You Don't Want This Perfect Job - <AUTHOR> http://blog.aha.io/index.php/you-dont-want-this-perfect-job/

<comment><USER2> Nice article, but I really love the photo of the monkey!</comment>


NAT Tunneling Without a Third-Party - <AUTHOR> http://samy.pl/pwnat/ <comment><USER2> Earlier (6 years ago!) discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1224905](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1224905)</comment>


IPhone 3GS JavaScript Performance Blows Away Rivals, Approaches MacBook Speed - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/06/24/iphone-3gs-javascript-performance-blows-away-rivals-approaches-macbook-speed/?awesm=tcrn.ch_4b2&utm_campaign=techcrunch&utm_content=techcrunch-autopost&utm_medium=tcrn.ch-twitter&utm_source=twitter.com <comment><USER2> "Approaches MacBook Speed"? It's 12x slower. That's like saying "bicycles approach speed of TGV" (25 vs 300km/h) when comparing them to walking.

<comment><USER3> If 12x slower than safari, that means it's probably already faster than IE7. So maybe it isn't approaching _Macbook_ speed, but it is approaching, or meeting, desktop browser speeds.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm really tired of MG Siegler's posts he is far from accurate on his statements (even about Twitter), HN please add a author field.

</comment><comment><USER5> If it's 12x slower than Safari on a MacBook, I bet it's already faster than IE, which would be impressive.

<comment><USER6> So, as a curiosity, I decided to run the SunSpider benchmarks on my MacBook Pro 2.4GHz 4GB RAM machine. Safari fared better at 1.1 sec. Firefox 3.5RC hit 1.4 sec. Then I downloaded Firefox 2. 13.2 sec for Firefox 2 on my MacBook Pro. So, the Phone 3GS might not hit MacBook speed with Safari, but it fares very well against a browser that many of us used not so long ago.

It isn't like Firefox 2 is some terrible browser and since Firefox 2 is handily able to execute the JavaScript contained in most pages on a MacBook Pro, it stands to reason that JavaScript performance shouldn't be a barrier on the iPhone on current generation web stuff. Granted, I'm sure Google and others would like to push the envelope, but it's good to see that mobile browsers aren't so behind.

<comment><USER7> Why on earth would you install Firefox 2? Firefox 3 has been out for a year, and 3.5 is a release candidate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Interestingly though, a casual browse through the Pre's software that Palm have so far put up shows it's using the webkit engine from Safari3.2. With the various iPhone hardware and software combos present, it gets a bit more interesting. The original 3G with the numerous js and render engine improvments keeping pace with the superior on the hardware front Pre. With firmware 2.2 (probably) using the same Safari 3.2 engine as the Pre, it gets a pasting from the hardware improvements.

</comment><comment><USER9> Also impressive is that the improvement in speed from the software upgrade is only a tiny bit less than the improvement in speed from hardware...</comment>


Building a Simple Web App using R - <AUTHOR> http://stathack.wordpress.com/2012/11/14/building-a-simple-web-app-using-r/

<comment><USER2> (Forgive my ignorance) Why? (Fun?)</comment>


You Suck at Excel with Joel Spolsky (2015) [video] - <AUTHOR> https://youtube.com/watch?v=0nbkaYsR94c <comment><USER2> This video of Martin Shkreli using Excel [1] is what really made me realize I suck at Excel...

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFSf5YhYQbw&feature=youtu.be...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFSf5YhYQbw&feature=youtu.be&t=211)

<comment><USER3> Does everyone love this guy all of a sudden? I thought he was the most hated person in the world but I don't see a single bad comment about him here or in the YouTube comments. Quite on the contrary.

<comment><USER4> Might be of help to someone else to realize that you are talking about Martin Shkreli, rather than Spolsky.

I missed the parent you were referencing, and thought one of the child comments was saying that Joel Spolsky was out on bail for securities fraud (which was the result, obviously, of me not catching who you were talking about)

oops!

:-D

<comment><USER5> Ooooh thanks. I've been reading a lot of Spolsky's blog posts from 2005-2006... I was thinking, what's happened to this guy in the last 10 years? Everyone hates him? Securities fraud? What?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> In my line of work I often see tech vendors and consultants trying to plan infrastructure changes using Excel (or worse, tables in Word, but we won't go into that). The results are horrendous.

They start with a manual inventory of the configuration in question, type it ad-hoc into a spreadsheet, then go through making manual changes, notes and additions until it feels good. There's lots of highlighting, different coloured text, etc like layers of sedimentation. Formulas are only used for sums and counts in an ad-hoc way.

The end plan _always_ contains mistakes and omissions that really hurt during deployment time.

The correct way requires discipline: immutable input sheets (from machine- generated config dumps), a parameter sheet, output tables (with consistent usage of formulas with "$" notation to lock rows and columns), and cross checks with conditional highlighting.

Unfortunately this is _really hard_ for people without programming instincts/experience. Good job security I guess. But if you can do it, it's both faster and safer than the manual free-form method.

<comment><USER7> In my line of work I see an organisation regularly burning $50m in IT budget for developping a software that is completely flawed, horribly designed, not fit for purpose, though take years to develop and for that amount of efforts and money, could be much more efficiently done in Excel for 1/10000th of the cost!

This week I am trying to extract data from a data cube that was created for reporting. Problem, the cube was designed so that only one node can be retrieved at a time, and so if I need a bulk retrieval, which I need, it needs to be queried a billion times, sinking the server, timing out the queries, taking hours. The IT team is trying to figure out a way to run an overnight job so that it sinks the server during quiet hours. Basically these guys designed a vault where you can only add data but never retrieve it. They should be fired.

[edit] and before someone starts to think "yeah but this is big data", the underlying populated numbers in this cube would fit in a 5MB spreadsheet.

I am not sure that the audience of hacker news realises how terrible is the reputation of IT and developers in large companies from the business side. They are seen as a world of hyper-bureaucratic, common sense-free, business sense-hostile, half-assed lemmings.

Excel is not great but one has to have a hard look at the alternative.

<comment><AUTHOR> Somebody said that before starting a startup you should evaluate what your competition is, and that includes Excel.

Many, many startups are competing against a moderately-complex Excel sheet, and they don't even know that.

<comment><USER7> I am frustrated I can only upvote once!

<comment><USER8> If HN were an Excel sheet, you could upvote as many times as you want! :-)

<comment><USER7> I could automate in VBA me upvoting. Try to do that in a business application!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> First, I learned a lot from this. But, here's some light criticism:

1\. Joel saying "I didn't understand that question" and then moving on might have been succinct and practical, but it was just not a good reflection of him.

2\. He acts like R1C1 mode is the only way handle relative references for the first 13 minutes. One of the first things I learned in Excel was $ to pin a reference to row or column in what he calls "baby mode". I think it's not babyish to use $ which is more succinct; you can edit the formula and see the calculated value right away. It seemed like he waited a long time to talk about that.

3\. "Almost none of which you can do in Google spreadsheets" at 18:15. Sounds so pro-Microsoft, right? Yet, if you look, he's obviously using OS X, which is surprising to me, because MS Office has historically sucked on OS X compared to its Windows counterpart, and it's been incomplete: [https://9to5mac.com/2016/01/21/windows-mac-ipad-microsoft- of...](https://9to5mac.com/2016/01/21/windows-mac-ipad-microsoft-office- comparison/) even though, yes, it's a lot better than it used to be. Also, Google docs is free.

<comment><USER10> 4\. All the stuff he starts describing at 18:40 Google Sheets will actually do just fine except the Growth Trend bit on the heights.

5\. 33:25 - Nope, that works in Google Sheets too. Just like Excel.

6\. OK that table shit was cool though. Sheets can't do that.

<comment><USER11> I remember watching this video a while ago and it is super basic. I can assure you that there are great many things that google sheet lacks.

<comment><USER10> Ya I know. Was just pointing out that Google Sheets isn't _quite_ as basic as people think.

It really should be better though. I wish Google would commit to it more.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Is there a standardized excel knowledge test and or certification? As a senior analyst excel expertise is requisite, but is very hard to interview for...I had to make an excel test just to empirically rate our analyst candidates. I know there are the excel competitions ([http://www.modeloff.com/](http://www.modeloff.com/)) and great resources ([http://www.chandoo.com/wp](http://www.chandoo.com/wp)), but no rating system for knowledge (even basic) of excel. Think the big investment banks would be interested in "testing" their analysts empirically before hiring them?

<comment><USER13> everyone employed to a relevant position at our company takes a pretty in depth excel assessment so we know what they need taught on Day 1.

Named ranges/tables is always top of the list!

 _edit_ : business schools usually make you take an excel course/exam your first year. Its always awful, using some absurdly priced flash-based webapp from 2003 that has such strict validation on answers/inputs, you often struggle just to input your answer because you solved it in a different manner than they expect. So, the IBs likely think you know Excel before getting in the door (which is not always the case).

<comment><USER14> Hi, I'm interested in taking your test too?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There are lots of things he does that are still rookie mistakes! Like index/match without doing a strict match (microsoft: when are you going to add a shorter syntax for that??).

Then he probably does that to make it visual but he should be using his mouse a lot less. F2, CTRL Enter on a range to apply the first formula without applying the formatting.

Also two data tables one above the other. As one expands it will hit into the other. That's where excel lacks a feature that apple introduced in numbers: not using a unique grid but a table being its own grid, placed as a shape on a sheet. That solves lots of problems.

Range names are not a good solution with experience. You get name clashes when merging spreadsheets, ambiguous duplicate names when duplicating tabs. For formula auditing F2 is your friend. And there are some third party add-ins to go to a reference within a formula and come back with keyboard shortcuts.

And no demo of excel is complete without showing the power of array formulas. In particular SUM(Col1 * Col2 * (Filter1=Col3) * (ABS(Col4)<4)) to do a sophisticated conditional sumproduct.

<comment><USER15> "index/match without doing a strict match"

I that the same as for vlookup? I never understood how that is supposed to work - when do you want to _not_ have a strict match?

<comment><USER7> There are cases where it is useful. Like I want to retrieve the FX rate for a given day but my time series might be missing days, so finding the nearest result is practical.

Also the default assumes that the values are in ascending order, which is computationally efficient as it can do a binary search.

But very dangerous in the most common scenario.

What would be even better is to be able to tell Excel to create a hash table / dictionary in memory from a table so that it can be queried very efficiently.

But as I posted everywhere on this page, Microsoft doesn't seem to be minded to add new features. Changing the color scheme between versions, making minor improvements, keeping bugs as they are, incrementing the version and shipping it!

<comment><USER15> Oh I never thought about using vlookup for anything but categorical values, but yeah your example makes sense.

I like the new functions that make you not having to wrap everything in ISNA(), like ISERROR()...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Joel played a part in creating VBA for Excel (and likely the other Office clients) when he was a program manager at Microsoft in the early 90s (see [http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/06/16.html](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/06/16.html)).

I'm a developer on XL (at Microsoft), only half way through the video and have learnt a thing or two. Out of academic curiosity I sometimes ask old-timers if they ever worked with Joel. So far nobody recognizes his name, though there is next to none left in Excel who were XL in early 90s or before.

<comment><USER17> Does MS not follow that old habit of C developers to put stuff like last edited by and lust updated in the comments?

You'd think his name would be everywhere on the internals.

<comment><USER16> They did have the code owners' name in nice formatted comments but they don't do that anymore, at least not in the Excel codebase. There are plenty of artifacts with the code owners names left behind (many having since moved on from Excel and Microsoft). Mr Spolsky was a program manager, so I doubt he wrote much if any code that made it into the Excel binaries, but I'm interested to know if he did.

<comment><USER18> His name doesn't appear in either the Excel 97 flight simulator monolith credits, or the Excel 2000 "dev hunter" driving game, so he may have joined the Excel team after that, or they may not have been exhaustive lists.

They're still very cool ways to put developer credits into enterprise software :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Excel is super useful for the range of tasks where speed and transparency to business execs is more important than flexibility or maintenance.

Its great to rattle something off in a couple of hours that you can email to your boss to tinker with

It's absolute hell flicking through tabs trying to find a bug or trawling through stack overflow looking at grim VBA contortions which have one-liner equivalents in python.

<comment><USER19> With named ranges and named tables it is a hell of a lot easier to debug a sheet.

(Not commenting on VBA)

<comment><USER14> The problem is if enough people have been working on a sheet for long enough it becomes very difficult to replicate your work. this is particularly true for projects involving data processing and if they have poor version control practices.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> You instantly brought me back to the "You suck at photoshop" series.

Enjoy and you're welcome!

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_X5uR7VC4M&list=ELME28FkTdZ...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_X5uR7VC4M&list=ELME28FkTdZHo)

<comment><USER21> Along the same line - here is Scott Hanselman with some Word basics: [http://www.hanselman.com/blog/VIDEODoYouReallyKnowHowToUseMi...](http://www.hanselman.com/blog/VIDEODoYouReallyKnowHowToUseMicrosoftWordThePowerOfTabsAndIndents.aspx)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Paste values isn't almost always what I want. When copying formulas around I usually want the actual formulas which have been judiciously constructed with fixed row and column references where needed. The default paste is ideal for people doing actual calculation in Excel.

<comment><USER23> I've often wanted some references in the formula to shift when I paste, while having others be fixed. This can be accomplished by putting the fixed references as string argument to the INDIRECT function (ex `indirect("F7")`).

<comment><USER24> You can also use $F$7.

Or if you do just F$7, only the column changes when pasting. Or $F7, only the row changes.

<comment><USER25> This right here is maybe the most important thing anyone can learn in Excel.

The second most important thing is how to use vlookup() for cross-sheet lookups, using a column in the other sheet as a foreign key.

<comment><USER26> Stop using vlookup. Use index and match, either through named references as Joel does it or just manually even. It's more powerful, faster and less prone to failure because vlookup relies on an assumed order of sorting but most people won't know this and will wonder why it's cocking up.

<comment><USER27> You really should use MATCH with last argument 0 (exact match) and use it only within IF(ISERROR:

IF(ISERROR(MATCH(Key;Keys;0));"null";INDEX(Values, MATCH(Key; Keys))))

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> As a person who doesn't get to use Excel much but wants to... is there such thing as "fun" Excel problem sets? Like Eurler Problems but for Excel?

Some kinda meaty stuff rather than just "here's how you sum"

<comment><USER29> Have you tried solving the Euler problems in Excel?

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Does anybody else feel that the vast majority of these things are either available in Google sheets or worth just doing in R? My last consulting project was on a VaR model built in VBA/SQL with a bunch of Excel sprinkled about and it was horrendous. Not Excel, VBA or SQL's fault, but it felt like a more thoughtful architect would have used better tools.

<comment><USER31> Yeah if excel was coughing with a few dozen tables I wonder what starts to happen when you process thousands or hundreds of thousands of values.

The pivot table got me jealous though.

<comment><USER32> You can do pivot tables in Google sheets

<comment><USER11> If you are a masochist .

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I think the most interesting thing in this video was the explanation of R1C1. I've always thought of the apparent automatic changing of references as almost magic. Now I know.

For me, the most useful things he talked about was, in order; giving names to cells and columns, use of INDEX and MATCH, leaving space around tables, defining and using tables, pivot-tables, copying formatting with the paintbrush, goal-seek, and finally, control-semicolon to insert today's date.

The various forms of paste special, I knew about from before, and I also knew about the dragging to fill in values stuff.

All in all, a very good video with a lot of things I didn't know.

<comment><USER34> This is not a judgment on you, but I've seen this echoed in a couple places in this thread and yours is a top-level comment that starts with it.

I really grokked the concept illustrated with R1C1 notation within a day or two of being exposed to $-pinning with A1 notation, and the concept of a relative offset was my mental model in Excel for a long time before I even learned about R1C1.

Yes, R1C1 notation is helpful because you literally type in an offset if you want it, but it seems pretty apparent in playing with Excel that the automatic reference rewriting is based on the relative offset of one cell compared to another. Seeing it rewrite a range as you drag a formula around seems to illustrate this concept very clearly.

On the other hand, I came from a non-technical background and came up as an analyst in a sales department. The person I learned Excel from didn't know about pivot tables, so I didn't learn about pivot tables for some time. What I did learn was how to make my own (much less flexible) pivot tables by hand very quickly. I got to the point that I put off learning pivot tables better once I was introduced to them, because they were an inefficiency for me. I eventually learned better.

<comment><USER33> I should probably have phrased what I said a bit differently. I have not had trouble understanding relative offset and how to use it. What I've always wondered about and finally got an answer to in this video is how the implementation works so that Excel is able to preserve the offsets even when pasting a cell in a random location into a spreadsheet :)

<comment><USER34> Ah gotcha. Yeah, for that I just had an implicit mental model of R1C1 without realizing it was physically implemented.

I interpreted you (wrongly it seems) as saying that the relative offsets were confusing and I responded to that. You were curious about the implementation instead.

I didn't care about the implementation when I was learning Excel, and simply assumed a mechanism like R1C1 without much interest in it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> That's a pretty good demonstration of some of the strengths of the ribbon interface.

After watching this, I went to Google Docs to try to reproduce some of this and it felt very clunky. The first thing I realized I didn't have is a styles manager but I was able to install an add-on. For other parts (like creating tables) I was stuck.

I wonder if a similar demo in Libre Office would be as impressive?

Edit: I just tried Excel Online and it worked surprisingly well. Last time I tried it, Google Sheets felt way better but now I'm not so sure.

</comment><comment><USER36> I had a chuckle at Joey calling @ "a bagel". I guess that's a New York thing.

Over here we call them "elephant-trunk-A" (interestingly elephant symbols are quite common here in e.g. royal/government coats of arms and the "Order of the Elephant" being the highest chivalric order).

<comment><USER37> I liked it too... but its clearly either a Chelsea Bun or a Cinnamon Swirl :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I've been using Linux on the desktop for years and have never missed Microsoft Office (except for Project, a little bit). Now seeing R1C1 notation is making me want Excel... Any recommendations for FOSS spreadsheet software that supports R1C1 notation or that is generally better than LibreOffice Calc?

<comment><USER39> [http://www.gnumeric.org/](http://www.gnumeric.org/) is pretty good.

<comment><USER40> Unless it's improved quite a bit in the last few years, no it isn't very good.

<comment><USER41> It's been a year or two since I've used it, but the last time I checked, it hasn't improved all that much. It was generally rather slow and limited.

This is really a shame, because of Gnumeric's history. It was (along with Gimp) one of the very first GTK applications, and present at the beginning of the Gnome desktop suite.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Great video, it actually reminded me of CTRL+D!

One of my many assignments at my job is to work with excel on a weekly basis exporting data dumps from MYSQL to excel ranging from 50k to 100k rows.

At first it was a daunting task but once I learned how to build some solid templates then all I had to do was to dump the data set into a tab and let the formulas do the work, everything was already formatted so I could just start validating the data then email it to the sales team for further analysis.

If you take the time to analyze your data sets and get to know how to handle each type of data then you can build some really solid template in a fairly short amount of time.

I try to avoid using excel as much as possible but this damn thing is so deeply rooted into the "business analyst" world that you can't really escape it so this is why I told myself that I would be better off mastering it and build solid reporting templates instead of trying to change their mind about using alternative software.

On a side note we started using WebFocus... that's another monster to tame...

</comment><comment><USER43> For many uses, I dropped Excel and replaced it with R. Doesn't hang with thousands/millions of rows.

<comment><USER15> Once you know what to do, yes. But for scenario analysis and prototyping, anything with a code/run cycle is just painful. I've tried switching many times.

Plus, Excel has a 'gui' (of sorts) build in. (Shiny is not a substitute for that - here too, shiny is fine for productizing once you know what you want to do, but not for quick one offs)

<comment><USER44> > for scenario analysis and prototyping, anything with a code/run cycle is > just painful

For scenario analysis and prototyping, you'd use RStudio as GUI and the command line for REPL. But personally, I find Jupyter notebooks with Pandas even better.

<comment><USER15> RStudio is not a gui, it's an ide. If you change a parameter somewhere you still have to re-run the code and hunt for whatever it is you're calibrating. In Excel, you just change values and you see immediately what has changed. In Excel, you can trivially show subsets (with a dropdown that show you all values in a range), or checkboxes for booleans, do conditional formatting to highlight special values (< 0, within ranges etc). All of which is a pita with R and with anything that has a code/view report cycle, basically.

<comment><USER44> The table viewer in RStudio shows any changes in dataframes live as you change them in the REPL, so I don't really see your point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> He says,"I am not taking your questions because your questions are stupid and check the internet"

</comment><comment><USER46> This is great. I just made a little internal slideshow for everyone at our company to get them to watch this. Link:

[https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1d00Cetvp8_4fW7Y854tF...](https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1d00Cetvp8_4fW7Y854tFcGtfEKTe0T5fUzXLksXTNIk/pub?start=false&loop=false&delayms=30000)

Thanks, Joel!

<comment><USER47> This is the first time in my computer science career that I've heard Excel (and spreadsheets in general) called a functional programming language! What an excellent, excellent point!

<comment><USER46> The lambda calculus is incredibly value-oriented. Consider that it is impossible to write a formula that injects another formula into a blank cell: all values flow from other values. To overcome this, you need to write a side- effecting Excel macro. This is why some people have integrated Python into Excel. It's a shame that the CLR (and more functional languages like Clojure) is not better integrated into Excel.

Story time (MS rant):

When Microsoft pulled Access (the best relational DB UI) to avoid competition with SQL Server, stopped adding features to IIS (still no wildcard domains!) and did not fix the botched Visual Studio deployment story (publish 10MB binaries for 1-line changes when you control the web server and the OS?), they ceded the "IDE" wars. Excel is sort of a business IDE, except sharing spreadsheets is a nightmare, which is what Google Sheets is really good at. I reluctantly started switching to other "IDEs" like IntelliJ (still worse than VS) and the Google Apps suite. However, SQL Server Management Studio is still the best SQL writing interface for me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> i've worked for many banks. amazing how reliant the whole industry, therefore the world economy, relies on excel.

[http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-02-12/how-rookie-excel- er...](http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-02-12/how-rookie-excel-error-led- jpmorgan-misreport-its-var-years)

<comment><USER49> And despite this, and despite the mind boggling amount of money at stake, no one seems to making moves to actually do something about it. It's like the finance industry has collectively decided that a few billion in losses each year is an acceptable price to pay to get to keep using Excel.

<comment><USER50> I'm in the industry, everyone here uses spreadsheets for everything. They only have us working on other stuff now because we're reaching memory limits and row limits for calculations.

But primarily we have a few factors working in excels favor. 1\. Inertia. 2\. Difficulty in switching to a more advanced solution for non-technical folks. 3\. Speed. If you can get a MVP up and running before another firm you have an advantage. Even if it's in Excel and held together with spit and string.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> The Goal Seek part was painful to watch. Why would rounding completely break that? And why would it end up at 9 billion?

<comment><USER52> like he said the rounding made 975000 an impossible result.

if you have rounding or some kind of non-continuous function the right feature to use is actually Solver (which is an included add in you have to enable in Excel options) which provides you with an fmin function (or several) as opposed to goal seek's fzero.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> Things in which people consistently overrate their skills: Super Smash Brothers, Scalable Backend Systems, Microsoft Excel.

<comment><USER54> Are there things where people consistently underrate their skills?

<comment><USER55> To give a serious answer I read somewhere: unicycling. Very few people can actually ride one, so if you can ride a regular bicycle you are probably above average at unicycling.

<comment><USER56> > Very few people can actually ride one, so if you can ride a regular bicycle > you are probably above average at unicycling.

I don't understand, are you saying that the average person can't ride a bicycle?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> This guy was an ex PM for Excel at Microsoft.

He even had Bill Gates review his spec:

[http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/06/16.html](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/06/16.html)

</comment><comment><USER58> He is so entertaining despite only having taught me one or two minor things.

</comment><comment><USER59> Is there Excel with vim bindings? Or anything with equivalent speed/modal editing?

Or is the default Excel good enough to warrant relearning all the navigation hotkeys?

And how is org-mode as an alternative?

<comment><USER60> No Excel with vim bindings or model editing. Excel has its own set of arcane keybindings that make using it really fast. If you are a heavy user, you can print out a reference sheet just like you did with vim when you started out.

Org-mode is not an alternative, there is zero overlap in functionality between it and Excel.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> I can't agree with'always name a cell/range' and dont put numbers. This gets very confusing for a second person working on the workbook. Typically sheets get large and they get all these names building up over time. You end up with no idea with what someone is referring to.

Also for 'paste special' I dint notice him mention Crt+Alt+V which is really shortcut vs using menu dropdown.

Ctr+D was new to me. Thats a great one.

<comment><USER62> I disagree with your disagreement. The principle of naming your cells/ranges is basically the exact same principle as "don't put magic numbers in code, use named constants".

<comment><USER63> I mostly agree with you. Where the names are clear and obvious, naming is very helpful.

However, when it is no longer obvious what the name refers to, there is no more benefit than the original cell reference. In fact it is even worse because it's not immediately apparent where the cell is now the reference isn't showing. I often run into this problem with very large spreadsheets where every cell is named.

Our workplace has a strict "everything has to be named" in Excel and it really makes life much more difficult when working with extremely large calculations. Often I will want to know what a certain formula is doing. I will look at the formula. There are about 6 named cells that I have no idea what they refer to. I then have to use the drop down list (which includes about 500 names) to find the cell it refers to. Looking through this list is a lot slower than just reading the cell reference and looking at that cell. It's also quite easy to pick the wrong name in a list of 500, because there is likely to be a lot of similarly named cells.

<comment><USER64> >There are about 6 named cells that I have no idea what they refer to.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but doesn't that mean they're just badly named?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> talking about the importance of variable input cells in minute 43 smh. working in finance this is not very impressive. also excel on a mac is inferior.

I think only about 1% of excel users actually build models with it so the need for advanced skills in using the program just aren't necessary, such as for storing data and maybe making pivot tables...

</comment><comment><USER66> Being an Excel jockey was "cool" in the 90s and 00s but all the cool number crunching kids are much more likely to be using something like Jupyter Notebook, R or homebrew command like stuff these days.

</comment><comment><USER47> One thing I find interesting is that on the Mac OS X Excel, Cmd+T is the toggle for the relative/absolute cell references, but in Google Sheets it's F4, just like Windows Excel.

</comment><comment><USER67> I take offense at this. Mr. Spolsky, you do not know me! King Kong ain't got nothing on me! I excel at Excel!

</comment><comment><USER68> Good content, but could he please stop calling listener a dummy baby!

I understand that he is presenting to his employees or to some company, but it's still disrespectable. If he is not my greatest buddy - don't call me a dummy baby.

<comment><USER69> He is presenting in the style of the popular You Suck at Photoshop videos. Check them out they are hilarious.

<comment><USER68> I have not watched that series, though I was not laughing while listening to the Joel's talk..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> Yeah. He probably has a crowd that sucks at Excel because that goal seek stuff is not exactly a revolutionary Excel trick.

</comment><comment><USER71> Wow I've read stuff by Joel but never watched; he comes across as a total prick.

</comment><comment><USER72> Did he cover volatile functions? Did he cover F9 vs Shift-F9 vs Ctrl-Alt-F9?

</comment><comment><USER73> I really suck at Excel

</comment><comment><USER74> pandas anyone?

</comment><comment><USER75> Interesting, any recommended resources to take it up a level?

</comment><comment><USER76> Many years ago there was a harmonic balance (circuit) simulator in Excel. Pretty crazy.

</comment><comment><USER77> idk im pretty good at exporting to CSV.

<comment><USER78> Dunno why you're getting hammered, this is part of a good Excel workflow. Do what you can using the nice GUI, if you have bulk changes to make that are easier to script than find-and-replace then dump it to CSV, do the grunt work with some command line tools or a script, and re-import it.

<comment><USER79> I have never seen anyone with an Excel workflow that involves exporting to CSV that does not immediately mojibake every non-ASCII character.

Yeah, I know there's a well-hidden option to export in tab-separated UTF-16. Nobody uses it.

So I guess you're fine if your data is just numbers, and if it's not labeled with words, names, or places.

<comment><USER80> Excel also messes with CSV values that look like integers but aren't (think serial numbers or IDs), leading to many frustrating days of support.

<comment><USER81> Not to mention the famous mangling of gene names that look like dates. Yes, I know scientists shouldn't be using Excel -- I agree. But I'm a computational biologist. Experimentalists know how to use exactly three programs 1) Microsoft Word 2) Microsoft Excel 3) Microsoft Powerpoint.

<comment><USER82> I find myself working with four letter codes to identify wards and facilities at my work, inevitably I have to compare my SQL output to someone's spreadsheet. No excel, I didn't mean March 02, just give me MAR2 like I asked. Drug codes that start with a '.' are another headache, they will be auto formatted as a decimal number. Worse is when they want to put info from a spreadsheet in to the database, no one understands the need for consistent field formatting :'(

<comment><USER83> Have you tried bringing in with PowerQuery instead? Much more flexible.

<comment><USER82> I haven't tried pulling Excel -> SQL with PowerQuery yet, only really dabbled in presenting data the other way. Do you know if this works easily with a document that utilises a lot of macros and VBA? Or are we still talking flat CSV.

<comment><USER83> What are you talking, Excel with VBA is importing/consuming the data, or it is the datasource for something else?

I assume Excel with VBA is importing/consuming the data in which case Power Query / Power Pivot would likely solve most of your problems. Refactoring a large complicated existing spreadsheet to use PQ rather than your existing peocess, hard to say how tough that would be.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER84> wow, i want a i-phone so i can play a 25 year old game on it.

</comment><comment><USER85> well, the main feature Excel really suck, and makes it almost impossible to use: Undo/Redo. Why the hell did they make undo/redo work across spreadsheets (eventually reopening closed spreadsheets)?

And then, why is it impossible once you wrote some content, to copy it, undo writing it and paste it? The copy gets undoed!

To me, that behaviour makes Excel unusable.

And anyway, why would any decent SW engineer want to use Excel, which is like a 2 dimensional view of the world, whereas after a career designing software I can see the multiverse.

</comment><comment><USER86> Real men use PowerShell to edit their Excel files. :j

edit: I did do this once, but it didn't scale to larger files. Also, it was the only option on those Windows RT Surface tablets.

</comment><comment><USER87> That was incredibly boring, why is this getting so many up-votes?

<comment><USER88> Because it was moderately enjoyable, I learned quite a bit, and I assume other people did too? That table shit in excel? Blew my fucking mind.

<comment><USER89> What's the table shit? vlookup() ? edit: oh, 37:00, I see.

<comment><USER88> The actual tables function, it's about 2/3rds of the way through the video.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why I left Trivago to become a blockchain developer - <AUTHOR> https://web3.coach/blockchain-programming-career <comment><AUTHOR> I know developers love to criticize blockchain for various reasons, but the blockchain is here to stay. If without any other use-case, it will definitely at least revolutionize the banking and financial sector still running on 40 years old infrastructure powered by CSV files and FTP.

I went from doing PHP/Java for seven years to now Go and Blockchain.

I want to share my story with you - hoping to change your perception about blockchain technology by at least a bit from the pure technical/programming passion perspective.

</comment><comment><USER2> Good for you, unfortunately the number of good use cases for blockchain are few and far between.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for reading it. I would like to understand why do you says so? There is AT LEAST: banking + supply chains + online identity. Which is already a significant percentage from all businesses out there.

<comment><USER3> What type of blockchain is the important question?

Am I going to trust my money and identity to a little project that hasn't caught on and puts this on a public ledger? For me, the answer is absolutely no

I will trust the government to run private blockchains and update their IT using the hype factor (if there is still any). Money and identity control are the purview of govt. Blockchain in finance will be largely unnoticed by the populace.

The only good public chain use case this far is [https://handshake.org](https://handshake.org)</comment></comment></comment>


Paul Graham on Graphic Objects - <AUTHOR> http://www.ddj.com/199204122 <comment><USER2> How weird. I didn't recognize this, but it sounded like me. Did I write something for Dr. Dobbs and then forget about it? Then I noticed the date. This is from 1988.

Uh oh, just noticed they didn't preserve indentation in the code. That makes it effectively unreadable.

<comment><USER3> So basically, someone who knows very little about Lisp just slapped your code on their website?

I also noticed that the date now reads "May 10, 2007," which looks to me like sometime in the future :/.

<comment><AUTHOR> No - DDJ reprinted an article they originally published in 1988. The article was written by Paul Graham. The digital version lost the code indentation which makes it a lot less readable.

<comment><USER3> Ahh, that's more forgivable then. I'm still not sure what's up with that date, though.

<comment><USER4> Read the italized subtext below the title.

I also got caught by the May 2007 date at first. It might be intentionally misleading.

<comment><USER3> Right, I saw that, but I read the article (thanks to jkush's submission) on the 8th, and the article's date is May 10. Anyways, it's not important, just a pointless observation.

<comment><USER5> I would guess it's the date that will be printed on newsstand issues. I noticed some time ago that a lot of magazines post-date themselves, presumably because people are less likely to buy a magazine that's dated a week ago.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


What Nihilism Is Not - <AUTHOR> https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/what-nihilism-is-not/ <comment><USER3> I used to be really into philosophy, until the revelation hit me that philosophy is ultimately ontological: it names ways of thinking -- suppose living life is like painting a painting. Philosophy, then, is a theory of aesthetics. Sure it can be handy, but at the end of the day you need to create a painting. How much time you spend reading about aesthetics deducts from your time actually painting and experimenting.

I think the author doesn't look at the drawbacks of nihilism completely -- nihilism is a blank canvas as opposed to something like paint-by-numbers. Ultimately the choice of nihilism is still personal. We are all given a blank canvas to start. What kind of painting do you want to hang up?

Nihilism is basically saying that no theory of aesthetics is better than any other. Is this really true? Would you paint random dots on the canvas? Surely circles are more meaningful than scribbles?

</comment><comment><USER4> It has been posted on here before, but since it is relevant and I enjoyed it think it is worth mentioning:

[https://meltingasphalt.com/a-nihilists-guide-to- meaning/](https://meltingasphalt.com/a-nihilists-guide-to-meaning/)

</comment><comment><USER5> Huh.

I did maybe a couple decades of applied nihilism, as presented by Landmark Education. It helped me a lot, given that I'm bipolar and prone to pessimism and depression.

So this makes sense to me:

> If, as I suggested earlier, nihilism and pessimism are opposites, then > nihilism is actually much closer to optimism.

But not this:

> Such a lack of awareness is the point of nihilism, as nihilism is all about > hiding from despair rather than dwelling on it.

As Landmark taught it, it's not so much hiding from despair as cultivating the awareness that despair is an illusion. That is, despair isn't about what happened. It's about our story about what happened. And our stories by default just reflect our programming.

This does, however, but it's too ambiguous:

> But the nihilist has feelings. It's just that what the nihilist has feelings > for is itself nothing.

It's not that it's "nothing", exactly. It's that it's indeterminate. By default, it's however we've been programmed. But it can be whatever we choose freely.

<comment><USER6> Personally, I see nihilism as part of strategic deployment like any other philosophical position.

If nothing has inherent meaning then you are the one who has power to give meaning to things. You can avoid giving meaning to mishaps, mistakes, past, nasty comments and anxiety while cherishing and making other things more meaningful (to yourself).

Nihilism opens door to countering positions such as above. By using it, one can either accept life without meaning and move on or they can counter it with different position that doesn't bind them from construction of their own structure.

off topic

> It helped me a lot, given that I'm bipolar

I am curious how do you trust yourself dealing with that. In a similar position, I find it a bit complicated to retain trust in myself (messy part is I have trauma related to trusting others as well). The feeling of being able to do anything devolving into sleeping like a rotten piece of meat within a few months. When I noticed the pattern, I had to stop thinking anything ambitious long term.

Currently, I have a few yes/no questions that highly depend on ny emotional and psychological state. I ask myself when I am unsure whether it's a good phase or bad phase. When am I myself? Is it when I can be high or low? Or somewhere between combining both.

Obviously, I can ignore the emotions and look at things objectively but then, I would start disagreeing with lot of people including doctors and become more 'robot' like. I start thinking about incentives, motive, biases, biological coding and what not to rationalize 'something' but that 'something' ultimately depends on my emotional underlying. The argument proposed are hard to deny unless someone has an irrational absolute stance originating from a position of faith or bias they are unaware of.(I am not saying things directly, I know)

Aa for drugs (they don't really work that much for me), do you not see yourself as intoxicated though? If someone was under the effect of alcohol, would you say that someone has control or actually thinking by their own? Comparing medical drugs to alcohol might be a bit stretched but some of what I took in the past was relatively similar in effects after a bit of research. What if you had to take drugs forever to retain that person? Who is judging what is ultimately good for you?

<comment><USER7> >If nothing has inherent meaning then you are the one who has power to give meaning to things. You can avoid giving meaning to mishaps, mistakes, past, nasty comments and anxiety while cherishing and making other things more meaningful (to yourself). That's one outlook on nihilism

As I understand it, that is, in fact, _existentialism_ , not nihilism.

<comment><USER5> Agreed. But nihilism is the gateway.

<comment><USER8> AFAICT existentialism is nihilism plus a bunch of pretentious gibberish, so if I was going that route, I'd rather stop at nihilism.

<comment><USER5> You do have a point.

Basically it's making up stuff to believe in, rather than believing in "nothingness" (which is not just "nothing").

As Landmark says, "We are meaning making machines." So it's very hard to stay centered on nothingness. And that's what TFA alludes:

> as nihilism is all about hiding from despair

So with existentialism, you're just manipulating yourself. But that's arguably better than being manipulated by others, your culture, authoritarian structures, and so on.

Another perspective is that it's all games. But that we're prone to forgetting that, and thinking that it means something else.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Nihilist: the payoff matrix is zero, people have been brainwashed to perceive a non-zero payoff matrix

Pessimist: the payoff matrix is negative

Cynic: players refuse to cooperate, so we're stuck playing with a net negative result

Apathetic: this game is boring

<comment><USER10> Nihilist: the expected value is 0. I'll play just for the hell of it.

Pessimist: the expected value less than or equal to 0. It's a meaningless game of chance, and it doesn't matter what you do.

Existentialist: the expected value is 0, but if you score 10 points, we'll call it a win.

Cynic: you think that the expected value is positive. You idiots only act like you're not playing to win.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The author doesn't actually seem to demonstrate an understanding of nihilism or of pessimism. Most of classical philosophy is predicated on _something_ in the universe having an intrinsic purpose or value. They require an "uncaused- cause" of moral values.

Nihilism is simply the rejection of inherent value or purpose to the universe or anything in it. It means the only values or purposes in the universe are non-inherent and they are things we made up. It doesn't discourage you from making up values, it just discourages you from claiming they are inherently right for some reason.

For a nihilist, hearing somebody ask how things are "good" or "bad" in a nihilist viewpoint is like an atheist being asked why they act morally without a god to act as judge. It is mildly horrifying to see somebody else unable to behave reasonably without made-up guidance.

<comment><USER12> > It is mildly horrifying to see somebody else unable to behave reasonably > without made-up guidance.

Not behaving according to your made-up reasonableness?

If there is no absolute line, then the only thing that matters is being the current top-dog

<comment><USER11> I'm ok with them deciding on different morals that me. It's the inability to decide morals for themselves I find unsettling.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I think this article is a waste of time. Rather than using actual sources the author uses scenes from mtv highschool sitcoms to prove their point. Also the author injects their personal bias into everything.

<comment><USER14> I think there's a difference between illustrating an idea and proving a point.

When illustrating an idea, It might be sensible to use relatable examples that make the concept easier to grasp. I don't see that an attempt to prove a point or persuade in and of itself.

I do however believe that if you disagree with the greater piece, it could be easy to pick on this kind of example to create the appearance of childishness / lack of seriousness. An easy win but not necessarily with merit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I think if your concept of nihilism holds that Socrates believing that justice is inherently good is nihilistic, it's not a very useful take on nihilism.

<comment><USER16> I think it's actually a great take. In my opinion there always has been something downright creepy about justice. The way some people talk about justice and the good society is eerily similar to Norman Bates in American Psycho or corporate modernity which the movie mocks.

There is a thin line where justice crosses over into complacency, maintaining order or just being a hollow PR slogan that instead of rallying people actually pacifies them.

I think the author is right that there is something liberating about pessimism and cynicism because they refuse to play, actually challening and mocking whoever claims to know what is just or correct.

<comment><USER17> You just took Socrates out of the conversation, though. I think the point is that you can only call Socrates a nihilist by refusing to treat him seriously. From the article:

> Thrasymachus's cynicism is so compelling that Socrates spends the rest of > the "Republic" trying to prove that justice is better than injustice by > trying to refute the apparent success of unjust people by making > metaphysical claims about the effects of injustice on the soul. Socrates is > thus only able to counter cynicism in the visible world through faith in the > existence of an invisible world, an invisible world that he argues is more > real than the visible world. In other words, it is Thrasymachus's cynicism > that forces Socrates to reveal his nihilism.

The logic seems to be that such an invisible world is obviously false - <USER2> obviously false that not even Socrates himself could believe it. But the absurdity of calling Socrates a nihilist is easy to see as soon as you give that invisible world a little credibility, even if only to say that Socrates could have found the idea plausible.

<comment><USER18> Yeah I was a bit taken aback when reading that part and became increasingly concerned that the author didn't know what he was talking about.

Imagine your friend asks you to count the windows on a building, so you count the rows and columns and multiply them. When he asks you how you did it so fast, you tell him, and he responds with something like: "Oh, I didn't realize you were a Nihilist." He then explains that mathematics is immaterial, and therefore non-existent. You believing in such a thing apparently makes YOU the Nihilist?

No. Nihilism is not about holding supposedly "empty" beliefs. If anything, it's the opposite; Nihilism would hold that these beliefs in the immaterial are themselves empty. Your friend might be a Nihilist, but you certainly aren't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I wasn't satisfied with the essay, so I thought I'd share my understanding of Nihilism. This is coming from someone who has never read Nietzsche so take it with a grain of salt, I'm curious to know where I might be off.

First, I think we've all most commonly seen the "colloquial" form of Nihilism, which is a sort of despair over a lack of meaning in life. I'm pretty sure most people are aware that this is oversimplified, but it is partially grounded in actual Nihilism. The emphasis is put on despair, but the despair isn't the philosophy, just a product of it.

To sum up Nihilism in a sentence: reality lacks inherent meaning, and any meaning we attempt to fulfill is ultimately chosen, not given to us. Importantly, most of the sense of purpose we see as being "real" comes from our desire to continue existing, (hence Existentialism.) But, existence is a choice. You simply choose to continue to exist, or you don't. (In which case you die.) This is the main insight which makes Nihilism disturbing. Philosophically, if our existence has no purpose, then it seems that everything else we believe and value is built on a foundation of sand.

<comment><USER7> >Philosophically, if our existence has no purpose, then it seems that everything else we believe and value is built on a foundation of sand.

Only if you assume that only "inherent" or externally supplied meaning or purpose is valid.

Why make that assumption, though?

<comment><USER18> Well, that is what Nihilism explores. Under Nihilism we can still have a sort of right and wrong, but only with respect to goals. The goals you pick, are of course arbitrary. However, reality sort of strong-arms us into continuing our existence as a precondition to choosing any other goal (aside from death), and in that sense all other goals become subordinate to that one. I guess there are some other ways to interpret it, but regardless, the implications of this vary from somewhat Utopian (Transhumanism) to very Dystopian (The Borg.)

I'm not a Nihilist but if I were I wouldn't be too happy about it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Nihilism is a complicated subject. Like feminism, it's a word that means a wide range of things to different people. One person's take on nihilism obviously is their operating definition more than a single decisive statement on the subject.

<comment><USER20> Nihilism has been a fad in the last 5 years. (I blame Rick and Morty) A lot of these "nihilists" that I've met use it as an excuse to be apathetic or even low-level belligerent, or to not put a mental filter on their disjointed thoughts. But it's not that they never gave a damn about anything; it's that they're either bored or were let down in some way by the establishment.

I discovered nihilism before I even understood that it was a thing. I came to a realization that, until I had some clear evidence to the contrary(even then I'm not sure I could let go of my skepticism), there is effectively an exception to every rule that we conceive of and that our view of existence is almost completely tainted by the way in which we perceive it. Thus, I have to accept that people in my reality are also perceiving reality in an entirely unique way, in which case I can't truly begrudge them when they act out. Essentially, I became a moral nihilist because there's no way I can reconcile my view of the world with idea that morals are objective and not contingent on circumstance. (which isn't to say that I'm a moral relativist)

I doubt that most people who call themselves nihilists are truly nihilists or even have the kinds of views on nihilism that I do. It's an identity that most people arrive at not through their own inward exploration but as a response to the world acting upon them. I would argue that's true of most belief systems, though it's probably more transparent with nihilism since it's the rejection of something, so it's not as if there's a coherent doctrine that so-called nihilists can use to bullshit others.

<comment><USER21> Morals don't need to be objective to be valid.

<comment><USER20> I don't disagree with that.

<comment><USER21> What are the 'morals' of some entirely different alien race? Are they going to be the same as ours? Probably not.

Maybe there are some very 'core' morals that might be consistent, but pragmatically, they won't resemble at all.

The 'morals' of Athenian life in antiquity were such that every able-bodied male had to have his own war fighting gear, and be called to fight in the defence of the city if need be. This would be an _existential_ duty towards the community, without which, they could not exist. But Athens today? Not necessary.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Nihilism goes hand-in-hand with atheism, doesn't it? If you don't believe that the Universe is operating according to the scheme(s) of some kind of "divine being(s)", it's hard to see where any "meaning" would come from. It's just mindless and possibly deterministic motion. That is unless you can somehow derive "meaning" as an emergent concept and see it as significant. Desires originate in biology that has evolved through natural selection; morality and expectations originate with peoples attempts to control how other people behave as mediated by power structures in society.

<comment><USER23> I've not infrequently found nihilism intellectually attractive. Usually, something like political nihilism.

One problem that I think has long been overlooked is the foundation of human rights. Only in the past roughly five years has there been much scholarly contribution on the matter.

What could possibly ground human rights? And if they have no ground, then aren't they simply the same as the preference for, say, peeing standing up vs peeing sitting down?

<comment><USER22> Human rights are just a concept that humans have come up after thousands of years experience with systems of laws. The fact that some societies manage to do without them shows that they aren't really essential.

Edit: Or to put it another way, ideas about legal systems can evolve over time, by analogy to how biological systems can evolve. Ideally, we'd be looking at what works and what doesn't and adopting best practices.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I'm not sure what the author is trying to achieve by defining words that already have perfectly acceptable definitions.

</comment><comment><USER25> > In order to preserve nihilism as a meaningful concept...

I found the irony here rather amusing.

<comment><USER26> There's no irony in that quote. Nihilism is predicated on the existence of meaningfulness. It merely holds that meaning is a subjective experience.

That's not to say that meaning is relative or that it isn't real.

This may be difficult to grasp at first. But consider this analogy which grasps the objective nature of a more concrete subjective experience: When you gaze up at the sky and see two birds it is objectively true that you are having a subjective experience of two birds in the sky above you (whether you're hallucinating or not) and not one bird or two elephants. There's nothing relative about it and it's very much a real experience. Cogito ergo sum, after all.

Likewise, under nihilism meaning itself is a subjective experience with quantifiable objective properties. Specifically, meaning is a quantitative (something objective) measure of experiences which are the most highly connected (ie. significant) to other experiences from a subjective perspective.

For example, if you experience prayer as meaningful to you, whether you're delusional or not about it's meaningfulness to you or in general, then it is objectively true that you are having said real non-relative experience of meaning.

For more insight, see A Nihilists Guide to Meaning: [https://meltingasphalt.com/a-nihilists-guide-to- meaning/](https://meltingasphalt.com/a-nihilists-guide-to-meaning/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> ok, i finally understand exactly what nihilism concretely refers to now. a state of being similar to the one of the hollow human replicas in "the invasion of the body snatchers"... so, that's what i've been referring to all this time lately when i use the phrase "delirium and drift"... it's not stupidity i've been referring to, but nihilism it seems. explains a lot. dostoevsky's use of the term now suddenly becomes rather disturbing in its 19th century russian context. either way, thank you. that was maybe somehow useful and somewhat insightful in helping me diagnose the surrounding world going clinically/criminally insane..

</comment><comment><USER28> An interesting article. I feel like, especially in the era of social media, nihilism is underrated at the margin. Perhaps we should all believe in fewer beliefs.

</comment><comment><USER29> "Nihilism: the rejection of all religious and moral principles, in the belief that life is meaningless;" Oxford.

Concise and seems pretty clear to me. While the article is well written, it doesn't really adds much IMO.

<comment><USER30> > life is meaningless

This is actually objectively true, our life are not different to the laws of physics then a rock on the surface of Mars.

Our life is meaningful to ourselves, however.

<comment><USER21> "> life is meaningless This is actually objectively true"

Definitely not 'objectively true'.

It's only 'objectively true' from a narrow materialist perspective, and there are other ways to look at it.

"our life are not different to the laws of physics then a rock on the surface of Mars.

Our life is meaningful to ourselves, however."

This is really quite some contradiction.

First - the materialist assumption (which I would say is a fallacy, or rather it's only partly true) which postulates that the universe is merely energy/matter bouncing around according to laws ...

... and second - then the acceptance that 'it's meaningful to ourselves'.

Consider what 'ourselves' (i.e. life, consciousness) are - something that's by definition not possible to describe with 'physics' because we've ruled it out (energy and matter acting according to rules cannot be 'aware' or 'conscious').

Contemplate for half a second that the expression of life is the meaningful, real thing, and that materiality is just the measure of the matter it's expressed in, and that science is just a tool for that. Or at least that's another, pretty reasonable way to consider it. And there are definitely other ways.

<comment><USER31> > Consider what 'ourselves' (i.e. life, consciousness) are - something that's > by definition not possible to describe with 'physics' because we've ruled it > out (energy and matter acting according to rules cannot be 'aware' or > 'conscious').

I'm not sure I follow.

<comment><USER32> I think GP is referring to the idea that there is no yet identified physical mechanism that identifies the arising of consciousness in terms of properties of matter or energy, to which (if I understand GP correctly) physics restricts itself to. Leibniz put the objection to the mechanical materialist conception of consciousness/perception in 1714:

>One is obliged to admit that perception and what depends upon it is inexplicable on mechanical principles, that is, by figures and motions. In imagining that there is a machine whose construction would enable it to think, to sense, and to have perception, one could conceive it enlarged while retaining the same proportions, so that one could enter into it, just like into a windmill. Supposing this, one should, when visiting within it, find only parts pushing one another, and never anything by which to explain a perception. Thus it is in the simple substance, and not in the composite or in the machine, that one must look for perception.

<comment><USER31> > there is no yet identified physical mechanism that identifies the arising of > consciousness in terms of properties of matter or energy

As far as I know, there's no proper definition of consciousness, and any time we have narrowed what consciousness may be (over the past few centuries) we have redefined consciousness so that it remains indefinable.

It seems strange to me to divide the universe into "meat inside bags of skin" and "things outside bags of skin" and presume one side of that split somehow possesses unique properties not subject to physical laws of matter and energy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Rather tautological article.

</comment><comment><USER34> Landmark was never banned in France or anywhere else.

</comment><comment><USER35> Nihilism is a logical fallacy and to believe in it is utterly delusional. To assert "nothing" is to contradict the assertion. To assert "nothingness" or that "everything is nothing" or that "nothing exists" is actually just a form of materialism in which the concept of a void is reified as just another kind of thing. If someone was truly a nihilist they would have to refute nihilism, for nihilism could not possibly exist, nor could nothing or any nothingness be established. Nihilism is logically impossible.

<comment><USER36> This is addressed in the first paragraph of the article, and the concept of "nihilism" has more to it than a literal translation of the Latin base word.</comment></comment>


Logicomix - A Comic Book About Logic, Math and Madness - Review - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/27/books/review/Holt-t.html

<comment><USER2> _In Paris, at the 1900 International Congress of Mathematicians, he witnesses a titanic clash between Henri Poincaré and David Hilbert, the two greatest mathematicians of the day, over the importance of intuition versus proof. Returning to England, Russell spends the next decade laboring with Alfred North Whitehead to complete the epic "Principia Mathematica" — all the while doing his best to seduce Whitehead's comely wife, Evelyn. Their (stillborn) masterpiece runs many thousands of pages, a mere 362 of which are required to prove the interesting proposition "1 + 1 = 2."_

Sounds like a thrilling basis for a comic.

I tried to open the preview:

[http://software.libredigital.com/bookrdr/live/Reader.swf?pgu...](http://software.libredigital.com/bookrdr/live/Reader.swf?pguid=3638010447141974&isbn=9781596914520&z=bpp)

However, it gave me an error on Safari running in Mac OS X Snow Leopard.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Web site: <http://www.logicomix.com/>

</comment><comment><USER3> I read it a couple of weeks ago, I can recommend it. Any suggestions for more comic books like these?

</comment><comment><USER4> I was sent this a few weeks ago as a "Thank you" for proof-reading a book coming out soon. I've started it and it looks good. I'm really looking forward to sitting down and reading this properly.

Comments here have encouraged me to do that sooner rather than later.

</comment><comment><USER5> That page of the comic in the article, reminds me of this video of Feynman: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvqwm6RbxcQ>

</comment><comment><USER6> From the preview that I saw it looked like a good comic so far.

</comment><comment><USER7> I just read it and it is awesome!

</comment><comment><USER8> this is so cool, is it just me or someone else also thinks its something along the lines of NUMB3Rs the prime time serial (which is my all time fav TV program).</comment>


Change the Palm Oil Industry in Indonesia - <AUTHOR> http://www.sawitchallenge.org/sawit-challenge-statement-english <comment><AUTHOR> This challenge has room for tech, ag, finance, and supply chain innovation.

From the site

 _SAWIT seeks solutions that address these questions and at least one of the following needs: \- Access to quality inputs such as seeds, fertilizer, labor technology and extension services for improved and sustainable production \- Access to up-to-date market and pricing information services \- Access to finance for farmers who do not have formal banking services \- Geographic mapping and demographic data that clarifies informal land ownership for farmers, and could lead to legal title and sustainability certifications \- Ability to trace crops to specific plantations and assure buyers that smallholder crops were produced legally and without deforestation activities \- A fast and cost-effective way to transport farmers' palm fruit to mills in less than 24 hours_</comment>


Create a Professional iOS App in Hours with Creo - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/lombardstreet-io/create-a-professional-ios-app-in-hours-with-creo-255ecc8a6643?source=linkShare-af181dda9753-1536648484 <comment><USER2> > Pretty soon they understood that to get Creo the kind of user experience > they desired, they had to rewrite one of the core modules of Apple developer > stack: the UIKit.

> Read it again: entirely rewrite a core component created by some of the > smartest programmers in the world, with no access to their source code.

They didn't though. Looking through their documentation[1], they subclassed all (or some?) UIKit components and offer those instead of what UIKit offers – which is what allows them to hook into each object's properties for their IDE (I'd guess).

It's cool, and I understand why they did this given their offering (a drag- and-drop IDE to create apps) – but they definitely didn't rewrite a massive, complex, UI framework. Similarly, they blocked off a bunch of UIKit stuff that could genuinely be useful. It looks like you can't provide your own collection view layouts, for example.

[1] [https://docs.creolabs.com/classes/CollectionView.html](https://docs.creolabs.com/classes/CollectionView.html)

<comment><USER3> Hi, we completely rewrite the UIKit framework from the ground up. We started from the abandoned Chameleon Project ([http://chameleonproject.org](http://chameleonproject.org)) several years ago and we added tons of classes and improvements in order to be in sync with the latest iOS versions from Apple.

We are able to execute most of the native iOS code directly on Mac, from example this project works without a single code change on MacOS: [https://github.com/chrismiles/CMUnistrokeGestureRecognizer](https://github.com/chrismiles/CMUnistrokeGestureRecognizer) (so we have UIView, UIViewController, UIGestureRecognizer, UITouch, UIBezierPath and much much more).

We also didn't block any customisations (like the custom collection view layouts). We simply need more time in order to correctly expose all the functionalities from a graphical user interface and in a coherent way for all the users.</comment></comment>