Ask HN: KISS company website: Wordpress, Square Space or roll my own? - <AUTHOR> I'm building a SaaS product targeting the telephony sector. Finished my prototype (Spring Boot backend, basic jQuery/Bootstrap front end) and raised a little scratch so I'm planning on building a company website, careers page, etc. before I start hiring.
Whilst I know PHP well enough (to really dislike it) temptation is to avoid Wordpress for the company site and go for something else (Jekyll, Ghost etc). Problem is a lot of the company web pages being churned out by design studios are Wordpress and I want to outsource at least the company web pages.
Has anyone here tried eschewing the typical Wordpress company website and rolled their own or alternatively gone for a completely different CMS?
Any pros or cons you've encountered?
To keep things simple I'm trying to limit my language focus to just Java8/ECMAScript for now so keen to avoid throwing Ruby or Python based stacks into the mix. <comment><USER2> If you want to outsource it, I can agree that the easiest way is to provide a simple interface for the other party. That's where a CMS like Wordpress would make sense.

On the other hand, if you want to have more control in the long term, I can recommend to use Hugo [0] as a static website generator.

They have plenty of themes [1] to choose from. You can still adjust it with basic knowledge in HTML/CSS. Afterwards you can chose where to host it. You can use Github Pages [2] for free or pay for a service like DigitalOcean [3]. I wrote a technical cheatsheet [4] on how to setup your own website with these ingredients.

\- [0] [https://gohugo.io/](https://gohugo.io/)

\- [1] [http://themes.gohugo.io/](http://themes.gohugo.io/)

\- [2] [https://pages.github.com/](https://pages.github.com/)

\- [3] [https://www.digitalocean.com/](https://www.digitalocean.com/)

\- [4] [http://www.robinwieruch.de/own-website-in-five- days/](http://www.robinwieruch.de/own-website-in-five-days/)

<comment><USER3> We're built www.takeshape.io for this exact use case. Quick way to get your static site up and running with a CMS backend. If you're interested I can put you into the beta program.

<comment><USER4> May I be in the beta program please?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> For a SaaS company like yours, I would do a site that's static content served from a CDN (generated by something like jekyll and friends). Obviously a site deployed that way is largely fail-proof and fast, but there's another (and larger) benefit people don't often mention:

Having your site content live in the git repo instead of a database is amazing. In fact, this is the approach taken by most documentation sites these days. It makes it so much easier and faster to make changes, updates, and experiment. I use Netlify as a static host; they have features to make any commit, pull request, or branch into a hosted preview. It's an awesome way to work.

(For less technical editors, you can plug them into the process with something like NetlifyCMS, a clever open source project from the same folks that basically is a CMS interface running on git / github.)

<comment><USER6> I support this very much. WP is quick to setup but becomes a huge pain in the a* very quickly. _Everything_ needs a plugin. Caching, backups, multilanguage support - these were the big ones for us. It becomes very fragile and hard to update, at some point you start spending a lot of time maintaining everything.

At the end I just sat down for an afternoon and wrote 500 lines of reusable python/flask that did exactly what we needed [1]. Even though it's my code this is actually much _less_ work to maintain compared to some MySQL-PHP- WP-10Plugins-JS-Nginx-Kraken monster.

[1] [https://github.com/muellermichel/guetzli](https://github.com/muellermichel/guetzli)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I recommend using jekyll or hugo for your site using either netlify or forestry.io for the CMS and hosting. This is the future, and it can be hard to convince the non tech savvy, but I think you know the benefits. I'm willing to help if you run into any questions with setup. You can find me here: [http://templatestud.io/](http://templatestud.io/).

P.S. This is from working with Joomla, Drupal, and Wordpress sites in the past. Static sites are the way to go.

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm surprised to see so much answers leading to use a Static Website Generator. WordPress certainly can be problematic, but I think that there are clear advantages in both cases. You've got to make tradeoffs in both too.

I've been hearing a lot about Hugo lately, but my main concern as a blog editor with static website generators is the fact that they are great for, well, static content. If you want to update your site with new content and features (posts, pages, sections, widgets, comments, web statistics) WordPress make that easier.

On static websites generators —at least the ones I tried a couple of years ago, octopress/pelican/jekyll— these systems are great if you want to just have a good/superfast landing page and a few other pages laying around. Once you want to add new pages and posts you had to recompile everything again, something that wasn't a good idea with sites that grow dinamically through time with hundreds or thousands of posts (like my blog, for example).

Please let me know if Hugo (and others) solves the "recompilation" issue to rebuild the site each time, I'm probably wrong or not updated here. In your case it seems that static website generator could be a good fit though.

Squarespace is really nice too, btw. Good attention to design and detail, not so versatile as WordPress.

<comment><USER9> I'm using Hugo currently on a site with tens of thousands of pages - it was converted from a Wordpress site which was updated multiple times a day for about 4 years.

Compilation time is around a minute. It's really not a big deal.

<comment><USER8> That's great. Time to test Hugo, it seems. Thanks ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> From a purely technical perspective, WordPress is so meh. But from a business and "time to market" perspective, it is not a bad choice. You can quickly put up a landing page, career page etc on a decent VPS and get going. WordPress also will give you tons of SEO and content marketing options out of the box.

One example. ConvertKit is killing it these days, right ? See their marketing website. It is WordPress.

</comment><comment><USER11> i've spent a CONSIDERABLE amount of time looking into this lately for a few projects. at this point, id definitely recommend wordpress + oneclick install on digital ocean for a company site. its so fast and easy, its really hassle free. which is the single most important thing when launching. time is already in short supply, so you want to (have to) invest it wisely. is a better "about us" page going to give you more return then product refinement or sales? absolutely not.

this is one of the few times that the right thing is also the easy thing.

</comment><comment><USER12> What segment of the telephony market are you targeting? Are you going after a smaller number of large companies, or as many small deals as you can get?

Basically, how important is human involvement in your sales process?

If it's really important, focusing on your website at all is probably a waste of your time. Just choose whatever involves the least amount of work (probably SquareSpace or Launchrock) and crank something out quick.

Revisit it later when the website is actually interfering with your sales.

</comment><comment><USER13> Static and markdown is the simplest I know.

</comment><comment><USER14> A really good static site generator: [Hugo](gohugo.io).

</comment><comment><USER15> If you are fine with PHP there is also the option of OctoberCMS built on top of the Laravel framework, have to say I really enjoy it so far.

[http://octobercms.com/](http://octobercms.com/)

[https://www.atlantic.net/blog/october- cms/](https://www.atlantic.net/blog/october-cms/)

[http://www.archybold.com/blog/post/laravel-vs-october-cms- di...](http://www.archybold.com/blog/post/laravel-vs-october-cms-differences- part-1)

</comment><comment><USER16> I wish I had some brilliant non-WP insight to share with you but once you deal with WordPress' security issues (not minor but conquerable), its ubiquity and flexibility make it a great solution for most smaller-scale (content-wise) projects -- the fact that you can turn to anyone from the local college kid to a major agency and hand them your site and they're going to be able to execute, or you can take it back and do it yourself at a moment's notice, it's just hard to beat that.

</comment><comment><USER17> A host who specializes in Wordpress can take a lot of the sting out managing it (patching, caching, security, etc). I'm in the process of moving a bunch of WP sites off of dedicated hosting for this exact reason.

So far the best options look like WPEngine, Wordpress.com, or Pantheon.

I've also worked with Squarespace and would caution that developers can find it to be frustrating--requires a lot of hovering and clicking to configure pages and post content. Not really a fan now--too much of a pain.

<comment><USER18> SquareSpace can feel nice for people setting up a brand new site. Problem I found is that I had to migrate a site away from their old host into something more user-friendly, but most of the SquareSpace templates looked nothing like the corporate site and at the same time too similar to each other.

The company wanted no changed to be done to the design, so it did take time eventually, but just wrestling a lot with its grid layout and CSS hacks to get it looking just right with no visual bugs.

If I could do it again, I'd use Wordpress.org with BeaverBuilder. BB takes a lot of the drag-and-drop functionality of SquareSpace and puts it into your Wordpress site.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> If only you'll be editing the site, as a dev, I always like to roll my own. Simple HTML/JS/CSS. Feel like I have more control, less learning and I enjoy it. But that's the dev bias.

If you want other non technical people to edit or make changes, choose a CMS.

Your goal is to get your message out there asap so you can solve problems.

End of day, the customer doesn't care, only you do. You can always change it later.

</comment><comment><USER20> Use WordPress for your website with a custom theme. There's really not that much to it and your going to get tons of features basically for free.

However use other things for your SaaS platform, WordPress is too slow for that kind of thing. Instead go with something lightweight like Slim Framework.

<comment><USER21> There's also the maintenance aspect of it all. Who is going to update it? A lot of people have experience working with WordPress - creating new content, the process, etc. There's a ton of documentation for basically everything. I know a ton of non-technical people who can do a decent amount with WordPress because of all that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> if you want to outsource, WordPress is the best choice. Make sure you use different domains for WordPress and your app. Sucuri (recently bought) provided a good managed WAF & security monitor for WordPress.

</comment><comment><USER23> I would leverage your existing knowledge but avoid WordPress, and instead use Grav ([https://getgrav.org](https://getgrav.org)). It's open source and much more flexible than WordPress, plus it does not require a database (it's a flat-file CMS) and it's very easy to build a site with it.

You don't have to have WordPress as the go-to resource for everything, but also you don't really have to roll your own CMS every time you build up a site, which is quite a time consuming task.

Grav offers a light experience to a CMS, and you can decide if you want to just work with markdown files, or rely on the Admin panel for easier editing.

(Disclosure: I'm a dev team member).

</comment><comment><USER24> github pages. redirect your domain name. easy.

</comment><comment><USER25> I would be surprised if you could only find companies that can design Wordpress pages and not Ghost/Jekyll pages.

</comment><comment><USER26> If you are just throwing something together, static S3 pages with Cloudflare in front?

</comment><comment><USER27> What are your requirements in terms of editing / updating (e.g. adding new blogs) content once your site is live? If you expect non-technical person being able to author the content, you may consider headless CMS like Kentico Cloud ([https://kenticocloud.com/](https://kenticocloud.com/)) or Contentful ([https://www.contentful.com/](https://www.contentful.com/)) to store and manage your content and then pull it to your template via technology of your choice. Eventually, you could feed that content to static web page generators like Hugo and serve only generated pages.

</comment><comment><USER28> We use a lot of Handelbars-based static html/js sites with no backend hosted on Azure, for landing pages and per-product micro-sites. It's very simple, and seems to work well.</comment>


Ask HN:  How do you answer what is your greatest weakness? - <AUTHOR>

How do you guys answer "What is your greatest weakness?" question in a job interview? <comment><USER2> I'm a workaholic, I work too hard, work extra hours, don't give up so easily.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm a perfectionist, irritated by mediocrity.</comment>


Ask HN: I need a VoIP provider.  Who do you recommend? - <AUTHOR>

I just need somebody who can port over about a dozen inbound phone numbers, and provide a trunk to my PBX.
Alternately, I'd be fine with paying a reasonable fee to use somebody else's VoIP PBX.
I need a provider who will actually handle a port for me.  I tried to switch from Teliax to VoicePulse, and ended up with most of the numbers not ported, and nobody on either side seeming to care about this fact. <comment><USER2> les.net</comment>


The Go Language is faster than the Computer Language Benchmarks Game thinks - <AUTHOR> http://klaig.blogspot.be/2012/09/the-go-language-is-faster-than-computer.html

<comment><USER2> The title is misleading, and the article is hard to read.

The central complaint seems to be that the language shoot-out uses the 'go' compiler. This doesn't seem surprisingly, seeing as this is what the go website tells users to use.

There is however a gcc frontend for go, complete as of July and still not in many distributions (this isn't a go problem, man distros haven't updated yet to gcc 4.7.1).

So the real headline should be 'Computer Language Benchmarks uses google's go compiler, gccgo is faster'

<comment><USER3> That is one of the things I miss in Shootout. Before, there were allowed multiple implementations for each language, and users could see how big difference between Lua and Luajit is, or how Python2 compares to Python 3.

Now that there is only one implementation for each language allowed, some important information is missing from the site.

<comment><USER4> Wait... Is luajit is back in the benchmark shootout?

<comment><USER5> no

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> 1\. Languages are not fast (or slow), implementations are. The language semantics can help or hinder, but in and of itself a language doesn't run.

2\. This is old news. The Shootout was debatable before, but 12~18 months ago it suddenly decided that only one implementation of each language (picked completely arbitrarily and according to no clear cut rules, and sometimes allowing two implementations e.g. Python gets CPython 3, Lua gets Lua, but Ruby gets both MRI 1.9 and JRuby, Erlang gets HiPE and Javascript gets V8) would be allowed after — as far as I understand — a spat with the pypy team.

<comment><USER6> JRuby really is a different language than Ruby. Not only is it built on a different ecosystem of libraries (anything on the JVM vs anything for Ruby) but there are language extensions that make it operate differently (Java MBeans being one of them.)

<comment><USER5> > JRuby really is a different language than Ruby.

No, JRuby is a JVM-based implementation of Ruby.

> Not only is it built on a different ecosystem of libraries (anything on the > JVM vs anything for Ruby)

Irrelevant, you can make the same claim about any impementation of a language: GHC has extensions to Haskell, why isn't JHC benched as well? IronPython can use .Net libraries but not Python C-API libraries, why isn't it there?

> there are language extensions

Which are not used in the shootout and — again – are irrelevant anyway.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> A trivial benchmark that doesn't actually run long enough or do enough allocation to exercise the GC isn't going to be representative of real-world performance in any case.

<comment><USER8> A trivial assertion without supporting evidence for the claims.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Go is unlikely to be faster than Java (JVM is very optimized) in the near future. So rerun your benchmarks!

<comment> Tuna-Fish In a sufficiently short test (where the jit cannot show it's chops) I'd expect go to win.

The tests in the benchmark game are totally useless anyway. When given a load that does not stress the L1i, modern CPUs perform pretty much completely differently than they do on real loads with more than 32kB of code. Given such a small code snippet, the CPU will never fail a (theoretically predictable) branch, will never spill L1, and, on SNB, will in fact never even have to decode an instruction after the uOP cache is primed.

<comment><USER10> > _When given a load that does not stress the L1i, modern CPUs perform pretty > much completely differently than they do on real loads with more than 32kB > of code._

Even if that's the case, one would assume that would hold for ALL languages, so you get a fair comparison at that...

<comment><USER11> In the same way that a bicycle race is a fair way to compare sprinters as long as you have all of them ride bicycles. It's a fair benchmark, but it's not benchmarking the case that's actually important.

<comment><USER10> No, it's like comparing sprinters by having them run, and someone telling you: "hey, the problem is not that sprinter X is ten times slower. The problem is what you want to do in the real world. Do you want to go from A to B? Why not take the bus, etc".

[I'm not saying this about the L1i cache case specially, which is a good point, but rather for the prevalent response to any benchmark in Go-land, a defensive attitude which I have not witnessed in any other language community. Usually Python, JS, Ruby, Rust etc guys get on to fixing such microbenchmark behavior or explain why it's as it is. Go guys just propose you forget about it and rewrite your code in another way].

I don't care about a specific real world case of getting from A to B, or how it can be done faster in another way. I care about measuring sprinters. The case that's important here is benchmarking itself. How fast each and every instruction of a similar type executes in a language.

E.g if I do:

for i in range(10): print i

and

for i:=0; i<10; i++ { fmt.Print(i); }

I don't care if this kind of code is not representative of an actual program, I don't care if the code inside the loop might take more time in most cases, I don't care if I can write some particular program using some other structure.

I only want to know why this takes X time in Python and c*X time in Go, and if the c factor can be improved.

Suggestions about "real world programs" and "write this another way and then measure" in this regard are counter-productive, because they focus not on raw benchmarking the language but on specific cases.

<comment> Tuna-Fish I'd like to point out that I'm not one from the goland, and in fact I find the language quite disappointing. However, the fact that the benchmarks are rather meaningless is a real problem, because languages use resources differently, and thus resource exhaustion affects them differently.

A notable example is C++-style templates (typically every codepath is expanded independently) vs java-style generics (one codepath with checks for types). C++-style absolutely dominates in small benchmarks, because it provides the best possible code. However, if you use a lot of them on different types, it's very easy for them to totally ruin your performance due to resource exhaustion. Some of the very largest performance gains I've ever gotten from a small optimization (on the order of 10x real improvement for a spot change to a few dozen lines, with no change to algorithms) involved removing C++ templates, storing tags, and adding a few case statements based on them.

> I'm not saying this about the L1i cache case specially, which is a good > point

Note that L1i is not the only, or even the biggest offender. BTB slots are another very critical one. Predicted branches are essentially free on modern OoO cores, and business logic often contains inhuman amounts of what's essentially if trees. Have enough branches in your main loop that the BTB overflows, and thanks to LRU replacement, all those ifs turn from costing half a cycle to costing ~10 cycles or so. Properly optimizing for that case is very different from optimizing for some microbenchmark with a 100 bytes of code.

And again, this is not praise for on an indictment against some language. I'm not saying that C++ is slow, it was just an easy example of a case where things change when the codebase gets bigger. What I am saying is that the performance shootout is essentially useless, and promotes the kind of optimizations that either don't really help, or even hurt speed in the large. If performance actually matters to you, you are much better off measuring things like competing mature XML parsers or the like. While there are a lot of things wrong with using that to measure the speed of your favorite language, it's still _less wrong_ than using a five-line microbenchmark.

<comment><USER8> >>If performance actually matters to you, you are much better off measuring things like competing mature XML parsers or the like.<<

Please tell us where we can see that comparison!

>>less wrong than using a five-line microbenchmark<<

The trouble with that hyperbole is that someone's already mentioned their five-line microbenchmark in this discussion -- <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4544096>

The alternatives to the benchmarks game that people come up with are usually worse, not better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I tested simple a simple Go program with a for loop counting from 1 to several millions and making simple integer calculations and the same with Java. Java was 4-5x faster than Go.

It looks like HotSpot VM is preety much optimized and that Go still needs a lot of compiler optimizations...

I know that this test isn´t representative and complete, but it is a good smoke test for first comparison. C and Go should be faster than Java in pure integer numerics (or at least as fast as Java)...

<comment><USER13> Why should C and Go (AOT compiled) be faster than Java for pure integer numerics? For long-running simple tight loops of numerics, I'd assume HotSpot would be faster.

<comment><USER8> Don't assume -- measure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> OT:

I am a bit of a fan of dark backgrounds but you got to be careful with the colours for links etc. Dark grey on Darker Grey is not very visible.

Additionally the article is not clearly laid out and if it didn't have "Go" in the title would not have had a chance at high front page spot on HN.

Oh well such is life at the moment.

<comment><AUTHOR> Indeed, fixed the horrible link color. I also agree, Go is really hyped at the moment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Personally, I'm surprised that anyone takes the shootout seriously. In my experience, benchmarks of this sort are about as useful and trustworthy as GPU benchmark results provided by a GPU vendor.

After having spent a little while looking over the site, I've got to give igouy props for fixing many of the worst problems that existed on the site a few years back (some of the micro-benchmarks that used to exist were questionable, at best; some of the implementations were even worse). It is a far better presented, qualified, and curated site than it used to be.

I still don't think it's a _useful_ site and that people would be better off ignoring it, but with the changes made, I don't think it's a _harmful_ site anymore.

<comment><USER8> >>useful<<

"#1. To show working programs written in less familiar programming languages"

>>trustworthy<<

Are you saying that you believe the measurements to be falsified?

<comment><USER15> Benchmarking is, in general, useless without context. I believe that something like the CLBG fails "useful" in the sense that the curated programs are themselves of limited utility. Showing different benchmark implementations illustrates _some_ things about different programming languages, but IMO these differences are of limited utility when learning languages.

Do I believe that your measurements are falsified? No. But generalized benchmarks (that is, without meaningful context to the problem that you're trying to solve) are truthy, at best—sort of like statistics presented out of context (such as the 47% figure floating around in political circles).

As I said, I think the way that the CLBG is presented now is much better than it was presented as the Shootout. I just don't think that it's useful toward real software development.

<comment><USER8> I'm sorry about the reply I made a few days ago -- it doesn't seem to address what you wrote.

>>limited utility<<

I don't think there's anything on the website that suggests the benchmarks game provides some sort of perfect, definitive and ultimate statement about anything at all.

On the contrary -- "Here you'll find provisional facts about the performance of programs written in ≈24 different programming languages for a dozen simple tasks."

>>useful toward real software development<<

That would be depend on how well informed the "real" software developers are, and there seem to be plenty of programmers with strange ideas about languages they haven't used.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> One datapoint is not meaningful here. Give it a go with the entire suite.

</comment><comment><USER17> As long as someone in our industry writes "smoking scala, clojure, java and lisp" we have not progressed from being children, playing with toys in our sandbox with a mine-is-bigger-than-yours attitude. Sad.

<comment><USER18> Oh please. It's a simple informal choice of words. To many people, programming languages are toys too, because programming is a hobby. It doesn't have to be all uptight super business speak all the time.

<comment><USER19> It doesn't have to be tribal, either.

<comment><USER19> Is it really so hard to understand that the language shootout promotes the same sort of (misinformed) tribalism-by-language that the blog post author both dislikes (otherwise, why concern yourself over relatively pointless microbenchmarks of single implementations?) and reinforces (apparently "smoking" other languages is good?). What happened to objective assessment?

<comment><USER8> Is it really so hard to understand that it hasn't been called _the language shootout_ for over 5 years - and you are promoting "the same sort of (misinformed) tribalism-by-language" by talking about it in those terms?

My guess is that your mistaken view of what the benchmarks game promotes reflects a lack of familiarity with what the website says about itself on the homepage and the Help page and the Conclusions page and ...

<comment><USER19> _Is it really so hard to understand that it hasn't been called the language shootout for over 5 years - and you are promoting "the same sort of (misinformed) tribalism-by-language" by talking about it in those terms?_

The "benchmarks game" is largely the same as when it was called the "language shootout" now with more caveats plastered about. Please explain to me which language tribe I am promoting by calling the "benchmarks game" by its original name? Is it the tribe of skeptics? Perhaps use an HTTP 301 to redirect <[http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/>](http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/>); to <[http://microbenchmarks.alioth.debian.org/>](http://microbenchmarks.alioth.debian.org/>); and expunge "shootout" from all names?

 _My guess is that your mistaken view of what the benchmarks game promotes reflects a lack of familiarity with what the website says about itself on the homepage and the Help page and the Conclusions page and ..._

Instead of guessing what my "view" "reflects", consider what the "benchmarks game" has promoted in TFA:

Title: "The Go Language is faster than the computer language benchmarks game thinks it is"

Well, this isn't what the "benchmarks game" says it measures anywhere (in fact, the site explicitly decries this interpretation) and yet this is what it indirectly promotes in various language communities (and linkbait tastes good).

Conclusion: "So Go should be between C and Clean, smoking scala, clojure, java and lisp."

Again, this isn't what the site says it measures (it measures some aspects of some implementations, not languages) and yet this is how it is portrayed by third parties. I understand that it is difficult to give people a lot of 'easy' data and simultaneously educate them about the reasonable limits of inference based on those data. I understand that the benchmarks game has taken great pains to try to educate its readers and inform their conclusions. I don't know if it will ever be enough -- people (as we can see) like easy answers and aren't willing to 0.) do the work to get more complete data sets and 1.) temper their findings with objective reality instead of drawing misinformed conclusions.

Do you see how the easily-digestible plots (indirectly) promote tribalism over rationality? Do you see how a plot is worth a thousand words?

<comment><USER8> Talking about the benchmarks game as a shootout promotes "the same sort of (misinformed) tribalism-by-language" -- I didn't say you were promoting a particular language tribe.

>>Perhaps use an HTTP 301 to redirect<<

Perhaps that was understood 5 years ago, and there are obstacles to that approach. (Not that I think that's actually why people like to talk about _the shootout_.)

>>promoted in TFA<<

Here you are -- <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4544096>

He's talking about this -- [https://groups.google.com/d/topic/golang- nuts/KqA1Jlpu2nM/di...](https://groups.google.com/d/topic/golang- nuts/KqA1Jlpu2nM/discussion)

He came up with it all by himself, the same way people make factorial performance comparisons.

>>(and linkbait tastes good)<<

This kind of traffic-less blog post isn't a benefit -- stackoverflow is by far the main source of link traffic, and much more traffic comes from direct search.

>>Do you see how the easily-digestible plots (indirectly) promote tribalism over rationality?<<

Do you see how you can intervene and explain what the plots actually say?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> >*The Go Language is faster than the Computer Language Benchmarks Game thinks

That's what Go advocates always say, but, for a static language with tight memory structures, it's not that fast at all.

Now, he does compile with gcc go, which is faster, but using the go tool I frequently find for lots of use cases it's about 50-100% faster than Python, or 2-5 times slower than Java.

Not every impressive -- it probably needs a better compiler with more optimizations and a better GC.

When you point that out the the golang mailing list, it's mostly met with la- la-hands-in-the-ears denial, and suggestions to rewrite your program in a smarter way and micro-optimize it. But I don't want to find the optimal algorithm for something -- I want to compare speed, and for that same-ish algorithms in same-ish languages are fine.

(Though, Russ Cox said the current HEAD has a lot of optimizations and is quite faster, so things might be improving there).

<comment><USER20> Not meaning this snarkily, but: if you write a program in Java and it's 2x faster than a Go program written in the same style, why not just write in Java?

<comment><USER10> Well, and I mean this kinda snarkily, who said people don't?

I, for one, found that for some kinds of work I do, Go doesn't give that much of a performance advantage, so I'm exploring other languages.

That said, even if Java gives you 2x, that doesn't mean that you shouldn't complain about Go.

E.g you might like Go's semantics and syntax, or it might have other benefits for you. That you like those things about Go, doesn't mean you don't get to say "shame about the performance".

<comment><USER20> I guess I'm just saying, Go's syntax and semantics aren't enough of a win for you to deal with the performance hit you take compared to Java. So use Java. It's not a moral issue.

<comment><USER10> Well, I hoped to use Go to avoid both:

a) writing in C for performance (and having to setup glib et al to make it comfortable)

and:

b) carrying the JVM with me to run something.

(And, no, I won't consider AOT compilers for Java. I want to deal with reasonably mature and widespread technologies and tooling).

So, there are my constraints. Given those, maybe C++ is the ticket. D is not mainstream enough, and Rust I've played with and I like very much but is still in flux.

<comment><USER20> I wrote three paragraphs of response here, as is my wont, and realized before hitting "reply" that that's the wrong tack.

Let's be specific. What are you building or considering, where your current options are C and the JVM? How does Go fall down on that work load?

I've got a fair bit of professional experience in both C (~10 years shipping code continuously in it) and Java, and I've spent the last couple weeks in Go --- not long enough to be a true believer, but enough to have some practical experience.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Microsoft tinkering with scary-smart ad spots - <AUTHOR> http://edition.cnn.com/2008/TECH/02/06/microsoft.ads.ap/index.html <comment><USER2> "For example, if a car company wanted to show its logo for 10 seconds in the bottom-right-hand corner of the screen, the computer program would find the 10 seconds in which the logo interferes _least_ with the action in the video."

Waitwaitwait... In my experience, marketers want to interfere in the most HORRENDOUS manners...</comment>


Khan Academy Founder Proposes a New Type of College - <AUTHOR> http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/khan-academy-founder-proposes-a-new-type-of-college/41160?cid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en <comment><USER2> And the pendulum swings back.

While there are differences, fundamentally the proposition of mentors, internship-based learning, and living on site is not that different from apprenticeships. There's a wider exposure to ideas, perhaps (because maybe you jump between internships instead of staying with one), but at its most basic level the proposed idea is training people to do jobs instead of trying to expand their thinking minds. Yes, there's lip service given to seminars, but it's evident in the quote ("Traditional universities… list the Nobel laureates… ours… would list the… entrepreneurs, inventors, and executives") that academics are held in a certain amount of contempt.

Let me be clear: I don't think there's anything wrong with this vision. This approach would probably be a success. It may be needed. The problem is this: somehow we mutated universities into a place where everyone goes in order to get a job. I think we benefit from having more people being educated at a university level, but that benefit is not purely practical. I don't think the point of getting higher education is getting a job. I think it's an extension of the same reason we go to school: because an educated population drives knowledge further. Because when a large part of the population gets a Bachelors of some sort, they can reason better. And because when there are more people at that knowledge level, a larger part than before gets a Ph.D. And that helps society and humanity move forward faster.

There's a tension right now between the university as a place to expand your mind and learn for the sake of learning and the university as a place where you prepare for a job. I think it's a good idea to play with that tension and that balance, and see what balance leads to better results in what way. But I think there is absolutely a place for universities as they are today, and I think their existence is part of what has driven us forward at the frenetic pace that we have seen the last several decades.

<comment><USER3> Caveat: I'm a co-founder of Dev Bootcamp (<http://devbootcamp.com>), so I have strong opinions. :D

"The problem is this: somehow we mutated universities into a place where everyone goes in order to get a job."

No, I don't think that's fair. There's no "we." Everyone -- students and institutions -- have a different answer to "what is the purpose of an education?"

In the US, we've been experimenting with the full spectrum of answers for the last 150 years.

For some students "an education" _is_ the promise of livelihood, for others it's about needs higher up on Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Some reasons people "go to school":

* Access to expertise and high-quality curriculum

* Ability to connect with similarly-motivated people over an extended period of time (think: MBAs)

* Credentialing, or in general access to a certificate valued by the market

* Cultivating their own internal or external life, becoming a better person, citizen, etc.

None of these are better or worse than others, however these mandates often contradict each other.

I studied mathematics and linguistics at the University of Chicago and the thing I loved most about the university was that it had a very strong opinion about how to answer "What is an education?" That answer wasn't for everyone, but the school was comfortable not being "for everyone."

In my mind, by taking care of a small subset of those mandates, Dev Bootcamp helps free universities to have a strong opinion about that question again.

Sal Khan wants to call it a "new kind of college," which confuses things a bit. To me it's about understanding all the ways people answer the question "What is an education?" and unbundling those needs.

<comment><USER4> > No, I don't think that's fair. There's no "we." Everyone -- students and > institutions -- have a different answer to "what is the purpose of an > education?"

We have different answers, to be sure, but how is that answer expressed? The only thing my parents cared about when I chose my college and major was, "What kind of job can you get with that degree?" I was on good terms with the faculty and staff of my major and they felt compelled to acknowledge that most people worry about having a job when they leave school and thus, that faculty and staff felt obligated to explain the marketability of their taught skills, even if they had to go digging and networking with employers to find such answers.

You claim that, in the US, we have been experimenting for 150 years, but you only provide as an example your own, personal anecdotal experience as someone who has become a co-founding entrepreneur. You don't even provide UChicago's answer (which, had you done so, would have been an invitation for other alumni to disagree with you).

I don't see any meaningful experimentation happening. I see universities struggling to be everything to everyone, and not really having any idea how to do it anymore, except to provide for the lowest common denominator: the need to make a living after parental support runs out.

<comment><USER3> Well, first, this

"I see universities struggling to be everything to everyone"

was exactly my point. :D

For some people, education is about "jobs," for others its about other things, and as a result universities have dozens of conflicting mandates.

I was rejecting the idea that we've somehow converged, as a society or whatever, on a consensus that education = jobs. That was not my educational experience. That's not the educational experience of people who attended an Ivy League school.

But I grew up poor and rural, so I know the flip side...viscerally. I meant to draw attention to exactly your point, that we've set up a situation where universities are directionless because we've asked them to be everything to everyone.

DBC is not everything to everyone. We hope that DBC will make it easier for universities to stop trying to be everything to everyone, too.

"You claim that, in the US, we have been experimenting for 150 years, but you only provide as an example your own, personal anecdotal experience as someone who has become a co-founding entrepreneur."

Happy to provide resources. :)

I'd start with Diane Ravitch's "Left Back: A Century of Battles over School Reform"

[http://www.amazon.com/Left-Back-Century-Battles- School/dp/07...](http://www.amazon.com/Left-Back-Century-Battles- School/dp/0743203267)

A video: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1T7jpyAG44k>

If you want names, I'd read up on the history of post-Civil War sociology, psychology, and philosophy in the US, especially the pragmatist tradition.

Start with John Dewey and William Torrey Harris (for a counterpoint to Dewey).

Here's a William Torrey Harris quote: "The great purpose of school can be realized better in dark, airless, ugly places ... It is to master the physical self, to transcend the beauty of nature. School should develop the power to withdraw from the external world."

Here's John Dewey: "The teacher is not in the school to impose certain ideas or to form certain habits in the child, but is there as a member of the community to select the influences which shall affect the child and to assist him in properly responding to these influences"

Also read up on Booker T. Washington and "industrial education."

Literally every point everyone has been making in this thread -- myself included -- was also being made by educational thinkers 100-150 years ago.

<comment><USER4> > I'd start with Diane Ravitch's "Left Back: A Century of Battles over School > Reform"

I'll do that. I haven't read any of Ravitch's work directly yet, and enough time has passed since I heard her speak that I don't remember her position reliably anymore.

> Start with John Dewey and William Torrey Harris (for a counterpoint to > Dewey).

I'm a fairly huge fan of John Dewey. I only barely hold back from calling myself a philosophical pragmatist in Dewey's tradition. On the other hand, I kinda recognize Harris' notion as a tradition I'd reject; Wikipedia's characterization of his supporters' arguments suggests that there isn't anything really useful in his ideas that doesn't require stripping it bare first. :P

> Literally every point everyone has been making in this thread -- myself > included -- was also being made by educational thinkers 100-150 years ago.

But this is not experimentation. There is a difference between a thought experiment and an _actual_ experiment. Schrodinger did not actually put a cat in a box and mysteriously wave his hands to express the quantum uncertainty of its aliveness.

Yes, we have some tiny movements like Montessori schools or project-based learning or Quest to Learn or KIPP's character training or charter schools and so on and so on, but they make such an infinitesimal impact and are often so incomparable that it doesn't make sense to call it "experimentation". The fact that Will Wright, Sergey Brin, and Jeff Bezos are all Montessori graduates, for instance, gets noticed sometimes but also gets _mocked_ a portion of that. (That is, the term "Montessori graduate" is sometimes used derogatorily.)

> I meant to draw attention to exactly your point, that we've set up a > situation where universities are directionless because we've asked them to > be everything to everyone.

I don't think that the answer is to unbundle it, though. That's an easy, dare I say Silicon-Valley-esque response to a difficult and multifarious beast, but it's not necessarily the right one. I think that it'd be worthwhile to shed some of those things, yes, but for their invalidity or overgeneralizations on their own merits, rather than because they detract from a university's capacity to be itself.

I am working on an answer myself, naturally... but I've so far declined to try to untangle the nature of a university on my own. It feels like putting the cart before the horse to do so. I've mostly held to a single, simple principle: a university experience should be optional. If people feel compelled to go to a university after some particular amount of basic education, such as high school, then the problems of a university are symptoms, not causes.

<comment><USER3> I've clearly pushed some kind of button for you. I apologize.

I hope you enjoy the reading I suggested.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "Mr. Khan conjures an image of a new campus in Silicon Valley where students would spend their days working on internships and projects with mentors, and would continue their education with self-paced learning similar to that of Khan Academy."

Because of course the entire world centers around SV and tech. And even if you are just trying to work as a manager at a regional chain in Kansas there is something you can learn from Silicon Valley.

"Mr. Khan writes that he admires the work of Peter Thiel, founder of PayPal, who set up a fellowship program for college students to drop out and pursue entrepreneurship with the help of financial backing and mentors"

The entire world is not cut out to be entrepreneurial. In fact most of the world isn't and can't (not everybody can be a chief we do need indians as the saying goes).

Noting also that Kahn takes the traditional route of publishing a traditional printed book (by Hachette Book Group) to get his views across. And will most likely go on a typical book tour and do the usual media publicity route. Nothing wrong with that. Just like there is value in traditional universities and things like Kahn "Academy".

<comment><USER6> I think your criticism isn't completely fair. I'm fairly certain that the narrow design and location of his thought experiment is because he is most familiar with the finance and tech industries (His degrees are in Math, EE, and Business). He's clearly spent a lot of time in school and is familiar with his pain points and would like to fix them (for better or worse)[1].

If I was in the same position I wouldn't bother expunging my ideas about what would make a better art school because I'm clueless about art schools.

[1]My experience has been that Community Colleges already do a lot of what he's suggesting (at least mine did) and I doubt his university style campus could compete on cost with a CC.

edit: forgot that asterisks italicize text.

<comment><USER7> _My experience has been that Community Colleges already do a lot of what he's suggesting (at least mine did) and I doubt his university style campus could compete on cost with a CC._

I bet it is the other way around.

Smart potential mentors know the value of finding good people early, I don't think that will cost nearly as much as you would fear.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> _In a chapter titled "What College Could Be Like," Mr. Khan conjures an image of a new campus in Silicon Valley where students would spend their days working on internships and projects with mentors, and would continue their education with self-paced learning similar to that of Khan Academy. The students would attend ungraded seminars at night on art and literature, and the faculty would consist of professionals the students would work with as well as traditional professors._ \--

This is what we do in what we call "Zoho University" within our company. We hire students out of high school, and they go through a program that has a mix of classroom instruction focused on extensive programming exercises with a heavy dose of interaction with people building products. Basically education combined with context - why should I learn this? Why is this relevant?

This comes from my own personal experience doing a PhD in Electrical Engineering from Princeton. I would rate my PhD as idle mathematical game playing. That would have been OK as a hobby, I just wish I had not gifted 4 years of life to its pursuit. And I definitely take issue with the fact that this was tax-payer-funded pursuit - in fact, tax-payer-funding has something to do with how abstract and detached from reality these things get. So I ended up repudiating the whole thing. Zoho University is my atonement.

I passionately believe that the vast majority of students (myself included) would get far more value from this type of a "contextual education" program.

<comment><USER9> I am currently volunteer teaching in a high school and found a few bright ones that are eager to learn. What's the best way for them to apply?

<comment><USER8> Please send me mail svembu at google's email.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Here is the crux of the matter:

 _In the book, Mr. Khan also advocates for a separation of universities' teaching and credentialing roles, arguing that if students could take internationally recognized assessments to prove themselves, the playing field would be leveled between students pursuing different forms of higher education._

Removing our heavy reliance on higher ed credentialling seems central to his idea, and yet the proposed solution is simply "internationally recognized assessments", which sounds suspiciously like "standardized tests" to me.

Sadly, many professions are not well-evaluated by standardized testing. This is not for lack of trying -- we already have the GRT and all of its related subject tests, plus the entire raft of tech-related certifications that aren't worth the paper they're printed on (remember "A+ certification"?). Grad schools look at GRT results, but usually only to make sure you didn't completely bomb the test.

This is the hard part, and will require a lot of careful though to untangle.

<comment><USER11> Standardized tests don't have to be multiple-choice tests from a question bank, though. You can have practical sections, like in the CCIE. You can have long-form scenarios you have to analyze like on part 3 of the CFA. You can have the exams only given on specific dates at specific times of the years, as is done on several exams, so that the questions are always secret and not reused.

The highest quality certifications comnbine more than one of the above techniques. For instance, you might make phase 1 be just a multiple choice test. This mainly acts as a filter so that not too many resources are wasted scoring the more comprehensive sections for test takers who aren't really serious. Then phase 2 testers might take a more open-ended test with essays, etc. Finally, people who pass phase 2 might have some kind of practical, similar to medical boards or the network building in the CCIE.

This kind of process might not be cheap, either. A lot of people's time are involved in creating, administering and grading of this kind of rigorous testing process, but it even if it costs $2000 - $3000, it is still much cheaper than a university. It is still much more egalitarian as it is not open only to the chosen few.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> My daughter(6 years old) asked me the other night at dinner when she would learn which which berries in the forest are poisonous, high school or college. I explained to her that she would not be learning these things in school, she will have to learn them from other places like books. At which point she tells me she is not sure she wants to go to college if she isn't going to be learning important things.

<comment><USER13> Even if not real, this anecdote is cute. The sad truth, however, is that she _will_ learn from other places that without a college degree she is less likely to be employed...

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I like the suggestion to separate instruction from credentialing, allowing excellent students anywhere to prove themselves as such.

However, I strongly object to the business idolatry expressed: trading Nobel laureates for "entrepreneurs, inventors, and executives." Why not both?

<comment><USER15> Separating instruction and credentialing (and a third item - learner support) has been suggested by others before (<http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/768/1414> ), and I do think it is a good idea in theory.

But look at where it has already been done before, like Microsoft or IT certifications. They are okay, but don't really have a whole lot of value because it is too easy to 'cram for the exam' - there are even services in many countries that help with this. I wouldn't want to hire someone solely based on their certificates or badges - I'd want to see a portfolio of their work, hear from previous co-workers, and of course speak with the person to see about their skills in communicating and working with others.

And outside of some technical skills or rote knowledge, most skills can't be so easily measured by test questions.

A better argument for a 'new college' would highlight how right now a college degree doesn't really indicate what a person has learned, and the evidence points to not much actual learning happening in college (see Academically Adrift: [http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/01/18/study_finds_la...](http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/01/18/study_finds_large_numbers_of_college_students_don_t_learn_much)). This isn't surprising since most professors aren't trained in how to teach effectively and properly support learning, and neither are most in industry, either.

<comment><USER16> All lawyers take the bar exam. No law firm or government organization asks for a lawyer's score on the bar. They only thing that matters is your GPA, given to you by your own university. Law GPAs are heavily curved; most students can only receive A's or B's. Everyone knows that law schools regularly adjust their curves to give their students higher GPAs and therefore an advantage in the hiring market. Still, nothing changes in legal education. If anything, legal education changes less than other forms.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> "Traditional universities proudly list the Nobel laureates they have on campus (most of whom have little to no interaction with students),"

They only have little to no interaction with students because students are stupid. When I started college, I was a physics major. After one year, I found the field of solid-state physics particularly interesting. I found out that Prof. Albert Overhauser was at Purdue (if you don't know who he is, just know that there is a very important spin-transfer effect named after him), and it turns out there were many opportunities to interact with him that almost nobody took advantage of.

Consider office hours alone: You've signed up for a lecture from a smart and talented person in a field you are interested in, and they are paid to set aside time to talk to you. If you are most students, you don't bother to go.

</comment><comment><USER18> He's spot on I think.

       * mentors
       * hands on experience and dives into theory/standard learning
       * live "on campus"

I was lucky to have all of these at a standard liberal arts college, albeit not in the exact doses that Khan is talking about. It made my education great.

<comment><USER19> One of the great successes of the university I attended were several weekly hour-long two-on-one sessions (two students, one supervisor) with either a professor or a grad student, talking about that week's lectures.

The regularity and length of them allowed a relationship to be built up over the course of the semester, and you could be damn sure you'd learn a lot more from that dialogue than you ever would from sitting bleary-eyed in the lecture hall at 9am.

<comment><USER20> I've heard that's what you get at Oxford. Seems great but as a mere mortal who attended a slightly less prestigious institution, I had to make do with tutorial groups where 18-20 people would cram into a room designed for 12.

<comment><USER19> You get it at a few places. It has its downsides though: expensive for the university, and a big time suck for the supervisors, but honestly it's a really successful system. I'd go as far to say that if there's any one thing an institution can do to improve the abilities of their students, it would be to adopt a system like that.

I'm not sure how students can be expected to learn from a one-sided teaching system. We're not photocopiers. There's so much value from a meaningful, extended dialogue between a student and a "mentor." Unfortunately, a lot of people have to wait until postgraduate programs to get that, and even then may not.

A lot of US institutions have office hours which could offer much of the same if students knew to take advantage of them in the right way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> As a current PhD. student in the liberal arts my position likely veers significantly from the mean around here. But having read a lot of these sorts of "higher education is in tatters" sorts of discussions--and tending toward skepticism about the general fitness of most humans to be involved in higher education of any kind--I find myself pushing back against the critics. My classroom experience as a philosophy and psychology major at a mid-tier, state university left very little to be desired. I'm not sure I am capable of being crafted into a good employee, whatever the skills of the institution attempting the task. But I learned a whole lot about the world, how to reason, how to communicate, etc. And I wasn't even a particularly good student.

As an undergraduate in our college of arts the average student, regardless of major, was required to write scores of pages per semester, all to be read and responded to by someone more than qualified to critique even the especially precocious 19 year old. Most classes were of less than 20 students and involved lively discussion with a professor who, more often than not, was well published and read in his or her field. Setting aside employment for the moment, I just can't imagine a much better way to grow a person.

There are certainly problems with higher education--too many to list really. But the core of what universities do, as it relates to undergraduate education, they do pretty well by and large. It is true due largely to economic distortions and poor alternatives too many who would be better suited by something more vocational go to four year universities looking for something the university is not designed to provide. Hence the present discussion I suppose. But for those who are looking for education in the broader sense, I find universities to be serving as advertised.

</comment><comment><USER22> >"Traditional universities proudly list the Nobel laureates they have on campus (most of whom have little to no interaction with students)," he writes. "Our university would list the great entrepreneurs, inventors, and executives serving as student advisers and mentors."

Why would "great" entrepreneurs, inventors and executives have more time than Nobel laureates would to spend mentoring students?

Mr. Khan's model can work as one-of-a-kind college, but to scale it up to the mass, it will probably fail miserably.

The best model for future higher education is probably being done at MIT and Harvard through their joined venture EdX, where students are being educated and trained on and off line. In other words, these finest educators are taking advantage of both latest technologies and traditional methods to educate their students. Hopefully, in a few years, lessons will be learned and we can all benefit.

</comment><comment><USER23> So really this boils down to one question: what is the purpose of universities?

Put simply, is it-

A: to make prepared members of society

B: to make prepared members of a work force

Now this is not as simplistic as it seems. Some may argue that A results in B. Some say that B is necessary for A to happen.

My view is why can't we have both?

<comment><USER4> I disagree with A, B, and randomdata's C. (I mostly disagree with randomdata because that's way too broad a stroke.)

The purpose of universities is to provide an umbrella for intellectual specializations to conduct research. There are two reasons they admit students: to pay the bills, and to acquire apprentices.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> It's about time we see some disruption in education. The old school methods of schooling will not work in this day and age. For example in the tech sector, more companies are looking for graduates that have experience rather then just a CS degree. There are free resources to learn how to code like Codeacademy, Udacity, Coursera, Mozilla's P2PU, Google Code University, and MIT Open Courseware. There are also more and more high-quality paid resources, both online and off, like General Assembly, Treehouse or Bloc, not to mention local continuing ed classes. Mr. Khan and Peter Thiel are headed in the right direction.

<comment><USER25> Do not confuse old with crappy. The fact that most lecture-based schools are crappy does not diminish the value of a lecture (cf. Oxford etc.). The problem is not necessary the method but the numbers.

Of course, a "lecture" on Perl is probably as useless as a "practical with computers" on Metaphysics.

<comment><USER26> This is a very important point. The problem, particularly in the US but not exclusively so, is that at the top universities the best _faculty_ are not necessarily the best _teachers_. You can be a world class researcher and still be a terrible lecturer.

A truly great lecture is akin to a piece of theatre, especially in the humanities. Really, that's one of the problems with the methods that Khan promotes: they appear to work very well for quantitative subjects that can be accurately tested, but that doesn't apply to many of the arts.

I don't see why the humanities should be relegated to "ungraded seminars at night on art and literature". And, as others have pointed out here, one of the reasons Nobel laureates who are faculty may have little time for students is because they have a lot of other things to do: the same is surely true for the professionals Khan wants to advise students?

I don't want to sound as if I'm against the Khan Academy - it's fantastic. I think there is real value in implementing many of its ideas into standard education, and I know that's already happening with projects like edX and the like.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I would rather make the real world work more like college..

</comment><comment><USER28> What problems do these ideas solve?

I suppose working with mentors could help students be better prepared to join the workforce, but students can already do that on their own by getting internships.

Classes could be self-paced, but then likely many students would lose the motivation to learn. People are strongly driven by competition and deadlines, two things schools excel at providing.

There already are internationally recognized assessments -- standardized tests. Though they are typically useless without a degree. It would be difficult to change this, but if you could then you might make colleges obsolete. Many people would not spend 4 years and $50,000 on a college degree if they could study for 6 months, take a test, and get the same job. But I don't think this could work. For example, even though we already have the GMAT, GRE, and MCAT, it's unlikely you will ever convince medical schools to let in students with an MCAT and no undergraduate degree. And if an employer is choosing between someone with a perfect GMAT and no undergrad, and a Stanford graduate with a mediocre GMAT, the choice will likely be in favor of the Stanford grad. I don't think this would change even if you made the test more comprehensive and difficult.

Not being graded: this may increase students' intrinsic motivation to learn, but it also may decrease their motivation, since there would be no penalty for not learning the material. But if you maintain that students must take an internationally recognized test at the end, then test-taking abilities will still be measured, so you're just playing with motivation here and not really changing much.

These ideas are interesting, but even if schools enacted them, what great improvements would they bring to our society?

</comment><comment><USER29> "… the faculty would consist of professionals the students would work with as well as traditional professors ... by de-emphasizing or eliminating lecture- based courses, having their students more engaged in research and co-ops in the broader world …"

The problem lies in the teaching materials and the teachers. In most cases, faculties don't have real world working experience, so they just provide their students with examples from text books. And text books are written by faculties who mostly don't have real world experience. Also, the race in producing research artifacts is extremely distracting for the faculty members. Universities need to distinguish between teaching faculty and research faculty.

As a very simple example, a state machine is a very helpful design tool if used properly. But, I noticed almost none of the new hires knows that a state machine is best used in modeling the physical world, people keep using this concept in very inefficient ways (here is a concise version of what I teach <http://www.drdacademy.com/?id=13>).

<comment><USER17> "Also, the race in producing research artifacts is extremely distracting for the faculty members. Universities need to distinguish between teaching faculty and research faculty."

I disagree. When you make research faculty teach undergraduates, you are basically forcing them to interact with the undergraduates, which is a mutually beneficial arrangement.

<comment><USER29> Yes, it is mutually beneficial. But, I have seen how new hires are suffering due to the fact that they have not gained practical knowledge at school. So, there is a problem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> This sounds a lot like an apprenticeship with a book club and some arts and crafts attached.

Perhaps that is fine, it seems to me that to most people (especially parents) what is important is not so much what is taught or how it is taught but the fact that they can say they have been to a place called a "university".

</comment><comment><USER31> So what's the difference between this and a technical school? Those are exactly what Khan has described.

</comment><comment><USER32> My first thought (as a student) is that it is not easy. During my internships, I was usually spent at the end of the day; I only wanted to chill out after work. I tried to take online courses at the same time, and it turned out to be horrible. It would require a lot of discipline and motivation to make it work. This is not for everyone.

It is better separate the working and the learning. A model like the co-op program offered by University of Waterloo may works better. In the program, students study and do internship alternatively every 4 months. When they graduate (after 5 years), students would have 5-6 internships in their CV. So far most students in the program that I have met are excellent!

</comment><comment><USER33> There are several interesting comments on this article that relate to company hiring procedures. With the help of other HN participants, I have gradually compiled references to build a FAQ file on that subject,

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4613543>

which seems to be well liked by other participants here. To relate what the research says to what Salman Khan is proposing, it is a widely replicated finding all over the world, for many categories of jobs, that work-sample tests based on actual job tasks do much better at identifying successful workers than higher education credentials. Any employer that doesn't want to be a chump should hire most workers on the basis of a work-sample test.

What an institution of higher education could do to respond to what research says about preparing learners to succeed in finding jobs and doing jobs well is make various work-sample tests part of a graduation comprehensive examination. Currently higher education degrees are based mostly on "seat time" (so that the saying is, "All you need to get a degree is a heartbeat and a check"), rather than on demonstrated competencies for doing any useful form of work.

[http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/01/18/study_finds_la...](http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/01/18/study_finds_large_numbers_of_college_students_don_t_learn_much)

A college or university that says to the world, "Our graduates who obtain our diplomas demonstrate their competence with work-sample tests, the results of which we list on their official academic records" would rapidly gain notice from companies with research-based hiring procedures. (And why would anyone want to work for a company with hiring procedures that are contrary to the best research?)

[http://mavweb.mnsu.edu/howard/Schmidt%20and%20Hunter%201998%...](http://mavweb.mnsu.edu/howard/Schmidt%20and%20Hunter%201998%20Validity%20and%20Utility%20Psychological%20Bulletin.pdf)

[http://geb.uni- giessen.de/geb/volltexte/2012/8532/pdf/prepri...](http://geb.uni- giessen.de/geb/volltexte/2012/8532/pdf/preprint_j.1468_2389.2010.00485.x.pdf)

That could provide the new college or university leverage to gain market share as compared to other colleges and universities. That would be enough for it to thrive as a new institution of higher education.

Yes, there are other reasons to go to college besides getting a job after graduation. But the research shows that many of those purported reasons are poorly achieved by current higher education practice,

<http://chronicle.com/article/Academically-Adrift-The/130743/>

and a new model of college or university might be able to do some outside-the- box innovation to also achieve better in that regard. Trying something new would not be a bad idea.

<comment><USER34> _"A college or university that says to the world, "Our graduates who obtain our diplomas demonstrate their competence with work-sample tests, the results of which we list on their official academic records" would rapidly gain notice from companies with research-based hiring procedures. (And why would anyone want to work for a company with hiring procedures that are contrary to the best research?)"_

This is exactly the line of reasoning that ITT Technical College takes [1] and yet few, if any, of those graduates go to work for Google or Microsoft or Apple in their engineering programs. (all companies that pride themselves on having 'enlightened' hiring practices)

What this means for the entrepreneur is that you _can_ hire top technical talent that these other guys won't touch because that talent either graduated from a more 'trade' oriented school than an Ivy League school, or if that talent trained themselves differently (online/self taught/Etc).

[1] "At ITT Technical Institutes, we are committed to helping men and women develop skills and knowledge to pursue opportunities in many of today's promising career fields, including electronics, drafting and design, criminal justice, business, information technology, health sciences and nursing." - <http://www.itt-tech.edu/>

<comment><USER35> I once had an education entrepreneur who had built 3 schools tell me in private that ITT techs business model is overtly designed to target quote: "The welfare market". ITT is ignored because it's a known parasite. If you look at ripoff report.com and search ITT tech you'll get a list of complaints. The cultural underpinning and intent of an institution actually has a strong affect on it's "cultural" outgrowth imho. You can't really measure this of course. I work at a school that is intertwined with the entertainment industry and unfortunately a large part of it is more culturally "entertainment industry"-ish (with all the shallow business and marketing psychology) than education-ish. So there is a rift between promoting something as a marketing strategy and really having the idea as part of the cultural framework that you believe in and intend to deliver on.

<comment><USER36> Also, think of ITT as a negative filter. If you go to ITT or Phoenix, rather than say, a traditional college, employers could make generalizations about your background almost immediately (destitute, not serious about schooling, bad background, high risk) regardless of your real capabilities.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Just as long as I don't have to become an indentured servant to school loans I'm all in.

</comment><comment><USER38> Education intersects with two problem areas that have historically been correlated:

1\. Knowledge sharing. Books no longer take three months of a person's time to copy, but <$0.01 of electricity. Video lectures are now freely available. This is awesome! But it's not the full picture when it comes to education. You also need frisbee games and poetry nights.

2\. "Social". This includes credentialing, social networking, and creation of an environment (in college, a mostly parentally funded and artificial one) conducive to rapid learning.

The second of these is much harder, because people still believe that exclusivity is necessary to preserve quality (and, sadly, they are not entirely wrong). I've said before that there are two sub-problems in social. One is _documenting_ existing relationships. That's lucrative but does little real good for the world. The second is to _expand_ the social graph. That does a lot of good but it's also risky and rarely remunerative because some people (and the _vast_ majority of the powerful) _like_ exclusivity. The problem with "disruption" is that it assumes the disrupted are old fogeys who won't fight back, and that's never true.

<comment><USER4> At the university level, there is also academic freedom and research.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why aren't system libraries/packages distributed using torrents? - <AUTHOR> This looks like an ideal scenario for torrents, everyone has a copy of packages on the server so seeding will be through the roof, usually on the same network.
No more breaking the world because PyPi/NPM/apt mirror is down.
One tool could support every type of package repository, and then the main mirror will be 'constant' seeds that simply proxy the current locations e.g.:
https://pypi.python.org/whatever-4.3 => torrent://pypi.whatever-4.3
So that you can always get a copy. <comment><USER2> Please don't confuse system packages (as in DEB, RPM) with your language's packages (e.g. npm).

And you're not the first one to think of this. In fact, there was some work in Debian around this idea. Like, a decade ago.

[https://wiki.debian.org/DebTorrent](https://wiki.debian.org/DebTorrent)

</comment><comment><USER3> I think speed would be the problem, getting 100 x 5mb packages would incur a lot of per file overhead.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm sure it will come across as rude(?) but projects should provide their own infrastructure.

Microsoft did this with Windows 10 and it's just feels cheap. They have tons of money, they can pay for their own bandwidth.

</comment><comment><USER5> Bandwidth isn't a scarce resource for almost anyone in the Western World.

</comment><comment><USER6> Windows 10 has peer to peer downloads for updates and apps.</comment>


If you wouldn't pay for my app, your pricing advice is worthless - <AUTHOR> http://tbbuck.com/if-youre-not-giving-me-money-your-pricing-advice-is-worthless/

<comment><USER2> If everyone you talk to says, "I wouldn't use this service if you paid me in gold-plated puppies" then you really should consider that your service may have a problem.

<comment><USER3> The full quote was "I wouldn't use this service if you paid me in gold-plated puppies… but I think you should be charging $X". The "... but" part is why their opinion is worthless. And if you base your advice on selective quotation you should really consider whether your advice is worth anything.

<comment><USER4> I agree completely. It was very clear to me when reading the original that the context is that the person simply has no interest in buying the product no matter what for his own reasons. The selective quoting completely changes the vibe to read that the person deeply despises the product, not that he has no use for it. The use of selective quoting here is dishonest and highly misleading, by intention.

<comment><USER2> All quoting is selective by definition. I didn't add the end part because frankly its irrelevant. This person is trying figure out pricing. But you need to figure out if this is a product people want at all first. If people are telling you that you couldn't pay them to use it... that IS the big takeaway. You're right to ignore the "but ..." part of the sentence, but not because their pricing information is not valuable -- but rather because they told you the important part in the first half of the sentence.

The fact that the author and you miss this is probably indicative of why we see so much crap software produced with no real audience or use scenario.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm surprised this had to be said. Basic economics will tell you that the only way to determine price is what people will pay... Not what they say they'll pay, or what they say others will pay, or what they say people should pay. Only what they will pay.

And everyone's price point is different, of course... Some would never buy, others would spend far more than most people. It's all about finding that sweet spot.

<comment><USER6> The meta insight seems to be that you should never trust what customers say, only what they do. Other areas where this applies is user testing ("No, I don't think it's that difficult to use.") and marketing ("This ad looks way better than that.").

<comment><USER7> _The meta insight seems to be that you should never trust what customers say, only what they do. Other areas where this applies is user testing ("No, I don't think it's that difficult to use.") and marketing ("This ad looks way better than that.")._

One more area: (most) female dating advice. "I want a sweet nice guy" vs "all my ex-es were jerks". Guess who she's attracted to.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The much more difficult thing is separating those who wouldn't use your app for functionality reasons (dude, it's a guitar...I'm a drummer.) versus those who wouldn't use your app for pricing (dude, I can't afford your sticks.)

You will only gain noise from the former, but you may find something out from the latter. You may still want to choose to ignore it (Apple has received no end of "it's too expensive" feedback), but the knowledge will still help you understand who your buyers are and how to best market to them.

FWIW, this is product managmpement 201. Pricing doesn't happen in the first year. :)

</comment><comment><USER9> I've recommended this Harvard Business Review article before, but I believe it is still relevant.

 _How Do You Know When the Price Is Right?_

by Robert. J. Dolan

Published Sep 01, 1995

[http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00005RZ5D/ref=as_li_ss_tl?...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00005RZ5D/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=littdidd-20&linkCode=as2&camp=217153&creative=399701&creativeASIN=B00005RZ5D)

</comment><comment><USER10> A/B testing your pricing? Do people really do that?

I wouldn't like to be on the receiving end when your customers find out about that one.

<comment><USER11> Amazon has done it.

<comment><USER12> I've heard about their UX A/B testing around showing cart flow and checkout, but actual pricing? Can you link to research?

<comment><USER11> <http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/news/2000/09/38622>

Searching for Amazon different prices with Google provides many claims of this over the years.

<comment><USER12> this appears to be far more anecdotal evidence than research. I was thinking a published study, not simply consumers noticing price differences on checkout, haphazard sampling to say the very least..

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I've sold CWC [1] for, $12.95, $19.95, $24.95, and $29.95, multiple times at each price point, over the past few months.

It's nice to find a way to segment the market and take advantage of price elasticity of demand.

[1] See profile.

<comment><AUTHOR> I love your product, it's cool! :) Mentioning segmenting, I've often wondered about taking exactly the same product, marketing it on a fresh website and raising or lowering the price depending on who the market is. Although I've also been partly worried that that's a good way to end up with a massive consumer backlash ;)

<comment><USER13> There are all kinds of ways to add/remove bells and whistles in order to have a pricing page with several tiers, yet very little change to the underlying code-base or product. You can charge more for support, exclusive access to additional content/material, number of time the user can do something per month.

It's been said many times on here, there are always people who want to pay more -- ignore them at your own peril.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is exactly the type of problem I have been encountering with my app FitLabs (www.fitlabs.co). Its an app catered to people who do Crossfit and are used to paying $150/month in gym fees. So I thought, "hmm if people are already paying that much, they wouldn't have a problem paying a premium for a tool that lets them get more out of their workouts". Wrong. I built the tool, and people balked at the price. They said I should lower it to $10/month, but even when I did that they still didn't sign up.

<comment><USER15> _if people are already paying that much, they wouldn't have a problem paying a premium for a tool that lets them get more out of their workouts_

You have to remember to explain how they gain from using your product in monetary terms. In exchange for $150/month in gym fees, I get to use their equipment, showers, electricity, trainers, cleaning crew, etc. When I use your app, what do I get? Maybe your app saves me 30 minutes three times a week vs using a diary. At my hourly rate, $30 is a bargain.

When I was doing freelance web design, you wouldn't believe how many businesses were spending $400/mo on paper YellowPages ads, but couldn't see the value in spending $500 + $50/mo for a website. When I explained that they could use just half of that monthly spend on SEO and PPC ads, and have better conversion tracking, they saw the appeal. When I explained that an online scheduler could save them $1600/mo over having a full time receptionist, they really saw the appeal. You have to frame it in terms of cost savings/increased profit/saved time, etc.

<comment><USER14> This is excellent insight. As a developer, my gut reaction is to say _but look at all these features_ and people will pay for that. But thats not really the case. In fact, it seems what people actually pay for is an efficient solution to something that takes them far too much time (or makes/saves them money).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I agree with the article. We occasionally get comments about how our software is too expensive. The only thing that matters though is we do periodic pricing experiments and we know for a fact we don't make more money by lowering the price or by raising it.

</comment><comment><USER16> What I've found difficult with pricing split tests, which you discuss at the end of the article, is that it takes loooots of time to statistically prove anything (if a paying conversion comes along every two days, for example).

<comment><AUTHOR> Yup, I think at the start you have to go with gut feeling until you can get reliable stats. As ever with SaaS - it's all about getting enough traffic until you can shape it how you want :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Well, unless that person happens to be an entrepreneur with a track record of successfully pricing products much like yours.

</comment><comment><USER9> This headline made me laugh.

</comment><comment><USER18> Unless your app is trivial it won't appeal to only one type of person so you're going to have to model multiple types anyways.

For instance, the inbox cleaning utility mentioned - it could be used by busy CEOs whose time is money, and by computer-illiterate people like the stereotypical grandparents who need frequent access to the same tool despite having ample time to shop around on price. You need to advertise to both group independently or you won't get either.

So model the people who don't like your software too, and their desired payment options, as more data points from which to understand your actual best market.

</comment><comment><USER19> "charge too little, and people won't use your service"

What?

<comment><USER20> Just to throw out an extreme example, I definitely wouldn't hire a wedding photographer who charges $100 for a day's worth of photography. If they have to charge that little, they probably aren't very good. And given the importance of the occasion, I want to be _sure_ that the photos are excellent.</comment></comment>


Are women bad at math: Graphs refute. - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2013/08/29/are_women_bad_at_math_graphs_refute.html?utm_source=tw&utm_medium=sm&utm_campaign=button_toolbar <comment><USER2> The last slide is really important since studies have also shown that social stereotypes ("women are bad at math") are reinforced in testing conditions. When people are reminded of these stereotypes, they perform worse (questions of race/gender before the big test).

I found that I did better at stuff when (a) I didn't care and (b) when I realized I'm not the smartest person, but darn it, I'm gonna try.</comment>


GETPing – The Simplest Notification API - <AUTHOR> https://www.getping.info <comment><AUTHOR> GETPing is the notification API. It will trigger an email, sms or slack notification on a simple GET request.

Since the API is dead simple, you can easily append it to your Linux commands and monitor systemd services, get notified when your cron jobs is triggered or monitor custom events from your app. You can even put it in the html and get notified when your page is hit or when your email gets read.</comment>


Why I think you should try dvorak - <AUTHOR> http://marcostoledo.com/why-i-think-you-should-try-dvorak/

<comment><USER2> I had a painful (in two senses) transition to Dvorak about eight years ago.

The first pain was RSI that I got through typing a lot. I decided to try Dvorak to see if it helped.

The second pain was touch typing incredibly slowly for a few weeks whilst I learned the layout. It was a great experience, typing is a lot more comfortable, and I've never looked back.

Regarding the negatives:

 _You need to switch back when using other peoples' computers_

Kind of. If you type on their computer for 5 minutes, just hunt-and-peck. If you type on their computer for an hour, go to the control panel and switch their layout into Dvorak!

 _Nearly no availability of keyboards with dvorak layout_

It doesn't matter at all. If you're using Dvorak for a sensible reason then you're touch-typing. If you're touch-typing you're not looking at the keys.

 _Having to relearn all your hotkeys_

I can understand why Vim's hjkl would cause an annoying transition, but location independent hotkeys will cause you no problem.

<comment><USER3> I learned vi after switching to Dvorak - so I don't have any vi-Qwerty muscle memory. That makes for a painful 5 minutes at someone else's desk, but they pick up vim commands better if I tell them what to do.

I echo the RSI sentiments though. Dvorak is more comfortable for myself. I'm somewhat tempted to try Programmer's Dvorak for the brackets/braces/parens at some point, but I do like having my (Dvorak) TypeMatrix 2030 keyboard reflect my actual keymap.

<comment><AUTHOR> I tried the programmer dvorak and, though it has some more accessible keys, the number keys as 753190246 and the fact you needed to type it holding shift (or pressing caps) eventually seemed worse than normal way, point being I type a lot more numbers in a row than symbols in a row, so holding shift or pressing caps for numbers got very frequent

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm surprised nobody mentioned Colemak. The Colemak keyboard layout is easier to learn and potentially faster than Dvorak (<http://colemak.com/>).

It is easier to learn because it changes many fewer keys, especially the less frequent ones which are harder to learn because you rarely use them. I found I could never remember where z and v were on Dvorak. Also, many hotkeys stay in place (ctrl+c, ctrl+v, etc).

I learned Colemak (from 0 to 70wpm, now like 90) in 10 days (I had learned and switched back from Dvorak before, though, so I was used to learning new keyboards).

It is potentially faster since it was designed after modern computers were invented and depends more on "finger rolls" to type common substrings quickly. With Dvorak, I often used the same finger to type adjacent letters. I also used my pinky _a lot_. That was painful. Finally, Colemak keeps punctuation in the same sane place, so it's better for programmers.

Colemak is the 3rd most popular layout. I use it and find it available or trivial to install on all modern OSs. I can easily use other people's computers by either switching the keyboard layout, or just by glancing down which causes my mind to switch to qwerty mode.

<comment><AUTHOR> Vote up for people trying Colemak. I'm all for people exploring with their typing layouts and seeing what works better, even if I haven't tried it myself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I use Dvorak just because with it I don't suffer from typing-related wrist and arm pain.

The (IMHO) improved typing speed is just a secondary effect.

</comment><comment><USER6> Here's some research in to alternative keyboard layouts which are (arguably) even more efficient than Dvorak and Colemak. [Also included is an application for optimizing your own keyboard layout based on criteria that are important to you (such as minimizing the use of the little fingers, weighting one hand more than another, etc..)]:

<http://mkweb.bcgsc.ca/carpalx>

The most efficient keyboard layouts are described here:

<http://mkweb.bcgsc.ca/carpalx/?full_optimization>

</comment><comment><USER7> After resigning from my job at an IP firm, I decided to undertake the learning and use of Dvorak over QWERTY. I got rather proficient at it and like it a lot.

Programmer's Dvorak is particularly awesome – my most often used keys were readily available and my typing speeds were much higher.

Something suffered though. My emacs environment used a Dvorak command remapping mode that played nice with some of my other major modes but broke the majority of my most often used commands in some very important modes. I chose to forgo Dvorak and switch back to QWERTY because I didn't want to maintain multiple different remapping packages for my Emacs environment, BIG pain in the ass.

I did, however, become a much better QWERTY typer because of it and greatly wish to become ambi. Maybe my next go will be a project in itself to better support Dvorak with my Emacs environment!

</comment><comment><USER8> I was skeptical about Dvorak, I read a lot about it, here and in other places, then in a day of "madness" I went ahead and bought a Typematrix 2030 USB with Dvorak layout.

It took me 2 months to go back to speed and I was not that good at typing, looking regularly at the keyboard with my Qwerty.

But now, I don't know if this comes more from the Typematrix or Dvorak, but anyway, the combination is so great, it is the first time in my entire life that I am fully touch typing, with the feeling that all the keys are naturally falling below my fingers. I will never go back.

Note, I am a solo entrepreneur working from my home office, so I do not have the problem with the switch between home and work keyboard. I started in March last year if not wrong, so my experience is a bit more than "just a test".

<comment><USER3> I switched to Dvorak with a regular keyboard and noticed a reduction in wrist / forearm pain. It was only years later that I picked up a couple of TypeMatrix keyboards as a luxury.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Why is dvorak really better than qwerty?

It's more fun.

Everyone tries to justify it as more comfortable or faster, but really it boils down to it being fun. (I use dvorak.) Sure, you spend more time on the home row, and certain key chords are much more natural, but everything has its drawbacks. One thing no one tells you is that dvorak is brutal on your right pinky... especially if you use *nix and type things like 'ls' a lot. After a while your pinky gets stronger and you no longer notice, but everything has its advantages and drawbacks.

So really, lots stop spending all this effort justifying and evangelizing our keyboard layouts. If you enjoy a non-qwerty layout, then by all means share it with the world, but stop making it something bigger than it is.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm sorry if I'm making it bigger than it is. I really just mean to make it as big as I think it is.

The more comfortable claims seem to be echoed by a lot of other dvorak typers here as well.

Also, the pinky strain is echoed a lot, even if I haven't really suffered that (perhaps for playing the piano and guitar??), so I think that's something to watch for too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I used Dvorak for a couple months and loved it. However, at the time, I was using other people's computers so frequently that I couldn't make the switch at that time. Lately that isn't the case so maybe I should try it again...

</comment><comment><USER11> What about Colemak, see this letter frequency diagram

<http://forum.colemak.com/viewtopic.php?pid=596#p596>

</comment><comment><USER12> I used Dvorak for about 7 years but I am now back to QWERTY. I learned to type with 10 fingers back in 1994 or so when in school. The reason I am back to Qwerty are:

Many programs choose their shortcuts based on QWERTY. Espcially editors like vim or emacs.

I don't type particularly faster on Dvorak.

I can't really feel a difference between the two schemes which makes one a killer over the other. In other words: Both schemes are about equally decent.

<comment> loup-vaillant Then change the short-cuts of your editor. Especially one like vim or emacs.

<http://xahlee.org/emacs/ergonomic_emacs_keybinding.html>

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a pretty nice link!

I use my emacs with most default key bindings in dvorak and haven't noticed it any better/worse than qwerty. Like I said on the article, ymmv

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Does anyone have suggestions for good online training for Dvorak? One of the big hindrances to learning Dvorak seems to be the lack of available learning tools.

<comment><USER2> I learned by printing out the keyboard layout, sticking it about my keyboard and just typing stuff that I'd have to type anyway. (Granted this is a slow method of learning so may not work for those who are pressed for time).

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> So we see the typing speed before, but we are left to wonder what the post- switch typing speed is.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yea good point. I tried going to typeracer and got some ~80wpm scores, but that's fairly anedoctal since I don't have any proper history of my typing speed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> You probably shouldn't, really.

<comment><USER2> Care to justify that statement? It's not a very Hackernewsish comment as it stands.

<comment><USER16> Off topic, but sometimes when you see a really moronic comment like that, check the user's profile. You can see he/she created the account just to post a dumb comment. Just downvote and ignore.

<comment><USER2> Normally I do do that, but the comment was already at +3 when I downmodded it, so that threw me a bit.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Redeye VC: If Reed Hastings had worked at Techcrunch... - <AUTHOR> http://redeye.firstround.com/2011/09/if-reed-hastings-had-worked-at-techcrunch.html <comment><USER2> touché</comment>


WHSmith take down their website over pornographic e-books - <AUTHOR> http://www.whsmith.co.uk/

<comment><USER2> Have they stopped selling pornographic magazines in their shops?

<comment><USER3> They should stop selling the Daily Mail - that's far more insidiously evil than any pornography.</comment></comment>