What do you want in your next job? - <AUTHOR> http://careerswitch.me?HN=5

<comment><USER2> Oh hey meetram. Can we stop posting this link over and over again?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=meetram](https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=meetram) [https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=careerswitchme](https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=careerswitchme)</comment>


ITerm 2 now offers deep tmux integration - brown9-2 http://groups.google.com/group/iterm2-discuss/browse_thread/thread/8b7af79c410b4993

<comment><AUTHOR> Discussion on this from yesterday: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3498163>

</comment><comment><USER2> This feature list is getting bookmarked as one of those "EXACTLY WHAT I NEEDED" moments. I hope the iTerm folks had as much joy writing it as I see imagining my new fabulous and easy life managing remote shells..

</comment><comment><USER3> explain tmux for the noobs?

<comment><USER4> like screen but better</comment></comment>


Before I Die I Want To - <AUTHOR> http://beforeidieiwantto.org/india_delhi.html

<comment><USER2> Before he dies he wants to run nginx and varnish caching so that his site will survive the front page of HN.

<comment><USER3> Keep pressing F5 until it loads.

<comment><USER4> I just usually visit the cached version from Google. Here's a script that I wrote a few days back. [http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/169548](http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/169548)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The disparity between what I can assume to be the local Delhi populace and the backpackers/travellers is huge.

The Indian kids just want to study, while the adults want to own houses/shops. The travellers on the other hand, have more abstract goals.

Fascinating. And also sad upon further thought

<comment><USER6> It's a pretty good example of Maslow's hierarchy of needs - the travellers are firmly at the self actualisation stage whereby they do not need to focus on fulfilling lower needs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I almost cringed when I saw the juxtaposition of India and New York; I thought this project, like others I have seen, was discrediting the life goals of Americans to trivialize so-called First World problems.

But that was far from the truth. It presented the stories of people in New York, India and in hospices with equal care and respect. I love the colors and the look of old film, too.

</comment><comment><USER8> A similar idea was implemented at the 2011 Hungarian "Sziget" festival. They installed a huge wall where visitors were able to write their "Before I die" messages.

[http://sziget360.com/panorama/link/762](http://sziget360.com/panorama/link/762)

<comment><USER9> "ERROR: Adobe Flash Player 9/10 or higher needed."

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Powerful content. At the risk of being pedantic, I think the site would be a better service to its content by using a standard vertical scroll layout. I viewed many of the photos but found it too easy to stop because of the difficulty in side scrolling

<comment><USER11> whats wrong with horizontal scroll? If a site has both horizontal and vertical scroll, the site looks messy! Horizontal scroll is also good to scroll pictures.

<comment><USER12> You cannot use a scroll wheel, which is annoying enough.

<comment><USER13> I held down shift and used my scroll wheel.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > Before I Die I want To... Service Temporarily Unavailable.

That made me laugh :P

</comment><comment><USER15> If you like this also check [http://beforeidie.cc/](http://beforeidie.cc/)

</comment><comment><USER16> "Service Temporarily Unavailable"

I hope the website could do what it wanted to before this.

</comment><comment><USER17> Before I die I want to see two legged robot running gracefully a rocky mountain path.

<comment><USER18> I think you have a good chance of doing that unless you're over 70 :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I made a site with a similar concept but instead of "Before I die", Its "Someday I Want". The link is [http://www.somedayiwant.com](http://www.somedayiwant.com)

<comment><USER20> Yeah, I've seen many similar, some examples:

[http://www.mybigambitions.com/](http://www.mybigambitions.com/)

[http://www.bucketlist.org/](http://www.bucketlist.org/)

And probably the oldest of them all?

[http://www.43things.com/](http://www.43things.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> You sure it wasn't inspired by Candi Chang? Not even a nod? [http://candychang.com/before-i-die-in-nola/](http://candychang.com/before-i- die-in-nola/)

</comment><comment><USER22> I think I noticed a lot more kids from Delhi as opposed to barely any kids from NYC. Perhaps that affects the overall picture.

</comment><comment><USER23> Poignant: "... I want to study."

Amusing: "... I want a government job."

<comment><USER24> Poetic: "Antes de Morir, Yo quiero Dormir."

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Before I die I want to live until I'm at least 100 years old.

</comment><comment><USER18> Before I die I want to go to space.

</comment><comment><USER26> I can't even read half of these, peoples handwriting is so terrible. One there says "Before I die I want to raise a child" but it took be a full minute to not read it as "I want to ride a child"

<comment><USER26> Why the downvotes?

<comment><USER27> Because reading criticism of a group of non-native-English speakers' handwriting is a waste of life.

<comment><USER26> The ones not written in English are clearly not what I'm referring to.

The ones written in English have terrible hand writing by people who clearly speak English as a first language. Pretty much all of the non-native English speaking people are easy to read.

<comment><USER27> Apologies for wording that in a a way that allowed you to avoid the point.

It's because criticising handwriting is a waste of life.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Is Apple Design Guru Jony Ive Quitting? - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2011/02/27/is-apples-design-guru-quitting/ <comment><USER2> How does this sentence even make sense?

"unfortunately he is just too valuable to Apple and they told him in no uncertain terms that if he headed back to England he would not be able to sustain his position with them."

So ... he is so valuable that they would fire him rather than let him set up a study in London and fly in a few times a month to Cupertino. Right ...

I call shenanigans on The Times of London.

</comment><comment><USER3> I hope not — there was even talk of him being a future CEO of Apple. In any case it's great to see silicon valley getting the value of creative talent at long last...</comment>


Investors In Our $400,000 Seed Round And How We Met Them - <AUTHOR> http://blog.bufferapp.com/the-17-awesome-investors-in-our-400000-seed-round-and-how-we-met-them

<comment><USER2> One common thread I noticed is AngelList. It's hard to overstate the important role AngelList has these days in connecting early startups with valuable mentors and investors.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi Josh, you are absolutely right, AngelList has been crucial for us and it is an amazing platform, we are hugely thankful for Nivi and Naval who are putting all the hard work in!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Congrats!

I'm curious to know: have you had or do you anticipate administrative headache/timesuck in having to liaise with 19 different investors + previous investors (via Angelpad)? Or since you've expanded, do you have 1 person dedicated to this?

</comment><comment><USER4> The title says 19 investors, the body says 17 investors. Why the difference?

<comment><USER5> Two of the entries have two people in them ;)

They bundled Thomas Korte and Gokul Rajaram since they're the founders of AngelPad and they bundled Gady Nemirovsky and Robert Fanini since they're the founders of Inspiration VC.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Awesome dudes.

I think the most important thing is having this number of strategic allies. People might not know but Hiten was actually building a competing product (I cannot remember the name).

So is anyone of them joining the board? was there any lead investor?

So a few days before getting kicked of of the US you pick up this loot? Awesome!

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha, so great to see you here Oo!

Yes, there is actually no lead investor, we just collected smaller checks, so we can stay in control. At the same time, we have given up no board seat! :)

You got it exactly right, we did all the most important things one should be doing in Silicon Valley and are now leaving (the money comes with us), but we will be back in a few months! :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Good luck guys!</comment>


Show HN: I built a wiki-style site for language learning and text translation - <AUTHOR> http://macaronics.com/articles/showhnwiki

<comment><USER2> I like the way the translations are at a sentence-by-sentence level. I think it makes you more of a language learning tool, rather than a social translation site like Yeeyan where the major goal is just making a translation of the whole article.

Being able to show the whole translation history of a sentence as soon as you click on it is also a good idea (is that what you're doing? I didn't notice any sentences with more than one previous translation, so I can't confirm it).

Here are some changes I would make if it was my site (just some ideas, they might not be particularly good):

* A bilingual/comparison mode, like Yeeyan's 左右对照 view, so you can see both the original and the translated articles at the same time

* Default to the latest translation when you click 'translate' on a sentence that's already been translated, instead of a blank textbox (I think most changes will be relatively minor corrections rather than re-translating the sentence from scratch)

* Continue to show the edit history of a sentence even when you've clicked 'translate'; also have a way to copy an old translation to the translation textbox for editing (just click on it?)

* Edit summaries for translations (optional, of course), so you can see why the translator thinks the new translation is an improvement over the old one

Also, I haven't really studied Japanese much so I might be wrong about this, but might it be better to show the kana as ruby instead of as a big long string below the sentence? That way it's easier to know what pronunciation maps to what word. Or perhaps highlight the appropriate kana when you mouseover a word. And is it normal to convert katakana to hiragana in that section, that seems a bit weird to me.

I created an account, but my Japanese isn't good enough to take part in this sort of project. I'll definitely be interested when you launch the Chinese version.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

Also, thanks for mentioning Yeeyan; I hadn't heard of it, and I'll check it out.

WRT multiple translations, the current plan is to show the 'best' single edit, rather than aggregating a series of prior edits (though anyone who wants to submit an alternative translation can just make minor edits of any of the prior ones, of course).

But to see if that or any of the other suggestions you've made would work, I need to get more contributors to the site.

You're right about the furigana; it would make more sense as a hover/click to the corresponding word.

As for adding Chinese, I would love to do it.

Whenever I add a language, I'd like to include an interesting source of articles which is not readily available in other languages (i.e., an intelligent or thought-provoking magazine which publishes _only_ in Chinese).

If you have a list of sites which fit that criteria, let me know, and I can add them, as well as making Chinese an option in the translate to/from list.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Very cool! This is something I was always looking for when I was studying Chinese--recommended texts to read, based on my ability, and with mouseover translations by word/sentence. Now that I'm about to get into German, I'll keep this on my radar.

Are you planning to integrate with dictionaries for placeholders, and let users modify/improve what's most critical?

<comment><AUTHOR> I actually started by machine-translating everything, but I think the sparseness of the articles is better b/c it feels like a call to action to complete them, versus already having the English or Japanese in place.

Also, the default MT was terrible, and in many cases, the sentences made no sense.

WRT German, I'd love to do it, it's just I don't know which articles from which sites I should pick to use.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> It started as a hobby, to automatically send myself short study emails once a day, but then I thought to open it up to anyone.

It's still very much a work in progress, but I'd love to find out what people here think!</comment>


"Perfectly Good Coffee": Super-automatic espresso machines that make good coffee - <AUTHOR> http://sprudge.com/122414-122414.html <comment><USER2> "A lot of the super automatic machines that are out, the primary aim of them is to make the machine as cheap as possible"

Yeah, with a lot of multi-function technology, compromises are made on the individual components to meet some price target. Because if you don't make those compromises, then it becomes cheaper for the user to just buy the components separately, and end up with a system that's just as good.

In a commercial setting though, a machine like this could easily be worthwhile for a restaurant that doesn't have a dedicated barista.</comment>


How Mike Judge and Co. Are Turning "Silicon Valley" Into the Next "Spinal Tap" - <AUTHOR> http://www.motherjones.com/media/2014/04/silicon-valley-mike-judge-hbo-spinal-tap-tech-satire-politics-interview <comment><USER2> I was surprised that HBO allows you to watch the episode on YouTube. For those that haven't seen it, I think it's really good satire.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvkmsI54ss4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvkmsI54ss4)

<comment><USER3> I think its only the first episode to attract viewers. I was surprised when I noticed they were airing this season's first episode of Game of Thrones on Xbox for free with no registration/app download requirements. Glad to see content publishers "getting" the marketing angle.

<comment><USER4> Pretty sure HBO is only airing GoT on Xbox since HBO Go conked out the other day, so they're trying to make up for it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I love the concept and I thought a lot of the jokes were pretty funny but...

I'm not sure how they'll keep it funny over more than a few seasons, seems kind of like a one trick pony (and maybe that's just fine).

I trust Mike Judge, so I'll likely keep watching, but what made King of the Hill so magical was how he was able to show our changing world through the eyes of a simple propane and propane accessories salesman. Plenty of content there; likely not as much with SV to survive maybe a two season run.

<comment><USER6> It's all about characters. If they're able to create an audience connection with characters, the show will be long lasting.

Entourage (this show's closest comparison) had some pretty stupid episodes (the last season in particular was awful), but I stuck through it all because I liked Ari and Drama.

<comment><USER7> I think they'll ultimately need to ease up on the wacky humor and make it more of a drama, similar to Entourage or other HBO rags-to-riches shows like How to Make It in America. I'd be concerned at such a pivot, but Mike Judge had episodes of King of the Hill full of real, warm, human drama, so I think he can pull it off. Office Space had heart at its core, too.

<comment><USER6> I think SV will go in that direction too, the last scene sure made it seem like the show cared about its characters.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> So far, not so good. 60% of the funny is coming from the fact that Kumail Nanjiani is a great standup. It's Mike Judge, so I'm going to watch it all anyway, but if it were anyone else, it'd have 2 more episodes to get a lot better.

<comment><USER9> I'm glad I'm not the only one. I was really excited about this show (big fan of Mike Judge in general) but it feels like what someone would think SV was like if they based their entire impression on Techcrunch articles and 80s nerd / guru tropes.

<comment> k-mcgrady >> "it feels like what someone would think SV was like if they based their entire impression on Techcrunch articles and 80s nerd / guru tropes."

It's not a documentary. The aim is to make people laugh while not straying too far from reality that it's completely unbelievable. I think they achieved that. Personally I didn't think I'd enjoy it at all but I found it kind of funny and will probably return for ep 2.

<comment><USER9> Fair enough, I guess I was hoping for the satire to be a bit more original. It was just the first episode though so I have some faith that there will be some more subtle humor as well later on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I like it so far. A lot of it was pretty funny, and then the hexadecimal joke killed me.

For anyone else who's enjoying it, you should also check out the TV adaptation of JPod. So far the humour feels pretty similar.

<comment><USER11> There was a tv version of _JPod_? Astonishingly it looks like there was also a movie version of _Microserfs_ that came out in 2011, but I've never heard of it. So much of what made those two books funny were the email exchanges intermixed with the narrative--it'd be a shame to lose that in a movie adaptation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's interesting how software startup culture seems to become mainstream, we've got two new shows centered on that topic now. So far I enjoyed watching "Betas" a bit more than the "Silicon Valley" pilot, but I'm looking forward to seeing more of SV.

<comment><USER13> I second this, and I'm a huge Mike Judge fan, but "Betas" feels so much more genuine then "Silicon Valley". Both are good, but I'm completely sold on "Betas".

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The idea of lossless compression in a smaller file size than anything else on the market spoiled the entire show for me.

Call me picky, but...

<comment><USER15> Lossless compression of non-random data is very possible, though. Video and audio files are far from random, and I don't believe that lossless compression is "a solved problem" (even by the business standard) for those. (However, it is a bit far-fetched that someone would invent a groundbreaking new algorithm in the space for a silly website.) General lossless compression may not exist, but we're talking about highly patterned (low entropy) subspace of all possible files/bit-strings.

Lossless compression requires assumptions about the data, of course, because making some patterns shorter requires making others come out longer. Random data will, in general, get larger under a lossless compression algorithm.

<comment><USER16> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolmogorov_complexity](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolmogorov_complexity)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> so far i like the show.

also i have the weird feeling that i know at least 3 of the fictional characters in person.

<comment><USER18> I was chuckling a lot and telling my wife "I feel like I'm watching parts of Hacker News and Techcrunch come to life"

It's satire but doesn't seem too exaggerated (unfortunately?).

My favorite was the marketing bicycle meeting. It seems like it would be such a silicon valley type thing.

<comment><USER9> Those bikes do exist, but they're more of a Burning Man thing. I don't think anyone actually has meetings on them.

<comment><USER19> I wish you were right. :(

[http://www.pcmag.com/slideshow_viewer/0,3253,l=238614&a=2386...](http://www.pcmag.com/slideshow_viewer/0,3253,l=238614&a=238614&po=1,00.asp)

<comment><USER18> hahahaha I can't believe this thing exists!!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> They should add a Signup for Private Beta on the website [http://www.piedpiper.com/](http://www.piedpiper.com/) :)

</comment><comment><USER21> It's definitely the best attempt yet. Remember that other show called something like "The Valley"? =/

</comment><comment><USER22> I didn't like it. Like most TV shows about professions it felt like a big bundle of crude stereotypes. Maybe its because I am an east coaster, but I couldn't relate to any of the characters or scenarios.

</comment><comment><USER23> I watched the first episode of it and I was not impressed. It wasn't really funny and it wasn't really exciting to watch.

<comment><USER24> Seems like people forgetting that downvote button is not "I DISAGREE" button.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> _When you have billionaires in Silicon Valley comparing the 1 percent to Jews during the Holocaust, and all that shit…_

So I haven't seen it yet, and I do plan to watch the first episode. But quotes like this — from one of the producers — make me not want to bother. Yes, this quote is justified, because SV is full of billionaires like Tom Perkins, and not struggling, creative people just trying to get by.

The reason I'm hesitant about this show is that it seems to be mocking something that isn't worthy of mockery: people genuinely trying to make the world a better place. You can laugh all you want at the What's App buyout, but assuming that the ridiculous events that make the news are the reality of life in the Bay Area tech industry is ignorant, isn't it?

Maybe the show isn't as caustic as I'm assuming it is. Maybe I'll love it. I really liked the Amazon series Betas. But the premise of this show — which seems to amount to "SV is full of assholes" — doesn't sound promising.

<comment><USER26> It's funny that you use "make the world a better place" \-- that's one of the specific phrases (and attitudes) the show makes fun of.

"We're making the world a better place. By constructing elegant hierarchies for maximum code reuse and extensibility."

"Making the world a better place. Through minimal message-oriented transport layers."

<comment><USER25> Yes, I'm aware of the show's mockery of good intentions. Few (or no) actual startups actually use language so wildly specific; when they say they want to make the world a better place, they generally cite the intent of the startup rather than specifics of the technology — which makes this attempt at satire fall flat on its face.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Sarah Austin, (from the bravo Silicon Valley reality series) is my CPO. She is very aware that the way "TV" wants to portray Silicon Valley and the way it really is are very different. Founders don't typically drive McLaren's and live in a multi-room suite at the Four Seasons.

It is much more typical to do what she does now, crash at AirBnB as she bounces between cities for meetings, and working 10 hours at the office and working another 4 at the house.

[http://plexinlp.com](http://plexinlp.com) is a passion, and we'd be building it even if we weren't out to get rich. Sure we hope it is the next billion dollar wolfram/siri/google killer.

We aren't planning to be like the reality series and get canceled in episode 4. We are in it for the long haul. Which is something that is happening less and less in SV. People routinely tell me they are doing 2, 3, and even 4 startups at the same time.

SV needs to be able to laugh at itself. But it also needs to understand that it isn't in a bubble entirely right now. The money is bigger, but not by the orders of magnitude that the pervasiveness of the Internet has increased. The people getting rich are creating more divide than there ever was, but also the expectations on those who achieve that level have gone up. SV is in flux as no other place on the planet has as much potential to make you a millionaire or a pauper in a 2 year time.

<comment><USER28> I haven't watched the show yet but I hope they manage to accurately capture this sort of continual shameless self-promotion.

<comment><USER29> The clinic scene seemed to do a decent job of it!</comment></comment></comment>


Top 20 Startup hubs - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2012-11/19/startup-hubs <comment><USER2> Europe does not look so good but I'm surprised to see Paris as number 11 (second European hub after London)</comment>


How to deliver on Machine Learning projects - <AUTHOR> https://blog.insightdatascience.com/how-to-deliver-on-machine-learning-projects-c8d82ce642b0 <comment><USER2> So we had this idea of a new feature for our product. The only way to quickly do it was to somehow implement a machine learning algo and that would give us the result that we wanted. Viola!! It seemed simple.

Now our company doesn't have any machine learning expert or a data science genius. Going for hiring one would take time. Taking someone up on contract would be very expensive (our CEO wasn't ready to shell out that kinda money). So the task fell on me. They asked me to go through the multitudes of Machine leaning MOOCs out there and get a working prototype ready in 2 weeks.

I had already done Andrew Ng's course back when it came out for the first time. But my memory had faded for the lack of practice.

I re-ran the course again. I went over a couple of online ML books too.

Then I started thinking of the problem at hand. Unfortunately, it turned out to be a chicken and egg problem. For the feature to work perfectly we needed a large amount of training data to train our models. But without the feature actually deployed, we didn't have any way to collect any training data.

So we ultimately fell back to simple algo, that took it's decisions based on a few hard coded rules. Things have been working fine till now.

<comment><USER3> They gave you two weeks to become a data scientist and implement a working solution? That's nuts. I'm still pretty early career, but I have done data science work for about four years now and I wouldve quoted at least two months to figure out data, clean it, feature engineer, run models, compare results, and then deliver the best performing solution.

<comment><USER4> And they didn't even have data!

<comment><USER5> No data cleaning required. That's often 80% of a project. So 2 months -> 2 weeks makes sense now!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Machine Learning is much more nuanced than people seem to understand. You can't just throw data at a net and expect results-this field requires a heavy degree of intuition, and engineers must be prepared for nets to pick up on patterns not obvious to humans, which can lead to unintuitive results.

Neural nets are basically black box heuristics, with unpredictable edge cases. Much like human reasoning, I'd warrant!

</comment><comment><USER7> this doesn't seem to offers any novel perspectives. I read it as intended for self marketing.

<comment><USER8> Co-author here. This post came out of a discussion with Adam, where we both realized that the advice we were giving to ML teams and ML Engineers to guide them to better results were very often process centric rather than model centric.

Many resources exist online about how to get a model to converge, and that's not usually what makes or break a project.

Data acquisition, augmentation, model selection, and iterative exploration however seem quite rarely discussed compared to how important we have seen them be. This is our attempt at sharing this outside of our usual circles.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> That sounds awfully close to DMAIC.

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

Nothing wrong with that though...

</comment><comment><USER10> So we do the loop 50 time and we now have an algorithm that works (97%!) on the test set. We are happy! We run it in production and everything looks good (prbly 92% ish). Everyone is happy! We all get promoted or get new jobs. Then, one day, someone actually looks at what it's doing... and lo. It. does. not. work (~51%) Everyone is sad. Apart from us! Yay!

Seriously - an optimisation loop on a test set? Seriously?

</comment><comment><USER11> The point about hacking away at the code needs to be couched heavily. It's too easy to conclude you've got negative or positive results when what you really have is a silly little bug. The lack of focus on implementation skills in data (or even "real" science) is frightful. The one take away anyone trained in software engineering could share is that if you aren't very sure if it is working as intended, it's very likely not. Code review is very applicable here when making major pivots, even if unit or other testing is decidedly too time consuming for the train test improve loop.

Edit: typo "of" to "if". Somewhat serendipitous if you think about it.

</comment><comment><USER12> I love that "Data Scientist" has become such an inflated and meaningless title that now we have "Machine Learning Engineer".

<comment><USER13> Well, "Data Scientist" has been appropriated by the overflow of PhD's w/o any actual stats or computational backgrounds and few academia prospects, so I guess you need to create new job titles for thise who are going to do the actual work.

<comment><USER12> I totally agree, and wasn't arguing that a new title wasn't necessary. And I'm ok with my downvotes for that comment :)

It's just funny that "Data Scientist" seemed to be originally branded as the more technical/engineer-y version of a data analyst. Now I get recruiters contacting me for "Data Scientist" positions that entirely revolves around SQL and excel, and nobody in the Bay Area hires "Data Analysts" anymore.

Alright, guess it's time to update my LinkedIn and resume to adjust for this inflation? Maybe I should jump up a few inflation levels and just become a "Deep Learning Engineer."

<comment><USER14> I do not see any problem with that. There is a ton of confusion in the tech world regarding labels, who does what, it is needed or not, outside of the core actions that need to be done. The net effect of laying off 50% of tech people from public tech companies might even result in a net positive for the companies. Not for a tech worker like me, so please do not tell them.

Taking advantage as much as possible of hypes and other people's lazyness is fine in my book. It is certainly not my duty from the outside to educate recruiters and business people who make hiring decisions on the field – when I tried, from the inside, to gently point out that what they were thinking did not make any sense, I just put myself in a dangerous spot. I can be a data scientist, deep learning engineer, machine learning engineer, machine learning research scientist, whatever pays more and whoever has the most fun. If using an RNN instead of a more effective and efficient linear regression gives me more money and prestige, I will do it – as an IC you either go with the flow or you are not having a good time. The vast majority of us is not saving lives anyway.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Digital banking, now halal - <AUTHOR> https://restofworld.org/2020/now-serving-halal-apps/ <comment><USER2> This piece uses snippets of real information to play to a pre-existing agenda thats pretty easy to spot. So please dont jump to conclusions. For example:

>> "New fintech startups must present themselves before the Indonesian Ulema Council .. composed of religious clerics"

But later we learn LinkAja "building _the first_ Sharia mobile money product in Indonesia". So obviously thats not exactly true.

>> embedded in the DNA of the app was Fatwa No. 116 and the fingerprints of three Sharia clerics.

Well obviously. If you want to build a halal certified banking product it has to be implement syariah principles, thats the point.

==

For context the banking system here is dominated by conventional banking, with syariah banking assets tiny in comparison (Rp424 trillion Vs Rp7.4 quadrillion [0]). There is demand for Syariah products, Indonesia has the largest muslim population in the world, hence LinkAja and others looking at it as a way to service this demand. Some people build syariah products for a desire to see Syariah financing implemented as they believe its better, some as its core to their beliefs, some for money.

The VP supports syariah banking, of course. But for context in reality Its a bit of struggle for them (hence the big initiatives), ie not some secret agenda being forced from above.

As for the merits of syariah VS conventional you'll need to research yourself. And if you really want to -OMG- talk to an islamic scholar then fire ahead. You wont exactly get far ignoring one side of the debate. There is also an interesting discussion on whether "regular" syariah banking products are normal ones wrapped in a compliant way, as others have touched upon here. And of course a macro-discussion on the problems with financing & banking ethics by people of all & no faiths.

[0] [https://databoks.katadata.co.id/datapublish/2019/09/20/berap...](https://databoks.katadata.co.id/datapublish/2019/09/20/berapa- aset-perbankan-syariah-dan- konvensional#:~:text=Pada%202018%2C%20aset%20bank%20syariah,81%25%20pada%202012%2D2018).

<comment><USER3> Are you familiar with how muslims in muslim minority countries do banking? Are there sayariah banks / credit unions that I am simply unaware of due to my ignorance? Or do they simply not use banks? Or do most just not care about the rule as I think would be implied by conventional banking being more prevalent even in a country with as many muslims as Indonesia?

<comment><USER2> Not very familiar, but I do know there are syariah banks in countries with muslim minorities. Eg Al Rayan Bank in UK.

Just opinion, but I think as with most beliefs people aim to adhear in general but maybe not to the letter where not practical. Eg. a bitcoin enthusiast who has a conventional mortgage :)

If given the choice, I think people would favor banking products that fit their beliefs, but weighed against other factors. One of the limits on growth of syariah financing here for example is that it sometimes tends to be more expensive than traditional.

<comment><USER3> I kind of assumed it was one of those religious rules that might get thumped around a lot by those who are very devout but conveniently ignored by most average folks, like some christians not eating meat on Fridays.

Unfortunate that rules that seemed to have been designed to be fairer to those borrowing ended up making them more expensive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm intrigued by how they (almost?) classified digital wallets as haram due to the cash back benefits which can act as a form of interest payment between businesses.

Do normal credit cards there not have cash back benefits? Do credit cards exist or because naturally they would charge you interest, do they not exist? It's interesting how there's a whole different ecosystem of apps in the part of the world that most of the world lives in.

Digital wallets must not be something akin to the Discover or Charles Schwab app on your phone, I recall hearing about them because there was an MLM ponzi scheme in Vietnam recognized last month where users would receive 80% cashback on paying bills and you'd receive more depending on how many friends you onboarded (with the app having a $100 minimum deposit to open an account). I don't know how that doesn't instantly seem too good to be true, then again I guess MoviePass seemed too good to be true.

<comment><USER5> > Do normal credit cards there not have cash back benefits? Do credit cards > exist or because naturally they would charge you interest, do they not > exist? It's interesting how there's a whole different ecosystem of apps in > the part of the world that most of the world lives in.

I'm not familiar with how credit cards work there, but from my point of view cash-back benefits aren't all that widespread. Aside from AmEx I'm not familiar with any such arrangement available in France. And even AmEx is pretty much a joke, you'd have to spend an enormous amount of money every year just so that cashback could reach the price of the card.

<comment><USER6> That's because credit card interchange fees are much lower in France than they are in the US. Does the French government cap interchange fees?

[https://www.mastercard.co.uk/content/dam/mccom/en- gb/interch...](https://www.mastercard.co.uk/content/dam/mccom/en- gb/interchange/documents/France.pdf)

[https://www.mastercard.us/content/dam/public/mastercardcom/n...](https://www.mastercard.us/content/dam/public/mastercardcom/na/us/en/documents/merchant- rates-2019-2020-oct-2019.pdf)

<comment><USER7> There is a cap set by the EU since 2015

[https://www.adyen.com/blog/all-you-need-to-know-about-the- eu...](https://www.adyen.com/blog/all-you-need-to-know-about-the-eu- interchange-cap)

<comment><USER6> Everything makes sense now. 0.3% is an order of magnitude lower than the fees paid by US merchants.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I am curious about the events that have lead to the development of Sharia banking. It seems to be partly a shield against runaway interest/inflation. This has a parallel to the idea of usury in Christianity. Perhaps societies that avoid becoming too financialised have a better chance of survival?

<comment><USER9> It is forbidden to lend money with interest in Islam. So they invented this thing which is exactly the same, but formulated with other words and so it's appropriate.

<comment><USER10> I detest sharia law in general and the whole idea of a religious authority making rules others then have to follow but... There are subtle and important differences between Islamic finance and non Islamic finance and there are upsides to the Islamic approach. One example of this is that there is no chance of bankruptcy from debts or negative equity. This strongly encourages responsible lending.

<comment><USER11> Unfortunately mainstream undercurrents of islamaphobia/orientalism have hijacked the english use of an arabic word "Sharia" and made it into a knee- jerk scare word.

It seems weird to pronounce that you detest it in general since it's not a monolithic thing and is more of a general concept encompassing a law tradition informed by a moral/religious framework.

[https://bridge.georgetown.edu/research/factsheet- sharia/](https://bridge.georgetown.edu/research/factsheet-sharia/)

[https://ing.org/a-closer-look-at-sharia-in-the-united- states...](https://ing.org/a-closer-look-at-sharia-in-the-united-states/)

<comment><USER12> Is Sharia law not a religious authority ruling folks who do not belong to that religion? What exactly is Islamophobic about calling that out?

The exchange between Bill Maher, Sam Harris, and Ben Affleck[0] is a great example of hamfisting Islamophobia into completely legitimate criticisms of Islam, Islamism, Sharia over secular society, etc. Not every criticism of Islam (and truthfully, the _vast majority_ of criticisms of Islam) are not racist of Islamophobic.

[0] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vln9D81eO60](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vln9D81eO60)

<comment><USER11> There is little to no difference between what the article is describing, a halal certificate on some financial instruments and the Kosher or Halal stamps you see on food products at the grocery store. In this case there is a consumer demand for products labelled Halal and it is being met by a body deemed to hold legitimacy in determining compliance, how this becomes a discussion about defending the entirety of a broad concept like Sharia is perplexing.

<comment><USER13> Scale makes a difference here. Kosher food isn't in large enough demand in the US to transform the entire agricultural industry, so non-adherents still have real choice.

A closer example might be the MPAA (US film rating group). It's a voluntary certification, but it's become a de facto requirement such that the small, opaque, non-government group shapes the level of violence (high) and nudity (low) in all TV and films.

<comment><USER11> Surely most people will continue to be able to find a bank that will lend them money under familiar terms of interest. I find it hard to believe or take seriously that an Indonesian body certifying financial instruments of debt as Halal is going to upend JP Morgan and the western banking system en masse.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Fascinating. Is Indonesia leading with these fintech refs in Muslim countries. Anyone aware of this type of oversight in other halal countries?

</comment><comment><USER10> It's sad that just as all the technology in smart phones is reaching people, so many places are clamping down and sacrificing all the benefits to keep control.

</comment><comment><USER15> I've always wondered what a Data Protection Officer would do if they where born in a muslim country.

<comment><USER16> What are your thoughts? What would be different then?</comment></comment>


Julia Computing Granted $600k by Moore Foundation - one-more-minute https://www.moore.org/newsroom/in-the-news/2015/11/10/bringing-julia-from-beta-to-1.0-to-support-data-intensive-scientific-computing <comment><USER2> At first glance Julia looks excellent. Glad to see money going to a project that makes sense :)

I guess Python is "the competition" so here's my thoughts on that competition (from knowing fairly little about Julia). From my limited experience Python is actually easy enough to grasp for most scientists without a programming background so I'm not sure the "easier" argument is what should be focused on. At the "lower end of the spectrum" (that is not super hard data crunching and/or less affinity for programming) there's social sciences, psychology, marketing, economics etc. and they use a variety of higher level tools (the pesky SPSS) for their routine tasks and are usually willing to invest time for more data crunchy activities (often R but Python is common as well in say economics with data-crunchy models).

The big attraction of Python (for me) is that you don't just get the data crunching but also the boilerplate you'll need around it (data normalization, stroing stuff in databases and getting it out, turning your models into simple web-apps etc.) \+ IPython notebook and distributions like anaconda make setup and quick experimention fairly simple.

If I were to give advice to someone entering science I'd certainly suggest "learn python". However...the more languages we have the better, MATLAB makes me cringe for multiple reasons. Go Julia :D

<comment><USER3> IPython notebooks have gone multi language:

[https://jupyter.org/](https://jupyter.org/)

[https://blog.jupyter.org/2015/04/15/the-big- split/](https://blog.jupyter.org/2015/04/15/the-big-split/)

I think Julia was one of the early alternate languages.

<comment><USER4> Out of curiosity, can you have multiple languages in one notebook with the output of one cell, in say Python, be input for a second cell in Julia or R? (emacs org-Babel allows for this -- a feature I use often.)

<comment><USER3> I just googled it, I don't know a lot about Jupyter, but yes:

[http://blog.dominodatalab.com/lesser-known-ways-of-using- not...](http://blog.dominodatalab.com/lesser-known-ways-of-using-notebooks/)

[http://ipython.readthedocs.org/en/stable/interactive/magics....](http://ipython.readthedocs.org/en/stable/interactive/magics.html#cell- magics)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is great news for Julia!

As a long time Python user, I disagree with the insinuation of competition between the two communities. In fact, I've met all of the core developers of Julia and of the major Python data science projects, and they see each other as fellows and colleagues!

For example, last year at PyData NYC, Stefan Karpinski gave the following talk, titled 'Julia + Python = \N{heavy black heart}'

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsjANO10KgM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsjANO10KgM)

This past week, at PyData NYC, Stefan Karpinksi also shared the stage with Andy Müller (scikit-learn) and Jared Lander (author of R for everyone) to discuss the future of machine learning with the audience and addressed how the various tools, languages and communities fit together.

In fact, most people may not realise, but Julia, Jupyter, IPython, numpy, pandas, matplotlib, &c. are all fiscally sponsored projects of the same 501(c)3 non-profit, NumFOCUS (which is the organisation that also runs the PyData conference series)!

[http://numfocus.org/projects/index.html](http://numfocus.org/projects/index.html)

</comment><comment><USER6> This is great news for Julia.

As a person who has spent the best part of year coding almost exclusively in Julia (I work in finance, we were one of the main sponsors of JuliaCon, though these are my personal thoughts) I want to chime in a little.

To get to 1.0 many of the cons in the language will be solved and there are plans in place for much of this.

I never cease to be surprised by the brevity of code to solve complex problems. Something which would be hundreds of lines in Java/C++ often turns into 50 or so lines of much more readable code.

When asked to describe Julia I struggle but end up this way 'I can make Julia 'dance' like no other fast programming language' though to be fair modern JS is pretty close for many tasks.

The parametric type system is to me the strongest part of the system - <AUTHOR> describe it simply as 'templates that work', it is ridiculously powerful and (to me) is the most compelling reason to learn Julia.

I personally find even at 0.4 it is very usable even for tasks which are not math. Though the run time is currently fairly heavy.

So congrats to the Julia team.

<comment><USER7> "many of the cons in the language will be solved"

Can you elaborate on this?

Re type system, how does it compare to python in use?

<comment><USER6> I'm not the best placed person to answer about Python, my background is primarily C++/Java and functional languages. The types in general get out of the way. The ability to specialize behavior by types makes for some very interesting patterns and for a module writer add a huge amount of power. For the user of the module they rarely see the types.

The cons, top three from the top of my head, implicit array concat ( going in 0.5 ), String types ( going soon ), anonymous function performance ( gone by 1.0 )

None of these are show stoppers, but they do sometimes fall into the category of surprising. The core dev are very aware of the issues and if you look at the road map for 1.0 many are either well on their way to being fixed or are scheduled to be resolved.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> For anyone interested in trying to get to know Julia (like me), I've found these talks useful as a starting point:

Introduction to Julia - Part 1 | SciPy 2014 | David Sanders - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWkgEddb4-A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWkgEddb4-A)

Get To Know JuliaLang - Guest Talk by Co-Inventor Viral Shah - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OC3hsct63Ok](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OC3hsct63Ok)

If anyone can recommend other resources that would be appreciated.

<comment><USER9> Here is a good short blog post: [http://www.nowozin.net/sebastian/blog/the- julia-language-for...](http://www.nowozin.net/sebastian/blog/the-julia- language-for-scientific-computing.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is great news for Julia and the scientific computing community in general. MATLAB doesn't scale, and python solutions are too scatter brained for me.

<comment><USER11> I actually, more and more think that python is an excellent language for science.

The only issue is that, when it comes to numerical computation, there is only "one right way to do it", which goes against Python philosophy. Meaning, either you do it while using vectorial operations mostly everywhere, or it's just too slow to work.

The only real advantage I see in Julia, is that it doesn't constrain you to a specific way to think about calculations. You can think about them in a vectorial way (which is not always possible) or you can just use an iterative approach. Both work fine.

This is what I mainly expect to get from Julia, but we must admit that the inertia behind python and it's excellent libraries for numerical computation, make it hard to change to Julia.

<comment><USER12> > The only issue is that, when it comes to numerical computation, there is > only "one right way to do it", which goes against Python philosophy.

But ... This is actually one of the pillars of Python:

 _There should be one-- and preferably only one --obvious way to do it_

<[https://www.python.org/dev/PEPs/pep-0020/>](https://www.python.org/dev/PEPs/pep-0020/>)

<comment><USER11> My bad... I sometimes mix Perl and Python philosophy.

<comment><USER13> > I sometimes mix Perl and Python philosophy.

That's like mixing up Vulcans and Romulans. Very dangerous indeed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> OOP is "weird" in Julia compared to Python and others and first time users may find it off-putting, but just power through and eventually you'll realize just how awesome multiple dispatch is and the lack of traditional classes. It's a more functional style that is very powerful (and in my opinion, more readable) in scientific computing.

</comment><comment><USER15> One of the reasons to consider Julia, as noted in the article:

>its flexibility and high performance (comparable to C)

This is one of those points that is so rare to see in new, high-level languages, and quite welcome in the world of high-iteration numerical computation.

</comment><comment><USER16> I hope they can have it accessible to people who are not that interested in fancy computer science concepts, but rather want to read in data, do computations, and write out data/graphs again. Without massive boilerplate or hair pulling.

It seems to be really hard to create smooth user experiences for the common use cases of such complex products. I think people have been trying to oust Matlab for 31 years or so.

Disclaimer: I haven't checked Julia for a few years. Requiring hand reloading of files after editing and no native graph support were a few major problems for a workflow back then.

<comment><USER17> The scientific community is not going to adopt any new language until most used idioms can be easily found in a quick search and copy-pasted. It is extremely difficult to arrive there.

I totally agree that having dynamic dispatch in the first position of the features list, for example, does not help. But, in my opinion, it is ok for a pre-1.0 language. That is what makes exciting seeing some external help to release a stable version.

<comment><USER18> What's wrong with dynamic dispatch?

<comment><USER17> Nothing at all. But, if Julia takes off, I would not expect it to be the main selling point.

It can be a very interesting feature for somebody into language design, but the average Joe working in a lab is not going to learn a completely new language and rewrite all his Matlab code because of it. Most probably, he has not idea what it is or why he would want it.

It was an example of how, at this point, it seems like the web site is more directed towards language developers than potential users.

<comment><USER19> Actually, I think the main page is directed toward those scientific users who create their own custom projects and/or libraries. This also goes back to your earlier point in that early in a language evolution you need more library and package creators so you can have a broad ecosystem for the more day to day programmers. One example of this need, is the creator of the fftw library (a cornerstone fft implementation in C) wrote several popular packages for Julia. I think there's a talk he gave at the 2014 JuliaCon.

In this regard, multiple dispatch is actually a huge selling point! I've written in Fortran 90 code, C, Python, and enjoyed most of those languages. There is something unique about being able to pull up the source code for almost every operator/function in the language, implemented in that language. Fortran has this, but is much more statically oriented and difficult for quick scripting. Python, well I'm hopeful pypy keeps building momentum. Or perhaps Pyrhon ported to web assembly, in more pure Python.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I still don't 'get' the language. I still have to think like running interpreted code. Definition of methods, scope, is a bit confusing/error-prone for my taste.

[http://docs.julialang.org/en/release-0.3/manual/parallel- com...](http://docs.julialang.org/en/release-0.3/manual/parallel- computing/#code-availability-and-loading-packages)

I am still hopeful. I will give another look at it soon.

<comment><USER21> There are definitely some scope issues with the distributed computing functionality, see e.g. [https://github.com/JuliaLang/julia/issues/13649](https://github.com/JuliaLang/julia/issues/13649) for a general tracking issue (also, that is the 0.3 version of the manual).

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Julia certainly does have several features worth being excited about: calling C without wrappers, macros, good JIT performance. But I think what really matters is the ecosystem. With python, there is tons of libraries such as Numpy and Scipy for scientific computing, django for web backend, etc. It is unclear whether the community will embrace Julia fully within the next few years.

<comment><USER23> >With python, there is tons of libraries such as Numpy and Scipy for scientific computing,

I do remember early on when this wasn't the case. Especially when comparing it to Matlab or R. I was discouraged by one professor from learning it. But time has proved otherwise. Julia will likely be the same.

<comment><USER24> If you compare Julia and Scipy at similar points in their evolution, Julia is far ahead of where Scipy was. And that's while the language itself is still evolving.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> It seems like I should mention that we (Julia Computing) are actively hiring. If you think what we're doing is interesting and would like to join in, please do reach out!

<comment><USER26> Any particular positions, or is this one of those "you'll know if you're able" kind of things?

<comment><USER25> Well, last time I posted something like this I think I made it sound way too narrow, so I'm trying overly broad this time, to get people who are interested to get in touch, because even if we don't have anything for them at this very moment, we might in the near future.

To narrow down, what we're looking for in the immediate future, anybody with interest in core language development, compilers, tool chain support, etc. Additionally, we will probably be hiring for our applications development team very soon, so if you're interested in data science, stats, etc. and like working with people on solving their challenging problems, please do reach out as well.

<comment><USER27> Please put effort into a good IDE that leverages the type system! I've been using Julia for two years now, and there's enough code to navigate through that it's becoming difficult to maintain. I'm really starting to miss Java/C#/ even C++ IDEs where you can easily jump to a definition or get a non-fuzzy autocomplete. Not to mention the refactoring support of the IntelliJ products. For a language that promises to handle both the high level and the low level, it really is not scaling well with codebase size. I've also been reassessing my needs and realizing that only about 20% of my codebase is quantitative code, and then with most of the work being sent off to raw CUDA or Theano. So I'm actively considering a better tooled language. I love how expressive Julia is, but that may be getting in the way of tooling. One issue that would help a lot is return type declarations ([https://github.com/JuliaLang/julia/issues/1090](https://github.com/JuliaLang/julia/issues/1090)). Return types would dramatically ease creation of IDE plugins.

<comment><USER25> That's definitely very high on the TODO list!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> As someone who worked briefly with Julia (My "standard" tools are Haskell and C) this is really awesome news. Way to go Julia team!

</comment><comment><USER29> Are there small or big tech companies using Julia in production? I'm interested in use cases outside of research labs

<comment><USER21> StaffJoy ([https://www.staffjoy.com/](https://www.staffjoy.com/)) are using Julia for staff schedule optimization, and a large multinational is using it for train schedule optimization. Its also in use (at least on a trial basis) in the financial sector.

It'd still be a fairly large risk to develop something built-to-last on Julia at this point, so not really the best time for most companies to jump in unless something about Julia really solves a problem they are having.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Will julia ever be popular for general computing and Web stuff? It's s till fast for non scientific use cases, has multi threading (in master) and is getting go like channels.

<comment><USER31> I think it will be interesting to see what happens with WebAsm. If Julia targets this at some point (it is based on LLVM, so there is a chance of this), then I think it will start to look quite attractive for various use cases that it isn't currently cornering.

<comment><USER7> Makes sense. But regardless, the core language is better than go in almost every way (as far as I know)... and it has python like syntax. I wonder if thats enough.

<comment><USER31> I personally think Julia is technologically superior to a number of popular languages, with a voracious appetite for even more smarts. But you are right that this isn't necessarily enough.

Based on what I've seen so far, I think Julia could eventually break into the Tiobe top 20 languages (it's currently in the top 100). On the other hand, I think this is plenty. As a language currently aimed at (admittedly fairly large) niches that would be an outstanding outcome.

It also makes it fun to work with as a language. It's not just more chicken.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> whenever there is R compared to any other analytics framework, the number one advantage is cited to be CRAN. And the counter is always that "hey python has wheel".

Does anyone think that a dedicated package site for analytics libraries is what is needed ?

From the R documentation:

 _In the simplest form, an R package is a directory containing: a DESCRIPTION file (describing the package), a NAMESPACE file (indicating which functions are available to users), an R / directory containing R code in .R files, and a man/ directory containing documentation in .Rd files_

But a python wheel is considerably more complicated.

<comment><USER33> Have you looked at conda and [http://anaconda.org](http://anaconda.org)? We spent a lot of time curating the most important Python packages for data science into the Anaconda distribution, and conda packages are a great format for distributing complicated software.

<comment><USER32> this is pretty cool and I think you are on the right track here. but here's the same question here - are you making the process of package _creation_ much easier ?

Because I suspect until you acquire mindshare among the academics (who distribute their research as R code), this will be difficult to scale.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I pray they make a breaking change before 1.0 and make it zero based

<comment><USER35> Amen. As stupid as it may sound, this is the only reason I haven't gotten into it ...

<comment><USER36> You're not the only one.

OK, this might sound even _stupider_ , but I feel _betrayed_ by the fact that otherwise good, technical people would voluntarily make such a major mistake, and then defend it so vigorously in the face of so many complaints.

<comment><USER36> OK, clearly some Julia fans down-voted my comment, perhaps because they misunderstood it. I was trying to say something about human psychology. We can admit that it is silly, but we can't pretend that it doesn't exist. This may be a bigger deal than they realize.

Programming languages are used primarily by humans, which means they must be designed with human psychology in mind. Today, Julia would have (even) more community support if not for this seemingly inconsequential decision. The fact that it seems to be succeeding anyway is largely in spite of, not because of, this design choice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Congratulations!

By the way, where can I find perf.h in the benchmark suite? perf.c is there but perf.h seems to be missing.

<comment><USER38> perf.h is generated by the makefile in that directory.

<comment><USER37> Thanks, I'll try it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I love Julia. This is great news! :)

</comment><comment><USER7> Is this going to get us better dataframes and nullable integration?

<comment><USER40> Yes, that is certainly part of the plan. We will be releasing details in a few weeks.

<comment><USER19> While some people love dataframes, in both Python and Julia, they feel constraining to me.

Does this mean there will be more features limited to DataFrames?

For example, Gadlfy is nice in many ways but by not using Dataframes it means I have to do my own colors for each data I plot. Some of the statistics features in GLM seem to rely heavily on DFs as well.

Dataframes could be much more useful more broadly if the interface was more consistent, better documented (e.g. still haven't figured out how to instantiate with half my data).

Basically, null-ability is pretty useful feature in many fields, not just statistics. Will the plans include any items to help generalize nullability?

<comment><USER41> Generalized nullables exist in Base already ([http://docs.julialang.org/en/release-0.4/manual/types/#nulla...](http://docs.julialang.org/en/release-0.4/manual/types/#nullable- types-representing-missing-values)), unless you had something else in mind.

<comment><USER19> My question really was ambiguous and more to do with subtle frustration with limitations of the current DF library and the dependence of various nice statistical features in GLM, or plotting in Gadfly, that rely on DataFrames. It's not just nullable types (and also I believe the Nullable arrays in DF are tuned for performance with linear algebra operations, which may not be true for general Nullable arrays). You can get to the features in other ways, but it's easiest to use DataFrames and the documentation is written for DF's. However I think the documentation, scope of functionality for DataFrames, etc is not complete enough for me to quickly use it day-to-day. So I basically just put everything back into arrays and do a couple of custom functions to get my work done. Julia makes this great, but it'd be better to not need to and MATLAB still has many more "easy" functions along these lines.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Flat UI is not the only way forward - <AUTHOR> http://blog.maxrudberg.com/post/41005209081/flat-ui-is-not-the-only-way-forward <comment><USER3> "[textures and ui effects like shadows and gradients] help you understand behavior from looking at a static screen"

The winner. I wish designers would stop pursuing styles & fads and instead pursue results. Stop worrying what's best for looks or minimalism and start caring about usability and predictability.

<comment><USER4> From a non-designer's simple point of view, this flat thing is insanity. Designers I find are very willing to follow latest fads and trends without really evaluating or thinking about it.

Someone rebelled and wrote a blog how skeuomorphs are bad, put some pictures of leather textures up for everyone to laugh at. The next thing you know, you get OS UIs (Windows 8), websites and a whole bunch of other interfaces where you have no freakin' idea what to click. It all looks flat and so I end up mousing around elements on the screen like a drunk person stumbling in the dark trying to find how this thing works.

How about a little drop shadow on that button so it looks like, you know, a button? "Oh but it looks like a real world button and we shouldn't have to mimic the real world...blah blah.." -- I don't care about the philosophy of design or whatever the latest thing came from Apple labs, I want to get my stuff done and just knowing what is clickable is helpful.

<comment><USER5> This very page has over a dozen different click-able targets, and only one is a button with a shadow. Yet we seem to be able to find our way around just fine...

<comment><USER6> With due respect to pg, HN's UI is not something to aspire to, though it has subtle things that make the difference between "meh, but usable" and "omgwtf".

The problem I've found with Windows 8 is that there is no visual difference between clickable text/icons and nonclickable text icons. The whole experience comes one of trial and error where you tap on random things like an idiot to see what elicits a response and what doesn't.

The web's way of solving this problem is by underlining text that can be clicked. HN violates this in many places, but at the very least text links underline when moused over - not ideal, but works, and is something that doesn't exist in touch-land.

Ditto, we've been using rollover effects for years to demarcate clickable icons from the unclickable. This entire strategy is now kaput thanks to touch.

We don't necessarily have to have drop shadows, but what we do need is a consistent and unambiguous language that clues the user into how the UI operates. Windows 8 currently lacks this in a really, really bad way. We can do this without skeumorphs, but we still need to do it.

And therein lies the greatest problem with this flat design trend - <USER2> designers are going flat without remembering that skeumorphs carry a lot of user hinting that you have to replicate.

<comment><USER7> Hn is also aimed at an audience who's HTML heuristics are perfectly honed to detect a link, whatever it may look like.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "Flat UI" seems like an immense reluctance to give Microsoft credit for their work on Metro.

I am reminded of this definition of Microsoft's Metro aesthetic by Andrew Kim: [http://static.squarespace.com/static/50271a61c4aab6c54f9af5e...](http://static.squarespace.com/static/50271a61c4aab6c54f9af5ee/5028140ee4b0195d2ee37559/5028140ee4b0195d2ee37f83/1341178875001/1000w).

~ [http://www.minimallyminimal.com/blog/2012/7/3/the-next- micro...](http://www.minimallyminimal.com/blog/2012/7/3/the-next- microsoft.html)

<comment><USER8> As a UX person I still give MS a fail on Windows 8. Yes it has a clean, aesthetic look. But it lacks usability. And any design that is not primarily focused on usability is best described as Kitsch. Even if it has all square angles.

That does not mean I think Apples god-awful "tape deck" interface or the horrors that are games center or find my friends are any good.

I am sick of designey people calling everything good that has a straight line. To paraphrase Steve Jobs, design is how it works.

<comment><USER7> Windows 8 is horrible. I am not going to fight you on that one as someone who's had plenty of trouble with it.

But it's not too much of a step back from Windows 7, so I find the more strict, general design philosophy to be a vast improvement; the gradients and Aero crap on Windows 7 and below was just so ugly to look at.

Windows's interface is horrible as always, and I don't envy people new to Windows who bought a Surface. Yikes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> That's far too reasonable and moderate an attitude to enrage, goad or inspire a new Movement.

I hope more people adopt it.

</comment><comment><USER10> Another point to consider: I think regular users prefer a bit of textures, gradients and real-life counterparts. It gives the UI a more friendly appearance.

Never forget we're just monkeys.

<comment><USER11> Those thing give UI something called affordance <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affordance>

<comment><USER7> It's pretty much the modern equivalent of the argument for always underlining links to communicate that it can be clicked.

Dustin Curtis's flat approach to buttons and links is to use rounded borders: <http://svbtle.com>. This will probably be how buttons will - and should - work in a flat design.

<comment><USER12> On the underline thing. While its not a need to have, it helps me recognize links without thinking.

<comment><USER7> It's always a great rule of thumb. Especially with touch devices that obviate :hover-based signalling.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The "leather" on iCal, FMF is distracting and should be eliminated.

An user-selectable UI stylesheet similar Pixate and Teacup for RubyMotion would allow the user to select a view most comfortable for them: be it plain or fancy, retro or modern, or even accessibility-enabled.

</comment><comment><USER14> What I'd really like to see in iOS UI in the future would be uniformity in design choices.

Many of Apple's own apps adopt different design styles instead of adopting a single design language. Also, cleaning up "over-designed" skeuomorphic interfaces might help a lot.

<comment><USER15> I would love to read a short history of how the current skeuomorphic interfaces came to be on iOS. There are a few good ones, but others are so amateurish in comparison that it's as if an entirely separate company pushed it out. I'm thinking of GameCenter, which even though I _know_ is a major part of official iOS, I sometimes disable because my reflexive action is to disable spammy-looking apps.

I'm not against all skeuomorphic designs....in Game Center's, the design is just bizarrely tacky.

<comment><USER16> It gets worse. The contacts app on an iPad doesn't use all vertical space in order to keep the aspect ratio of the booklet it imitates believable.

Very amateurish indeed, I'm baffled people praise Apple for UIs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I've always looked at it from the perspective of who I'm designing for. From a functional standpoint, certain users respond to certain affordances in a design. For some, gradients and shadows are helpful when trying to discover points of interaction. For others, a flat colored element with a certain shape and hover color dictates the same thing.

The fight between styles is unnecessary. Think about who is using what you make and their level of understanding. More importantly, though, never let aesthetics inform functionality. Rather, let functionality inform the aesthetics.

</comment><comment><USER18> I love these design discussions on HN, brings out many different specialties.

I know this isn't specifically a Microsoft thread, but I can't help myself...

I find myself wishing Microsoft would return to its hardcore productivity app roots, and I don't feel Windows 8's Metro design serves me. Give me desktop apps with multiple child windows and allot only a single, thin button bar and the menu bar for the mouse clickers. Let me Ctrl-Tab/Ctrl-Shift-Tab between my stack of child windows and Alt-Tab between my stack of processes.

Isn't this a form of minimal? To focus one's app and UI design on keyboard accelerations and freeing up a maximum amount of screen real estate for editors/data presentment? A throwback productivity-focused design like that would demonstrate real bravery. Microsoft has already committed to balancing touch with a keyboard and touchpad with their tablet design, so this could be possible.

</comment><comment><USER19> Yes, Flat UI has its place and not the only way forward. One thing everyone is missing is the author's statement about all knowing Jonny Ive being and an expert in industrial design. UI design is a whole new beast.... That means having a UI with only 10 shades of grey will be the best look

</comment><comment><USER20> Ahh, well said. I think you nailed exactly the thinking inside Apple design.

Most everyone agrees that Calendar and Find My Friends UI adornments are way over the top. Still, their target market is grandma and not us, so the kitschy-ness of it all isn't as dramatic when you keep that in mind.

</comment><comment><USER21> Aren't corporations and designers in them just "design fascists"? "This is the ultimate design that is only good for everybody in the world, for a little girl and a brutal middle-aged man, you are not allowed to have your own taste". Maybe everybody must also wear the same gray-colored minimalistic clothes?

</comment><comment><USER22> flat ui is a design trend and like all trends it'll go away.

<comment><USER7> Basically, but it can still be a good one. Dieter Rahms had a pretty good design trend going for instance. :)

All design is going to feel dated somehow, even though we can't imagine it in the moment, but I think the flat design is going to age very gracefully compared to a lot of the design memes today.

<comment><USER23> I disagree, there is a lot of design that still feels quite modern, especially within furniture (Dieter Ram's famous shelving system holds up quite well for instance). If you go for a timeless style it's usually the technology limitations (size for the product for instance) that gives away the design.

<comment><USER7> I meant design within software is always going to feel dated eventually, because we don't have finalized hardware products like Ive's and Rams's products.

There isn't really an idea of software design that's extricable from the viewport, and that what I mean is going to make it look dated eventually.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How can new and upcoming programming languages survive and thrive? - open-source-ux Many programming languages struggle with attracting contributors or with securing funding. How do these programming languages - without large benefactor support (or large name association) - survive or thrive?
For example, the recent release of version 1.0 of Nim put the language in the spotlight and piqued the interest of lots of developers who may not have known much about the language. Will the recent publicity swell the number of Nim users and their levels of funding? Only time will tell.
Some recent languages have associations with companies or organisations that have helped adoption of those languages as well giving those languages widespread visibility. Some examples: Go and Google, Rust and Mozilla, and to a lesser extent Julia and MIT.
But what about the myriad other languages out there without those big-name associations? Can they prosper without financial support or visibility in the field? What can be done to support new and upcoming languages that don't have big name benefactors? <comment><AUTHOR> I think it is a self-correcting mechanism: adopting a new language comes with the substantial overhead of learning it, possibly rewriting existing code in it, etc. So if the benefits of a language outweigh all the mentioned burdens, then the users are willing to switch. Therefore, today the new language with mass adoption ambitions must be significantly better (Julia comes to mind as an example) compared to existing alternatives</comment>


Groupon Prices I.P.O. at $20 a Share - <AUTHOR> http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/11/03/groupon-prices-i-p-o-at-20-a-share/?hp <comment><USER2> I don't know why the "per share" price is the headline number here -- what matters is the total valuation, which is $12.65 billion.

Dunno about you, but I'm not gonna be buying at that price.

<comment><USER3> I don't argue with $12.65, it's the "billion" added at the end that makes me scratch my head.

<comment><USER4> Honestly, $12.65 might be too much too - the company has built up some pretty serious liabilities the way the deal payouts are structured.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Putting aside the questionable nature of Groupon's IPO discussed ad nauseum here, this trick of only selling a very small part of the company in the IPO to keep price high by restricting supply seems, for lack of a better word, strange. So, I buy some stock at a price inflated by the lack of supply as the company puts 5% of itself out there. For the supply-restricted price to make sense, though, I have to believe that either the supply is never going to be expanded by the company putting more pieces of itself out there on the market, or that I'll get mine in dividends before that happens. (Or that I can unload it on another sucker, but for the sake of analysis I'm trying to discuss the real value in terms of dividends and percentage of company owned rather than the gambling side.)

Well, _obviously_ I'm not seeing any dividends any time soon for something like Groupon. What happens when more of the stock trickles on to the market? (How much of the company will become available as employee stock options?) Or if Groupon puts another 5% out there? What happens when the supply expands?

It seems like this is the sort of trick that's only going to work for a little while.

<comment><USER6> That argument is sort of like a chess strategy that starts with "If I get four moves in a row, I can checkmate my opponent."

Nobody is denying the basic facts you've cited, so it'll be very hard for you to find someone whose ignorance of those facts you can use to your advantage. Groupon won't be as liquid as, e.g., AMZN. But buyers and sellers both know that.

And selling pressure is intrinsically short-term; Groupon's underlying value is completely independent of the number and motivation of selling shareholders. In a Bayesian sense, you could respond to insider selling-- except that insiders are almost always selling, and the more successful the company is, the more they ought to sell. The biggest insider sellers are, by necessity, the founders of the biggest and most successful companies.

<comment><USER5> I would think something more like "If my opponent is going to get four moves in a row, why should I play?" is more what I was going for. I'm not trying to screw other people over, I'm trying to figure out why I'd play this game at all.

I'm as big a believer as you're going to find in rational markets, but that entails also knowing that in point of fact they can often be quite irrational by exploiting various human irrationalities, such as using past experience when we really shouldn't. Big fund managers aren't even remotely immune to this. This strategy of selling such a small portion of the company on the market feels like a way of exploiting the fact that "everybody knows" these big tech stocks "always" explode and exploiting the demand that is higher than it should be, while in fact selling hardly anything of value at all. Arbitraging the belief that tech stocks can't help but pull a Google, basically.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Manipulation Manipulation Manipulation.

Manipulation of the worth of the services on the coupons. Manipulation of the SEC IPO filings. Manipulation of the IPO timing. Picking a mini bull run to IPO. Manipulation of the financial statements. Sacrificing user acquisition to balance the books.

A company with a sound business doesn't require this much manipulation to operate.

</comment><comment><USER8> IPO or not, we still won't be talking about them in 5 years.

</comment><comment><USER9> Of all the naysayers, the Hacker News community seemed to be one of the most consistent. I'm curious why that is? Is it because Groupon doesn't look ostensibly too technical? Is it a general disdain for commercial success? Is it for perceived arrogance? Is it a lack of business acumen?

<comment><USER2> Wow, now there's a loaded question. Why don't you just ask us whether we're gonna stop beating our wives?

The reasons to be skeptical of Groupon are well documented. Not that it's a bad business, by any means, it's just that it's an industry with low barriers to entry and many competitors, and Groupon's early success is unsustainable since it was built on persuading businesses to offer ridiculously good deals which are likely to lose them money; businesses are wising up to this, deals are getting worse, people are getting less interested, and in general the whole social-coupon industry seems to be settling into a new equilibrium in which a $10^10 valuation for Groupon seems excessive.

<comment><USER6> I used to think it was an industry with low barriers to entry, as did lots of people who have lost lots of money on Groupon clones. I'm not sure why, but it turns out to be a really tough business for all but a few companies.

<comment><USER10> Groupon's business is basically all sales and marketing. The v1 tech behind the deal-a-day offerings is trivial. (leaving aside recommendations and such)

You need to be _very_ good at signing up businesses and getting good terms for your company to succeed. In addition, you need to figure out how to get a stable base of customers of your site.

Basically, Groupon clones have very low technical barriers to entry, but if you don't have a really good sales and marketing staff you're in trouble.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The headline only means anything because of the convention restricting IPO share prices to a fairly narrow range. The more relevant number appears in the fourth paragraph:

 _The stock sale values the company at $12.65 billion._

</comment><comment><USER12> I predict that much like Demand Media [DMD], Groupon [GRPN] will be at less than half its IPO price within one year.

<comment><USER9> There's at leat one major difference in my mind: I and many people I know use and like Groupon (both consumers and merchants). No one I know, including me, use or like Demand Media.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> How long until they have to start selling it via their site at a discount?

</comment><comment><USER14> The comments are much more interesting than the news. 100% negative public sentiment on the most inflated IPO of the year. That can't be a good sign.</comment>


Why I Say Dumb Shit - <AUTHOR> http://gist.io/5522214

<comment> cupcake-unicorn I really wish this were the reason behind other people saying "dumb shit". I often find myself trying to reinterpret something so uninformed into an interesting angle. Example: guy trying to impress me says he's working with a programming language that "isn't even Turing Complete". I reinterpreted this to mean that perhaps he was doing some domain specific stuff, say, with Regexes or something, but I was still confused about what use he'd get out of a limited programming language like that. When I asked him about this, he became embarrassed and admitted he was just throwing the word around because he heard it somewhere and wanted to impress me. Not the best move to pull on a CS grad student.

</comment><comment><USER2> My guess is that the article is another of the dumb things said, with the aim of getting responses about good ways to learn from others.

<comment><AUTHOR> More a sharing of experience. I probably should have noted that internet comments are not the responses I'm talking about – no offense to you, but I'm sure you'll understand why I say that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The following is my opinion, and from personal experience only. Maybe I am wrong, but this is what I gathered over the years:

Being naive and saying things rashly without solid, scientific backing is a normal thing. It means you are learning the hard way, and learning things in an un-scientific way, or informal way.

In college / school / work / The Internet, we are trained to be as scientific about things as possible, because it looks like we worked hard at getting an answer. i.e - We put thought and effort into our question.

Sadly, people ask questions indirectly, or subconsciously. So casually saying:

"C is an uninteresting language and no longer relevant."

Is really you trying to understand programming more, even though it seems like a statement.

I am basking in the brilliance of this post.

To build on top of what you're saying, @tyre ...

Even if you reach the brilliance of your peers, and you attain their level ---

There will always be somebody else better than you. I know this from personal experience.

I am going to speak about this topic in regard to the coding scene on Github:

Take for example hacking/coding/dev. When I first started, I had my role models. Expert coders / dev rockstars / whatever.

Then when you reach their skill level, some new guy arrives on the scene and blows everyone away.

This happens a lot on The Internet, aswell as in real life. But this competition can also be a good thing. It fosters innovation, because who can tell when you supersede your contemporaries and blow their minds too.

I've seen it happen. Little johnny unpopular can skyrocket on Github very quickly, and be respected by his role models, overnight. This is the beauty of the social web.

</comment><comment><USER4> This post reminded me of something I read on HN last year:

<http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3124-give-it-five-minutes>

My favorite line from it: "There's also a difference between asking questions and pushing back. Pushing back means you already think you know. Asking questions means you want to know. Ask more questions."

I might be oversimplifying it, but it sounds like the call to action in this gist is "Make trolling statements to smart people to evoke a passionate response. Maybe you'll learn something as they tell you off."

</comment><comment><USER5> As a modification to tyre's protocol, the way I typically try to learn something is:

\- Find a standard reference. If the subject is controversial or unsettled, the reference should note these facts but not take sides (if it's taking sides, it's by definition not a standard reference). In many cases, Wikipedia is a good first source.

\- Track down a few additional references. These can be short survey articles, if necessary. Get a sense for the field.

\- Find a discussion or discussions on the topic. Follow these. Unless your need is very pressing _sit on your hands for the first week or so_ and see both what is being discussed and what cultural norms are. In particular, how are newbies and fools treated?

\- If there's a FAQ, read it.

\- At this point, start asking clarifying questions as to understanding, or for learning methods (depending on the topic).

Often starting with small clarification questions or references to what understanding you have may is a good way to enter discussions.

Dropping elementary questions on most groups is highly frowned on. It gets _very_ old, _very_ fast, and shows a lack of preparation.

I'm also self-taught in many areas, and my methods have afforded me well. Though there was that time I retorted back at Alan Cox that he was wrong regarding some aspect or other of kernel processing, according to a programmer I'd had a brief prior conversation with. Before I was fully aware of who Cox was (#2 linux developer for many years).

I did immediately apologize, and he took it well.

</comment><comment><USER6> As a person who says way too many really really dumb things, all I can say, and at the risk of sounding dumb, again, "regret is just lessons not learned yet" or something like that. I agree, I have learned a lot in life by saying dumb things and later regretting it, but learning along the way. Continue on my friend...

</comment><comment><USER7> What I think he's trying to say is something my dad told me long ago (about juggling): "If you're not dropping, you're not learning". If all you're ever doing is juggling a three ball cascade (even if it's perfect) you're still not a better juggler than one who can juggle a 7 ball mills mess.

If you're the 3 ball juggler, it might actually help you to go up to the 7 ball juggler and claim their pattern is easier - as they'll probably take offence and try and teach you it.

</comment><comment><USER5> This is a tactic that can work. Though it requires the capacity to learn. And often the answer will be "no, you're wrong, study the topic / read the FAQ / read the manpage".

<comment><USER6> In other words... RTFM :) sometimes we all need to be reminded to do that.

<comment><USER5> Especially if there are all indications that someone's failed to do _any_ work, or they're operating under either gross misinformation or exceptionally faulty logic.

Occasionally this can present a teachable moment. More frequently, the effort's wasted (or very annoyingly repetitive).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Dig the post. The title is definitely a good way to get some clicks. But I would disagree that your first 3 examples are "stupid" things to say. They at least have some basis and are absolutely great challenging statements that can lead to awesome discussions.

</comment><comment><USER9> The gist was just removed.

<comment><USER10> <https://gist.github.com/tyre/5522214> seems to still work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's stupid to say dumb shit just to get beaten down for it (the best people will not beat you down, but either ignore you or challenge you to think). But you shouldn't be afraid to speak your mind, always with your ears open.

</comment><comment><USER12> So the title is "Why I Say Dumb Shit" but he never explains why...

<comment><USER13> he did explain why, he says dumb shit so people who are smarter than him will correct him and teach him something they might not have been willing to talk about.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This seems borderline trolling to be honest; like the real life equivalent of the IRC behavior of bursting into #linux with "Linux sucks because it can't do X" and then getting 10 different explanations on how to resolve the issue.

I do something similar to this, but it's a fairly different strategy. When I'm learning something, I assume that I have a valid working understanding - usually of CS concepts or code or what not. I repeat (to a friend/colleague/manager) that understanding and make extrapolations and relationships and confirm it. And I'm stubborn. If I say something slightly incorrect, I will reiterate "Well, I thought it was that way because of X, Y, and Z, or do I not understand". When I then have my understanding corrected, it's not just knowing that I was wrong and that A, B, C is actually right, but it also corrects my underlying mis-assumptions that caused my gaffe in the first place. So it's not just me saying "OK" now that my question was answered... I actually leave with a better fundamental understanding.

It's like the real life equivalent of "Can you repeat the word, Can you use the word in a sentence please?"

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree with you, so I guess there are some necessary guidelines.

1) You should almost always learn from someone face to face. Whether it is in person or over Google Hangout, personal interaction lays down a baseline of respect. Yes I am implying internet forums are not the place to learn (and the irony of saying that here.)

2) Don't waste their time. Defend what you believe until you've learned why you're wrong (if you are), but don't be a dick.

It is really about starting a conversation and learning efficiently. Lob 100 softball questions at an expert and they can give you dictionary answers. Or really challenge them and you can get a framework for their entire understanding of a broader volume of knowledge.

<comment><USER14> I tend to agree with both of those, though I'm largely self-taught via Google/IRC. IRC's certainly more interactive than forums though -- after HN and reddit I absolutely refuse to use non-threaded forums.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do Go and Rust binary file sizes compare for the same app? - <AUTHOR> E.g. if you write and compile a simple Unix-like wc (word count) program in both Go and Rust, how do sizes of the resulting binaries compare? And similarly for a few other apps, to get a rough idea of binary file size differences between them.
For example: this simple test Go program compiles to an EXE of ~2 MB on Windows 7 with Go 1.9:

    // From: https://gobyexample.com/reading-files

    package main
    import (
        "bufio"
        "fmt"
        "io"
        "io/ioutil"
        "os"
    )

    func check(e error) {
        if e != nil {
            panic(e)
        }
    }

    func main() {

        dat, err := ioutil.ReadFile("dat")
        check(err)
        fmt.Print(string(dat))

        f, err := os.Open("dat")
        check(err)

        b1 := make([]byte, 5)
        n1, err := f.Read(b1)
        check(err)
        fmt.Printf("%d bytes: %s\n", n1, string(b1))

        o2, err := f.Seek(6, 0)
        check(err)
        b2 := make([]byte, 2)
        n2, err := f.Read(b2)
        check(err)
        fmt.Printf("%d bytes @ %d: %s\n", n2, o2, string(b2))

        o3, err := f.Seek(6, 0)
        check(err)
        b3 := make([]byte, 2)
        n3, err := io.ReadAtLeast(f, b3, 2)
        check(err)
        fmt.Printf("%d bytes @ %d: %s\n", n3, o3, string(b3))

         _, err = f.Seek(0, 0)
        check(err)

        r4 := bufio.NewReader(f)
        b4, err := r4.Peek(5)
        check(err)
        fmt.Printf("5 bytes: %s\n", string(b4))

       f.Close()
    }
 <comment><AUTHOR> I've also compiled small programs that I wrote in D and Free Pascal (not equivalent to the program above, but simple command-line utilities), like wc clones or similar, and their size is quite a bit smaller than the Go binary size above, e.g. in the range of 50 to 100 KB (IIRC). And similar programs in C were ~22 KB. I know there can be many reasons for the differences, such as what libraries are included by default, maybe transitive dependencies, etc.

<comment><USER2> There's a Rust FAQ entry on file sizes[1], but it also sort of glosses over that Rust defaults to static compilation. Go does as well, and I believe Go does as well. Part of the size of executables can be attributed to these languages implementing their own libc equivalents (or wrapping libc). The stories probably fairly nuanced as each language has it's own story, but that's the general idea.

1: [https://www.rust-lang.org/en-US/faq.html#why-do-rust- program...](https://www.rust-lang.org/en-US/faq.html#why-do-rust-programs- have-larger-binary-sizes-than-C-programs)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks.

>Part of the size of executables can be attributed to these languages implementing their own libc equivalents (or wrapping libc).

Yes, I agree. Both of them have more features and I guess (I know it a bit for Go, not sure for Rust) do some more / higher level things than plain C, which may partly be why they need to wrap libc (or implement the equivalent) with non-trivial additional code.</comment></comment></comment>


Creating CI Pipelines with Tekton (Part 2/2) - <AUTHOR> https://www.arthurkoziel.com/creating-ci-pipelines-with-tekton-part-2/ <comment><USER2> For those of us less familiar with the kubernetes ecosystem, can anyone explain why there's a whole new set of tools for things like CI pipelines? What's wrong with using one of the many existing CI pipelines from the previous decade?

<comment><USER3> I think a lot of it has to do with scale and the _ease_ at which that scale can be increased (and in some cases monetised). Some of it also has to do with mitigating risk as it's easier to manage what happens in a container as opposed to just letting an agent roam free.

What I really take issue with though is that a lot of the solutions _only_ support a containerised approach, I'd much prefer they start from a general "agent" that can _also_ run containers (et al) rather than hard coupling to one technology.</comment></comment>