Michael Arrington's Response - <AUTHOR> http://uncrunched.com/2013/04/07/response/

<comment><USER2> Why is this on the front page? If the accuses about him were flagged off from the frontpage, then it is fair that even this response should be flagged off the front-page for the same reasons.

</comment><comment><USER3> Relevant articles:

<http://gawker.com/5993171/?post=58678169>

[http://www.policymic.com/articles/32719/michael-arrington- ra...](http://www.policymic.com/articles/32719/michael-arrington-rape- allegations-are-wake-up-call-for-silicon-valley)</comment>


A sphere's volume and area are 1/2 that of its box - <AUTHOR> http://www.vendian.org/envelope/dir0/ballbox.html

<comment><USER2> I disagree. It's good that children know that the volume and area of a sphere is something with pi (and can search the exact constant in Wikipedia).

I like the idea that the volume of a sphere is half of the volume of the box. I never thought about it. But this is more useful as a rule of thumb and a trick to remind the actual formula:

* It's a volume, so it's something like r^3

* It's round, so it has a pi

* Half of the box is 1/2 (2r)^3 = 4r^3

* Now: X * pi * r^3 ~= 4 r^3

* And pi ~= 3 so, X * 3 = 4, then X=4/3 and V=4/3 pi r^3</comment>


Tests from Traces: Automated Unit Test Extraction [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://janvitek.org/pubs/issta18.pdf <comment><AUTHOR> I posted this because I hate writing tests and I think this kind of work could potentially save humanity billions of dollars a year and many human lifetimes worth of drudgery.

I have been looking into doing something like this for JavaScript / Node using [https://opentracing.io/](https://opentracing.io/)</comment>


Digicert buys Symantec SSL business - <AUTHOR> http://fortune.com/2017/08/02/symantec-web-certificates-sale-thoma-bravo/ <comment><USER2> In the meantime, there is still [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1340880](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1340880)

</comment><comment><USER3> CA business. SSL is a deprecated protocol. The modern equivalent would be TLS business but also incorrect. Both protocols use x.509 certificates that are issued by a CA.

But I'm preaching to the choir here.</comment>


Using Objective-C On The Server - <AUTHOR> http://blog.securemacprogramming.com/2012/03/using-objective-c-on-the-server/ <comment><USER2> I had the "joy" to work on a pretty broken WebObjects project a few years ago. I also didn't enjoy the framework a lot back then. So, the open question:

Is there anything in WebObjects that makes it worth revisiting the framework?

<comment><USER3> WebObjects is, in many ways, two products: EOF4 and the web components. I'm going to separate them.

EOF4 was an absolutely insanely well-designed ORM that I absolutely still think has held up very well. EOF4 assumed, _hey, you already have a relational schema!_ and _hey, you like your objects to actually act like objects!_ , and rather than trying to shoehorn one into the other, EOF4 instead provided excellent tools so that _you_ could specify how your database should be represented as objects. Other tools today still provide that (e.g., Hibernate), but EOF4 provided it in an extremely easy-to-use way that at once provided good abstractions, _and_ the easy ability to dive under the covers when necessary.

WebObjects's web components, on the other hand? Probably not. Prior to widespread JavaScript, WebObjects made it extremely easy to write stateful websites without going crazy playing with sessions and the like. Nowadays, the right way to do that is to write a JavaScript application and call a bunch of REST endpoints--something doable in WebObjects, but needlessly complicated. Throw in Objective-C's memory model, and I don't really have any desire to work with WebObjects again.

If this project revives EOF4, and provides a cleanly RESTy way to use WebObjects, I think there could actually be a lot of value for companies that want to reuse their Cocoa models on the server. I don't think we're going to see a general renaissance of WebObjects, though.

<comment><USER2> Thank you for the insight. I mostly used the frontend components and was already using proper frameworks handling sessions and alike, so this might be why I didn't enjoy it a lot.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I often feel like IOS apps work well despite Objective-C, not because of it. The idea of someday having to maintain a server written in Objective-C scares me.

<comment><USER5> iOS and Mac apps are a lot of fun to write and work with, for two reasons:

1) Objective-C is a pretty decent language. It's not perfect, it has some baggage, but overall it's pretty neat and has enough flexibility to build a good platform.

2) Apple has built two good platforms, in AppKit (Mac) and UIKit (iOS). These frameworks are the real secret sauce, not the language. They're comprehensive and generally well-built, and make working on Apple platforms a joy. They actually take advantage of the unique features of Obj-C.

If someone could produce a web framework of the same caliber as UIKit, I think Objective-C would make a great server-side language. But building such a framework is not easy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is interesting; just last night I was looking for some obj-c web app frameworks. I spend most of my day working on iOS stuff and I thought why not play around with implementing some web services with obj-c?

While I tip the hat to the gsw folks, I always thought WebObjects was a horrible dev environment. It always seemed overly complicated and compared to where the web is now, to me it doesn't make any sense to use.

The closest thing I've found to 'usable' for making a dynamic site or api is frothkit: <http://code.google.com/p/frothkit/> But, it needs Cocotron to work and I don't know if it works with the Lion Xcode.

Anyway, I think obj-c is totally legit for webapps that require speed. Maybe that magic framework will break through. However, I definitely do not think GSW is it, sorry.

</comment><comment><USER7> Compared to the JVM (and probably even V8), it's slow. Compared to Javascript or Ruby or Python, it's no more expressive, probably less. And it's more dangerous than any of those, being just as brittle as C. I don't see any relevant niche in which it's best suited, other than being artificially blessed for half of the smartphone market.

<comment><USER8> Slow is something you're going to have to define more, in which situations? Drawing? String parsing? Concurrency? And in which real world situations does obj-c "slowness" hurt it where any of the others you mentioned would be a better fit?

<comment><USER7> Message dispatch: The Hotspot JVM contains years of work to branch-on-type or inline as many method bodies as possible, while the ObjC runtime has to search a cache for the IMP to handle a SEL and then jump through that function pointer (which superscalar pipelines really hate) every time you do anything.

Object layout: The modern ObjC runtime imposes some indirection on every field access (because your old object code doesn't know the current size of your base class), where a JIT compiler can bake offsets right into machine code.

GC: ObjC has a conservative collector, so it has to do some work for each dead object rather than just copying the live ones and recycling the whole arena. And a lot of people still use reference counting, which is the slowest high- overhead form of GC by far.

It's all clever stuff but seriously compromised by the need to produce static object code that's resilient against changes. If you can afford ObjC, you can probably afford a bigger runtime where everything really is an object and the slightest mistake doesn't blow up randomly.

<comment><USER9> Message dispatch: If you really, genuinely, need higher performance, you can grab the IMP yourself. On some architectures, jumping through an IMP is actually faster than an apparently direct call (e.g. because of the way the dynamic linker works).

Object layout: Again, if you care, you can grab a pointer to the variable you're using.

GC: I doubt the GC is used all that much in practice because retain/release is faster and better understood. Your claim that reference counting is "the slowest high-overhead form of GC" is wrong, because it is based on old automated implementations that inserted reference counting operations automatically _everywhere_. _Manual_ reference counting is not usually dealt with in the GC literature, and as it happens Apple's more recent automatic implementation, ARC, does substantially better than the historic auto- reference-counting implementations that most papers discuss (indeed, in some cases it is more efficient than manual reference counting).

Another thing worth noting is that Apple's Foundation (and Core Foundation underneath it) have very efficient implementations of the collection data types, and indeed adapt their behaviour depending on their content. This does not happen to the same extent in STL or Java, and means that simple programs can sometimes outperform their equivalents in other languages merely because high performance implementations in competitor languages would require that the author tailor his/her use of collections according to e.g. the number of items presented, which is not necessary with ObjC (at least on OS X). You can read a little about this kind of thing here:

      http://ridiculousfish.com/blog/posts/array.html

Finally, I'll note that in ObjC, you always have the option of writing performance-critical code paths in plain C, or even in assembly language. You can even construct your own task-specific JIT, if you like (which is made considerably easier by the availability of the LLVM libraries, though they are not the only possibility).

To summarise: I don't buy your "Hotspot JVM means Java is faster" argument. It's based around a set of assumptions that don't hold in practice. Java is definitely a fast language these days, and for some applications the JIT does indeed result in a performance boost, but it is _always_ possible to equal or exceed Java's performance in plain C (and hence in Objective-C), albeit with some degree of effort.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've thought about this a lot over the past few years. I think it'd be awesome to be able to compile your web app into a bundle that gets loaded by some Objective-C server.

That being said, I think the performance improvement would have to be substantial to get me to switch from a scripting language.

<comment><USER8> That's exactly what I did (see other response), and it works pretty well for the most part. The bundle gives you both a nice container to deploy, along with the ability to pull assets out of it with a relative bundle path, just like on iOS/Mac.

Launchd works really well for keeping your server process running too, zero issues there.

The performance was really good, with the right libraries involved and some tuning you could have something really nice, but very few groups are focusing on it at the moment :\

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> A few months ago I was making plans for what is now my home base website for App Store & other projects. I'd been working in obj-c for about 2 years both on the Mac and on iOS, but also had a fair bit of python experience with Django, App Engine, etc. I decided to give it a shot with obj-c.

I knew about the handful of "big" frameworks for handling this task with obj-c, but rejected them in favor of getting more hands-on experience building it, pushing myself and learning in the process. It was, of course, a personal project, something I alone was responsible for working with, so I decided it was OK if I experimented a little.

I went into the project knowing I would eventually have to port it to Python (and I did), but it was a lot of fun :)

I hand picked some lightweight libraries to handle specific parts of the server. One has to be cautious knowing that a library developer who thinks their sole target is a tiny cellphone, may not be worrying about things you will eventually have to worry about on a server.

I picked CocoaHTTPServer to handle requests and responses, and someone else had written a nicer "route" style interface for it which meant all of the possible responses to an http request were simply a series of blocks defined in a row, each with a regex or named parameter style URL route defined right there next to the code that would handle it. This works out to be quite a similar layout in code as something like Bottle/Python or Express/Node.js, both of which I've worked with now and I very much prefer this style.

I made good use of blocks & dispatch queues elsewhere as well, firing off an async block whenever I needed to pull new tweets from Twitter's api, or update Github repo stats (both are cached and displayed on the site).

I picked a Mustache template library and a Markdown parser library I found on Github for handling dynamic page generation & blog post syntax, respectively. Sqlite for storing anything that needed to be stored, Regexkit-lite for properly checking and handling anything that may be passed in to a url query or post body, etc.

I changed the Xcode project type to build me an executable binary that lived inside a bundle (Server.bundle) containing all the pages and assets the thing needed, so it could be deployed as a single "thing".

I also got Lion's sandboxing to work quite easily, which in theory would give some moderate protection against the entire server being compromised if someone managed to get an exploit to run inside the process.

Other than some CPU usage issues with the template library (easily solved by nginx caching pages), it all worked really, really well. I threw enough abuse at it, and did enough debugging that I was confident it would hold up well in production (which turned out to be wrong).

And then it came time to deploy somewhere, a problem I had been working on since day one, so i knew what i was getting in to.

There were only a few options: a cross-compiler framework like Cocotron (compile on Mac, run on Linux), one of the native *step libraries like GNUstep running on Linux or FreeBSD, or simply deploy on a Mac somewhere.

I tried all combinations other than Mac first, I built out a GNUstep environment with libobjc2 on FreeBSD, tried the cocotron->linux stuff, each time watching something blow up in my face due to my choice of components and my requirements.

While obj-c is cross platform, some of the libraries and features I chose to use were not. CocoaHTTPServer is built on top of CFNetwork, which is not part of any obj-c framework/library, but rather a lower level Apple C library only found on Macs. There's a "lite" open source version, but I quickly discovered that solving one issue like that would only bring up another. For instance, dispatch blocks will only work with GNUstep at the moment, and only when it is compiled with clang, against libobjc2, a combination few if any Linux distros actually ship in their repos.

Not a lot of people interested in deploying modern, dispatch/block-heavy, obj-c 2.0 code to Linux, not nearly as many as there are deploying such things to OS X or iOS.

So I decided why not just run on a Mac server somewhere? After all I can't solve every problem all at the same time, and on a Mac a lot of those problems were non-existent, plus the Mac approach would allow me to use things only available on a Mac, like easy sandboxing and potentially keychain integration for auth.

I found a Mac VPS provider that ran Xserves and hosted copies of Lion server inside VMware (HostMyApple, not someone fudging the licensing in moms basement). It worked really, really well, as long as I treated it like a headless server (issues with Lion Server are another story for another time). My sandboxing worked, performance was fantastic aside from the CPU usage during a cache miss, so I was fairly happy.

Long story short though, memory leaks in 3rd party libraries (that only someone running a server would likely hit), coupled with higher hosting costs (and fewer choices), smaller community and a desire to use some things that are really only "mature" in other languages (database adapters, etc), caused me to spend a few days porting the entire thing to Python.

My site now runs on a Linode, and is a nearly identical clone of the obj-c version, ported as a Python/Bottle app. There was nothing particularly wrong with the obj-c approach, but the primary focus of nearly all obj-c developers and libraries is iOS, where processes never live longer than a few minutes, or Mac where a crash or leak is only going to affect one person rather than a few hundred in-flight requests. I expect if I had stuck with one of the "frameworks" intended for this purpose it would have been a viable option but as I said before I wasn't looking for turn-key, but wanting to get my hands dirty :)

</comment><comment><USER11> I don't think Objective-C was ever designed for large scale Enterprise projects.

<comment><USER3> Dell ran its entire business on the Objective-C version of WebObjects (4.5) for quite some time, until about 2000, if I recall correctly. I'm not quite sure what you mean by "large-scale enterprise", but I'd hope Dell at its heyday would qualify.</comment></comment>


Clean iGoogle - <AUTHOR> http://www.trashdev.com/ I love iGoogle. No really. Love it. But, disturbing gateway love aside, it's not perfect.
I want it cleaner. "Cleaner" as in a single page with no search functionality, or clutter. I never run a search from it anyway.
This simple Jetpack automatically removes the Search header, Left Column, and Footer elements. <comment><USER2> So _that's_ what JetPack is good for!</comment>


Amazon CloudFront Lowers Minimum Content Expiration Period - <AUTHOR> http://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2012/03/19/amazon-cloudfront-lowers-minimum-expiration-period/ <comment><USER2> Glad to see that Amazon is still a bit excitable ;)

[http://blog.mailchimp.com/the-email-person-at-amazon-web- ser...](http://blog.mailchimp.com/the-email-person-at-amazon-web-services-is- really-really-excited/)

</comment><comment><USER3> This is interesting since you could effectively use CloudFront as a proxy by setting the TTL to 0 and using a custom origin.

<comment><USER4> That sounds like an extremely expensive proxy. Why would you want to do that?

<comment><USER3> Only if you want to squeeze the best performance out of the web - for instance if you were serving up JavaScript that is different for each request you could have it pass through CloudFront. You see this in the widget and ad business quite a bit.

<comment><USER5> how could this possibly be faster than a direct connection of the client to your origin server?

<comment><USER6> I don't think it would be. Also, if you're constructing purpose-built javascript the best solution might be to merge that information into the url scheme so that you can cache the results.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Programmers Don't Understand Value - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/p/programmers-dont-understand-value-508799517da0 <comment><USER2> I agree that developers(and pretty much everyone) tend to over value their own time and therefor over emphasize the importance of technical debt. Even in code there is a pay off. It's recovered every time something is fixed or a new feature is added a little fast. It's extremely hard to calculate, though.</comment>


Internet use is associated with non-religion - <AUTHOR> http://www.technologyreview.com/view/526111/how-the-internet-is-taking-away-americas-religion/

<comment><USER2> Non-religion? Why would atheism not be an appropriate descriptor in this situation? (I'm honestly curious.)

<comment><USER3> A religion is a system of beliefs regarding life (Why are we here?, How did we come to exit?, etc). Atheism is not a religion, it is merely rejecting the belief in a deity. It does not attempt to answer any other questions.

As an example, agnosticism is another non-religion that is distinctly different from atheism.</comment></comment>


I trained an AI to tell jokes using deep learning and open sourced all the code - <AUTHOR> https://towardsdatascience.com/can-a-robot-make-you-laugh-teaching-an-ai-to-tell-jokes-815f1e1e689c?source=friends_link&sk=342342be4cbf0064f8f0e7cb7ec0b6bc <comment><USER2>
        How many clowns fit in a Tesla? Just one.

That was pretty funny. I think I'm going to use it.

Maybe from the Yo Mamma jokes it was trained on, Tito is probably NSFW since some people would most definitely get offended by the more colourful responses.</comment>


Southwest airlines website unavailable outside of the US for months - <AUTHOR> https://southwest.com <comment><AUTHOR> I live in the Netherlands, and have been trying to access the southwest airlines website for months. I've always failed at this, and the website simply blurts out:

Access Denied You don't have permission to access "[http://www.southwest.com/"](http://www.southwest.com/") on this server. Reference #18.93643e17.1506590830.9a2c74

I've contacted customer support, and had this brief exchange:

"Well thank you for following up with us! Are you trying to access our website outside of the U.S. by chance? ^Emilia

Yes, i am in the Netherlands. Why would that make any difference?

We've been made aware that some Customers outside of North America are experiencing trouble with [http://Southwest.com](http://Southwest.com), and we are working hard to resolve this issue. In the meantime, we'd be happy to help you phone at 1-800-435-9792. While we are unable to book reservations through social media, if you have any questions, we're also happy to help with those through here. ^Emilia "</comment>


My experience in creating Fastr, a Ruby Web Framework - <AUTHOR> http://chrismoos.com/2010/06/08/fastr-ruby-web-framework/

<comment><USER2> While this is a work in progress I think rails could learn from it. The use of eventmachine at the core for handling requests and responses is brilliant. I hope to see more of this in the future.</comment>


Citi Confirms Data Breach at Citi Account Online - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2011/06/08/business/business-us-citigroup.html?_r=1&hp <comment><USER2> Pretty content free. Only affects 1% of customers. No insight into how, when or where.

<comment><USER3> Reporter (in Bangalore) cites his source as Financial Times.

Googling offers: [http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/885a54e8-9225-11e0-9e00-00144feab4...](http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/885a54e8-9225-11e0-9e00-00144feab49a.html)

Which says, "The US bank on Wednesday revealed details of the breach...

And MarketPlace.com is similarly unforthcoming: "Citi reportedly said it discovered the breach in early May, and that it had affected about 1% of its card customers, according to a report in the Financial Times, citing a Citi statement." Link:

[http://www.marketwatch.com/story/citi-customer-data- exposed-...](http://www.marketwatch.com/story/citi-customer-data-exposed-in- online-breach-2011-06-09)

And Reuters says little more. That's (to me) one of big disappointments of journalism (on/offline): lack of citation for further investigation.</comment></comment>


Brain study shows how slow breathing induces tranquility - <AUTHOR> http://exactlyscience.com/archives/11860.html <comment><USER2> Blogspam of

[https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2017/03/study- discove...](https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2017/03/study-discovers- how-slow-breathing-induces-tranquility.html)

with actual author credit (Bruce Goldman) cut out.</comment>


In Germany, couples with more than €5160/month belong to the upper class - <AUTHOR> https://www.zeit.de/wirtschaft/2019-08/institut-der-deutschen-wirtschaft-einkommen-singlehaushalt-gehalt <comment><USER3> No, they don't. The upper class live off investments.

I'm not even going to look but just guess that 60K EUR/year isn't even enough to buy a house near Frankfurt or another decent sized city.

They might be in a high percentile. That only means that most people are very poor.

<comment><USER4> 60k euro puts you in the top 0.11%[0] globally in terms of income.

"It would take the average labourer in Zimbabwe 71 years to earn the same amount."

[0][http://www.globalrichlist.com/](http://www.globalrichlist.com/)

<comment><USER3> Yes, it's a high income globally.

"Class" in the European sense is not an income based thing. It falls apart a bit at the extremes (what is Jeff Bezos?) but it'd be incorrect to categorise e.g. a CEO as being upper-class despite them being in the 99th percentile by income in their country.

The term really describes nobility, inheritance, large land ownership. Existing in a different 'class'.

<comment><USER5> For the German bourgeoisie, it's education and cultivation. (Education and profession are probably more important class markers than actual income or wealth.) The genuine upper class may or may not care about either because their status is drawn from other things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Please note that in Germany and many other European countries, the net income is usually after taxes _and_ mandatory insurances like health insurance, pension insurance, unemployment insurance or long term care insurance.

For a married couple without children, 5160 EUR net income per month then equates an income of over 100,000 EUR per year.

<comment><USER7> yeah, this number seems high. It might not look high to the overseas visitors to HN, but in Europe that's well paid!

<comment><USER8> > _in Europe that 's well paid_

Well paid but not upper class. Give Germany has a _bona fide_ upper class, this is a meaningful point to snuffle about. The couple with €5,160/mo. in net income is still, in all likelihood, beholden to their employer.

<comment><USER9> The study defines upper class as top 10% of net income.

<comment><USER8> > _The study defines upper class as top 10% of net income_

And the comments in this thread are disagreeing with that terminology. (The term of art has been "high earners" when I've seen income statistics in America.)

<comment><USER9> The study itself actually distinguishes upper class _(Oberschicht)_ from the top income decile (which is what the research is about). At any rate, that's really a semantic issue and should not distract from the substance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Read it. They're using the wrong expression. 'Oberschicht' might be accurate in some statistical way, but it really means 'upper middle class' in this case. The measure is flawed though because it is based on monthly (presumably earned) income without taking into account net worth. Someone could own millions in property or other investments in Germany and have a relatively low net income, yet have the option of cashing out for a vast amount of money.

</comment><comment><USER10> Given that you spend the recommended one third of your net income (€5160) on housing, this means that in 45 years (~roughly a worklife) you can spend €919.512 on a house/flat (ignoring renovations, assuming 0 interest financing). In Munich, this is what a flat like that can look like: [https://www.immobilienscout24.de/Suche/S-T/Wohnung- Kauf/Baye...](https://www.immobilienscout24.de/Suche/S-T/Wohnung- Kauf/Bayern/Muenchen/-/-/-/EURO--919512,00?enteredFrom=result_list#/)

Also, this is _net_ income. In Germany that means healthcare is covered and you don't have to pay off large student debt.

To reach this net income, both partners have to make about 54.000 a year pre- tax.

Most important point: the data is based on surveys, which means the super-rich don't really show up.

<comment><USER11> Is that apartment considered nice and in a good area? It looks a little dated but certainly not bad. Not sure about the price compared to hr states.

Here's a comparable listing from Atlanta in a nice urban area. Atlanta is a lot bigger than Munich.

[https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/867-Peachtree-St-NE- UNIT-...](https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/867-Peachtree-St-NE- UNIT-203-Atlanta-GA-30308/2086809212_zpid/)

<comment><USER10> If your are talking about the first one in the list - that is a very good location in Germanys most expensive city. Your link is a new building, so it immediately looks quite a bit fancier. The Munich place would probably get a new kitchen by whomever spends 800k on it.

I think you have to click through a couple of places to get a better feeling.

It's also insanely different between countryside and cities. Back home where my parents live, you could build a really, really nice house for that money. That's probably triple of what my friends back there spend on their homes, and those are really nice already.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Of note is that "upper class" in this context is questionably defined as being in the top 10 percent of earners. I think this is misleading because I don't see someone making 3.5k as a single or 5.1k as a couple necessarily enjoying an upper class lifestyle. It's enough for a mortgage in a middle-class neighborhood and maybe a lease on one nice car (or two middle-tier cars).

I have no idea what percent of the population is _actually_ upper class, but they usually outright own multiple houses and luxury cars, and most importantly, a significant stack of wealth that is not necessarily bound in everyday living.

<comment><USER13> Do you not find it concerning that someone at the 90th income percentile in one of the richest countries in the world, in stuck in a socio-economic system where they have to be in significant debt to be able to obtain two fundamental human rights - shelter and transport?

Either something is wrong with the social system which is making individuals to spend so much. Or something is wrong with the economic system, which is not providing enough income. Or something else wrong?

<comment><USER12> In short, yes, I do find it concerning. Germany at least has a social safety net (as opposed to, say, the US), but making use of it is often dehumanizing and complex by design. Of course owning a nice house and an upscale car is a few rungs removed from having basic shelter and transport.

One of the middle class problems I do see is that owning your daily stuff (like a house and a car) - and hence gaining some measure of independence - <USER2> increasingly difficult, even for relatively high earners. I think another poster here got it right when they said that being upper class ultimately means being a rentier instead of a rentee.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm reading a book called Capital in the Twenty-First Century right now, which is all about this stuff. I'm only about halfway through right now, but here are some points from the book I find interesting (all of them iirc since I don't have access to the book right now):

* the author chooses not to use the terms lower, middle, and upper class because doing so just leads to arguments about where to draw the lines. Interesting that so many comments on this thread are just people arguing about what "upper class" means because it's a personal term. He instead splits the distributions of income into three parts, the bottom 50%, the 40% above that, and the top 10% and simply refers to them by centile and decile. The "top decile" has an unambiguous meaning, whereas "upper class" could mean anything. * there are three distributions: income from labour, income from capital, and combined total income. The people at the top of one distribution aren't necessarily the ones at the top of the other. The book analyzes inequality across different countries across the past two hundred years or so, super interesting stuff * only when you get into the top 0.1% are you earning more income from capital than income from labour * inequality of income from labour is far lower than inequality of income from capital and always has been in every society in every period * inequality from income from labour is _easier_ to morally justify than inequality from capital, but still not necessarily just in any absolute sense * the bottom 50% owns only about 5% of the total capital

</comment><comment><USER15> Self-referencing my post in another thread: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20695115](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20695115)

Summary:

\- €5160/month is the German 90-percentile monthly net household income

\- The US 90-percentile monthly household net is probably around $9k - $10k

\- Major contributors to the differences in the gross are in my guesstimate (1) overvalued USD, (2) more hours worked in the US

\- differences in the net are clearly mostly due to different taxation/collective spending

</comment><comment><USER16> Is it really worth our time to be debating the semantics and connotation of the word "upper"? That's essentially what this post is.

<comment><USER9> Exactly. The substantive contribution is to peg a number to the top income decile. It doesn't matter what you call it (and the study itself is careful about that, distinguishing _Oberschicht_ from top income decile).

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Most people don't realize how well-off they are since in most cases, their income move at a similar pace to their expenses. A person making $500k may feel poor and complain to their peers simply on the basis that they are living in an area that is more expensive, eating an assortment of foods at a higher premium, buying a car 15x the average used car, etc.

</comment><comment><USER18> The real problem is that in East Germany with more than €2839/month you belong to the upper class. In West Germany you need €3431/month showing that people from East Germany on average only have 80% of the income in the West even 30 years after reunification.

</comment><comment><USER19> Sounds about right to me.

Sure, you won't get a house in Starnberg for that, but they don't say you're rich with that money, just upper class.

The middle class isn't as rich as most people here think.</comment>


Scientific Background on the Nobel Prize in Physics 2016 [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/2016/advanced-physicsprize2016.pdf <comment><AUTHOR> John Baez has a nice write-up aswell: [https://johncarlosbaez.wordpress.com/2016/10/07/kosterlitz-t...](https://johncarlosbaez.wordpress.com/2016/10/07/kosterlitz- thouless-transition/)

</comment><comment><USER2> This paper mentions that vortices in a 2d system of phases end up acting like particles that obey a 1/r force law, which is _so cool_ to me. Instead of thinking 'vortices act like particles' I prefer 'whoa, particles act like vortices'. Electrons and positrons annihilate when they meet in much the same way that a vortex plus an antivortex do (except they give off photons, so maybe they're just 'more complicated' vortices in some way?).

<comment><USER3> there's some crank out there with a "vortex theory of the universe". But from you description it seems like vortex is a subset of particles (but not the other way) because there are plenty of particles that don't obey 1/r force laws. Moreover, extending vortices to three dimensions is tricky, due to the hairy ball theorem.

<comment><USER2> The 1/r thing is just emergent from it being a 2d space, since the surface area of a 2d ball goes as 'r', a divergenceless field goes as 1/r (since the flux through any contour around the particle ought to be constant). In 3d this would correspond to 1/r^2.

The hairy ball theorem is an interesting point. Maybe to equate particles with vortices we have to work in 4d spacetime, since that theorem only applies to even-dimensional spheres?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> here's a nice answer on MathOverflow

[http://mathoverflow.net/questions/251470/topology-and- the-20...](http://mathoverflow.net/questions/251470/topology-and- the-2016-nobel-prize-in-physics/)

</comment><comment><USER5> Can anyone tldr this paper?

<comment> T-A Try the pop version. It's not even 5 pages:

[https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/20...](https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/2016/popular- physicsprize2016.pdf)</comment></comment>


Show HN: We want our audio jack back, and we got it - <AUTHOR> https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/adaptkey-the-portable-iphone-7-keychain-adapter-charger/x/15704483#/ <comment><USER2> There's no mention of the DAC used. Build this with an high quality DAC/Amp combo, even as a more expensive option, and you will sell millions.

</comment><comment><USER3> Does it work and for how long?

I had issues with most of the iPhone charging cables they don't work after 20-30 days due to connector issues.

<comment><USER3> Any response?</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Are VCs Risk Averse? - <AUTHOR> I've heard many times founders complaining that VCs don't take enough risk.
As an investor, I feel that there's a lot of risk in every investment decision we make.
Is this job poorly understood? Or is there a different problem?
I've tried to share my view here: https://medium.com/@decodingVC/breaking-bad-mantras-40c60e2e276f <comment><USER2> Like mutual fund managers, VCs suffer from a classic "agency problem": since they invest other people's money, VCs have the incentive to fail in popular ways. Failing because of a non-fashionable idea means you don't get investment for next fund. Fail in a fashionable way (dot-coms, Uber someday soon) and your investors will stick around, since after all everyone made the same mistake.

This probably leads to many biases not only in what ideas get money, but also which people get money.</comment>


Ask HN: How can I make the most out of high school? - <AUTHOR> I'm in high school. Soon, I will be in college. Before, I've focused mainly on studying and pursuing solitary passions, but not doing social activities. However, I now feel that I'm missing out on typical teenager life, and I'll have regrets when I'm an adult.
I just watched an anime following a group of close friends in a band as they pass through high school. I've seen people online state that the anime reminded them of their own high school lives, but it doesn't remind me of my current life at all; it's way too carefree and fun.
My online friends have told me that they don't have close friends either, so my life is normal.
Today, I saw this: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/aanfmf/whats_a_very_common_thing_that_you_just_cannot/ecuao12. Granted, the person is saying that they don't relate to looking back on high school. However, the topic is about common things that one can't relate to, and some repliers said that their own HS lives were carefree. Now, I again feel I am missing something.
I like programming, and I've become interested in type theory. I doubt that other people in my school care about this stuff.
I take art class, but it's a solitary activity between me and my teacher, not together with other students.
I don't know how to make close friends. I can talk to people, but I can't suddenly form a close relationship with somebody. Friendship can't be forced; it develops naturally. Yet, I've never made a close, loyal friendship, only casual friendships.
Before, I've been looking forward to college so I can study my interests. Now, I feel afraid of ending high school.
Is it normal that I don't have close friends and that I'm solitary? Am I missing out on anything?
What hobbies do you advise me to adopt that I can do in a group, with camaraderie?
Will college be the same or different than high school? Can I have the same kind of youthful fun when I'm an adult? <comment><USER4> Join a group, any group.

Close friendships come with time, make the time for that friend and do things together even if it's dumb. You're not there to impress them or vice versa but just the best of them and the best of you sometimes meet up and show the other person that there is something admirable, in morals and values or skills like your programming. You have something to share and time is the most valuable. So make some time with the people you want to be close to.

<comment><USER5> This. Some ideas I tried (some of them too late - try earlier!): board games, trading card games, martial arts, dancing, snowboarding, ... - they can all be awesome social activities. You could look at it as a numbers game - the more groups you try, the more people you meet. You'll find someone cool at some point.

> Am I missing out on anything?

From my experience - I wish I tried more at school times. It's much harder once everyone has their own life / family to take care of.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> > Is it normal that I don't have close friends and that I'm solitary?

This is quite a common narrative. But it is also very easy for it to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you don't believe that it is easy to make friends, it will be harder to make friends. People are social creatures. Smile, laugh, enjoy yourself, and celebrate the people around you; and you will have friends.

> Am I missing out on anything?

Probably, but such is the narrative of life. If you're concerned about unknown unknowns, then do more scary things. If you like programming and art, try skateboarding or maybe join the debate team and do some public speaking. Just do different stuff. You don't have to abandon the things you like, but you have to make time and space to push yourself into places that are uncomfortable.

> What hobbies do you advise me to adopt that I can do in a group, with > camaraderie?

Anything with a group of individuals who are working together. Team sports, band, some ROTC, debate, school newspaper, . I would also caution against the impulse to be "better" than everyone else. Camaraderie comes from working together as a team, not from being better than your teammates. There is enough available success in the world to go around. There's no need to step on people to get there.

> Will college be the same or different than high school?

Both. People will still come in all flavors. The amplitudes of their behaviors will likely be different than what you're used to, but the same behaviors will be there.

> Can I have the same kind of youthful fun when I'm an adult?

Depends on how you define "youthful fun" and "adult". The available options of a 70 year old person are much more physically limited than a 17 year old person. And there is some continuous curve that links those two points. But at 70, you've had a lifetime to accumulate wealth (and maybe some time to blow it too), so the 17 year old may be more financially limited than the 70 year old. Do what you can with what you have.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for your advice. In the past, I didn't care about joining other clubs and only cared about my programming hobby. Now, I think that I should be more well-rounded and pick up other activities, especially ones in which I am more likely to find companions. I will find an interesting club to join.

w.r.t being better than others - I go to a school with a strong academic culture. In absolutely no way do people put each other down, not at all, but I feel like there is an underlying motivation to have good ECs to make oneself attractive to colleges. In particular, you mentioned the debate team, which, at least at my school, seems to me like a highly competitive club that boosts college applications. I feel extremely cynical about the culture of people padding college applications, so I had decided previously to ignore clubs and only pursue my passion of programming to be "true to myself." However, now I feel a desire to join a club out of genuine pursuit of happiness (as opposed to boosting an application). I hope that I will find a club with a passionate and genuine culture, without competitive people.

Before, my mother had told me that I should have activities outside school that I could show for. Part of it was for colleges, as I would have a hard time competing with others if I didn't do much outside school. However, my mother also said that part of it was being a fuller person. I used to feel frustrated because I felt like she wanted me to do stuff just for college, a motivation that I felt was "phony," but now I see what she meant about being more active in general.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> In my experience, life has become more fun and carefree since I've become an adult, not vice versa. It's ironic, as youd expect adult life to be laden with more responsibity and "seriousness" but the truth is that work is easier than school (as long as you're not married with children), and you have financial freedom to pursue your interests. Your adult life can be what you make it. You're not stuck with the same social group so you're free to associate with who you want. I wouldn't go back to high school or even college if I had the chance.

</comment><comment><USER8> > Is it normal that I don't have close friends and that I'm solitary? Am I > missing out on anything?

Given your interest in type theory, it's definitely normal for you to be solitary. Most mathematicians are. A lot of writers, too, I imagine.

But you _are_ missing out on something, as a lot of us "programmer-types" are, which is a healthy social life. We can connect with others online, but I think we'd be fooling ourselves if we thought that being social online can replace being social IRL.

My recommendation is that you put some work into making a good friend with similar interests to your own. There's got to be someone at your school who is also interested in programming. Find that/those person/s and befriend them. You'll be glad you did.

<comment><AUTHOR> There are some people in my school who program, but they aren't interested in type theory. Nevertheless, I think that I would be closer with them if I could just see them more often in terms of class schedules. I will find time to be with them more often.

<comment><USER8> How's it coming? Have you spent any time with any fellow (aspiring) hackers yet? :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I hated high school (Dutch), with a passion. I felt restricted in what we were learning (set curriculum, almost no extracurricular possibilities), I disliked most people and it was posh (I'm not) and therefore had a bit of an overconfident air.

I had fun: I cheated, I skipped classes, my motto was "minimum effort, maximum freedom." I went out a lot in Amsterdam in order to get my social fix and a read on what it means to be social (long story short: if you don't like going out that much, go to places with more interesting music -- jazz, classical, opera, finger style guitar etc.)

For me the fix was obvious: travel in Europe and make friends. It was obvious because I had a huge hunger for doing whatever I wanted as opposed to other people dictating it to me (e.g. set curriculum in high school).

In the end those friendships were short-lived, all of them. But those friendship did give me the validation of that I mattered (and the insight that everyone matters really). When I look at Japanese high school animes, I think of the time where I felt lost in other countries, and gained some friends who showed me their world in all their wonderful idiosincratic ways.

I'm not saying you should travel. I hope that my story just gives some inspiration.

In your youth you can follow your desire, the older you get, the more you'll have to follow responsibilities.

<comment><USER10> I also hated high school with passion. I loved it at the university though. That is also where I found the little circle of my closest friends - after 20 years we are still close. I am not sure there is any lesson to be learned for the original poster except maybe... do not over-think it. Things change quickly at that age and a year from now your life might be pleasantly different without doing anything special to achieve that (not that I am advising against mixing it up a little if you feel like it).

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> As other people will probably tell you, I hated HS. For technical people it seems to be a common thread: stories of the type "I was miserable until I went to Uni, when I found out there's other people who like talking about the Linux kernel" are everywhere. So I will risk it and say "yes, it's normal to be solitary in HS if you're a technical person, but College is often better".

As far as hobbies go, it's more about you than about the hobby. I had a drawing group where we would gather at coffee shops and talk and draw for a couple hours. Sports are also surprisingly entertaining once you do them because you feel like it rather than because someone tells you to. I made lots of friends through martial arts.

<comment><USER12> >when I found out there's other people who like talking about the Linux kernel

I went to an engineering school with a sizable CS/ECE program but I never found people like this.

My advice to OP is - go to a university that does have people like this.

<comment><USER13> "My advice to OP is - go to a university that does have people like this."

Sorry, but that's an unactionable advice. You really can't tell what your classmates interests will be before the uni starts generally.

Go to the best college you can is a better one.

<comment><USER12> Generally speaking it correlates well with selectivity and ranking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I know hindsight is 20/20 and it's easier said than done, but probably the best way to build social skills is to take up a group sport like football/basketball/frisbee/rock climbing etc. Or join a dance team/music band after a few lessons. Or take up volunteering. Any physical activity in which you're part of a team. This is very important, try to succeed in this as seriously as you study type theory because people skills are important for whichever career/life path you choose.

</comment><comment><USER15> It bears saying, despite being obvious: You can't have all the experiences the world has to offer. And the ones that are in media are both constructs of a prior generation - media is _selling_ the aspirations of the experience - <USER2> inevitably romanticized, with clearly defined characters, conflicts and firm resolutions. Most real experiences feel ordinary in the moment, with lots of room to ignore, withdraw, disengage, or disbelieve. Even violence can feel quite ordinary. I can assure you that most of your classmates are not feeling their experience as anything but another weekday.

So it's not the experience itself, it's what you get out of it as years tick by, and perspective can help. Real stories are subtle, with a lot of ways to retell them differently.

"Carefree" high school life is not innocuous - or rather, like a toddler who breaks their toys, it's innocuous right up until it isn't, and the friendships are only lasting in some cases. As a lifelong thing, what will help the most is bringing a balanced skillset and mindset to the scenarios you find yourself in. But the skills and attitudes you get from full engagement in high school life are also some of the _most common ones you will encounter among people of your generation_ , and they are relatively undirected. It can feel good in the moment without doing anything to help you down the line, because doing the most common thing puts you up against a lot of competition.

So, "normal" can just mean setting yourself up for a completely different set of regrets. It's something that young people cling to desperately in their adolescent years by way of setting a baseline, but there are a lot of good reasons to grow away from it and focus on life more pragmatically as an unending series of opportunities and threats.

College life is more illustrative of the different paths you could take, because there's more specialization, more extremes of behavior. Some college kids break down moments after getting there because they discover they are, in fact, extremely underprepared for life away from their parents. Others can really thrive and define themselves.

</comment><comment><USER16> Everyone's life is different, man. There is no benchmark that you need to compare against. Most of my good friends are people I've known for 15 years who I met in high school. Many people I know kept few or no friends from high school. Some of those people have great friends from college instead, while others have few or no friends at all. Some are happy, some aren't-- with or without the friends. I know two separate girls each with almost no friends who are both happy as a lark, and I know a few people with more friends than they can count who are quite depressed.

There isn't a rubric for life.

</comment><comment><USER17> > I don't know how to make close friends.

Don't worry about this. If you can make acquaintances, you're on your way. Think of close friends as friend seeds that you've watered. I even have such people from years ago that I keep warm around this time of year. Whether you become close depends a bit on serendipity. Will you live near each other? Will you work in the same business? Will you have kids the same age?

So gather up friend seeds, it's pretty easy. Go for drinks with people, hang out, that sort of thing. You don't have to force yourself to spend a load of time with anyone. In fact it's impossible in some cases.

As for your interest in coding and math, you've already discovered you can make online friends. Maybe you'll see more people like you at uni, who knows. For the moment you at least have online people you can socialize with, and it's not like they're any less than real people.

</comment><comment><USER18> Get into minor but not major trouble. Learn what it is like to bend or break the rules get caught and suffer consequences. Get that out of your system now if even an inkling of curiousity exists here.

Don't get into major trouble or do very dumb things that could get people seriously injured or killed.

</comment><comment><USER19> Just go to college and study what you like. Contrary to the popular belief, mathematics and computer science aren't solitary pursuits. You'll meet people who share your interests and ways of being.

</comment><comment><USER20> Regarding making friends, I would like to share this paper with you: "The Experimental Generation of Interpersonal Closeness: A Procedure and Some Preliminary Findings" [0] See the appendix for a great set of questions/tasks to come closer to another person.

College for me was much better than High School.

[0]: [https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/014616729723400...](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0146167297234003)

</comment><comment><USER21> Look, everyone is different and so is his/her path.

While we have some ideals, e.g. as portrayed by pop-culture, it does not mean that you would even enjoy living this ideal. Your life will be what you desire it to be, if you are able to make your own decisions.

As someone that flip-flopped between solitary and social phases in his life (and not only marginally), my only advice would be: whatever you feel like, just try to enjoy it the best you can.

Life is incredibly short and it is all yours and _you_ will be the ultimate judge.

Regarding friendships: Especially at your age, friendships can be very intense and meaningful, and yet so frail and meaningless in retrospect. Again, all that matters is how you perceive and enjoy it, and that's the point: deep down, everyone just wants to enjoy themselves. Try to enjoy yourself, and while doing that, don't hesitate to bond with people that support this feeling and ideally have similar interests. And take an open look at what they offer on alternative views and interests.

And don't sweat it, if most bonds are very shallow and superficial, these will always be the majority (through all your life), and that's OK. And things might change incredibly fast anyway, especially in high school.

</comment><comment><USER22> Paul Graham wrote an essay on this exact question. I read it while in high school but only after years later aimlessly wandering through life did the words pierce my soul.

I'd say read this: [http://paulgraham.com/hs.html](http://paulgraham.com/hs.html)

And really reflect on it deeply, aside from that just try to do things you won't regret not doing later.

<comment><USER23> Thanks for posting this, I was wondering today what advice I'd give my younger self. Reading this, it turns out I'm still the intended audience for a high school address :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Socialize where you can. I say this as someone who is looking at putting together a wedding party and deciding on a best man. I had some good acquaintances in high school, then I had some good acquaintances in college, and then professionally. But no one that can really hit that "like a brother" spot that stuck through each major change. Beyond all the socializing and carefree stuff the one thing I wish is there was at least one person who I knew throughout all the big parts in my life.

</comment><comment><USER25> Have fun, don't waste these years worrying about the future, you'll get plenty of time in the next 50/60 years to do that but you'll never get your youth back.

</comment><comment><USER26> Is it normal that I don't have close friends and that I'm solitary?

Who cares what's normal, but your situation is quite common.

However I'd advise that you force your self to work on the social aspect and have relationships - friends, colleagues, enemies is all good as long as you invest some time in that. One good outcome is in high school you can have sex with your peers - other young people, something that is illegal in the USA to do when you become older.

</comment><comment><USER27> this shits a run-on thought so be warned before you read it:

learn to skate, you'll have a quick mode of transport in urban/suburban areas, you get to meet some cool people, widens your music exposure. Chances are these skating kids have spare boards, ask if they can help you learn, most people are down to hang out a little after school and skate for a bit.

Seriously I was in a similar state, but skating helped me branch out to other groups of people, I ended up meeting cool people through it, and I now surf with one of the people I met through it. Plus whenever we are in SF i feel really comfortable street skating.

Be ready to fall, and thats part of the learning, and the balance acquisition. its a life long skill, but a gift that keeps on giving.

also don't take off the plastics that cover the ball bearings on the wheels, people say that they "help out" but it really trashes them, if anything get some Red Dragon Bearings and call it a day, they are super good besides ceramics. If you have the ability to get a board ($110 new) get something some Thomas Trucks, Enjoi Board, and some Spitfire wheels.

</comment><comment><USER28> If you look at facebook, you see what people want other people to see. The pictures of good things,or beautiful places from travels, and so on, the only good stuff. The same with the anime.

This is not reality. Reality of friendship or anything in life like dating is good and bad combined. Sometimes is pain in the *ss to have a close friend or lover.

You probably want something that is perfect, and you idealize it from the distance. Friendship is not complicated, you just spend time with other people, not hard at all.

It is also a routine, you need to gain momentum, it will look hard to break you current routine(that is comfortable, what is called the "comfort zone"), but is not, write down an objective you want on paper and look it every day while doing a little every day to gain momentum.

How could I advice an stranger what hobbies should he adopt. I don't know you, your tastes, I do not know where you life, your country. This is your job.

in places like the US people is isolated by default, one way to improve is traveling to a country that is more social for a while like Spain, Argentina,or Brazil.

Youthful fun? Stop desiring what you don't have. I had fun when I was a kid but right now it is only memory. Only the present exist. And the past is not the future.

There are more important things in life than "fun", read "Man's Search for Meaning" of Victor Frankl.

You could have fun at any stage of your life, you don't need permission from others for that.

What usually happens is that what other people consider fun, is not fun for you and vice versa. I get pretty happy spending time in the Woods talking- discussing about philosophy with other people. Other people consider it boring.

<comment><USER28> PS:"How to make friends and influence people" is a good book to understand friendship, it is about others, not you.

By the way, this book has an old version, I think pre WWII or something, and later versions.

Pick the old one, it is the original. It was later "improved" by the author's descendants.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I am 39 yo and I am not close anymore to any of my HS friends. But I am very close to lot of my University friends. I don't think you need to worry about missing something irreplaceable for life.

Also, do not take other people's memories and nostalgic feelings at face value. These memories usually filter out the bad, boring, irremarkable stuff to make the past sound like an anime. Also, it is often compared to struggles they are facing in the present and wish they could escape.

All that said, I think you do should do something to not feel solitary. I am not so sure that friendships _must_ develop naturally. Sure, they can't be _forced_ , by I think they can (should?) be consciously pursued. That's my approach to keep my best friends close in my adulthood.

Keep an eye open for good people, people who are kind to others and that happen to have some common interests with you. And if the interest seem mutual, make an effort to hang out with those people.

For me, the bottom line: make an effort to be nice to nice people and nice things will happen

</comment><comment><USER30> > Am I missing out on anything?

Only if you truly feel that you are missing out on something in particular-- something you can describe in unambiguous terms.

The answer to "am I missing out on something?" is always, 100% of the time, "yes", because of course no single person can experience every possible 'thing', and there are probably tons of experiences you haven't had that you're glad to have "missed out" on because they're undesirable.

if you know of some that you're really hoping to have before you move on, those are probably the only ones to even concern yourself with; but, even then, just know that it's really, really likely that they are things that are available/doable far beyond your HS years, and at the end of the day, may not have much to do with the fact that you're an HS student; you may find that they are things you'd just generally like to experience.

On a more personal note, having been out of HS for almost 13 years now, the culmination of my high school experience is basically a lot of relief that I screwed up, made strange decisions, joined in sometimes, missed out sometimes, got in a bit of trouble, helped some people, was hurtful to some others, and was generally just totally winging it, while still an HS student.

In college I eventually learned how to learn, and how to think. High school (for me) was the social version of that. I could have done much more, been more extroverted, etc, but those feelings dissipated way more quickly that I thought. A good example of this is the whole dating scene. I met my husband when we were 16 and 17 years old, and I "missed out" on casual dating for most of HS and all of college+. There were times I thought of this as a regret, but it just took me a while to, for lack of a better description, know what I'm about and what I want out of life; those regrets have been re-contextualized as "I am so glad I never had to do that."

</comment><comment><USER31> Firstly, it's difficult to get perspective on something when you're in the thick of it. You may have made better friendships than you realise and these things will become clearer with time.

Secondly, it sounds like you've lived yr teens a little differently to others, but there's no right way of doing it, and you'll be richer for some of the choices you've made and poorer for others, that's part of life. Live without regrets. It's a cliche but also a truism that you can't change the past.

Finally, the great thing you've done is yr reflecting upon the life you're leading. The trick now is to actually act upon the changes you want to make and commit to them. If you can work this loop really effectively (do, reflect, improve) while also just being able to relax a bit and find pleasure in where you are right now then I think this is one of the keys to a happy, fulfilled life.

Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER13> I would not trust an online group to form an opinion what is 'normal' and what is not. An online group is formed of people who were incentivized to join that discussion because it appealed to their personality. There are probably at least 500 million english speakers on the internet. This means there can be subgroups for all sorts of fringe things that have thousands of members, yet present a tiny fraction of the population. Most of all, the groups you visit have people who have same types of personalities as you. Hence, you don't know whether the opinions you get are an overall average, or totally uncommon.

What I mean by this - it's great you are wondering how to to live your life so it' fullfilling - but an online group is not necessarily the best place to gauge the quality of your life in the general context as there is no single optimum for human experience as people are very different. And some people learn to cherish the things that make their life painfull. And some people have toxic personalities yet are terribly good at persuading others.

Social proof is an immensly powerfull force yet it is easily manufactured in this day an age.

That said, many have adviced trying some group sport and I think that's a great advice. You don't need to like it, and can the stop the experience, but there is no way to know except by trying.

It's great you are partaking in art. This already gives you a wider context than just your technical interests.

While wondering how to live your life, you might enjoy reading biographies of technical people. I would warmly recommend Walter Isaacsons magnificient books- Innovators, Leonardo da Vinci, Jobs, Einstein and Benjamin Franklins biographies give a vivid and human description how other technical people with artistic qualities lived their life.

You don't know what your life will be like, and you are a being of your own, but often peoples lives have more things in common than not - even across centuries.

</comment><comment><USER32> > Is it normal that I don't have close friends and that I'm solitary? Am I > missing out on anything?

Not really. Not everybody needs to or wants to have a huge circle of friends. And let's face it, it's impossible to have a huge circle of close friends. You wouldn't be able to maintain the friendships AND your studies, hobbies, etc.

> What hobbies do you advise me to adopt that I can do in a group, with > camaraderie?

Strength training, hiking, biking, running, dancing, watching anime/drama/movies in a group -- so many to choose from. Just try out whatever interests you. You'll end up meeting lifelong friends just doing that.

And trust me, high school is a not a big deal. It's a very small chunk of your life compared to what's ahead. And what's ahead is much much better.

</comment><comment><USER33> Just keep making friends. Keep it a priority and learn to get to know people. Don't stress too much if it doesn't feel like it's working. If you keep this as a goal and make the effort it will happen. I don't think you are alone in this. Western societies are getting more and more isolated. Finding people you connect with is not easy.

I don't keep in contact with any of my high school friends now. I've made new ones as an adult. I've changed so much since high school so has everyone I was friends with so we just don't have that much in common any more. So I wouldn't stress to much that you're missing out on high school connections.

You will need friends in life but you'll find a way to make them.

</comment><comment><USER34> Every close friendship I've ever made has been based on a mutual understanding that both of us are flawed.

You will only continue to cultivate superficial friendships if you keep people out of your interior world, and are unwilling to be there for others to open up to you.

</comment><comment><USER35> With most things in life, you get out what you put in. I remembered it was awkward for me, but I made efforts to hang out with friends. A lot of my friends didn't have the same interest as me at first, but there's always something in common that we share, may it be sports or food or movies or just plain hanging out. As you already know, friendship needs cultivating. Just like building a relationship. So, go have fun! Keep an open mind and hang out with people, you'll learn interesting things about them and build a long lasting friendship bond.

</comment><comment><USER36> I remember watching an anime called Erased! that elicited similar feelings for me, but it was centered around elementary/secondary school. I'm not sure I can answer your question, I wasn't that close with my highschool class. But two things I can say are: be your genuine self, and take a genuine interest in others.

To say anything more specific would really just be me trying to give advice to my past self, instead of trying to give you advice. Someone you know well may have more personal insights.

</comment><comment> a-saleh Random musings:

There are less rules than you might think, but you are right that developing close friendships takes time.

On the other hand college can be a nice ground zero, where you don't need to break into some weird existing cliques where everybody already has shared language based on years of in-jokes.

But my friendsip building wad reasonably low-effort, but over long time with consistency :-)

I went to bible-study and enjoyed the more personal setting than the "50 people sing hymn together in a church youth-meeting". I am order of magnitude less religious than I was back then, but I still remember the time fondly and keep in touch with some of the people I met there :)

I liked to go swimming with few friends that found the idea "swim from one end of 50m pool to the other for an hour" relaxing. Every 300m we stop at the end of the pool and chat. Then we swim again.

I had group of ~4 friends I played board-games together. Or we organized lan- parties from time-to time. 3 of us then went for a same programme at the same college and that helped me quite a bit when acomodating in college.

I joined for a few longer (several days) hikes with few people from my class. I don't keep in touch as much with them, but knowing there are few people I literally walked like hundred miles along-side is nice :-)

I learned a lot just by walking home with a friend of mine and talking Java design patterns and algorithms for path-finding through mazes. We did few projects together, and to this day (10y after we left hs) we still make point of getting a few beers together or going for Puzzlehunt every few months.

Close-ness is a difficult concept. I.e. with the friend I talked about I wouldn't call him at 3 AM if I am depressed. I think only one I would wake up like this might be my wife :) Over a beer we probably would discuss if I am burned-out at work or simmilar.

I might have few friends I would talk about my kids and raising them and the usual life-stuff. Former colleagues that I grew to know over hundred shared lunches and cofe breaks and later on beers in pubs, occasional hike or going bouldering.

I might have maybe one friend I might talk about more intimate stuff, like if I had problems in marriage. We have known each other for around 20 years and we literally met in middle-school.

I do wish you luck!

</comment><comment><USER37> First, I'd like to say that you're doing fine, no worries.

Second, I'd say go out and join a team or two. This is where you will find deeper connections with other people.

It could be a sports team, a work team, a User Group[0] or anything where you have to cooperatively participate with others based purely on shared interests and goals. Just be sure to pick something you enjoy and to participate fully.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Users%27_group](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Users%27_group)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I wanted to make this submission longer to better convey how I feel, but I had to cut it down to 2000 characters (including the title apparently). Therefore, it may come across as terse and abrupt.

<comment><USER38> You can get around that by adding more text in later via the 'edit' link, which is there for 2 hours after you post.

But I don't think what you wrote sounds terse or abrupt! I hope you get some value out of the replies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> The less you worry about what you're missing out on the happier you'll be. Focus on what you can and want to do.

TV and anime makes carefree socializing in high school look better than it is.

Colleee is usually a lot better time for socializing than high school, espicially if you're ambitious and nerdy.

Find other ambitious nerdy people that share the things you're excuted about. This will probably be much easier to do in high school.

</comment><comment><USER40> I hated high school. Spent all of my time alone. Flunked. Repeated the tenth grade. Flunked again and dropped out. 5 years later, got e GED and went to a state school. Found a passion for math and CS. Got good grades for two years and transferred to Stanford. Found my tribe and discovered a career that I love.

High school was an oppressive environment.

</comment><comment><USER41> Didn't attend US highschool, but from the movies and TV shows I've seen about it, coolness and popularity seem to be commonly put on a pedestal, I can only say it's just 3 years of your probable 70+ years' life, so what's cool and popular for kids in high school maybe isn't as important after it.

</comment><comment><USER42> > I don't know how to make close friends.

In my experience, it's much easier to do with people you have something in common. I didn't even know the names of most of my classmates in high school.

> Will college be the same or different than high school?

The best thing about college was the fact that other people stopped feeling like a bunch of scripted NPCs.

</comment><comment> tom-- Here's a nice advice page done by founder of Stripe - [https://patrickcollison.com/advice](https://patrickcollison.com/advice)

You'll be missing out on teenager life as you worry about teenager life, so don't worry about it and just do what you want to do.

</comment><comment><USER43> Make sure to never listen to guidance counselors. They're idiots who push you in the wrong direction.

</comment><comment><USER44> 1\. Forget about what's "normal". Instead, ask yourself: "Is this going to contribute to my broader goals in life?" Having close friends in high school may offer valuable experiences in social dynamics and managing relationships, but chances are you won't remain friends with most of those people after high school, and that's ok.

2\. Definitely research colleges thoroughly and apply to them, but realize that you don't _have_ to go to college. And certainly not right out of high school. In some disciplines, such as web software engineering, those 4 years spent working with real clients could be more valuable for your career than spending lots of money on a Computer Science degree.

3\. Leverage all the extra-curricular activities you can in order to gauge your interest in certain subjects. Obviously you can't register for _everything_ , but pick, say 3 activities to focus on each semester and apply yourself to them. As life goes on, you'll have less and less carefree time to explore this stuff.

</comment><comment><USER45> Study your body like you would a machine or a program or a puzzle. Understand how your muscles respond to stimuli. Figure out how your nerves transmit intensity. Discover what forces your body to move against your will. Given your submersion in the hormonal hilarity that is puberty, you're going to spend a lot of time on autopilot, so step back and observe your body being commanded by primal forces.

Once you build this map, you can begin to monitor and track how external factors drive you. Memes, TV, movies, music, conversation... all signals designed to persuade and hijack your behavior. Spending time here will give you much needed clarity of self and begin laying the foundation of empathy for others.

Friends appear once you have this map as you will have unintentionally filtered out those who will exploit the unexplored regions of you.

Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER46> Birds of a feather flock together. In my experience it's pretty hard to not stumble with people that clicks with you, wherever you go. Take those chances to make friends.

</comment><comment><USER47> High School is pretty much useless, don't rely on teachers to teach you anything.

</comment><comment><USER23> Like you said, you can't force friendship, your best bet is to make more casual friendships and then develop the ones that are a good match.

I recently began consciously developing my casual social skills (small talk). I make a point of smiling and greeting people at every opportunity.

Many of my coworkers are silent until spoken to, at which point they smile with delight and really open up to you.

Beyond that, I would say, clarify as best you can the type of friends you are looking for. What exactly do you mean by close friends? What kind of things would close friends do together, or do for each other? Figure out what that is, and then see if there are opportunities for doing those things in your existing relationships.

A friend once told me, years after the fact, that a favor I did for him was very meaningful to him. Nobody had done anything like that for him before, and it was instrumental to our lasting friendship.

tldr (1) social skills will improve with practice (2) to have a friend, be a friend

Best wishes

</comment><comment><USER48> I've never regretted saying yes to an offer to socialise in a small group. It's easy to get lost at a party or a big event, but if you're one of four or five people sitting in a MacDonalds after class it's easier to talk and make friends. College will give you lots of opportunities to do things like that, and they'll be more useful than the massive social events if you're a little bit introverted.

</comment><comment><USER49> My lessons learned from high school:

High school performance is not an indication of real life performance. I graduated class rank 380 out of 386 because my personal goal was to see just how close I could cut it without missing the mark. That means I was at that time a risk seeking personality. I also hated high school, because my high school is one of the top high schools in the country and is certainly not a reflection of reality. I was happier isolating myself from the competition politics parents imposed on their children and I achieved that isolation with far too great of success. I still got into college just fine and now I make more money than many of my teenage childrens' friends' parents. This is solely because I pursue my personal interests far more aggressively than most people.

Many years ago when I was at Travelocity I was a young senior developer. Somebody I graduated high school with (top ten class rank) came in as a junior vice president. Her education and life goals were centered around management, but she had no product or technical goals. She left the company before I did and is doing very well. It took me later in life to discover my personal goals and I have been less successful as a result. I suspect there is greater demand for me in the marketplace and I likely have greater job security and her though.

You are still a child. Your brain has not fully formed and so you lack the observational and emotional stability that comes with being an adult. That said remain calm and don't anything too seriously. Focus on learning all things from academics, inter-personal relationships, technical things, human behavior, and so forth. Don't confuse who you are with who you want to be. Be yourself and do it well.

Use your time in high school to prepare the personal behaviors that will carry you through the rest of life. Consider things like self-reflection, work ethic, a lust for learning, written communications, and so forth. Discover your interests and personal passions and have the courage to share your interests with others.

Set personal goals. Its ok if you don't achieve your personal goals at that age, because your interests are subject to change. Goals give you something to work towards and what is important is that you are working towards something intentional with great focus. If you do quit your goal prematurely do so deliberately with a great reason that you can speak to out loud.

You never get your time back. Don't waste your time on frivolous things. Any activity that contributes to some degree of self-improvement, listening/communication skills, or social behavior is important.

Fun is what you make of things. It is a matter of perspective. Beware of people trying to define this for you.

</comment><comment><USER50> To make lasting friends you have to hang out repeatedly with a group of people. Then you'll naturally hang out more with some people in a group, and suddenly you'll realize you're friends.

Also friendships bloody well can be forced (or nudged, anyway). All friendships start between two people who aren't exactly friends.

"Hey, do you want to X later?" "Yeah sure"

Then you try X, and if you enjoy X, you do Y together later, and eventually you're friends. Whereas if you don't, you drift off and meet other people.

As far as I can tell, (forming) friendship is just:

1\. Repeat interaction

2\. With people you like

The group helps make it natural. But friendships also form when one person is outgoing enough to say "hey wanna hangout?"

Maybe you've done that and it didn't work. I was just skeptical when I read the phrases "friendships have to develop naturally" and "I have never made a close, loyal friendship". Empirically, you have no evidence of how friendships _have_ to form - you've never formed one :) I find the "natural" language is often an excuse used by people to avoid taking the outgoing actions necessary to nudge a relationship forward. (This applies to dating relationships too - someone always takes iniative of some sort)

Also if people aren't warming to you, then dressing well and being fit help. And if you're a man, being strong helps immensely. This might sound silly and superficial but it's how things work. People respond more warmly to people they find attractive and/or not embarrasing to be with (within genders too). And when people are warm to you, you act more warmly to them. This catalyzes friendships. Simple as that. This could partly explain why you can talk but it leads nowhere.

You don't need to go too deep into style. Just....make sure your clothes fit you. Poor fitting clothes affects many an introverted high schooler.

Anyway, no it's not normal to have no friends. Introverts generally end up with some close friends they interact with one on one. This is normal and healthy and allows for a lot of solitude. But being totally alone isnt so good. And some of the best friendships form in high school/college, so it's good to work on the skill now.

(The group advice is good advice to finding these individual friendships. A loose group lets you sift through and find closer friends)

Also, since things aren't coming naturally, "how to win friends and influence people" is a really good guide to doing just that. People who are good with people intuitively do the stuff in the book.

Also, that's good insight on your part after watching the anime. I only had the same insight in third year college, I wish I had had it sooner. I do have close friends now, it's nice.

Btw, as far as afraid of ending high school goes: don't be. You're only 17. It's good to enjoy high school. But, it you start working on this an figure it out by 19....you're still really young! Most young people are sortint themselves out in one way or another. You're not "missing" anythint while you do that: you're just gettint yourself ready for life. Most nerds were bad at high school, have poor memories of it, and are fond of college instead. The carefree high school kids with fond memories were usually either popular or those who didn't go on to university.

That doesn't mean don't work at it. Do work at it. Just, the goal is to be able to make friends, at some point in the near future. If you miss the high school window, you should be fine as long as you're improving.

You may also like these Paul Graham essays:

[http://www.paulgraham.com/hs.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/hs.html)

[http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html)

(Your high school problem may simply be that people at your high school aren't interested in your interests. See Paul's comments on his high school chess club. Note also that he weight lifted, and his social life improved after he became good at soccer and started a scandalous neespaper. Both are things that improve social status: [http://www.paulgraham.com/gateway.html?viewfullsite=1](http://www.paulgraham.com/gateway.html?viewfullsite=1))

<comment><USER51> > Also if people aren't warming to you, then dressing well and being fit help

I have been way over-valuing this before. While the effect might not be 0, I think it is a much worse problem for dating and not so much just making friends. Even then it is surprising how far a bit of confidence will get you.

Don't stress about things you can't change.

<comment><USER50> ....you can very easily change how you dress. I wore ill fitting pants for years. Now my pants fit.

I'm not high fashion or anything; I wear jeans and T shirts. But they fit. This is pretty simple to fix.

It's not a huge deal for making friends, but it isn't zero.

This may not be OP's problem, and it may not have been your problem, but a lot of introverted men are _awful_ dressers and it adds friction to hanging around with them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> For some of us, being solitary is the way it is. A range of things is normal, including being fairly solitary :) I've never really had lots of close friends either, but I've also found that there are upsides to this - it did, after all, allow me to move countries without many complications, for example. I did this in my mid-30's. I happen to move to a more introverted country than the US - being somewhat solitary definitely helped with this.

I fully suggest things like joining groups if you have them in your area. I understand that not everywhere has these or not in your interest. Join groups even if you think everyone else will be your grandparent's age! You never know who you might find. If you can't join any groups, try to do something regularly. Do you have a local coffee shop or even a local McDonalds? Go there once a week, fairly regularly, and drink coffee while you sketch. It is a great way to meet people (I took a vacation to Amsterdam where I sketched in coffee shops and other public places - it was wonderful). Plus, art gives me something to talk about :)

Experience as much as reasonably possible, especially while you are young. The only other real group hobby I have is tabletop gaming - I go to a friends house when possible to play overly complicated board games. I've thought about volunteer work, in part to improve my language skills.

Casual friendships are gold. While it is hard to find close friends - <USER3> stuff is easier. The grand thing about these friendships is that when put together, they tend to equal a full friendship. One person might be good for getting your mind off things while the other might like to listen to some people's problems from time to time. I tend to have very few close friendships. Heck, I have only a few casual ones as well, but i'm ok with that. I'm not sure if I'm missing out on things, but I stopped caring.

College will be partially the same and partially different than high school. I have enjoyed being an adult much more than I did being a teenager. I'm now 40 and can honestly say I enjoy life much more now. You can have the same kind of youthful fun when you are an adult. What you find fun might (and probably will) change. It is normal to be afraid of ending high school, by the way. Most of us get at least a bit nervous before life changes when things seem a bit unknown.

One thing that might help your perspective is learning how to frame things in life. For example, before I moved to Norway after marrying the spouse (who is Norwegian), I figured that if things went badly and I wound up back in the US... I'd at least have a good story to tell and a mound of life experience that wouldn't have happened otherwise. I figured the story itself would make me more interesting - at least to my standards. This sort of attitude makes difficult times ever-so-slightly easier and the fear of the upcoming changes much easier. :)

And this might not have been the best writing, but that's all I'm doing for now :)

</comment><comment><USER53> [apologies, wall of text follows]

A number of other people have suggested sports. I wish I had discovered Judo and Brazilian Jujitsu younger, but I was a competitive fencer and boxed in university. All sports give you a pool of people to have shared experiences with (maybe a bit artificial) whether they are team sports or individual sports.

The other element of these kind of 'instant friend' activities is that you can find a kind of 'placeholder' group of people to hang out with who may be able to introduce you to other people you are more likely to click with. I made some good friends from groups of people that I largely had nothing in common with but was hanging out with because of some girl (for example) - but you might wind up meeting way more interesting people on the periphery of a group you don't really 100% click with.

My friends in high school were generally 'shared interest' nerd friends (mostly Dungeons and Dragons as a core nerdy interest).

It's possible to make friends doing pretty much whatever - a lot of friends I had in university were my peers in CS and other subjects. We had to hang around in labs and classes together, though (and having a 4th year "honours" program in CS where we did 100% CS and all had on-campus shared offices was really good for that). So it's just as possible that you could wind up walking in, doing your work, and walking out. Cultivating some projects and working with a group might really help with that. A lot of undergraduates are considered disposable randos who are just interested in getting a qualification as quick as possible while accumulating as little extra knowledge as possible, but if you're interested in type theory, maybe you should be trying to work with a research group in something you like. Ideally go for a healthy research group that's actually _at_ the place you want to go, not something that exactly fits your supposed interested right now (which will likely change). So if they have a big healthy machine learning group that welcomes undergraduate research interns vs one cranky weirdo doing type theory, do the former (that's better both socially and, likely, as research prep if that's the direction you want to go).

Do try to make sure that you're not assuming activities are asocial when they aren't, too. Maybe people are getting coffee after art class?

It's very hard to force the issue - I think people are more and more preoccupied with their phones and previous social connections via social media than they are interested in meeting new people. I suggest cultivating a lot of interests (including a wide variety of things), behaving yourself well, keeping an open mind and seeing what happens.

Of course, maybe you're just solitary by nature. But don't assume stuff. I substantially reinvented myself in university and essentially declared myself an extrovert after having been very introverted in HS. Despite some awkward moments from this forced transition (yes, someone trying to put on an extrovert skin can be about as dreadful as you might imagine) this was a very good idea long-term.</comment>