers from round one.

<comment><USER5> Yes this can occur, but supringly rarely. What always amazes me is how rarely the reviewers ever agree on anything. Getting published is just a matter of sending out your work until you get two or three reviewers who say accept.

I have had the situation where all three reviewers said publish and the editor rejected the paper - of course this paper has gone on to get over 600 citations so it was not the best decision that editor has ever made.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I can't see how arXiv helps with the outlined problems. The goal of publishing is getting a stamp of approval from your peers, which you can then bring to hiring or promotions committees to buttress your case. Arxiv merely helps you put your paper online, which I would argue is a trivial problem (and has been so since the personal university homepage was invented).

</comment><comment><USER12> I read the paper before I finished the article, and I really didn't like the abstract. Reading the original abstract in the article, it makes me sad that it was made so much worse.</comment>


Mass Animal Deaths Are Not in Fact Unusual - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/mapping_the_mass_animal_die-offs.php <comment><USER2> They are up to 5,000+ dead blackbirds now in that one town.

I find that highly disturbing. If it was 5,000 across the USA, it would be worrisome and sad but somehow in one place (and then more in another place) gets the "alarming" label for me.

Don't forget all the fish-kills and how they now think the mass bee extinction is from seemingly EPA approved pesticides.

<comment><USER3> 5,000 birds across the country? That's about one for every area the size of Rhode Island. Blackbirds are _the_ most abundant kind of bird on this continent. A few thousand here or there is literally not going to make any difference. This is not nearly on the same scale as the bee crisis.

Edit: Even if there are only 10 million blackbirds living at any given time (I'm sure there are more), and they have a lifespan of 5 years, that's a turnover of 5,400 on an average day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The deaths aren't worthy of concern and investigation only if they're linked.

They're worthy of concern and investigation in each instance because history has shown they tend to happen for one of two reasons: severe weather shock or human activity.

Thus we need to carefully consider and investigate each occurrence, lest we ignore the metaphoric canary in the coalmine on the grounds that 'canaries die all the time'.

Truly the news cycle has latched onto an easy-to-sell trend and narrative. But their behavior, and the laughable connections they imply, don't speak to whether or not any given mass animal death truly is a non-issue.

<comment><USER5> The canary in the coal mine is only useful because there's only one plausible explanation for it keeling over. If they died all the time for no good reason they'd be useless. It might be _really cool_ if we could extract signal against a noisy background but there's mathematical limits on our ability to do that even in theory, and we're generally better off looking at the less noisy signals.

Plus chasing noise turns out to be really dangerous. 5% of the time or so, random processes will correlate with something else you look at with 95% confidence. Your suggestion is not a good idea at all, it's a recipe for spurious connections and wildly disproportionate responses, no matter how good it feels to a human brain.

<comment><USER4> Except that when it comes to mass animal deaths, the rate of it being caused by human activity isn't anywhere near as low as noise. And mass die offs simply don't happen "all the time". Canaries die of non-gas-related causes far more often than entire flocks of birds and schools of fish die within feet and seconds of one another.

Essentially, if a mass die off doesn't correlate with a particularly sudden weather event, or known human activity (fireworks displays) it's safe to assume it _is_ us, from something we (tautologically) didn't know was happening or didn't expect to cause these problems.

And at that point, it's just straight-up good science to investigate the remaining cases to better understand our environment and how our activity is affecting it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The more complete historical data is here: [http://www.nwhc.usgs.gov/publications/quarterly_reports/inde...](http://www.nwhc.usgs.gov/publications/quarterly_reports/index.jsp)

the NWHC has quarterly reports on wildlife mortality dating back to 1995 online (and they claim to have records back to 1975 in databases).

</comment><comment><USER7> The google map linked in the article[1] contains many entries that don't quite fit the oddness of some of the die-offs people are talking about. For example, [2] refers to 150 tons of tilapia that died because of being farmed too densely. [3] refers to fish that died when a small city lake froze over with a bunch of decaying leaves trapped under the ice releasing methane. And others.

[1]: [http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&msa=0&msid=20...](http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&msa=0&msid=201817256339889828327.0004991bca25af104a22b&t=h&ll=64.320872,16.171875&spn=87.534022,210.585938&z=2&iwloc=0004991c2e41cf55affcb&source=embed) [2]: [http://business.asiaone.com/Business/News/Story/A1Story20101...](http://business.asiaone.com/Business/News/Story/A1Story20101231-255737.html) [3]: [http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/liverpool-news/local- news/201...](http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/liverpool-news/local- news/2010/12/24/hundreds-of-fish-killed-in-greenbank-park-lake-after-water- freezes-over-100252-27879505/)

</comment><comment><USER8> If mass die offs are so commonplace, why haven't tin foilers started tracking and pointing them out before (as they have with "chemtrails")?

<comment><USER5> Because you can only conspiracy-theory about what you've noticed. They don't actually notice anything new, or at least not very much new, the essence of conspiracy theories is to weave existing readily-visible facts and a healthy dollop of made up fantasy into some new theory. From what I can see they hardly ever do anything like a real investigation and even when they do there's a lot of the aforementioned fantasy in it. Like, someone writes a book in which they claim to have spent a lot of time investigating UFO issues but it's still mostly just regurgitated theories and a few allusions to trying to get more info but mostly not. Info mostly just circulates and gets endlessly chewed on, very little new info gets added into the morass by the actual conspiracy theorists from what I can see, with a handful of exceptions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Why is this article on ReadWriteWeb, an online zine for web-design?

Come to think of it, how would one classify RWW? "All the news that's currently popular"?

<comment><USER10> ReadWriteWeb are linkbait whores. I'm totally serious. I stopped taking them seriously a long time ago.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> They are perhaps quite common, but I think they are unusual and should be investigated to see if they pose a risk to humans or other species.

<comment><AUTHOR> investigate? yes. panic? no.

<comment><USER12> Who's panicking? I've only seen reports of alarm.

<comment><AUTHOR> maybe not you and me but lots of people:

      Technology to blame for animal die-off panic [1].

      Mass Animal Deaths Leading To End Times Panic [2].

      Dead Bird Panic [3].

\----

[1]: <http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40961721/ns/us_news-environment/>

[2]: [http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1974746/mass_animal_dea...](http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1974746/mass_animal_deaths_leading_to_end_times_panic/)

[3]: [http://metabunk.org/content/137-Dead-Bird-Panic-How-Media- Fo...](http://metabunk.org/content/137-Dead-Bird-Panic-How-Media-Focus- Distorts-a-Subject)

<comment><USER12> Yeesh, the media really likes to stir stuff up. Those articles read like self- fulfilling prophecies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Direct link to the map the article is based on: [http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&msa=0&msid=20...](http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&msa=0&msid=201817256339889828327.0004991bca25af104a22b&t=h&ll=64.320872,16.171875&spn=87.534022,210.585938&z=2&iwloc=0004991c2e41cf55affcb&source=embed)

</comment><comment> DanI-S Mass death hasn't been particularly uncommon throughout human history, either, but it's probably not something to aspire to.

</comment><comment><USER14> Mass Animal Deaths Are Not in Fact Unusual ... especially in the middle of winter, when food is hardest to find.

</comment><comment><USER10> I love the wording here: "not unusual". So what does it make it? Usual?

</comment><comment><USER10> I can see it now: the moon spirals off into the sun, and some "expert" is going to say that it's "not unusual".</comment>


Dear India, Show Some Spine: Take Hong Kong for Example - <AUTHOR> http://www.nextbigwhat.com/india-hong-kong-snowden-297/

<comment><USER2> So India should take orders from Beijing?

China Said to Have Made Call to Let Leaker Depart [http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/24/world/asia/china-said- to-h...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/24/world/asia/china-said-to-have-made- call-to-let-leaker-depart.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> India, which claims to be a democracy, must bat for free speech, privacy and expression. It is funny that China, often branded as an autocratic country, for whatever reasons, is doing it.

<comment><USER3> India is ranked 140th/179 in the Press Freedom Index, there are cases of academics being arrested due to sociological theories that offend people, there are consistently cases in which people are arrested for social media statuses that are benign but that are minorly negative towards someone in power (and even arrests for 'liking' statuses!).

Pretty much every one of those cases is far less defensible than an indictment of Snowden would be (i.e. there is literally no ethical ground to stand on in any democratic society in these cases, whereas one can conceive of a reasonable devil's advocate argument for Snowden's case). India's recent record on free speech is pretty abysmal, unfortunately. It's a nice thought, but I don't see why they would go out of their way and stick their neck out diplomatically to protect it in Snowden's case.

Immediate edit of a typo: "less defensible" \--> "more defensible"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The statement said Hong Kong had informed the U.S. of Snowden's departure. It added that it wanted more information about alleged hacking of computer systems in Hong Kong by U.S. government agencies which Snowden had revealed.

\--right now snowden is looking like a pimp</comment>


The Impossible Propulsion Drive Is Heading to Space - <AUTHOR> http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/a22678/em-drive-cannae-cubesat-reactionless/ <comment><USER2> You'd be better off trying to make a perpetual motion machine. [1]

[1] [http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2015/05/26/warp- dri...](http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2015/05/26/warp-drives-and- scientific-reasoning/)</comment>


Show HN: Community to connect startups & VCs by helping each other - <AUTHOR>

Hey everyone - I was inspired by HelpAReporterout.com and thought that maybe there was a place for something similar in the startup world.
My idea is that VCs and VC-backed startups could benefit from having access to entrepreneurs with knowledge and skills that they don't have. Likewise, those entrepreneurs could benefit by building relationships with VCs and their companies by helping them.
The site is fully built and you can check it out at helpavc.com . I've already got a few VC firms signed up to use it. But...would you use it and participate? I'd really love your feedback. Thanks! <comment><USER2> Hmm I'm not sure if VC's are interested in building relationships with entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs want money from VC's, it's purely business.

I think what would be neat is a startup community. Reddit.com/r/startups and Hacker News are great for posting, sharing, etc., but if you sit down and research the startup experience / collaboration / other aspects of entrepreneurship and created a product which addressed a certain aspect(s) of it, that would be neat

</comment><comment><USER3> What advantages does this give you over AngelList?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the reply. I think the advantage would be that this would be a way to build a relationship with investors before you're ready to raise money, while AngelList seems to focus on connecting entrepreneurs and investors once they are already raising money. It also would provide a venue for investors to broadcast the needs of their current portfolio, which AL doesn't seem to do.

Does that make sense?</comment></comment>