Ask HN: How to make money while burnt out? - <AUTHOR>

My resources are running out fast, and I still find myself unable to work. I'm not up to date with the latest web technologies (like AngularJS which seems to be in high demand). I've started a project to learn it, but often find myself unable to type even though I already know what I should type. Maybe it reminds me too much of Java (Spring), but that's besides the point - such concerns shouldn't stop me from working.
As a result I don't really have the confidence to accept consulting gigs at the moment, because I am not sure if I can work consistently.
I know web development (especially front end) is not my dream job, but time seems too short to learn anything else. Usually I can pick up new programming technologies fairly quickly, though.
I wonder if I should try to work at a cafe for a while, but of course it doesn't pay well, and it might also be beneficial to exude happiness which I don't atm.
Any ideas? I am at a loss. I think people often recommend to take a break, but I can't afford it at the moment. My wife is expecting a baby any day so I can not just simply go away either. <comment><USER2> A newborn is likely to challenge you in ways you've never imagined. My best advice is to try to find a short project that you're able to take-on and complete before your child arrives to give yourself a small financial buffer. When your baby is born, take some time off. It sounds like you need it, and it's a natural time to set work aside to focus on your family. Also, you wife is likely to need the help.

Having a kid will require you to learn all new things. Sure - they're not tech related, but it'll get your brain to work in ways it never has before, and perhaps give you a renewed focus about why you're working.

If it were me, I'd also be up-front with my wife about what I'm dealing with. You're bound to be sleep-deprived and at-times frustrated with the challenges of a newborn, and it'll help to make sure she's aware of your concerns. Good luck! Work will come and go, and I'm sure a short while from now, Angular will be considered old-news ... but having a kid is an awesome experience.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks - it's the second kid so I know about the sleep deprivation. I certainly plan to spend as much time as possible at home (especially right after birth to help out).

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I get this a lot, usually at the end of contracts - I've been freelance/contracting for more than a decade.

Taking a break works, that's what I do.

But you've said that you're running out of resources? That's probably the most scary thing in the world, seeing your bank balance fast approaching nil. Doubly so with a child on the way.

So let me throw some ideas in the air:

If you can do IT-type stuff, try to do some low end IT admin/roll out work.

You could work in a Cafe/Bar but you'll find that unless you're quite depressed the increased social interaction will actually pick you up faster.

If you're feeling particularly misanthropic, then shelf stacking, gardening, casual laboring will probably work.

When I've been burned out I tend to avoid socializing, physical activity and sunlight. So I make things worse for myself. Actually engaging in those activities brings me out of it.

I think I'm rambling a bit, hope it makes sense.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you. I'll go outside now and ponder things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've felt that way a number of times. Sometimes a break is a good thing. I've bartended, done dog-walking, tutored kids, personal training, bike messengering, etc...anything to get a mental break.

These days, if I had a decent car I would absolutely drive for Lyft / Uber. Seems like the perfect "I don't wanna solve tech problems right now, just clear my head and meet people" kind of job.

</comment><comment><USER5> > Any ideas?

There's tons material out there about 'connecting with your why' and channeling intrinsic motivators. Motivation is important and your mindset matters.

But it's called work for a reason, you must suck it in and tough it out. Do build time-blocks into your day for things that give you energy. Action will make a you a better husband & father.

On a practical note, suggest reading up on Polyphasic Sleep, it will help tremendously over the next 12 months > [http://www.4hourlife.com/2012/04/29/become-uberman-sleep- lik...](http://www.4hourlife.com/2012/04/29/become-uberman-sleep-like-da- vinci-the-polyphasic-sleep-cheat-sheet/)

</comment><comment><USER6> I agree with uptown. Try to look the life in a fresh perspective with the newborn and you will feel like starting a new life. When my second baby was born I felt that I have a lot of things to take care for my family. If your spouse does not work and your saving is approaching zero then you should think for some part time gig and spend the rest of time with family. Try to save something for the rainy day.

</comment><comment><USER7> If you're burned out, try to find some tasks that are really easy for you and are relatively short in duration and well defined.

For instance: setting up google apps for small companies.</comment>


Did we reached webdesign's coolness boundaries? - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/businessweek/design-conference/ <comment><USER2> Please don't use HN titles to editorialize.

</comment><comment><USER3> I feel like this is a joke but if you're interested in the "Coming Soon" schedule, it's actually just commented out in the source. (edit: just noticed it's a design conference. Has to be a joke, edit2: Sessions 2,3,4 are all the same so obviously not finalized!)

        Session One

        9:00 - 10:45AM
            Evan Sharp, Pinterest, in conversation with Brad Wieners, Bloomberg Businessweek
            Alon Cohen & Adi Tatarko, Houzz, in conversation with Emma Rosenblum, Bloomberg Pursuits

        Break

        10:45 - 11:00AM

        Session Two

        11:00 - 1:00PM
            Matias Duarte, Android, in conversation with Joshua Topolsky, Bloomberg Business
            Michael Bierut, Pentagram
            Tim Brown, IDEO, & Roger Martin, Martin Prosperity Institute, in conversation with Josh Tyrangiel, Bloomberg Businessweek
            Susan Kare, Susan Kare Design
            Marco Tempest, Technoillusionist

        Lunch

        1:00 - 2:00PM

        Session Three

        2:00 - 4:15PM
            Matias Duarte, Android, in conversation with Joshua Topolsky, Bloomberg Business
            Michael Bierut, Pentagram
            Tim Brown, IDEO, & Roger Martin, Martin Prosperity Institute, in conversation with Josh Tyrangiel, Bloomberg Businessweek
            Susan Kare, Susan Kare Design
            Marco Tempest, Technoillusionist

        Break

        4:15 - 4:30PM

        Session Four

        4:30 - 6:00PM
            Matias Duarte, Android, in conversation with Joshua Topolsky, Bloomberg Business
            Michael Bierut, Pentagram
            Tim Brown, IDEO, & Roger Martin, Martin Prosperity Institute, in conversation with Josh Tyrangiel, Bloomberg Businessweek
            Susan Kare, Susan Kare Design
            Marco Tempest, Technoillusionist

</comment><comment><USER4> We have come the full circle.

This in essence is the same thing with [http://mahir.faithweb.com/original.htm](http://mahir.faithweb.com/original.htm)

<comment><USER5> Beware! Music autoplay alert.

<comment><USER6> As all classically well designed sites should.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Jumping in here as someone who has been designing for the web and other medium since 1994 I think what drew the OP to that question is lack of historical context. This site is great. It's clearly 100% deliberate, tongue-in-cheek, like randlet said here as well. Scrolling headers, blink tags, superfluous animation is what dominated the web like drop shadows / leather & satin / "flat" / etc. later, as we found we could use it — then jodi, nn, and other text-only web artists incorporated into their work. This is a nod to both sides.

<comment><USER8> I'm not so sure it's tongue in cheek anymore. The problem with post-modernist design is that eventually it just becomes codified cool.

Look at the Terry Richardson shots for American Apparel, the works of Banksy, or Miley Cyrus's outfits -- the original intention was to produce camp, but to young people, without context, they just look cool.

The designers get to feel like they're doing something high-art, because there is intended irony behind their work, but the masses are just experiencing it like any other loud obnoxious art -- it still drowns out anything of subtlety.

<comment><USER7> This is a fun conversation and I feel I may be too ignorant on the topic to hold any informed stance. But my feeling is the problematic issue has a lot less to do with the producers and a lot more with the consumers. As in, you're right — the intention may be there, but the result is misguided since the audience can't appreciate it. Well, I appreciated it at least.

(Banksy's original intent was not to produce camp — read his pamphlets and manifestos from the early 00s. Highly socio-political, black mirror stuff.)

<comment><USER8> If Banksy isn't trying to produce camp he is officially the worst artist of all time.

[http://www.fecalface.com/news2/1-11-11/banksy.jpg](http://www.fecalface.com/news2/1-11-11/banksy.jpg)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think it is easy for the design world (myself included) to take itself too seriously sometimes, and start to sound pretentious.

This seems like a great antidote. I think it's funny. Design needs more humor.

I love the scrolling "BUY TICKETS" and the rollover effect of the cursor gripping a wad of bills. Ha.

</comment><comment><USER10> Bloomberg has a lot of fascinating web design. Their homepage has been walked down from the height of its punk-rock-ness, but I've always appreciated how bright and lively their site is, especially for an incredibly boring business/finance website.

Previously, in the same vein: [http://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/year- ahead-2016/](http://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/year-ahead-2016/)

</comment><comment><USER11> It looks pretty nice. Does its job. Is super fast.

And... it's a poster. An online poster, a billboard poster, an interactive online billboard poster, but a poster.

Plus:

 _font-family: sans-serif;_

How fantastic.

</comment><comment><USER12> It loads pretty fast. No spinning "wait" icons. It's to the point.

I dunno, I wish more sites did that.

</comment><comment><USER13> Did I really just read "Did we reached" as a viable English construction? Ow. Easy fix if you can be bothered.

Regarding the question, no, I think that embodies everything wrong with the abilities of web design. Throwing a layer of Helvetica and various typeface sizes is not pleasant. What gives with the Mickey Mouse hand cursor? I get it has five fingers, but that's a glove suitable for a body that's been floating in a river for the past two weeks. And, if anybody else managed to dig deep enough into this LARGE PRINT EDITION WEBSITE and get to some of the speakers' photos, and mouse over, they wiggle and twitch and zoom in and out in some kind of digital seizure.

If you're going with coolness factor, I can honestly say some Pitchfork and Vice and other multimedia layouts have been quite impressive. There's a reason Medium is catching on so well. Clean, image featuring narrative in a not-too- cluttered-but-still-link-tastic format is highly readable and allows the subject matter to be the focus[0]

Everybody has different opinions and cultural influences, sure. Same goes for food. Or musical scales. I suppose that can make it more difficult for consistent standards and expectations on a global platform like the webs.

[0] [http://www.thefader.com/2015/01/29/chance-the-rapper- donnie-...](http://www.thefader.com/2015/01/29/chance-the-rapper-donnie- trumpet-the-social-experiment-cover-story)

<comment><USER14> Maybe its a Meta on the cheekiness Meta of the post's content

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Title reminded me of "Cool Site of the Day". Surprised to see it's still going strong, 21 years later. Extra points for using a perl script via CGI. Now that's cool.

It's a bit disappointing to see how many websites no longer exist. Would be cool to see a mashup of Cool Site and The Internet Archive.

[1] [http://www.coolsiteoftheday.com/cgi- bin/stillcool.pl](http://www.coolsiteoftheday.com/cgi-bin/stillcool.pl)

</comment><comment> rm_-rf_slash Think of it like architecture: you create a design that works, people copy it, it becomes standard, then boring, then people make baroque experiments, and then finally it goes retro. Rinse and repeat until a new technology replaces the old (steel over brick/concrete).

Web (and mobile) design is now stuck on the hamster wheel. Until we have nanomachines swimming through our veins, all we can do is reinvent what we have to make it fit the fashion of the day.

I'd argue the same goes for tech startups' business models, not just their websites. Snapchat didn't introduce any new technology, it just changed how we use what we have. That's why you see so many Uber/Airbnb clones: tech has hit a ceiling, for the time being.

I think in the next 5 years there will be a contraction in Silicon Valley, and a cynical cultural backlash as people see more and more that all this new tech isn't making life all that much better than years previous, but instead it just serves to make a few people very rich and the rest more rushed than ever.

</comment><comment><USER16> Couple of very serious omissions:

\- No autoplaying MIDI

\- No flaming 3d banners from dafont.com

\- No hidden white text that needs to be highlighted to find the super secret link to the super secret webpage

Otherwise, bravo to the design team. They've developed a unique style (anti- style?) for Bloomberg pieces that many are now trying and failing to emulate. Good to see web design satirizing itself and staying fresh.

</comment><comment><USER17> I'm using Firefox and there are actually many usability issues, which I only noticed when I opened the same page in Chrome. The bigDot's are too large and cover some of the text. The venue map doesn't show up on Firefox at all. Circles next to About/Speakers/Schedule/Location overlap each other. And so on.

</comment><comment><USER18> Some talented artists getting away with amazing stuff over there, like how the 'what is code' article logs an ascii art "smash the patriarchy" tweety bird into the console. i love it.

If authors are reading- The 6 in BWDESIGN2016 wraps at smaller browser widths.

</comment><comment><USER19> I'm noticing two emerging interesting trends on the web design/development front nowadays where people embracing and exploring international typographic style motifs mixed with minimalism on one hand and on the other hand, people dabbling with a revival of the ill-fated Flash websites in the early 2000s but this time around built solely on web technologies.

Nothing against those two specific trends and going experimental away from the bland and boring corporate and "professional" look dominating today's market but I must say that the Flash and extreme artsy minimalism are a step backwards and not a best fit for this specific medium and use cases.

</comment><comment><USER20> If you want a vision of the future, imagine a powerpoint presentation in your web browser -- forever.

</comment><comment><USER21> I'm reminded of this oldie but goodie: [http://www.goer.org/htmlhorror/htmlhorror1.html](http://www.goer.org/htmlhorror/htmlhorror1.html)

</comment><comment><USER22> The most interesting trends in web design I've seen lately aren't aesthetic - they're features engineered into sites that work and feel like native apps.

<comment><USER23> > and feel like native apps

True, in a way. Thanks to Electron, quote-unquote native applications now feel, perform, and use resources just like web apps.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> This is the funniest thing I've seen in a while, definitely tongue-in-cheek poking fun at design.

</comment><comment><USER25> And now the site seems to have messed up.

</comment><comment><USER26> I actually kind of like this design.

</comment><comment><USER19> Can someone please fix the title? "Reached" is sticking out like a sore thumb that I can't bring myself to ignore it.

<comment><USER27> Or maybe "did" should be changed to "have", and we'd all be fine...

<comment><USER19> The pedant, polemicist, anal retentive in me would argue that losing just two letters is more economical than scraping a whole word and then inserting a new one in its place but that's just me and my multiple personalities.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I just realized something.

At some point in the future, there will be a resurgence of 90s style shitty web design as a retro movement.

</comment><comment><USER29> wow ... I actually thought the site was broken for a second there, or that I'd accidentally blocked something style-related.

</comment><comment><USER30> bloomberg business week graphics pretty much kills it when it comes to cool/weird web shit.

</comment><comment><USER20> 29 requests, a megabyte of data.

<comment><USER31> There's some aggressive downvoting going on here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> It's fun. I like it.

</comment><comment><USER33> where is the "under construction" digging man animation?

<comment><USER34> And "Best viewed in IE6"?

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> aka the raging cretinisation of the world

</comment><comment><USER36> this sir, is awesome.

</comment><comment><USER37> That site rocks!

</comment><comment><USER38> The markup is actually pretty neat.

</comment><comment><USER39> Holy moly.

</comment><comment><USER31> I read that date as April 1, 2016 at first.

</comment><comment><USER40> That's the worst thing I've ever seen.

<comment><USER41> Clearly you have never been to [http://www.theworldsworstwebsiteever.com/](http://www.theworldsworstwebsiteever.com/)

<comment><USER42> My eyes filter all that out already.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Yeah, that site is never going to get peoples attention... :)

</comment><comment><USER44> I m not sure. I would like more scrolling backgrounds please. Try harder plz.

</comment><comment><USER45> Needs more...pop.

And maybe <blink>

</comment><comment><USER46> Wow that site actually broke my cursor, now i see 3 separate images. To line cursors and a hand. Kudos!

</comment><comment><USER47> I don't know what to think but I feel the need to say that I don't know what to think about this.

At the end they mark a point, you love or hate it, but you've heard of it, and it's all what matters.

</comment><comment><USER48> Wow. Someone paid for and approved that website.

</comment><comment><USER49> To think we used to hate on the <BLINK> tag...

</comment><comment><USER50> Even their CSS is atrocious. [http://www.bloomberg.com/businessweek/design- conference/stat...](http://www.bloomberg.com/businessweek/design- conference/static/css/style.css)

Why do they have this in the first block of text: /* 1 */

What's the point to commenting out the number 1?

I guess when they have a good lineup of speakers it doesn't matter? I don't know. I honestly don't know what to say.

So many questions, I don't know where to start.

<comment><USER51> That's not "atrocious css", that's minified CSS. They're running their backend code through a resource compression system like JAWR to conserve bandwidth. Who cares if the CSS that's presented to you isn't pretty, it's a declarative language anyway.</comment></comment>


Pixel Shaders: Proposal for an Interactive Introduction to Graphics Programming - <AUTHOR> http://pixelshaders.com/ <comment><USER2> "Wants to use your webcam"

Just a suggestion, if it's going to do that it should explain why. I'm not hitting yes to that without a good reason.

If it's using it as source data for the pixel shaders... I get you're trying to go for a wow factor, but from experience I think a lot of people are creeped out when their likeness is used for something they don't have direct control over.

<comment><USER3> You do have direct control over it in this case. You can just change the fragment shader code to do with it whatever you want.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is really cool! Would you consider adding a "Sign up for mailing list" form and sending out occasional updates (for new chapters, etc.)?

I often find and bookmark interesting learning resources like this, but I don't remember to come back later and check for new additions.

</comment><comment><USER5> Bret Victor points out a cool part:

[https://twitter.com/worrydream/status/257915809131819008](https://twitter.com/worrydream/status/257915809131819008)

</comment><comment><USER5> Previous HN discussion of Recursive Drawing, another very cool project by the same guy:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3951255](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3951255)

</comment><comment><USER6> If you want to play with shaders interactively, take a look at Tao Presentations. Will let you combine shaders and real-time 2D/3D animations. [http://www.taodyne.com/shop/en/blog/67-real-time- stereoscopi...](http://www.taodyne.com/shop/en/blog/67-real-time-stereoscopic- raytracing) for an example, [http://www.taodyne.com/shop/en/blog/60-screencast- building-a...](http://www.taodyne.com/shop/en/blog/60-screencast-building-an- animated-clock-in-10-minutes) for another one.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'd like to add that I didn't make this. I only found it. Let's all send the author an email and encourage him to continue his work!

</comment><comment><USER7> This is super useful, and I hope to see many many more examples of this kind of approach to teaching programming and math concepts, especially in graphics where real time visual feedback is so important. As he says, there is a lot of material for the already advanced out there, but not much that fills the gap for people already used to coding but that lack the experience for digesting dense packets of information relevant to the topic. I hope he can finish this. Does anyone know of other interactive learning projects such as this?

<comment><USER8> [http://www.crunchzilla.com/code-maven](http://www.crunchzilla.com/code-maven) [https://www.khanacademy.org/cs](https://www.khanacademy.org/cs)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> [https://www.shadertoy.com](https://www.shadertoy.com) is a nice community to share ideas about shaders...

</comment><comment><USER10> This looks fantastic.

One small thing I'd suggest is to show errors in the editor. I changed some things which worked great then I tried some other syntax I thought might work which didn't. The line with the editor went red (good) but there was no way of seeing the exact error (bad).

Another request: a mailing list for updates on the project. I'd love to be emailed when new stuff comes out as I'd like to keep an eye on the project but will probably forget...

<comment><USER11> I think hovering over the line number will give the error message. I just stumbled on that by accident.

<comment><USER10> That doesn't work for me, not sure why...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is really neat - already knew everything here but if it ramps up I'll be coming back.

For those who want to dig into pixel shaders, I recently wrote a tutorial going from no-knowledge to intermediate on this very topic:

[http://ivorydungeon.net/2013/zero-to-glsl-spectrum- analyser-...](http://ivorydungeon.net/2013/zero-to-glsl-spectrum-analyser-in- one-hour/) HN - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6159240](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6159240)

</comment><comment><USER13> A fantastic tool! I couldn't help but notice when I did the first exercise that the way of live editing did distract me from observing the code deeper than fiddling with the actual values needed.

So if one would now ask me how do I do a full-yellow box I would not know how to do it from scratch. However, I would know that the RGBA values were 1, 1, 0 and 1, which is the most important part to learn.

That's why I think there is a lot of work to be done when making proper abstractions around this for human programmers in the future.

This is however just an observation on my part, I think this is definitely the way to go forward. Making learning more interactive just makes so much sense.

</comment><comment><USER14> Really great. Struggled to get the last one on the same chapter. Might be useful to have a hint feature.

Loved the demos, especially the webcam ones.. I'm still surprised by what is possible with 'javascript' now.

</comment><comment><USER15> Really good. Reminded me about Bret victor's [http://worrydream.com/#!/LearnableProgramming](http://worrydream.com/#!/LearnableProgramming)

</comment><comment><USER16> I've been looking for a shader guide that ramps up in complexity just like this. The interactiveness is just the cherry on top! Can't wait to see the rest.

</comment><comment><USER17> Wow, this is great. Looking forward to the completed book!

</comment><comment><USER18> The demo chapter is fantastic, I'd definitely be on board to buy/fund this if it came up.

Is there a way I can subscribe for updates?

</comment><comment><USER19> Fantastic!</comment>


1984 v. Brave New World - <AUTHOR> http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/03/1984-v-brave-new-world.html <comment><USER2> For those who found that interesting - There's an also a comic made using the foreword to ' Amusing ourselves to death ' which also contrasts the two:

[http://highexistence.com/amusing-ourselves-to-death- huxley-v...](http://highexistence.com/amusing-ourselves-to-death-huxley-vs- orwell/)

It's a pity the comic had to be removed from its original site citing copyright reasons. imho, it could have been considered as fair use. Sad.

<comment><USER3> Some of the examples on the comic page starting with: _Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies..._ , are not chosen well.

I think the opposite of a _trivial culture_ is a _culture of self improvement_ , and at least four of those six examples are ostensibly doing something to improve themselves. One is a competitor in online gaming, one is debating online, the two are watching and debating current politics, one is improving his body. Those are all meaningful activities. I understand that they are not intended to be in the context of the comic, and the visual space is limited.

Great comic by the way. Our society seems to be going the way of pleasure, but I don't think it will ruin us.

<comment><USER4> _Great comic by the way. Our society seems to be going the way of pleasure, but I don 't think it will ruin us._

your conditioning is complete... please report to the incinerator

<comment><USER3> Yay, renewal!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think its a bit of both. The masses being distracted and sedated in a BNW fashion, with those that step outside being hit with the 1984 treatment.

The big irony being that this is not a willed construct, but a emergent phenomena.

<comment><USER6> I agree that the phenomena are not purely constructed, however I disagree with the idea that the phenomena are purely emergent.

Maybe they are "curated emergent phenomena?"

<comment><USER7> pure emergence, nihilism. curated emergence, existentialism.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> North Korea, Belarus and perhaps a few others are Orwell. The rest are Huxley. I've noticed that former Orwells, like East Germany and Poland, are thought to be warmer in character, have closer families, and are less atomised than the western consumerist equivalents.

</comment><comment><USER9> Zamyatin is the less known precursor of Huxley and Orwell:

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

<comment><USER10> And his book Мы (English: We), is a fun read especially if you love paleo- future.

<comment><USER9> Yes! D-503 reminds me a lot THX 1138...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Both ended up far wrong because they overestimated government's cohesiveness. Most first world governments are far too inept to accomplish anything so difficult as either book prognosticates. We've seen nothing but a slide toward increasingly ineffective democracies since their era.

<comment><USER10> I tend to find the dystopian vision of Terry Gilliam's movie Brazil the most utterly believable. In it, we have benign or benevolent actors, who are guilty of nothing more than incompetence. Evil is an emergent property of the system rather than a conscious act. People give up autonomy and privacy for retention of their bourgeois lifestyle, and mostly ignore the economic underclasses. A small number of malcontents are branded as terrorists and the government ineffectually tries to treat the symptom rather than the underlying disease.

<comment><USER12> > benign or benevolent actors

This was Hannah Arendt's "banality of evil" theory that she developed post WW2 when everybody was trying to figure out what happened. Evil acts are perpetrated by dumb people "just doing their job".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> "The change will be brought about as a result of a felt need for increased efficiency. " \- Huxley

vs today :

"Work less, enjoy more!"

\---

Of course it is much more efficient to keep the subjects well fed and well hypnotized, rather than waste a lot of energy on keeping them subdued through violence. It is harder, but the returns are much worth it.

And that's not only what the "elites" who realize (they only gain a slightly higher standard of living), but also the mythical "AI singularity" which should one day spontaneously arrive.

Our fears of "the machine" which kills all humans because we are pests are unfounded - a hyper intelligent entity would quickly understand that violence is a very weak tool of control. Pleasure is much more powerful and achieves much more plus a thankful smile.

It is "efficiency", "pleasure", "less work", "more fun" that we should be wary about ... but not me , I like to enjoy myself. And I welcome whatever overlord (AI, aliens) that promises more pleasure and less pain any day.

<comment><USER14> I dislike pain because it keeps me from doing and being person things. So what use is pleasure induced/increased to such degree that it ALSO keeps me from developing as a person?

I have to ask, do you see yourself as nothing more dignified than a pet or a slave? I don't mean to be rude, but you can't have your overlords without them ruling me as well, and I don't want them, at all, and you basically said you welcome "whatever" might force me and my offspring to live in what I would consider a golden cage and utter depravity. So this is a discussion, if not civil war, I'd rather have sooner than later :P

And besides, why would someone or something who sees you as pet or slave feel the need to control you past the point where you are no longer a threat or useful to them? Everything that makes you happy, they could simply take from you, cutting out the middleman. Who genuinely cares about a "thankful smile" from a drone?

It's a nice hypothesis, but here's mine: The pleasure stage comes before the non-existence stage, and the wide-eyed and shallow cheerleading we have now is a bit like the Nazis painting the red cross on the ad-hoc pits where they would kill people who were too weak for transport. By the time you find out what it is, it's too late. People and systems don't dissolve who you are and could have been as a person to ultimately look out for you.

<comment><USER13> Well, I was being sort of sarcastic about it.

Fact is, the vast majority of people prefer pleasure over pain .. all time, although not-pleasure (or pain) is one of the few _guaranteed_ things in life. Pleasure is optional, pain and suffering are guaranteed and unavoidable, because of our mortality.

Still, we want pleasure and not-pain and if possible - greater pleasure over "just pleasure", since, well, it's more scarce.

> do you see yourself as nothing more dignified than a pet or a slave

If there's a choice between being a pet and a factory farm animal, I guess being a pet is much nicer and desirable. I say this while my cat is purring ecstatically on my lap. Not bad to be loved and cared for by a omnipotent giant.

And I think in the end, this is the metaphor for "A brave new world" and "1984" \- A society of pets vs a society of farmed animals.

Make your pick.

<comment><USER14> > Fact is, the vast majority of people prefer pleasure over pain .. all time, > although not-pleasure (or pain) is one of the few guaranteed things in life. > Pleasure is optional, pain and suffering are guaranteed and unavoidable, > because of our mortality.

No parents would want their child to die, but if you offered grieving parents some happy drugs that made them forget they ever had a child, do you really think most would take them? Would you?

If someone offered you a drug that killed you, but somehow subjectively made it feel like a million years of bliss, would you take it? Sure, you'd make the people who love you sad, but you wouldn't notice that anymore, so why not, wouldn't that be the most efficient thing you could ever do in your life?

Pleasure is something that I generate in myself. Based on stimuli, sure, but those stimuli are not the pleasure. And I think it's not a stretch to say that pleasure and pain exist for reasons (I know it can go wrong in all sorts of ways, that there's plenty of pointless and chronical pain, but let's ignore that for the sake of simplicity). Pain warns of things that harm us, pleasure does the opposite, but this can be "hacked" and abused in all sorts of ways. Comparing it to the feeling of hunger, you could take drugs that make you not feel hunger and pain, then you'd simply starve happily, rather than also getting what "not feeling hungry" _is supposed to mean_. And I think the same would happen to people held as pets: yes, their bodies would still exist, they'd "be happy", but they would cease to exist as the person that happiness and pain as once a tool and advisor for. As they say, the lights are on, but there's nobody home. (In my hearts of hearts, I believe this may have long since happened, and that we might be the afterbirth of an afterbirth of an afterbirth of an abortion. But if that is true, I can't lose anything valuable by not giving up that I haven't lost already, and if it's not so, I could make it so by believing it, making it self-fulfilling prophecy.)

When you see, say, a religious fanatic or deranged person, who _really_ believes in whatever floats their boat, and is happy 24/7, would you envy them? Or would you shudder? Wouldn't you at least think "I wish I was that happy, but not at that price"?

> If there's a choice between being a pet and a factory farm animal, I guess > being a pet is much nicer and desirable.

Well, _if_. But those are not the only choices you have, and I'd even say being a pet is a choice you might never have. From you having a cat doesn't follow that you being the pet of someone will be an option for you. You're not your cat and your overlords are not you. Who would keep you as a pet? The people who sleep well while people starve? People who use fears and love to bring about more of the things people fear and destroy more of what they love? Machines ordered to be made by the same? Why would they, and what for? I'm sure you're a great person and all, but what makes you think you'd not rather be used as prey in hunting games, until more challenging prey is made? What makes and billions of other people so great that a few thousand square miles of private golf course or jungle wouldn't be more interesting?

When cars were invented, we didn't keep all the horses around to love and cuddle. Where's the children of the horses your grandgrandgrandparents owned? What's that, you never even _thought_ about that? Welcome to your own role in the sight of your "overlords" :P

How are we treating the vulnerable so far? Last time I checked, every few seconds a child dies of thirst. And that's just one thing in a long list. So at what point would the drive for MORE power lead to LESS suffering, instead of more, as it does until now? Can you at least see how that might come across as a little kool-aid-ish, to believe it will suddenly change because that would be nicer? It would also be nice for the millions of people who suffer currently, but if they don't matter now, they won't matter then.

> I say this while my cat is purring ecstatically on my lap. Not bad to be > loved and cared for by a omnipotent giant.

So you're thinking the cat is your pet, instead of the other way around? :)

But more importantly, you're a human, whatever turns you into a pet will be made by humans. As Erich Fromm wrote:

> _The whole concept of alienation found its first expression in Western > thought in the Old Testament concept of idolatry. The essence of what the > prophets call "idolatry" is not that man worships many gods instead of only > one. It is that the idols are the work of man's own hands -- they are > things, and man bows down and worships things; worships that which he has > created himself. In doing so he transforms himself into a thing. He > transfers to the things of his creation the attributes of his own life, and > instead of experiencing himself as the creating person, he is in touch with > himself only by the worship of the idol. He has become estranged from his > own life forces, from the wealth of his own potentialities, and is in touch > with himself only in the indirect way of submission to life frozen in the > idols. The deadness and emptiness of the idol is expressed in the Old > Testament: "Eyes they have and they do not see, ears they have and they do > not hear," etc. The more man transfers his own powers to the idols, the > poorer he himself becomes, and the more dependent on the idols, so that they > permit him to redeem a small part of what was originally his. The idols can > be a godlike figure, the state, the church, a person, possessions. Idolatry > changes its objects; it is by no means to be found only in those forms in > which the idol has a so-called religious meaning. Idolatry is always the > worship of something into which man has put his own creative powers, and to > which he now submits, instead of experiencing himself in his creative act._

The only way that "overlord" can be "omnipotent" to you is by either lying to you, or by keeping you in check. (Why am I suddenly thinking of gardens and forbidden fruit? ^^) I had two cats, they were happy because they had a nice place to stay, food, humans who loved them, and each other.. any powers of mine beyond that they had no use for or interest in. A cat living on a farm catching its own food is also happy, no "omnipotence" required.

And we are, right now, sitting in the warm, gentle lap of the sun. We could be purring, too. The same motives that keep that from realizing now, will likely still be around when the technology is there to completely control everybody and everything. And I suspect that won't be for the purpose of making us happy as we are, but to either make us fit or make us gone. That is, everything else being the same, namely as it currently is and how it trends. I don't know the future but I know my contemporaries. So my pick would be kicking Big Brother in the dick, flirting with his sister and singing loudly as they drag me to the guillotine.

<comment><USER13> Thanks for your thoughts, stranger.

My comments are a reflection on the outside world. My own philosophy is very different.

Our (western) society is built on the premise of avoiding pain at all costs - even if it means exporting it to other countries or species.

That's why I'm saying that people will choose pleasure over pain - not just because it's convenient, but because we're constantly conditioned to do that - take the pill, pain will go away.

So I agree with Huxley - a society based on offering unlimited pleasure is even more insidious than a totalitarian state based on violence described in 1984. At least in a totalitarian state you can rebel...

\---

The idea about the horses really took me by surprise - I haven't thought about that.

\--

My personal belief is that "rebirth" is only possible by passing through the gates of suffering. By "rebirth" I mean "new, changed, evolved self" , rather then physical reincarnation.

Suffering is a necessary ingredient for stepping onto the next level of understanding. So I respect it and I accept it when it's unavoidable, although it's never easy.

There's the idea that "suffering and pain" are what makes us "feel alive", but if examined under a microscope, then the following can be observed: _Life_ is the process of expending energy in order to _avoid_ suffering and pain and optionally experience "pleasure".

To drift even further, I'd note that True human-like "AI" will only be possible when the concepts of pain, suffering and pleasure and love are somehow implemented into the AI's "brain"..

But to do that we'll have to somehow convince it that it's mortal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Orwell talked about this in one of his essays. The man who does not have fascism beating in his breast can't understand the pleasure of smashing someones have with a boot for all eternity. Sex, money and control have nothing to do with the pleasure of destroying others and their work.

<comment><USER14> Just like Hitler wrote (and proved), if you just lie big enough, people will be too "polite" to even suspect it a lie, and that works in many layers. E.g. for many wars, there is the outermost facade which is usually "we have to save X from the aggression of Y". Then there is "we meant well, but made mistakes" as the next layer, then comes "we didn't really mean well, it was about geopolitics and national power", then "it's not actually about national power, but about transfer of tax payer money to the military-industrial complex which ultimately has no ties to any particular nation, at the deliberate expense of social development".

And then you have the same game with the people involved in that, first there's how much they care for their children and are worried they might have to grow up without private jets, or how they're just trying to prevent a job someone would do anyway being done badly, and a whole host of other good reasons (maybe they simply operate a "business" and it "makes sense" to "make profit", no further questions). Then there's how they really just want power and fame, because we're all just apes and that's what apes want, and so on... but that they might simply be sociopath/narcissist and essentially stuck at some point in their childhood they built a shell around, that they might be merely a black hole chasing a fix they can never quite reach, now _that_ is too much. Sure, we grant that it occurs here and there, but not as a major driving force, as the underlying pattern for a lot of things. No, of course it has to be more grandiose than that, if only because we're under the heel of and/or doing it.

It boils down to this, "normal" people aren't that way, simply cannot fathom the utterly alien and barren landscape some others operate in, and would rather pile on rationalizations and faux complexity. Even you described as "pleasure" which I would assume is more a temporary relief from the pain and fear of existence someone who never got to develop a personality feels constantly, and tries to instill in others.

TLDR:

> "I learned that it is the weak who are cruel, and that gentleness is to be > expected only from the strong."

\-- Leo Rosten

<comment><USER16> If I read what you're saying correctly, Hitler was ... weak? And that is what made him cruel?

<comment><USER14> While I didn't put it that way, that's not the worst summary. Though I would say whatever induced his narcissistic personality disorder made him weak, and his disorder made him cruel. Lack of empathy and the inability to reflect are not strengths.

Hitler came back from WW1 with the same rank he went in, which was a huge disappointment for him, then he failed as an artist and ended up in homeless shelter where he was disliked because, well, I guess he just wasn't very lovable or interesting. He was driven by resentment and a feeling of inferiority, which is narcissism 101, as is the fact that he put on a great show which he and others fell for.

Generally, even when "just" talking about a sociopath desire for power and less about the self-destruction of someone as sick as Hitler: any leash transforms people on both ends, and the very desire to have power over others betrays a lack of inner strength and integrity. I can't prove that, but I'll claim it. And furthermore I think people pretend to themselves and each other that power is an end in and of itself, because they're so scared of what it covers up. When you walk on a landmine, you can't just go on pretending you still have legs -- not so with abuse, trauma and neglect resulting in a haywire personality development, where routing around things, in ourselves and others, is often our default reaction.

P.S. If you're really interested in the psychology of Hitler as well as the Nazis historically I can recommend the books by Sebastian Haffner, the titles make it kind of obvious which ones apply.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Orwell was the better writer, Huxley the better prognosticator.</comment>


This Indiegogo campaign promotes child neglect. Here's my open letter to the CEO - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@loorinm/so-today-i-saw-this-indiegogo-product-that-encourages-child-neglect-6a8605250d8c#.v92yvva0z <comment><USER2> Why is it that we've gone about grossly abusing terms that imply harm to the point that their real meaning is almost entirely lost?

The other day there was a big thing about how, "Twitter is Fucked" because the platform only allows for "violent" speech. The trivial falsifiability of the claim aside, it was a gross overstatement of the term "violent". The correct term, based on the content of that article, would have been more like "insipid", "vapid", or "derogatory".

Here we have the same thing with the term "neglect", the well-defined construct "child neglect", and the concept of "promotes" with respect to either of those things, and the application of all of them to content that is mundane and innocuous at worst, and can only even border on a depiction of "neglect", let alone the promotion of it, with the most perverse and intentionally inflammatory interpretation of the video.

Are we so distanced from what real "harm", "neglect", and "violence" actually look like that as denizens of tech-culture we must redefine them to instead represent "minor annoyance", "occasionally tended to", and "somewhat offensive"? It just seems like such an unnecessary expression of effete privilege and insularity.

<comment><USER3> I just made the connection that the OP of this link is the author. They seem to post links to their own Medium posts so it's not surprising that this is clickbait.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> While I'm all about involved parenting, I think that this headline is hyperbole. I read the documentation and watched the video and I didn't get the impression that they were actually promoting child neglect. Furthermore, the whole thesis of this post is based on an argument from silence that relies upon the premise that parents are "habitually" absent. In fact, in many of the scenes the parents are present and there to receive and applaud the child after she'd done something on her own. Additionally, the author's definition of neglect is quite aggressive and, as above, based on missing information from the project and not on the information provided.

While I appreciate and understand the author's desire to protect children, the post itself seems overly alarmist and based more on opinion than fact.

</comment><comment><USER4> So, you're one of those anti-free range children/helicopter parents I read so much about?

"A loaf of bread, a container of milk, and a stick of butter." \- [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Im4GwUD1UY8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Im4GwUD1UY8) . That's what the US was like when I was a kid. Were they all bad parents then?

As [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7YrN8Q2PDU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7YrN8Q2PDU) points out, "By Western standards, Japanese culture emphasises independence and self-reliance from an extraordinarily young age." Do you think all of Japan practices child neglect?

<comment><AUTHOR> Uh, no.

Sending a kid to a store has absolutely nothing to do with routinely relying on an electronic device to manage all of their daily activities.

Kids COULD do a lot of things. They might be fine living alone in a box and learning everything online, for example. But that doesn't make it a good idea.

I'm actually glad you bring up Japanese culture. Japan has several forms of institutionalized child abuse, as well as a culture with extreme conformism and too much social pressure for anyone to be vocal about dissent. So yeah, probably a product of the way kids are raised. Also, with the extreme xenophobia and non-acceptance of outsiders, it's probably safer on the streets there than an average US city.

Providing your kid with day-to-day love and attention isn't really related to whether they leave the house or not.

<comment><USER3> You're still speaking in extremes and failing to see the middle ground. It's another logical fallacy. You're saying that they're relying on an electronic device to manage _all_ of the daily activities. You also take it to an extreme by saying that they "might be find living alone in a box." I don't think that anyone is proposing this, so now you're attacking a strawman.

Providing your kid with day-to-day love and attention isn't really related to whether or not you give them a device to help them begin to manage their lives and schedules in bite-sized pieces in a digital age doesn't constitute abuse.</comment></comment></comment>


How Vine Overlooked the People of Color Who Made It Amazing - <AUTHOR> https://backchannel.com/how-vine-overlooked-the-people-of-color-who-made-it-amazing-2d80d4cde651#.ta510hwc1 <comment><USER2> There is (was?) so much creativity on Vine, it's insane. Many times, I've been delighted by the originality that people have been able to cram in a mere 6 seconds.

Even crazier is that many of these users were just bored teenagers with a smartphone. When people (many of them on this board) complain that smartphones/tablets are all about consuming content rather than creating, Vine is one of my favorite examples to bring up.

If I worked in any field that primarily relied on video as its medium (e.g. marketing), Vine would be the first place where I'd try to track down undiscovered junior creative talent.

It's been sad to have seen it be completely misunderstood and neglected by the twitter execs, and it wasn't hard to predict, but I'm sad to see it go. And, as the article points out, the fact that many of the most creative, active users on Vine were people from communities typically ignored in tech/social media makes it even sadder.

</comment><comment><USER3> A lot of early vines that made it big relied on pretty racist stereotypes, I really disagree when people label Vine as a haven for black entertainment because in reality I feel like it was overall a pretty bad place for anyone not white.

Yes, there are some very awesome and entertaining content creators on Vine that are black, but there's also a lot of racist shit hitting the top of the comedy section that plays on every old and new stereotype you can think of.

I feel like for most of vine's lifespan, the comedy section was filled with stupidly simple sketches about 1) Asian and chopsticks/ninjas 2) Black people and swimming/tough guy/etc... 3) muslims and bombs. I'd hardly call that a welcoming culture.

that being said, I feel like the current comedy section of vine was finally more matured and had content that wasnt stupid simple racial stereotypes, sad that's it's being shut down now.

</comment><comment><USER4> I think about this every time someone on HN discusses Twitter's problems with finding its role; there's a huge community of Twitter users with a distinct culture and engagement that can't easily be replicated elsewhere, they're just very different from the Silicon Valley community/Twitter's board.</comment>


Ask HN: How to rehab Buick's image - <AUTHOR>

The last few years Buick has really been trying to reach a market other than retirees.  Noticed it first with having Tiger pushing the Lacrosse, noticed it most recently with the ad for the Regal Turbo featuring a be-stubbled male model piloting the car along a coastal road whilst enjoying the melodious sounds of the turbocharger.
I'm curious what HN would propose.  Me, I'm a hacker, not an ad guy, but I'd start with
a) reworking the logo and
b) ditching their established names.
For example, I don't care if it's called the Buick Regal Ion Drive, it's still a Regal and therefore conjures images of being stuck behind some old gal looking between the dash and the steering wheel while cruising along at 10 under the speed limit.
What would you folks do? <comment><USER2> Get rid of all the names, launch a new brand (see Scion). The _cars_ probably aren't half bad, but I haven't even thought to look at them when buying a new car - frankly, because they're Buicks.

</comment><comment><USER3> In GM's largest market, China, Buick is a well respected luxury brand. Your perceptions don't matter to GM because China is where GM's future lies.</comment>


Ask HN: Please critique my resumé - <AUTHOR>

https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B_hyya_meyBYZGYzOTcyYzQtNTQ3Mi00ODk2LWFjYTItNzc0MTRhMGQ5NTgz&hl=en&authkey=CJO-psYM
I originally created this resumé last summer and wasn't able to land a new job. I recently edited it in the process of applying for another job; I'm curious if there's something more I should be saying or doing to try to get meaningful work.
I'm mainly interested in back-end development in Python or C. I'm really good at leveraging my Python and command line skills to quickly transform data in various ways. I enjoy being buried deep in the underbelly of code. I like defining, implementing, and working with clear APIs, which probably explains my general distaste for front-end work. I think I'm really good at iteratively writing code to do a specific job, and then generalizing that work to apply in other situations.
Perhaps surprisingly, I'm an extrovert. I feel comfortable in most social situations, and I consider myself a good writer and communicator.
Does this resumé do a good job of reflecting what I'm looking for? I think I'd be a valuable asset to a lot of companies, but I'm having a very hard time finding the right position and then convincing the company that I'm a good fit. I'm open to any advice, suggestions, or offers :) <comment><USER2> Alright so here I go, within a total of 20 seconds of skimming though your resume as any HR would:

1) I would update your career objective as it has a few limitations. the only thing to keep should be "To become a Software Developer in an exciting atmosphere"

Could need some TLC though, maybe: "Aspirations to become a "specific job title" in order to propel myself in the professional career of software development."

2) when writing points remember to answer the "what" the benefit was ex: "Developed software for analyzing large sets of data"

\- developed what type of software? \- analyzed what type of data? \- what was the benefit?

So your point could become: "Developed an algorithm for the CS department which analyzed large sets of student record data in order to successfully predict student behavior"

3) remove this part: "Various: Cashier, Stockboy, Waiter, Bartender, Valet"

You are telling HR that you like to work two jobs at once. They only want you to be focused at one thing. Also this is not relevant to your profession thus it works against you.

4) Join a few meetup groups too, there are many free ones around your city. find them on meetup.com related to software development. Then include them in your resume replacing your interests section with it.

5) This line should be removed: "I'm at home on the command line and regularly write scripts or use crazy shell commands to automate work"

This whole section should be compiled into a chart consisting of languages, platforms, and OS thats it. 3 rows and two columns. (no fancy talk)

6) It seems you have took a portion of your cover letter and squeezed it under "Expertise" on your resume. This should be in your cover letter. (they are cool)

7) I would not use points which don't relate to programming such as: "Fulfilled student and staff needs by working at my dormitory's front desk"

Think of working at a programming job which also got you to mop floors and wax shoes. Now when you apply for another job, you really wouldn't want to mention the violent mopping and aggressive shoe waxing, right? same thing. If you need points to replace those in your resume keep reading my points below.

8) I don't see any self management points such as estimations, work breakdown structures, checklists, tech release notes or even mention of process or best practices. Don't forget to mention these as you may have used some sort of deliverables or even sat with a manager to talk about the best way to proceed. Use it as best practice discussions and ongoing process improvement.

9) remove the work "Hacker". not every startup knows what this means. especially the HR rep who works at these startups. I'm in IT and it still pulls the word "criminal" in my mind.

10) also include some points on how you managed your career path within the organizations along with educational paths. Leverage the names of thought leaders in your specific industry.

other than that don't forget to expand on every related point as stated in #2.

Also don't forget to volunteer your programming efforts so that you can use some of it on your resume. join Odesk or Elance and get paid for small gigs. plus you can put these on your resume if your lacking experience.

good luck

PS. I'm awesome!

</comment><comment><USER3> A few scattered thoughts:

o I would divide into specific positions, and for each position mention responsibilities and accomplishments

o Omit any irrelevant unless you have extra space on the single page (Cashier, etc.).

o "Advisor: my advisor" seems off-guess that's part of the template.

o Why not do everything in latex, it looks more professional and you'll have more control?

o I'm not surprised you are an extrovert. Hackers come in all personality types, stereotypes otherwise.

o It's irrelevant that the person you tutored was on the swimming team.

o While it's true you may be fun to be around, better judged by interaction than by a statement on a resume.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks a lot for your thoughts.

> Omit any irrelevant unless you have extra space on the single page

I was mainly trying to highlight that I've worked several jobs that required social interaction in a service capacity. Is there a better way to do this? Is it even worthwhile?

> "Advisor: my advisor" seems off-guess that's part of the template.

That's simply a result of me editing out personal details.

> Why not do everything in latex, it looks more professional and you'll have > more control?

Good question. I'll make sure my next iteration is in LaTeX.

> While it's true you may be fun to be around, better judged by interaction > than by a statement on a resume.

Good point. My real point was to show that I value an enjoyable workplace and interaction with my coworkers. Perhaps that would fit better in the objective? Is it inappropriate to use a less formal tone for the resumé to try to convey that point?

Again, I appreciate the effort you put into giving me honest feedback.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Overall, too breezy and conversational. Objective should be more like "To become a Python or C software developer in [field of interest or company]." There's a lot of "I'm personable and a hard worker" fluff. They'll tell if you're a social fit from the interview, not the resume, and work ethic should be demonstrated by your experience and education. (If a person _says_ they're smart, they're immediately doubted. They should _show_ it.)

Experience section could include much more detail and should tie-in with Expertise. Take the first entry. "Performed major system upgrade," doing what? Setup 30 servers, migrated from Windows to Linux, something else? "Developed software tools," which did..? What languages did the projects use (should support Expertise)? "large sets of data" how large? What kind of data? Mentoring a new hire should also be much more prominent. Bullet points should start with the most impressive bits first. Receiving a fellowship should be a part of Education, not Work Experience.

Tightening is possible throughout: "Worked part-time through college to maintain financial independence."

Those are my random critiques. Hope they help.

<comment><AUTHOR> > Overall, too breezy and conversational. Objective should be more like "To > become a Python or C software developer in [field of interest or company]." > There's a lot of "I'm personable and a hard worker" fluff.

Thanks a lot. This the kind of honest feedback that is really hard to get from rereading it over and over again myself :).

Your second paragraph is very valuable as well, and it will receive heavy consideration in the next iteration of my resumé.

The point about tightening is good. I was trying to fit in a bit more writing since I consider that one of my skills, but in the process I forgot the most important principle: "Omit needless words."

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> 1) This is a giant wall of text that I don't want to read.

2) First item under work experience "Summer Intern, Senior Technician"... This sounds like you were interning as a senior technician. Not believable. It wasn't until I saw you worked there for 4 years that I guessed you were listing all jobs you had at that place.

3) There is so much boring/unrelated trash in this resume it is hard to get through. I dont care that you were a paper grader unless it has some impact on what you'll be doing for me. Tell me about what kind of projects you spearheaded as a lead developer for your university. (As an aside, virtually no employer will believe you were a lead developer for your university as a student -- you sound like a liar and I'm not even half way through the page).

4) On your activities section, _REMOVE HACKING_! Your boss may know the colloquial meaning of the the term, he may not. But I would bet the farm that HR thinks you are spending your free time trying to steal people's passwords.

4-b) Remove your activities and interests entirely.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you very much for your feedback. Would you mind looking at a significantly-reworked version in a week or so?

I totally understand your point about hacking. I was sending out versions with _hacking_ mainly to startups and without it to other places. Your advice makes me realize that it's high risk with little reward, and that the entire section basically adds nothing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think you should point out more things that set you apart from other candidates. While an interesting detail might not land you a job, it might get you an interview.

Also, be more specific in what impact your work has had on the company. For instance, when you mention that you've developed tools to aid in internal operations - be more specific - say that "my tool has reduced the time to prepare a monthly report from 2 days to three minutes".

<comment><AUTHOR> _be more specific in what impact your work has had on the company_

This is a great piece of advice. I'll have to see how I can work this in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've looked at thousands of resumes over the years. All I care about is What You Know and What You Did. I can see both pretty clearly from your resume. The rest is just noise (to me).

If I was looking for guy to write primarily Python or C in a Unix environment I would definitely follow up with a request for code samples and a phone screen.

<comment><AUTHOR> > What You Know and What You Did

I think this is my biggest problem. I was in school until the age of 24, then I kind of drifted (read: took up online poker) for a year and a half, and I finally started a real job at age 26. I don't get to program a lot in my current job.

In other words, I have a good grounding in a lot of areas, I am an efficient and hard worker, and I pick up new things very quickly.

Hmm... thanks for the feedback. Reading your comment and writing my reply shows me that I need to give explicit examples that demonstrate the traits I've listed above, as opposed to just saying them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> That looks like the standard resume that I see on my desk every day. Nothing spectacular, but probably nothing really wrong with it either.

I guess I should say that I'd also never read the whole thing. A little less wordy might give me a better chance of reading the whole thing.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, this comment really pointed out the need for me to highlight what sets me apart.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Clickable:

[https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chro...](https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B_hyya_meyBYZGYzOTcyYzQtNTQ3Mi00ODk2LWFjYTItNzc0MTRhMGQ5NTgz&hl=en&authkey=CJO- psYM)</comment>


Ask HN: Review my Forum - The Cal Forum - <AUTHOR> http://thecalforum.herokugarden.com/ I created a forum for the students at my university and just wanted to see if anyone had any suggestions on how to go about improving it and making it better for the community. <comment><USER2> It's a forum. There are six sub-forums. It has the school colors, which is nice, but the orange is distractingly bright. Is there something else that I'm missing? Do you have integration with class listings, or club directories, or sports calendars? If you do, I have no way of knowing, and would be unlikely to register.

Without any of these things, you have a forum with 5 members and no topics. I'm not sure what I'm supposed to review.

<comment><AUTHOR> Fair enough. I just wanted to see if there were features that are common of forums that I did not recall. I've also added the ability of tagging and some different methods of posting topics other than the standard forum discussion way such as questions that might result in a single answer or a voting type of discussion. I just made the forum public a few days ago so yes there are not many members, but hopefully that will change soon.</comment></comment>


John Carmack's comment on Doom 3's code style - <AUTHOR> http://kotaku.com/5975610/the-exceptional-beauty-of-doom-3s-source-code?post=56177550 <comment><USER2> A lot of the practices here are enshrined in the Google C++ styleguide:

[http://google- styleguide.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/cppguide.x...](http://google- styleguide.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/cppguide.xml)

The author's first point about establishing conventions so that you can re-use the code that works with those conventions is very important. At Google, nobody writes code to serialize/deserialize bytes, because the default answer is just "use protobufs". Nobody writes low-level communication protocols (well, outside of some very-specialized infrastructure teams), because there's _one_ RPC system. There's one standardized naming system, and a mostly- standard logs format and method for analyzing logs. If you do batch computation, there're two solutions, and there're only a handful of different file formats and storage engines, certainly less than in the open-source world.

I think Rails and Django (and Lisp) discovered the same principle: if you get everybody writing their code & data files the same way, you can write tools to manipulate those files, and that saves you way more in productivity than trying to get the perfect file format.

<comment><USER3> > A lot of the practices here are enshrined in the Google C++ styleguide:

with the notable exception of lining up things horizontally, which tends to be frowned on.

<comment><USER4> I really do not understand why they chose to do so. In my opinion, it does not improve readability at all, even worse, when the spacing between type and name gets _big_ , your eyes need more work to figure out the correct line relations.

Furthermore, this can generate _horrible_ commits, for example:

      int x;
      int y;

becomes:

      int   x;
      int   y;
      float z;

after adding _ONE_ single variable. But your commit will contain changes for the above 2 lines. This will make for an insane experience once your variable list grows to a certain size (including multiple spacing changes) and you intend to rollback/cherry-pick/time-warp. Then you will get to deal with the full wrath of conflict resolution. Also, your commit (of one logical line change) contains way to much _meta_ info, which also decreases commit/diff readability.

<comment><USER5> If trivial whitespace difference causes wrath fill conflicts then I think you have a deeper issue. I can't think of a situation where this would be even a minor issue.

<comment><USER6> Not a huge deal, but it hides the actual author of that line when you're doing a blame. I try to only change the precise lines I need to in a commit, and all of them are relevant to the commit message. That way it's usually a very quick check to see what commit added a certain line.

If I absolutely need to do some tidying in a file, I do it in a fully separate commit so that the change can not be construed to be related to the other feature.

<comment><USER7> Sounds like someone should implement a blame option for "ignore whitespace - show latest author with non-whitespace changes"!

<comment><USER8> git blame -w already does this: [http://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git- blame.ht...](http://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-blame.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > _C++ code can quickly get unruly and ugly without diligence on the part of > the programmers. To see how bad things can get, check out the STL source > code. Microsoft's and GCC's[5] STL implementations are probably the ugliest > source code I've ever seen. Even when programmers take extreme care to make > their template code as readable as possible it's still a complete mess. Take > a look at Andrei Alexandrescu's Loki library, or the boost libraries—these > are written by some of the best C++ programmers in the world and great care > was taken to make them as beautiful as possible, and they're still ugly and > basically unreadable."_

Finally, a guru dares to call a spade a spade. Header-only, template-only C++ programming is a mistake! After 1995 C++ Standardization took the wrong path and lost contact with real world developers. The glorification and idolization of 'STL programming' was in sharp contrast with programmer's needs. Today in C++ there is a chasm like in no other language between the 'official language' and what programmers need and use day in day out.

<comment><USER10> What's odd is that the C++ community fetishizes these techniques so much. I mean, when faced with problems that require running code at compile team, the lisp community's answer was "ok, just include an interpreter and run your lisp code at compile time with eval-when". The C++ community first insisted that there was never a reason for doing so and then said "ok, but instead of writing code for compile-time execution using C++, we're going to create an nightmarishly complex and crippled language that you'll use instead; it will be so painful that you'll be proud of implementing factorial".

And now a whole new generation of programmers can gaze at the horror of Modern C++ metaprogramming and conclude that metaprogramming is bad....

<comment><USER11> As far as I know, C++ templates were never _intended_ be turing complete. They turned out that way by accident.

If you'd asked the standards body to add a turing complete type-level meta- programming language to C++ in order to generate code at compile time I suspect they'd have told you to get knotted.

What people actually asked for was a reasonable syntax for adding generic functions to C++ that would not carry any runtime cost. Sounds completely reasonable, right? The standards group said "sure, how about this?", and kept adding more perfectly reasonable individual requests to the syntax like template specialisation. Only afterwards did the true nature of crawling horror that they'd inadvertently unleashed become apparent.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I've loved John's code since I saw it first time when the original Quake was leaked from their FTP site through IP spoofing. I was just a kid at that time, and it was an amazing experience to hack it.

Yet now, the first example that I saw in this article hurts my eyes. Compare:

      for ( i = 0; i < in->numVerts ; i++ ) {
          dot = plane.Distance( in->verts[i] );
          dists[i] = dot;
          if ( dot < -LIGHT_CLIP_EPSILON ) {
              sides[i] = SIDE_BACK;
          } else if ( dot > LIGHT_CLIP_EPSILON ) {
              sides[i] = SIDE_FRONT;
          } else {
              sides[i]  = SIDE_ON;
          }
          counts[sides[i]]++;
      }

Versus:

      for(i = 0; i < in->numVerts; i++)
      {
          dot = plane.Distance(in->verts[i]);

          dists[i] = dot;
          sides[i] = dot < -LIGHT_CLIP_EPSILON  ?  SIDE_BACK  :
                     dot > LIGHT_CLIP_EPSILON   ?  SIDE_FRONT :
                                                   SIDE_ON;

          counts[sides[i]]++;
      }

<comment><USER13> Well, let me state this: John's version is not to my preference 'cause it has { in the same line as if, but I can live with that. But YOUR version uses not only the ? operator, which should be burned with fire but it NESTS two of them together. Please, I want to die now. :(

Conclusion: We have different preferences.

<comment><USER14> the ternary operator is awesome. it should be used more often.

<comment><USER15> Yeah, I really like it.

It's a nice little oasis of Functional style in an otherwise pretty un- Functional language.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> My heart grew a little warm with the last paragraph of John Carmack's comment:

"The major evolution that is still going on for me is towards a more functional programming style, which involves unlearning a lot of old habits, and backing away from some OOP directions."

<comment><USER17> John Carmack wrote a nice article about experiences writing functional code in C++ here:

[http://www.altdevblogaday.com/2012/04/26/functional- programm...](http://www.altdevblogaday.com/2012/04/26/functional-programming- in-c/)

<comment><USER18> "a function can still be pure even if it calls impure functions, as long as the side effects don't escape the outer function"

This is a very good point that probably could be systematically exploited. Does anyone know examples of this?

<comment><USER19> Here's a pretty trivial example in Haskell - computing the factorial function using a mutable variable.

        import Control.Monad.ST
        import Data.STRef

        fact :: Int -> Int
        fact n = runST (fact' n)

        fact' :: Int -> ST s Int
        fact' n = do a <- newSTRef 1
                     mapM_ (\x -> modifySTRef a (*x)) [1..n]
                     readSTRef a

Here the function `fact'` uses mutable variables (encoded in the use of `ST` in its type -- `ST` stands for State Thread) but the function `fact` is pure -- the call to `runST` ensures that none of the side effects leak out of `fact'`.

As with most Haskell code, the types are optional - I included them for clarity.

<comment><USER20> > As with most Haskell code, the types are optional - I included them for > clarity.

I'd just like to make it clear to anyone else reading this. The types aren't optional, but because Haskell has type inference, specifying them is optional.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> As someone who has worked with the Doom 3 source code for a mod, I have the opposite opinion. The code very clearly shows a programming team (or programmer) in the process of transitioning from old-school C to C++.

Most functions have a huge blob of variable declarations right at the top, as was once necessary in C, even though these variables aren't used until later, or possibly even at all. Usage of const is minimal to non-existent. Global variables are everywhere.

It made some of the functions I had to modify so hard to read that I wound up completely editing them, particularly those variable-declaration blocks, even though I ultimately only needed to change a line or two to get my mod to work.

<comment><USER22> What do you find so disagreeable about collecting variables at the top of a function? For the most part, I like having all the variable declarations at the top, so it's easy to see what names are in what scope.

<comment><USER23>
      void up_front_decls()
      {
        float some_var;
        int another_var;

        some_var = get_some_var();
        do_some_calculations(some_var);
        maybe_something_else(&some_var);

        some_var = get_another_var();
        do_some_other_calculations(another_var);
        blah_blah_already_broken();
      }

      void as_needed_decls()
      {
        float some_var = get_some_var();
        do_some_calculations(some_var);
        maybe_something_else(&some_var);

        int some_var = get_another_var();
        // compile-time error
        // ...
      }

Also:

      void poor_style()
      {
        up_front            declarations;
        also                encourage;
        this_ridiculous    *block_style;
        that_is             a_royal_pain;
        to                  maintain;
        because_some_long_type inevitably;
        screws_it           up;
      }

<comment><USER24> I would argue that if declaring up-front versus declaring as-needed makes a significant difference in readability, then your functions are too long.

<comment><USER2> Except for loop counters. Being able to do:

      for (int i = 0; i < len; ++i) { ... }

vs.

      int i;
      // Half a dozen lines
      for (i = 0; i < len; ++i) { ... }

makes a big difference to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> "I am a full const nazi nowadays, and I chide any programmer that doesn't const every variable and parameter that can be."

Immutability...one less thing to worry about.

<comment><USER26> Yes, but it's easy to spend way too much time chasing that stuff, too. The API you're working with may not itself be const-clean, so you end up with a zillion const_cast expressions translating your "cleanly consted" local expressions into something the compiler will accept. And all that junk hurts maintainability and readability; you end up being tempted into nonsense like "caching" your non-const handle just to avoid all the casts, etc...

Broadly, my feeling is that getting your own APIs (internal and external) to be const correct is important and worth the trouble. But don't jump through hoops to shoehorn the strategy into someone else's code where it isn't honored.

<comment><USER27> I think that highlights a broader point that is touched on by the article. The Doom 3 code is not idiomatic C++ the way many would think of it but it does build its own consistent idioms and sticks with them wherever reasonable. It can do this through having a fairly small number of points where it touches the external world and ensuring that its idioms are compatible with that world.

If you're building a program in any language and it interacts heavily with a particular library then you'd better write something idiomatic to that library. If you're going to be using several libraries (including your language's standard lib) with different idioms then one of the most important design decisions you can make is how to bridge them, and where to make compromises.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Comments should be about _why_ a piece of code does what it does not about what (should be clear from the function/method name) or how (should be clear from the code itself). As long as the comment just explains _why_ it should be as long and detailed as necessary.

<comment><USER29> That is so wrong.

Mathematical thesis are using a syntax arguably much much more powerful than programming languages and yet they're still using lots and lots of english to describe what the formulas are doing and why they're (supposedly) correct in doing so.

I very much prefer to have 1000 lines of some Lisp dialect with lots of comments about what the code does than 10 000 lines of "self-explaining" Java/C# code.

Code can contain bugs. Comments cannot.

<comment><USER30> >Comments cannot.

I disagree. While the comments won't break your code, they can certainly ease the introduction of bugs, and cause cognitive delays when they're wrong or out of date.

Comments need as much care as the code itself, with the DRY principle guiding when they need to be pruned.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> "I mistrusted templates for many years, and still use them with restraint, but I eventually decided I liked strong typing more than I disliked weird code in headers."

I never liked templates myself, and still avoid them almost completely. Even if my reasons are ridiculous, here they are:

1) I typically don't use anything where I don't understand its inner workings (i.e. how it manages memory, how the compiler is likely to optimize it). This does not mean the entity in question is bad, it just means I'm too lazy to learn about it on a deeper level.

2) In most cases where I need to handle a diverse amount of operations and a diverse amount of data types, it is not CPU-critical and I can resort to a higher level scripting language that is much better suited for the purpose.

3) Template syntax does not sit well with me. This is really just an OCD on my end.

4) I often prefer using uber-types (all-encompassing) to many different types -- within reason. I don't like to extend classes for this reason (particularly when you get into extension-hell with 5 different sub types).

<comment><USER32> I'd say 1-3 are perfectly reasonable. If you want to get good, put in the time and you will be rewarded, but that's really a choice.

#4... I think that might make a lot of sense with a weak or dynamic type system, but with a static type system there is a lot of benefit to having a different type anytime the behaviour is different. Of course, that can be tedious unless you have templates or at least generics...

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> The author seems to like the minimalistic comments. I wonder if the team looked back what their thoughts would be. I can barely look at code I wrote a year ago and not ask what the hell I was thinking, but in my mind it was absolutely clear at the time. I guess an impartial third party reading it and understanding it is a strong testimonial.

<comment><USER34> The key is to have self documenting code, not undocumented code. If you create functions that do only a single thing, with their purpose fully described by their method signature then you don't need comments - the method itself explains exactly what it does.

The author makes a good point that comments are just more text that you need to maintain, and whenever you make changes you now have to make changes in two places: in the code, and in the comment - (and I guess in the unit tests as well, depending on the change...)

The best code I've personally seen has been code with no comments and an attached document explaining how the system works and how modules tie together.

<comment><USER33> Oh, I get the concept. I've just been doing this for a while and see it fall part constantly. The problem is always that what is clear to you isn't clear to everyone else, including yourself somewhere down the road. And decomposing everything to atoms tends to lead to a mess of indirection.

Clarity can usually be addressed with longer variable or method names, but there's a strong culture against that in nearly ever programming community.

<comment><USER35> > Clarity can usually be addressed with longer variable or method names, but > there's a strong culture against that in nearly ever programming community.

It would be interesting to see a list of those that discourage long method and variable names. I haven't seen anything that suggests that Java, Ruby, Python, Haskell, Kotlin, Scala, PHP, Groovy etc. discourage long variable and method names.

<comment><USER33> IntelliJ has inspections for long class and method names. A lot of Java devs run that. Long names are frequently derided in the Ruby community as being Java-like. I can't speak to Haskell at all. But generally whenever something needs to be typed frequently, it tends to be shortened. My favorite is when vowels are deemed too onerous.

<comment><USER35> While I was writing that, I realised that it may come down to the definition of what constitutes a long method / variable / class name.

I have usually found that the IntelliJ defaults are enough to make the names meaningful. For Ruby, the inspection kicks in at 30 characters. Interestingly, it's referenced from the ruby style guide here: <https://github.com/bbatsov/ruby-style-guide> where I can't find a recommended maximum length.

We're somewhat sidetracked from the main discussion. I'm generally in favour of trying to write code that is as readable as possible. Ideally in such a way that it is understandable even without the comments.

That said, I do think that good comments are helpful and essential if you're building a library. The Spring Framework comes to mind as a project that has a great set of documentation built from the comments (but also has very readable code, along with long method, variable and class names).

<comment><USER33> I can get on board with common sense decision making :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I guess Carmack would be a big fan of Rust which essentially borrows lots from Haskell, OCaml, C++ and Erlang while being native, safe and on-par in terms of speed with idiomatic C++.

<comment><USER37> On the Quakecon where he talks about static code analysis, he mentions that ML languages are too much for games developers, given the usual skill set.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I don't have much experience with C++ codebases, but is this really "exceptional beauty"? The majority of the things he comments on could be enforced with a code-formatter.

<comment><USER36> Considering the codebase is around a decade old, how many code formatters existed for C/C++ back then?

I am asking because I've only used gofmt to format Go code and infact it was gofmt which introduced the whole concept to me.

<comment><USER38> Astyle seems to have been around that long, I imagine pure C formatters have existed for much longer. They've got a lot in common with a language parser so if you've got a compiler you're most of the way there.

<http://astyle.sourceforge.net/notes.html>

I think Go is pretty unusual in that gofmt is provided with the language. So all Go everywhere looks the same. It's awesome isn't it? :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> It would be really helpful to have some real world examples of changes going from C++ OOP to C++ functional and include the trade-offs.

By concrete I mean what changed in Id's code (or some other game or ui framework), and not just some text book example. What changed in GameObject or PhysicsSphereObject or RenderableSkinnedMesh or whatever things changed. What did the code used be like? What was changed? What benefits did the change provide? What problems did the change introduce?

Abstract talk is interesting but "show me the Money!" ;-)

<comment><USER40> Go search for "data oriented programming". Mike Acton wrote a few interesting presos on it, GameDevADay blog has a few others, too.

Yes, technically they have different motivations for going the way they go, but the end results tend to coincide neatly :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> These are very reasonable guidelines that most of us can probably relate to.

What I find much harder is to write "beautiful" code at a higher level. The examples shown are mostly algorithms working with fundamental language features. My code tends to get ugly when integrating APIs from different sources with different conventions. I spend a lot of time checking return codes, mapping from one set of error codes to another. Sometimes it's hard to decide whether a return code has to be checked or whether I should assume, for efficiency, that all parameters I'm sending in or getting out are ok.

Other things that uglify my code: exception handling, locks or other concurrency artifacts, retry loops.

</comment><comment><USER42> I currently make a living by essentially applying these rules to other peoples code and handing it off.

My second programming lecturer ever, refused to correct my assignments if these rules were not followed. He never told us said rules though. This was before I learned what an array was! Got 0% on my first two assignments with him but eventually he corrected the next ones with a good life lesson.

Frankly its the only thing I remember from that asshole but was probably one of the most important lessons in my opinion!

</comment><comment><USER43> I've always been told that the get, set() idiom is to allow the author to change the implementation at a later date.

I always resent doing it but I can see how if the body of the function is not declared in the header file, but instead the associated .cpp file, that an author can change it, without introducing a whole recompile overhead.

Writing code that may not be needed is bad, but it's a trade off vs. preventing other users writing code that depends on it when their code should not.

</comment><comment><USER44> So he discourages Getters/Setters and instead says that declaring the variable as Public is better?

I mean, isn't that like not giving a sh-- about encapsulation principles ?

<comment><USER45> I'm kind of the same opinion as Carmack re: getters/setters. My feeling is, if all you're going to do is allow clients to read and write the variable, why not just expose it? Sure, you can argue encapsulation and even justify it by saying that later down the road you may want to change the implementation, but far too often I've seen C++ classes with a setter and getter for every variable, for no good reason (eg, they're never called, or shouldn't be). I think it behooves programmers to really think about the interfaces their code offers; don't just expose something through setters and getters because it's there, ask yourself, what is this class really offering that you couldn't get with a struct? Pass through setters and getters aren't an abstraction.

<comment><USER46> One (maybe stupid?) reason why I really like getter/setters has nothing to do with encapsulation, but that it makes it easier to search for places where a variable is changed. Often you have lots of getFoo and little setFoo functions - so just searching for "Foo" will return lots of results while "setFoo" helps me finding those faster.

<comment><USER47> Most editors with an indexer solves that automatically with _"find all references"_. They can usually even order by "read occurrences" and "write occurrences"

<comment><USER46> VS2010 and C::B both don't seem to allow that ordering. So not a solution for me, but certainly could be other IDE's support that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> I am also a const nazi, and occasionally find myself trying to imitate some of its uses elegantly through run time errors or strict naming conventions in other languages. I do understand why many other languages decided not to support it though. There's definitely a few times I've coded myself into a corner and ended up with "const spaghetti", having to do a const_cast or two to free myself and make a deadline.

The article makes it sound a little like you can just slap const everywhere and your code will be better. It does take more time and effort to be const correct, although it's usually worth it.

<comment><USER46> I also care about const-correctness... but once in a while in a dark hour I wonder if I really saved or lost more time by it so far.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> I don't like this coding style at all. There are quite a few inconsistency with respect to the formatting, for example:

common->Frame(){ session->Frame() { ... } }

etc.

</comment><comment><USER50> Great article. Even if you're not a C/C++ programmer.

</comment><comment><USER51> A bit of a derail, but I have to ask: since Carmack has been big on rocketry for years now, is he in any way associated with Elon Musk's Space X program?</comment>


The Secret to Start-Up Success: Save Customers Money - <AUTHOR> http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/10/the-secret-to-start-up-success-save-customers-money/

<comment><USER2> There are only a couple secrets to startup success...

Save someone Time

Save someone Headache

Save someone Money

Make someone Money

Make someone cool(er) by association

Make someone smart(er) by association

<comment><USER3> I'm not a fan of the phrasing, but "get the user laid" is often cited.

<comment><USER4> I've heard "get 'em paid or get 'em laid"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Here's a simpler secret:

Create more value for the customer than it costs them and than it costs you to produce.

<comment><USER2> For being so simple, that's a complicated sentence.

<comment><USER6> What if I put it this way?

      (defun evaluate-profitability (you your-service customer)
        (if (> (value service customer)
    	   (cost your-service customer)
    	   (cost your-service you)))
        "PROFIT!")

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Also key to success; hiring a good PR firm to get you mentioned in a NYTimes fluff article.

</comment><comment><USER8> Wow nice one! This is what the new idea I'm working on is all about.

I still have a half developed primitive version of an already successful idea in the west and I hate to copy ideas. But the one I'm working on is a local version that suits the prices and standard of living locally. I've even edited the idea to make it simpler to understand as guys in my surrounding are not too much into tech (they rarely understand the internet. for them all they know is that there's a gate to it called google).

I was always wondering if this was a valid base to work on an idea.

</comment><comment><USER9> I think this article makes a really good point and has got me thinking. We all want to build cool things and innovation is key. Although, in these times I think coming up with solutions to make people and/or businesses more efficient might be even more innovative.

</comment><comment><USER10> The Ultimate Question: "How likely is it that you would recommend this company to a friend or colleague?"

It helps, really.

Replace "company" by whatever you need. I used it to check myself, to check my firm, to check my solutions, etc.</comment>