Ask HN: What are some books where the reader learns by building one project? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Related question from 2 years ago with 200+ comments "Ask HN: What are some books where the reader learns by building one project?" [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13660086](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13660086)

</comment><comment><USER3> I've got a book called Building Django 2.0 We Applications published by Packt. It consists of several different complete solutions, the first and main one being a simple IMDB type site.

<comment><USER4> Looked at your repo. Good work mate. Curious, what you working on these days?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> To clarify your ask, are you looking specifically for books that focus around a single project or just books that use reader projects as the primary learning tool?

<comment><AUTHOR> around python, django, and web dev</comment></comment>


A history of roguelike games - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/03/ascii-art-permadeath-the-history-of-roguelike-games/ <comment><USER2> I looooove Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup. There was a five-year period or so where it was about the only game I played. (Things got worse when I discovered that there are two-week tournaments that are essentially a war on productivity... How many times and in how many different ways can you beat the game in a two- week period? Your team is depending on you! Down with sleep!)

Their design philosophy is fantastic: [https://github.com/crawl/crawl/blob/master/crawl- ref/docs/cr...](https://github.com/crawl/crawl/blob/master/crawl- ref/docs/crawl_manual.rst#n-philosophy-pas-de-faq)

The core concept is that all choices should be /meaningful/. 'No-brainers' are ruthlessly pruned away, or given interesting side effects that could be situationally useful or terrible. And also, avoid anything that looks like grinding. These people speak my language...

<comment><USER3> I like DCSS, but I've found the recent releases are making it less fun by removing mechanics I liked. E.g. removing inventory weight limits, food types and nerfing abilities that modify the dungeon.

<comment><USER4> Inventory weight limits add grind due to having to manually shuttle items around instead

Also there is just nothing fun about inventory management IMHO.

In Skyrim I always did a player.modav carryweight 10000 and things became SO much more fun.

<comment><USER3> I always enjoyed optimizing my items for the next branch in DCSS, plus worrying about dropping dangerous weapons, lest an enemy pick it up and use it on me. (Which has also been removed)

<comment><USER4> ah crap that sounds like fun actually because that would in fact happen.

The game should have options that let you toggle things like that

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've been playing Hack/Nethack since 1982-ish. My friend got it for his IBM PC, and we were both addicted. The only reason why I kept asking for a computer for my parents was so that I could play Hack. I was the one who figured out that the Amulet of Yendor was underneath a boulder on level 26. My friend, however, one-upped me. At some point, his version of Hack was corrupted, so every time he read a scroll of identify, the game would crash. So he had to go through the entire game without reading a scroll or using rings. He was able to make it through the entire game and finish it, which I admit is an impressive feat.

I've been playing Nethack since, although I haven't played it in the last few years because of work and kids. There was a time in Nethack where it wasn't as complicated, but once they added all the deeper features, I've never completed the game and ascended. The game is now so deep and so complicated that I couldn't solve it without reading the cheats, and even following those, and even saving my games and redoing them, I've never gotten to the point where I could ascend. I'm really good at surviving the lower levels and stealing from shops, but I've never been able to figure out how to ascend. At some point, I should reattempt this now that I'm locked down for 2 months.

<comment><USER6> It can certainly be completed without spoilers, but it requires a bit of trial and error. I managed to ascend after 2-3 months of intense play...and a lot of dying. I think part of the joy of playing nethack is discovering how things work, so highly recommend not to read any spoilers. The best way to learn the mechanics is to install the game locally and play in explore mode. The game offers a lot of alternate ways to do stuff (because of conducts), but if you don't care about conducts characters tend to become a bit too powerful towards the end game. It's all a matter of surviving the early game, where you don't have resistances, skills etc. and where most people give up.

<comment><USER7> Playing without spoilers would be very challenging indeed. And you're right about the early game - there's a breakpoint where you've got enough food, hit points, AC, damage-dealing capability, and miscellaneous tricks (if you know how to use them) where the only think that's going to kill you is YASDing yourself. And then the game transforms into prepping (and prepping, and prepping some more) for the ascension run while staying alert enough that you don't YASD yourself because you forgot something or panicked. (You never have to panic in Nethack.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If you're looking for a fresh roguelike rabbit hole, check out Cogmind. It's PC only but takes RL in an interesting new direction. (Not affiliated with it other than begin somewhat addicted.)

<comment><USER9> The development blog [https://www.gridsagegames.com/blog/](https://www.gridsagegames.com/blog/) is a fascinating look into the design of the game that goes back years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I know permadeath is a core mechanic of roguelikes, but I absolutely hate it. It's an artificial time waster.

Imagine trying to learn a piano piece, but instead of being able to practice the hard parts over and over until you've mastered them, you always have to restart from the very beginning at the first mistake.

Net result: you get extremely good at the beginning, to the point that it's boring, and you always get whooped by the hard part because you barely ever get to practice it (you have to sink an hour doing easy stuff just to get 5 seconds practicing the hard stuff)

<comment><USER11> All video games are an artificial time waster. You either get roguelikes or you don't. You clearly don't.

Let's take your analogy and flip it around:

Imagine trying to play a game, but instead of a logical progression with consequences, you can just pick it up from whatever point you like. If you die, it doesn't matter. You can just completely skip over that part and head to the next. In fact you can begin the game at the final boss if you want.

Net result: you get extremely good at nothing to the point that it's boring because you never have to practice or repeat a single thing.

<comment><USER10> I get roguelikes, but as my life has gotten more time constrained, I've grown less tolerant of shenanigans like permadeath that artificially prevent me from practicing and mastering the parts of the game I'm weakest at, instead making me sink most of my time into the parts of the game I've already mastered.

I'm not saying get rid of permadeath, I'm saying make it optional like Hollow Knight, IWtbTG, or any numerous other games where time constrained people can use save points to master the game mechanics more quickly, and kids with infinite time can play permadeath mode to their heart's content.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Ragnarok deserves more than one paragraph. Among many of it's great features was the one I personally loved most: sometimes you could meet a ghost of your past self, complete with all your inventory. Sometimes I even made this my strategy, dying as lots of scribes (weakest class at start, who carried a highly prized and rare item, a quill), then starting as blacksmith, which was easiest to survive in early stages. Quill was essential to win: you could always switch class to scribe after some level to write scrolls, but finding a quill was extremely hard.

<comment><USER13> I've been playing iNethack on my phone (Uses 3.4.3). I ran into a ghost of myself last night. I was in a 1 square dead end tunnel with no digging tools and out of food. I thought I was going to starve to death before it finally moved. Really starting to have fun with it, but can barely make it 12 levels down :).

<comment><USER14> So back at University a friend of mine had NetHack (3.0) and a lot of us played in it. I had a game where I simultaneously had the incredible luck to have my dog get polymorphed into a Xorn and then the bad luck to leave a bones file.

Quite a lot of people got wiped out by a pet Xorn.

<comment><USER15> Did your old xorn end up as part of _their_ bones files, too?

I feel like I've seen this online at some point, where there were lots of ghosts because they were all getting killed by the same thing and then accumulating in new bones files.

<comment><USER14> Yeah, it was on a level where it was simultaneously quite deep but not deep enough that you stood a chance when it came through the walls (you didn't exactly get much warning you were on a bones level).

But yes, quite a few people have experienced this by now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Each year Roguebasin hosts the 7DRL challenge where people look to create a finished roguelike in seven days. I participated this year and found it a pretty thoughtful meditation on the genre.

[https://7drl.com/](https://7drl.com/)

<comment><USER17> There's a _lot_ of gems in here, and in older 7DRL entries as well.

The nature of the format means that games (the ones that are actually finished) are focused, often highlighting one or two novel gameplay mechanics and/or mood/design elements. Anything more than that and the designer can't finish in 7 days. This also means that entries from 10 years ago is just as playable ( _IF_ you can get them to run) as the entries from this year.

Cogmind (mentioned elsewhere on this thread) started as a 7drl.

Each year they have judges grade each entry, so you can look at archives like [http://www.roguetemple.com/7drl/2010/](http://www.roguetemple.com/7drl/2010/) to find the highest-rated ones and focus your search there, if you like.

Roguelike Radio usually has a show about the 7drl results, e.g. [http://www.roguelikeradio.com/2018/05/episode-145-7drls-2018...](http://www.roguelikeradio.com/2018/05/episode-145-7drls-2018.html) .

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is not that great of an article, IMO. A prominent developer of one of the roguelikes mentioned says:

> you can immediately see that this article was stitched together by throwing > some wikipedia articles together if it references the Berlin interpretation

> it's also hilarious if the guild of disgruntled adventurers is referenced as > fun addition :)

> I'm not sure if I should feel insulted [by the article's description of my > roguelike]

I mostly agree with these. I also feel a bit slighted by one of the descriptions. I'm also not sure quite what to make of the fact that they don't mention the two most prominent recent roguelikes: caves of qud, and cogmind.

</comment><comment><USER19> I enjoyed urogue (ultra-rogue I think) as shipped with SCO Xenix. I had previous experience with nethack, but urogue was frankly easier.

I think it's this: [https://github.com/RoguelikeRestorationProject/urogue1.03](https://github.com/RoguelikeRestorationProject/urogue1.03)

</comment><comment><USER20> The roguelike game mechanic is fantastic, but it really needs to break out of the fantasy theme in a big way.

<comment><USER21> Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead ([https://cataclysmdda.org/](https://cataclysmdda.org/)) is ab open source post-apocalyptic near future scifi roguelike. The best way to play it is with a launcher:

Windows GUI launcher - [https://github.com/remyroy/CDDA-Game- Launcher/releases](https://github.com/remyroy/CDDA-Game-Launcher/releases)

Linux/Docker CLI launcher - [https://github.com/houseabsolute/catalauncher/releases](https://github.com/houseabsolute/catalauncher/releases)

The Linux one is mine and could in theory work on macOS too. Patches are welcome.

<comment><USER22> Surprisingly I found the best way to play was on the phone. First spend some time on PC to get familiar with mechanics and interface, then switch to mobile. Some things are horrible, like on-screen keyboard frequently obscuring more than half of screen, and some hard to read text. Some things are easier, like swipe to move and a toolbar with recent key shortcuts.

The thing that makes it worthwhile is that it is so easy to jump in and out of the game. You play few moves while waiting in line, then put it in your pocket. Play for half an hour while watching TV. Your player gets into impossible situation, just put the game away and resume later with fresh ideas. The game is so deep you can get a feeling of living a parallel life. You pause your life to play game, then you pause game to continue your life. Can be a surreal experience. It is so much more complex and satisfying than your average mobile game.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> As luck would have it, I've spent much of the afternoon working on my orc rogue in nethack 3.7.0 via ssh on hardfought.org. Being elderly and self- sequestered from the plague has its rewards...

</comment><comment><USER24> While more of a twin stick shooter, Enter The Gungeon deserved being mentioned here. I've spent the last 4 months with that game and it's still fun. I has a huge number of weapons, actives, passives, synergies which can be combined in crazy ways (some break the game deliberatly). Almost no run plays like the other.

<comment><USER25> I think ETG is technically a "roguelite", but yes, it's a wonderful entry. Binding of Isaac is another, but it's so dark and disturbing that it puts many people off - which is a bit of a shame, because mechanically, it's spectacular. Dead Cells, Nuclear Throne, Crypt of the Necrodancer (and its sister game, Cadence of Hyrule), Risk of Rain, and Wizard of Legend are some of my recent similar favorites, too.

Slay the Spire is often also called a roguelike, and if it gets its teeth into you, watch out. Steam says I have 350 hours logged in it and I still enjoy the heck out of it.

<comment><USER26> Nuclear Throne is outstanding and really deserves more recognition.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> > Out of the two-dozen-or-so NetHack variants, the most notable are probably > SLASH'EM/SLASH'EM Extended and UnNetHack

Congratulations Amy, slex has been noted by Ars Technica now :D

<comment><USER28> #evilhack is one of the newest variants and has me hooked right now. You can find it on the hardfought server. It's harder though and better for anyone who's already managed to win the vanilla version of nethack (which only took me about 12 years lol)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> if you're homebound and enjoy exploring game systems, you could do worse than diving into a few rl's

<comment><USER30> So I am a gamer for sure, spent tons of time playing all the dark souls, bloodborne, sekiro over the past 4 or 5 years. After souls i was left wanting, a void in my game life so to speak. Monster Hunter World captured my attention for a good while. Then i found roguelikes and specifically Darkest Dungeon.

I had seen people playing on twitch, it looked cool. Turn based, RPG, permadeath, difficult. All up my alley. Jumped into it and got my butt whooped for a while but then it clicked. And BOOM i was off, many months later and hundreds of hours later i was done with Darkest Dungeon.

Since then, Slay the Spire baby. Wow that game owns hard. about 300 hours here. It's a deck-building (card game) turn based rogue-like. Recommend it to all!

<comment><USER31> Calling it a deck builder is misleading and I think puts off people who might otherwise enjoy it.

Sure, the abilities are card-shaped and there are drawing mechanics, but it doesn't really play like a deck-builder at all.

I think the main differentiator for me, and where I thin Slay the Spire sets it apart from normal deck builders, is that the enemies you're fighting aren't playing by the same rules. The enemies don't have cards, or decks or similar abilities.

Because of this, the enemies can be really thematic and varied and have interesting mechanics and don't need to be balanced around playing by the same rules as the player.

As a consequence it doesn't feel like a deck builder to me, the abilities just happen to be card-shaped.

Add in the relics which are one of the more important parts of the run, and really the skills involved aren't at all like other deck building games.

But yes, huge recommendation from me too, definitely the best rogue-lite game in years. (~450 hours played for me, and probably twice that watching it on twich).

<comment><USER32> I played it for about 5 hours and I just don't have any motivation to keep going. The trickle of new cards is super slow and I don't really feel like much depends on my skill at all. But I also have friends who rave about it, so maybe it's an acquired taste thing.

<comment><USER33> It's a very challenging game that exercises different muscles than other games, especially if you've never played a deckbuilder before. One of the hardest things to get used to is the fact that skipping a card reward is often the best play. The key insight is that every card taken decreases the probability of drawing all of the other cards in your deck.

Another tricky aspect to the game is that any given card may be great in one deck and terrible in another, to the point where taking it makes your deck worse. Strong players (such as jorbs, whom you can find on twitch) tend to lean very heavily on the card remove feature in order to get rid of bad cards.

There is definitely a luck component to the game but skilled players are pushing that boundary every day. Winning streaks on ascension 20 (the hardest difficulty level) are possible and always growing.

<comment><USER34> I'm nearing 500 hours on StS and I still have so much to learn. Approaching it as a deckbuilder can definitely be a noob-trap - anyone who has played MTG or similar is very tempted to build into archetypes instead of understanding that you have to deal with the problems at hand with the solutions you are given, because you can't force the game to give you what you want. Taking a "will be good later" pick is nearly always a problem, often because it reduces your chances of reaching "later".

Funnily enough a really thin deck can also be a problem. If you have 15 cards and Nemesis adds 5 burns, you're in trouble without a way to handle that. Instead of thin or fat, the best way to think of it IMO is consistency (draw and exhaust help this).

I really like how each Act tests different strengths and exposes different weaknesses. A20 is tough but rewarding.

<comment><USER31> I completely agree with this, although as new advice "thin your deck" is good advice because new players don't remove strikes nearly enough, and the "too thin" problems only really hurt when you're doing act 4 and on higher ascensions.

On lower ascensions you get far fewer status cards added, and if you're a new player you probably don't have act 4 unlocked.

<comment><USER34> Yes definitely. "Remove cards" and "you don't need to take a card every time" are both good early tips.

There's definitely a lot of depth that you have to unlock over time. I sometimes watch Jorbs on YouTube as background noise and he'll often think over a single turn for 15 minutes or more. I don't have that patience.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> This post has so much love for roguelikes, what a joy!

I Carbonized [1] Angband to make it playable on OS X. Then I Cocoaized it a few years later. What a rarefied game, that you can play it for years!

1: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_(API)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_\(API\))

</comment><comment><USER36> Funny I'm trying to make a rogue-like game with my son these last days. Anyone has experienced using the C library `notcurses`, or some demo project ? (the library seems to be made to on purpose break curses API compatibility for the sake of sanity)

<comment><USER37> I don't know how keen you are on using C, but there's an excellent open Roguelike library for Python, with a whole community round it. The subreddit is pretty active..

[http://www.roguebasin.com/index.php?title=Complete_Roguelike...](http://www.roguebasin.com/index.php?title=Complete_Roguelike_Tutorial,_using_python3%2Blibtcod)

<comment><USER36> thanks for the link I didn't know about this project. However here it's specifically a project to learn C :) but your link is still full a useful information (notably their dungeon generation algorithm )

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Enjoyed the article very much, but missed Caves of Qud.

<comment><USER14> Yeah, I haven't played it myself but it's unquestionably a significant entry in the genre.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Shout out to Lincoln-Sudbury RHS where Hack began...and JOVE! Can't imagine that fantastic experiment happening again; PDP-11 running Unix given to a cohort of teenagers to maintain. Thanks Brian!

</comment><comment><USER40> For a modern pixel roguelike, check out OneBit Adventure on mobile

<comment><USER41> Also the Open Source Pixel Dungeon and its many mods.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Happy to see Omega in the list. I enjoyed so many hours playing that in college! Too bad the version I had was buggy and impossible to win.

</comment><comment><USER43> No mention of NetHack?

<comment><USER21> Try Ctrl-F? It does mention NetHack quite a bit.

<comment><USER14> Or try Page 2..,</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Random email generator? - <AUTHOR> I love the random password generator from LastPass, but I still consider emails to be an unsolved problem for registering on websites. Do you know of any extension or similar to generate a random email? Ideally, those would be redirected to my @gmail.com or my @francisco.io emails without revealing it to the sender. User case:
1. New dubious register form that I think will send me SPAM.
2. I click the "Email Generator" and it generates a random firstname.lastname@example.com (or my own domain).
4. I use that email. They send a confirmation email.
5. This confirmation email gets redirected to Inbox ( http://inbox.google.com/ ), Gmail, Hotmail or any other I set up previously.
6. I just click the link to validate the account.
7. They send me SPAM. I nuke that email address and know who did it (if I want to).
Right now I am using a combination of low-value private email address and mailinator to achieve something similar. I consider Gmail's "+" totally insufficient since my original, good email can be extracted from there.
Extra: the same thing with phone numbers would be awesome, but I understand that would be a lot more costly and difficult that it exists <comment><USER2> Well you just wrote out your own solution, just code it up! Instead of mailinator just use your own domain.</comment>


Bees living in Notre Dame cathedral roof survived fire - <AUTHOR> https://nypost.com/2019/04/18/bees-living-in-notre-dame-cathedral-roof-survived-fire/ <comment><USER2> So, apparently bees have an instinctive behavior for what to do in the case of fire. Moreoever, it appears to be different for European bees than for other bees. Evolution is an amazing thing, and so are social insects.</comment>


Ask HN: Novice looking for an overview of different areas of programming - <AUTHOR> Complete beginner here. I'm wondering if someone can give me an overview of different areas of programming. I know there is mobile development and web development. That is the extent to my knowledge. I want to venture into a field that will be ripe for innovation in the years to come. I'm not necessarily looking for employable skills, but that won't hurt either. Initially, I was looking into iOS development, but the success rates for indie developers don't look promising.<p>Essentially, I'm looking for an overview of different fields and my interest is from an entrepreneurial standpoint. Thanks. <comment><USER2> Perhaps you can look at optimization or machine learning. Optimization of processes and algorithms can be applied to almost anything out there and Obviously machine learning is new and hot and will continue to be a hot topic in the near future.

<comment><AUTHOR> How would I go about the learning path. Would it be something along the lines of: 1) Learn programming language X, 2) Learn Multivariable Calc, Linear Algebra, Probablity & Statistics, 3) Learn machine learning?

Also, what do you think of iOS development in terms of entrepreneurial ventures?

<comment><USER2> If you have no technical background then you should start by learning a programming language such as python. If you do hav a technical background learning optimisation and machine learning has two paths. 1) theory 2) practical. Most of the time in these two fields to start off as a beginner in depth theory knowledge is not required so you can play around with some open source libraries and get started that way.

In terms of iOS and entrepreneurial ventures my opinion is that you shouldn't focus on say "iOS" as you have framed it. Startups is about finding a problem and building a product that people will use. iOS is a tool that will help you to do so. Likewise the product could be a website (so you'd use a different tool to build, such as ruby on rails) so it ultimately comes down to what you want to do. If you don't have a technical background, even to do a business role in the tech world, it won't hurt to learn one programming language as from there you will have your foot in the door.</comment></comment></comment>


How to Kill Active Listening on Siri, Cortana, Alexa, and Google - <AUTHOR> https://www.pcmag.com/article/355774/how-to-kill-active-listening-on-siri-cortana-alexa-and-go <comment><USER2> This will turn off their ability to respond to you. That doesn't mean they are not listening.</comment>


How the CIA made Google - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/how-the-cia-made-google-e836451a959e <comment><USER2> Tl;dr; the pentagon and intelligence community funds basic CS research, news at 11.

<comment><USER3> This is why I check the comments first, thanks!

<comment><USER4> If you do this to read cynical dismals that don't sum up the content but kind of agree with your believes it should be ok.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The article is from 2015, and it's tinfoil hat claptrap. Not sure how this made it to the front page.

<comment><USER6> And your last comment was from a year ago and one of only three you've made...all of them being related to Google..

<comment><USER7> This breaks the HN guidelines, which ask to assume good faith and not insinuate astroturfing or shilling unless you have actual evidence. Please don't do this again.

No doubt nefarious actions are real but internet users have a far greater tendency to project it onto people who simply have a different view than they do. We all need to guard against this.

Endless reams about this at [https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...](https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=true&page=0&query=by:dang%20astroturfing) if you or anyone want to understand this rule better.

<comment><USER6> I was only kidding! That being said, thanks for the warning I'll be more careful commenting in the future.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> As a shortcut for those of us who don't have the time to really dig into this right now, could those of you have dug into it answer one question?

Is this credible and well sourced?

<comment><USER9> EDIT: Nevermind, it's an old article.

Surely, you could just wait until people have had time to read through it all and analyze it. By asking before it can reasonably even be read you're inviting half-baked responses.

<comment><USER10> Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12439826](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12439826) (I'm sure there are others tho)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It all makes sense now lol</comment>


How mapmakers help indigenous people defend their lands - <AUTHOR> https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/2018/10/indigenous-cultures-mapping-projects-reclaim-lands-columbus <comment><USER2> A similar thing happened in the last place I lived, a small town in the Northwest Territories, Canada. The indigenous people in the area (called the Tlicho) were able to take over some of the governance of their land from the Canadian government, including mineral rights. It is a pretty significant amount of land too, about 100km x 200km. To make the case they had to map which land was included in their territory and demonstrate that their use of it goes back a long time. So they sent out their elders and professional map makers on canoe trips along their traditional hunting routes. The map makers collected gps data and associated it with stories from the elders and artifacts they found along the way, which built a compelling case for the land claim.

</comment><comment><USER3> Tangentially related, the missing maps project [http://www.missingmaps.org/](http://www.missingmaps.org/) is also working to map communities whose populations have often never been represented on a map, though in this case to help humanitarian organizations to access them.

</comment><comment><USER4> Map making is quite a fascinating, and intricate business!

One tends to take maps for granted, but making a good one really does take quite a bit of work. (And just imagine how it was before satellite imagery, or even GPS...) For an interesting bit of cartographic history, read the story of Ordnance Survey in the UK: [https://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/about/overview/history.html](https://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/about/overview/history.html)</comment>


Ask HN: A place to sleep, a laptop, no résumé and a hungry man. - <AUTHOR>

I've found myself in this situation more often than not. Due to my own fault of course. But I always ended up relying on others until I caved in, doing jobs that provided me with more money than I need but with no enjoyment and the feeling of unfulfillment, dropping them like I had a choice even if I didn't.
I can program, it's what I can do best, it's what's keeping me happy. But without a college degree, experience or a stack of projects in my pocket no one is going to believe me.
With all the app hype one could lose himself dreaming about all the money that's in the business.
But what real chances are there? What small jobs can one do with the ability to write code but the inability to prove oneself just to keep from starving?
Guitarists can busk, drifters could mow the lawn, artists can do caricartures. What can a lone man with a laptop under his arm do? <comment><USER3> Like you, I was once in the same position. Extremely poor, I literally hand drew business cards and cut them out of cardboard and walked around the city to hand-deliver them. This helped as someone eventually gave me a chance, but I'm sure it's because he felt sorry for me. I had no experience and learnt how to code from making free photo copies of the pages in the visual basic 6 book at the local public library.

Where I'm from (South Africa), internet was expensive and not accessible to all at the time.

Some advice for your situation:

\- You are at the bottom, your only way from there is up - this is something to be excited about.

\- Fake it until you make it. When meeting potential clients, talk the talk and do the walk later.

\- You'd be surprised at how many SME's need IT services and don't know it yet :) You can simply walk in the door and have a chat to them.

\- Put your ego away and always be aware that in order to eat, you need to sell. Selling is actually pretty simple if have a bit of confidence.

\- Look after your laptop with your life, it's your key to getting out of your situation.

\- If you can write code, it most likely means that you can solve problems logically - this doesn't only apply to coding, figure out where you can use that and make a bit of money.

\- Don't be afraid of charging for your time. Poverty is also a mindset, as soon as you realize that, you are one step closer to getting past it.

\- Just ask for help. You are not alone and most people will be sympathetic when they are asked.

\- You don't need to prove yourself to anyone in order to survive, simply do what you do best and the rest will follow.

Goodluck! S

</comment><comment><USER4> > _What can a lone man with a laptop under his arm do?_

Create an online presence.

Contribute under that name.

Never ever flame or troll under that name. Appear calm and sensible and rational and kind and polite and exciting and dynamic.

There's a bunch of things you could do: Many open source projects need help. (Especially with documentation.)

Many people want some small app to help them do something, but they have no idea how much that would cost, and they have no programming skill. (I have a million ideas. "X-Face for HN profiles" is just one.)

In theory, you do jobs you don't enjoy to give you money to do things that you do enjoy; or you do a job you love which leaves you poor. (If you're really lucky you get great money and a great job.) Doing a lousy job shouldn't stop you from being able to code in your spare time.

> _With all the app hype one could lose himself dreaming about all the money > that's in the business._

This is, I'm sure you know, a distraction. You're not doing it for the huge 1-in-a-million chance of getting rich. You're doing it to solve a problem, or to create something awesome.

Good Luck!

</comment><comment><USER5> You know what I'd like to do? Offer free work experience more. I took another young guy on today, to mentor him through a project that we need done but not so badly it was worth us prioritizing it in our schedule. We're not paying him, but he's getting our time for free, and a good resume piece and reference from us if he steps up to the challenge that I think he can meet. Maybe more of us need to be doing this in our own businesses, bring back apprenticeships. If this guy does well, we'll either hire him if we can, or recommend him. I'll have a friend for life I can call on for advice in whatever speciality he chooses to go on with from here (he looks set to be a sysadmin whiz if he keeps at it). If he fails, I wasted nothing. I've done this before and I'll keep doing it as time permits.

He got in touch with us directly, somehow he'd found dev labs near him and we agreed to his request for experience. No degree or experience but a resume full of the right things you want to see from a self-learner (online Stanford classes etc) and he backed it up when we interviewed him.

Maybe try that, or ask here on HN for someone to mentor you through developing a real-world project that they need, and don't have the budget or time for. All you can lose is your time, and if things work out maybe some great new friends and a chance at a real opportunity.

<comment><USER6> I wouldn't go around bragging about breaking employment law. I don't understand how this person can be doing useful work that isn't worth $8/hour to you?

[http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/03/business/03intern.html?pag...](http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/03/business/03intern.html?pagewanted=all)

edit:

The U.S. Department of Labor's Wage and Hour Division (WHD) has developed the six factors below to evaluate whether a worker is a trainee or an employee for purposes of the FLSA: [http://wdr.doleta.gov/directives/attach/TEGL/TEGL12-09acc.pd...](http://wdr.doleta.gov/directives/attach/TEGL/TEGL12-09acc.pdf)

1\. The training, even though it includes actual operation of the facilities of the employer, is similar to what would be given in a vocational school or academic educational instruction;

2\. The training is for the benefit of the trainees;

3\. The trainees do not displace regular employees, but work under their close observation;

4\. The employer that provides the training derives no immediate advantage from the activities of the trainees, and on occasion the employer's operations may actually be impeded;

5\. The trainees are not necessarily entitled to a job at the conclusion of the training period; and

6\. The employer and the trainees understand that the trainees are not entitled to wages for the time spent in training.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, in California that's definitely illegal.

Which is a shame, because I've seen some people benefit enormously from similar intership-ish things. They got in the door of cash-poor companies, were ambitious enough to take on hard things, and eventually got hired at a level way above what they could have achieved through the normal process.

Of course, I've also read about no-pay internships that were total scams, companies just using and abusing the naive so they could get out of paying minimum wage. So I'm glad this stuff is illegal, but I regret that the cheap assholes have ruined it for everyone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> EDIT: "our" startup

We've always got room at the lodge: <http://gdkr.ma/LodgingSociety>

Seriously, we're always welcoming hackers to come hang with us in NY.

We put you up, give you plenty of your own time to work on what you want, and ask for a part time contribution to _our_ startup.

Hit me up if that interests you,

Adrian

<comment><AUTHOR> Sadly I'm not American. I forgot to add my location, I didn't think it would be important as I doubt many of HN's readers are German, which I am.

If I had the money to fly to NY, gee, that sounds both awesome and frightening. I envy people who can just take the already filled suitcase out of their closet and end up in a distant place without fear or confusion about what to do next.

<comment><USER8> no worries, just let us know when you're ever state side. I used to live in Paris, France so I know how scary the idea of relocating to a new place is.

Good luck man, I really wish you all the best!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> When I started I could just about make a website but hell, it was what I wanted to do.

I did 2 things. Firstly I went on the freelancer job boards and picked up some of the worst jobs going with the most hard to please clients. I think my average wage was like $3/hr for the first handful of projects. However.. soon enough I starting getting 10 star ratings which opened up better jobs. Also I started to get a portfolio from these jobs which gave me credibility. It was a miserable time but I wouldn't have to got to where I have any other way.

The second thing I did was found a framework which was semi-popular and just camped the forum. I learned everything I could about it. I read every thread. I only answered questions. If I had a question I would join IRC under an alias. I didn't want to look nooby.

I would take notes on frequent questions. I was soon known as someone who always had the right answer. I would then usually be the first to respond on the job board for the framework. I would link to my forum profile and reputation. Some of those jobs paid really well and there was very little competition to get them.

I currently make 36k a year from a job I picked up on the forum. The post for the job was titled 'Developer Required'. The message was 'Urgent, please PM name, portfolio and email address'. Turned out well.

Ultimately though to succeed you need to stick with what you are doing. You may find the job terrible but if it leads to a great portfolio piece at the end then you should be doing it. Its rarely about where you are now, its about where what you are currently doing will lead you.

</comment><comment><USER10> Make a website offering a free service that a moderate amount of people would use/could be convinced to use. Monetise via ads, and bam passively fund yourself for a few months whilst the site rises and fades.

Amount of income depends on site design (probably quite good), type of subject site tackles (how much scope there is for a visitor checking the site to see related ads that they would then go on to click).

For instance a week or so ago one guy came along with a passive site that gave away simple, free gift certificate templates. He was getting a few hundred dollars every week. Not enough to live on, easily enough to just feed him, could be replicated for more income.

This is your busking. Dirty dirty ad revenue from sites that do stuff the common man would take hours doing themselves.

<comment><USER11> Pointers to good articles on generating _real_ ad revenue would be useful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> _But without a college degree, experience or a stack of projects in my pocket no one is going to believe me._

Step 1: figure out which of this is easiest to change. Hint: it's "stack of projects".

Step 2: change it.

Yay, github.

<comment><USER13> You need to be building things to learn anyway, so github fits that perfectly. There's such a low barrier to entry with getting started and putting up a project or two, and then adding more as time goes on. The key is getting the first project up there, and realizing that it doesn't need to be 'perfect'. The other big advantage of having a github is that it shows you're familiar with version control.

Having a github account with several projects on it is a big positive signal. There will be companies who feel that you need a degree, but that's a small portion of the job market. Committing to build and grow a github is probably the single best thing a developer without a degree can do.

<comment><USER12> _The other big advantage of having a github is that it shows you're familiar with version control._

Also, put in a readme, that makes it easier for me to evaluate the project. And put in tests, so I know you are familiar with those. In short, show me you know what you are doing by actually doing it.

 _Committing to build and grow a github is probably the single best thing a developer without a degree can do._

Or even a dev with a degree.

I've gotten a number of interviews based on my github and projects, without even sending a resume. For all the interviewer knows, I never went to school. And when I hire, I look at github first, maybe a resume if there isn't a github. Or, equally likely, no github -> resume goes into the circular file.

<comment><USER13> Adding the readme also shows some ability to document a project, which is always helpful.

Test coverage is nice to have, but I don't know that it's a requirement up front. I can't think of any circumstances where having test coverage will hurt, so I'd agree that it should probably be there, even if you're not a TDD/BDD zealot. It at least shows that you're familiar with testing and can do it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm an artist and didn't know I could draw caricatures to make money. I've been getting by writing proprietary software for the Apple App store. People download my artwork off my website all the time and use it for commercial purposes even though it states "All Rights Reserved" on my website. I regularly send out DMCA notices. People want it, but they are unwilling to pay for it.

However in the App Store there is a distribution network that checks for purchase before download and signs ipa files with DRM technology. I wish there was something like that for artists (but their isn't and probably never will be).

My advice is to learn ObjC and get the money up front for freelancing gigs while registering as a sole-proprietorship with your local chamber of commerce. Then pay Apple a registration fee for the App Store. It takes about 10 days to get their approval. Or learn another language. Go to Starbucks or whatever coffee house is in the "nice and upscale" part of town and eavesdrop on the business deals that are going down. Learn what people want and figure out a full proof way to help them get what they want while getting paid for your effort. Now. Be greedy. They will be. Trust me.

That's my advice. You're welcome to it. If you can't make money as a software developer and you CAN ACTUALLY PROGRAM software, then I don't know what to say except learn some confidence. Life isn't hard unless you make it.

</comment><comment><USER15> You're in a rough spot in your life. You have my sympathies. Your situation won't change overnight, but you can begin by finding a low-skill job that will pay for your basic needs (food and shelter) while you use free internet in libraries or from neighbors to put your code on github and other places.

If you enjoy coding, start creating projects. Then start completing projects. Consider one of the million "fart" apps: the app itself is far from glamorous, but the person who wrote it has gained experience in (1) writing an app, (2) completing an app, (3) getting the app into an app market.

If you keep doing that, and have 5-20 apps on a market, even if none of them are very popular, it looks a LOT like experience.

</comment><comment><USER16> You can teach kids programming. If they learn to make small games their parents might pay you some money.

And material you create while teaching kids can later be converted into book form and published.

<comment><USER17> I wrote KTurtle[1] to basically learn 'real' programming :)

I had only toyed around before that.

Anyway, I think prtk is right: there is a lot to be picked up in education. And as always; make yourself cheap enough to build portfolio at first.

[1]: <http://edu.kde.org/kturtle>

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> If you're in London, drop me a line - greg at memrise dot com.

And even if you're not, take heart - some of the best people I know have been in this situation at one time or another.

</comment><comment><USER19> Its hard for me to get a good feel for what your experience level is from your post, but I'm guessing you've worked mainly as a freelancer thus far. I'm someone who started off similarly to you, I don't have a degree, although I am close to finishing a BA degree thats not in CS as I just had a bunch of units from general ed courses. Basically, I just pushed my way in by starting off working at a really small company that couldn't afford to be picky. The pay was fairly lousy but after a few months I found a better opportunity to work with a startup. Then after that, I had enough experience working full-time to start working for a contracting company that did a full-time placement of me at a mid-sized company. Once you get experience working full-time, it gets easier to find the next job so you should really just focus on getting your foot in the door. I've found that companies are often wary of people who just want to freelance as they often want a longer commitment and someone who is going to be more invested in their product / company. Also, there's no reason not to work on your own project and put it on GitHub, its helped me get at least one job, just from being able to talk about it in the interview, as the interviewer found it interesting.

</comment><comment><USER20> I don't think most startups and medium sized require that you have a CS degree. Find an environment that is appealing to you or create one. Some options:

Apply to a couple startups even just as an intern to see whether that floats your boat.

Find a good(!) co-founder and start a company. or If you feel that the problems are deeper than just not wanting to work in a traditional environment and you have a bad outlook on live seek advice of a therapist.

</comment><comment><USER21> I am about to leave a well paying job to go live in my Campervan and travel around Europe and Morocco. The more work I can do on the side while away means the longer I can stay on the road.

I am quite interested in helping teach or working with voluntary organisations if I can make enough money for Diesel and food.

It is both exciting and scary at the same time.

<comment><USER22> This is exactly what I've started thinking about doing. I am working at a great place but I'm getting tired of doing boring work for boring clients. I really don't care about how much money I make at my current place because it is making my hobby, my biggest interest and my talent - into something different.. it is now in a new, ugly shape. It has gone from something I could not resist doing, to something I don't even want to think about.

For me, it's draining more energy than it gives. Programming should be fun. I hope your journey goes well. Hopefully I will be on the same track in a couple of months. First I have to save enough cash to feel secure. Happy hunting.

<comment><USER21> Yeh I am currently in cash saving mode. I also have to pay for my girlfriend who has no savings so it is quite hard. We are planning on leaving in July and will start a blog about it soon.

I am just trying to kickstart my company (I am a contractor) into doing more than just contract work and me and a friend are working on a few small projects/ideas.

Really want to hit the road soon, but its the fear of effectively being 'homeless' and not being able to find such well paid work when/if we return.

Good luck with your plans too, our situation sounds very similar.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I've been in your shoes and don't have any advice that hasn't already been said.

But, think of this as an exciting chapter of your life. You're at bottom, so you can go anywhere from here without constraints or obligations.

This chapter happened for me when I was younger, and at the time it seemed almost awful, but on reflection now, it was very freeing. I'm positive you'll see it the same, when you get older.

If you lack commitments (wife, kids, etc), it's kind of nice to periodically reboot (eg. destroy and rebuild) your life.

Do whatever you're passionate about. Seriously.

PS: Make your passion first, money second.

</comment><comment><USER24> There is a lot of good advice in previous comments.

I'm just wondering, how is that you say you can code and you cant find a job / project to work on. I did my first project for money in PHP when I was 16 - <USER2> degree, no experience and not much code to show - just few HelloWorld playpen projects.

People rarely ask developers for a degree and even if they do, once you have impressive code to show is worth much more.

So my advice would be maybe harsh but simple - stop complaining and get working!

you can always use "drug dealer's" method - do the first project for free :)

<comment><USER25> > I did my first project for money in PHP when I was 16

Can I ask how you got those jobs and what you got paid?

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Sadly, one busks out of need more than passion. But it seems to me that hunger is a metafore in your case. Otherwise you could exchange your laptop for a guitar and some lessons.

To document your experience the best you can do is to fix bugs into any popular open source project, like WordPress, Rails, ... If you know how to program, it will be easy for you to enter those dev groups and be taken into account.

<comment><AUTHOR> I actually own a guitar. Playing for two years now. But its not worth much and I'm not good enough to keep anyone listening. I think learning to code at a reasonable level is much easier than learning to play guitar well enough to be able to busk.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Assuming you are capable(and willing) of spinning a wrench spend a couple of days somewhere with free wifi learn some CNC programming and find a machine shop in need. The smaller the shop the less qualifications matter and the more can you do the job matters. Smaller shops have a harder time hiring so they are often willing to train people who show promise.

</comment><comment><USER28> Where are you located? What are your exact skills? I might be able to help you out (email is in the profile).

</comment><comment><USER29> This video is a TED talk on how to work for free with impressive people then transition into paid work you love.

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5qUR3tpEdA&feature=playe...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5qUR3tpEdA&feature=player_embedded)

</comment><comment><USER30> Open Source. Sure, you don't get paid for it directly, but it can get your name noticed, and show people that you _can_ code.

Either contribute to an existing project, or start your own.

Think of it as code busking.

</comment><comment><USER31> > But without a college degree, experience or a stack of projects in my pocket > no one is going to believe me.

Even with those, people won't believe you. That's why interviews exist, so you can prove your knowledge.

</comment><comment><USER32> >>I can program Ok, what can you program? Which languages or platforms do you know?

Irrespective of where you live I may be able to offload some paid work your way, that would then be part of your portfolio.

</comment><comment><USER33> I'm in the same position... We should build something together, solve some problems, put them on github, learn from each other.

<comment><USER34> I'm also in this position. Although I have a degree in CS, our area have almost no jobs, where I can work and grow as a programmer, and with remote work, people tend to not trust anyone without experience, sadly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> make bluetooth candles and sell them. if you made your own pcb it would be so cheap.

<https://sites.google.com/site/r3s2v1/projects/candles>

</comment><comment><USER36> You didn't say where you were located, but if you're in the Annapolis / Baltimore area, shoot me an email. My info is in my profile.

I assume you have some sort of internet since you're posting this. If hosting costs are an obstacle, shoot me an email and I can cut you off a piece of a Linode or something.

As for 'proving you can code', get a free Github repository and start filling it up. Find a project, any project, in any language, and build it. Projects don't have to be amazingly complicated or fit a broad needs. One of my first 'open source' projects was a library that would reliably fetch a favicon from a website.

No, it hasn't made me famous, and no, it hasn't made me rich, but it has helped a few people based on the messages I've gotten through Github. I have had offers from work based on it (not full time jobs, but implementation / freelance stuff), and if anybody questions whether or not I can write a line of code, I can point them at that.

After you write one library / module / program / app / whatever, write another one. The idea being that you'll establish a 'body of work'.

We recently tried to recruit another HNer to fill in on some project work recently and, when my project manager was asking how qualified he was, I just pointed him to his github profile. Not only has he released a lot of code, but he's worked on a lot of the libraries that we're using in our code as well.

Don't worry about whether or not the code you release is 'production ready', or if it's too small, or if you think it's only of limited utility. My favicon parser is under 100 lines of code. Backbone.js is only ~700 lines of code. Code doesn't need to be huge to make an impact. Hell, code doesn't even have to be GOOD to make an impact, but that's a different story.</comment>


Alaska's sea ice has completely melted away - <AUTHOR> https://mashable.com/article/alaska-sea-ice-melt-2019/ <comment><USER2> "This is definitely an extreme year — even by more recent standards in a changed Arctic"

Not quite an extreme, as next year will probably dwarf this year, as extremes rapidly become the norm, given that Siberia, at altitudes above Lapland, is seeing 80ºF/30ºC too.

</comment><comment><USER3> Arctic Sea Ice News and Analyis - the August 6 update is up. [https://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/](https://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/)</comment>


Show HN: Konsus.com – On-demand freelancers via chat - <AUTHOR> http://www.konsus.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hey everyone, co-founder of Konsus.com here

I was a big user of old Elance/Odesk for design and data entry in the past, but found myself struggling to find freelancers, and having some mixed experiences with quality.

So mrstochastic, my co-founder/CEO and I decided to create Konsus.com, to make it easier to get things done on the internet.

We provide on demand freelancers for business, available 24/7 via chat. We're aiming for the mid-price range where (29 USD /hr). We do business tasks: as in design, writing and data. You can see some actual stories and examples of what we've dine under services.

If you want see how it works to give feedback, you can do it with no sign- up/risk, just click "Talk to us" and ask for a quote for your project, for example.

Look forward to hearing your thoughts!

<comment><USER2> I generally do fix bid on upwork.com. I have experimented lately with hourly but I'm only paying $8 for a developer and $4 for VA and $15 for a telemarketer. Where I could see a possible area is if you focus on project management and requirements gathering and were available during after work hours(5-10PM EST.) And managed projects but passed the lower billing rates on for the actual workers. Although I still want to see portfolios and passed work. Also, I'd want templates and code used to lower costs when possible. Just my 2 cents of what would be valuable to me.

<comment><USER3> Out of curiosity, what are you paying a developer $8 to do?

<comment><USER4> Create a mess a pro gets to solve for $200 an hour

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> How does your service compare to Codementors.io which does similar stuff?

<comment><AUTHOR> I am not familiar with this excact one, and there's a coming soon on the url.

But in general what seem to differentiate us is \- On-demand: someone answers instantly and start working on your project right away. freelancer is instantly matched based on skill and availability. \- quality control: we guarantee quality. Ensure this by pre-vetting freelancers and doing quality control on deliverables.

Should also say that while there are plenty who do development. Very few specialize in business tasks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Is it a random match every time, or could the same freelancer be requested in future rounds, if I am impressed with their work?

<comment><AUTHOR> You can request the same freelancer if you are satisfied with their work, but we cannot guarantee that that person is available or awake at the time. In practice we see most people trust us to do the neccesary quality control, so that they are indifferent as to who performs the task.</comment></comment>


Reduction of Additions - <AUTHOR> https://www.excelsiorjet.com/blog/articles/reduction-of-additions/ <comment><USER2> Thank you, really interesting reading!

It would be interesting to see how this rule ("x = (y + c1) + c2 => x = y + (с1 + с2)") was encoded in the compiler. I guess it has more complicated form than a (simple and declarative) term rewriting rule, which you may use on AST transform stage.

There is a quote from Muchnik's textbook: "Like constant folding, algebraic simplifications and reassociation are best structured in a compiler as a subroutine that can be called from any other phase that can make use of it".

But it seems that in some cases, on the later phases with lower IRs, you just can't use this "subroutine" as is.

<comment><USER3> Thank you for the feedback!

This transformation is encoded exactly like simple and declarative term rewriting rule, and it may be called from any phase of compiler, except the last one when IR passed through backend and IR objects acquire machine code attributes - registers and code ordering. But we guarantee that at this phase there are no terms in IR applicable to this and other similar simple rules.

During IR "lowering" we do not rebuild the whole IR into some other form, we just rebuild parts of them, which are too high-level for backend. Additions are obviously not among them, so the is no problem for using this transformation in lowered IR.</comment></comment>


Financial information data for web2.0 businesses - any (businessplan) examples available? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> <http://www.businessplanarchive.org> \- but those are old bp s

</comment><comment><USER3> SXSW had at least two decent talks on web apps, including their financial performance.

\- <http://www.carsonified.com/sxsw.pdf> \- <http://particletree.com/sxsw/autopsy.zip></comment>


So you think you can tell Arial from Helvetica? - <AUTHOR> http://www.ironicsans.com/helvarialquiz/ <comment><USER2> I really don't consider myself a typography expert or designer, but I found that easy and got a perfect score.

There are obvious tells in almost all of them -- mostly lowercase "s", "c", etc, in which Helvetica is has perfectly level edges and arial is angled.

The only harder ones are some of the all caps examples like TOYOTA.

<comment><USER3> That is almost the exact experience I had. I got 17/20 and the ones I screwed up all had capital letters.

I couldn't see any difference between Mattel and Toyota.

<comment><USER4> The perfectly round "O" was the giveaway for me. Helvetica just feels more "literal" to me, if that makes any sense, with its perfectly horizontal endings on "C" and "S" and "t", so the round "O" seemed more likely. Mattel nearly tripped me up too, but I noticed that Helvetica was bolder throughout than the Arial equivalent, so it wasn't hard.

<comment><USER5> O isn't perfectly round in Helvetica. The Toyota logo is modified to use perfect circles for the Os. The real O is a bit rounder than in Arial maybe, but still not a circle. Futura is the one with the perfect circles (for both O and o).

<comment><USER6> Toyota was the only one I got wrong: it was the round Os that threw me off. I thought Helvetica didn't look like that, and, well, it doesn't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Thank you, now you have ruined Arial for me.

Before this test I considered the differences negligible, without really knowing what the differences are. Now I consider Helvetica much more elegant and incisive.

<comment><USER8> Maybe it is more elegant, but if you don't want cross browser, cross platform rendering issues you'll stick with Arial.

<comment><USER9> No, you should stick with verdana. It's fully cross-platform, designed from the start to be a screen font, and generally looks better.

Alternatively, @font-face is supported by just about everything at this point, opening up the opportunity to use much better fonts, like open sans

(also, helvetica is a print font. It doesn't work for body copy at the sizes commonly used for screen text.)

<comment><USER10> Learn something new every day. I've always used Helvetica on all my web pages at the behest of my design co-worker. He's a print designer so it makes sense now.

<comment><USER11> I hope you do test how it looks on windows? I've worked with a webdesigner that often chose fonts that worked perfectly on his mac, but looked really ugly on all windows browsers, since the fonts were unavailable and the substitutes had noticable style/width differences.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Ruining the game for everyone; two things I love about Helvetica

— Terminals at right angles to the stroke. <http://c.jon.gd/image/3Q0y2u323j3C> . Arial looks particularly sloppy with jaunty terminals. It is possible to have a similar grotesque sans-serif feel with offset terminals (see Univers & Akzidenz Grotesk) but they're a crucial part of what give Helvetica its character. \- The uppercase R. Has a really strong leg compared to Arial's half-assed flaky leg.

<comment><USER13> I immediately got 17/20, missing only the ones where there were no lower case characters. How do you distinguish between in these 3 cases? <http://imgur.com/a/NOLoI>

<comment><USER14> 1) Completely round O = Helvetica 2) The C's. Helvetica = flat endings not slanted 3) Like a perfectly round O, the M's have more of a squarish spacing

<comment><USER15> Hmm. I see a completely round O in "TOYOTA", but not in "THE NORTH FACE". Is it just me?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Yes, the differences are easy to see, as everyone has said.

But the important part is that there's a difference in feel and theme that's not really measurable and identifiable in direct comparison.

The subtle difference is far more important than trying to identify the tiny details that don't really matter. And in that sense, this game (while fun and interesting) misses the point.

<comment><USER17> It's entirely measurable. Helvetica has slightly heavier strokes, which are finished at right angles or closer to that than Arial, and prefers verticals and horizontals in general compared to Arial.

<comment><USER16> Yes, but why would you use one over the other?

<comment><USER12> Because it gives the text a different character on a macro level.

<comment><USER18> I believe that is what he's trying to say. You don't use Arial because it terminates at right angles, you use it because it feels different.

<comment><USER19> You use it because it's the only option you have under Windows.

<comment><USER20> I've always heard the Helvetica snobbery (and haven't used Windows much since the 90s) so I was a little surprised to find that in most cases, I found the Arial logo more attractive. Helvetica has a little more "heavy-handed" feel to it which worked for short words in all-caps, but I thought the lighter look of Arial worked better for the rest.

<comment><USER19> Horses for courses, but you're in the minority. Helvetica is pretty widely considered a more aesthetically appealing font, especially amongst those who have a lot of points of reference.

It's like art: you develop more sophisticated tastes as you're exposed to better things. It's hard to say this without sounding snobbish, but if all you've seen is Arial, you'll find Arial familiar and comfortable. But the more time you spend looking at good typography, the more Arial will start to hurt your eyes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Here's something interesting to do with the same test. Instead of guessing which one you think is Helvetica, choose the one you like better. Then see if Helvetica shows up more times than Arial (or vice versa).

<comment><USER22> Great idea! Personally I had no bias towards either font, but now discovered that I do in fact like Helvetica a bit more (12 out of 20 times). Would be interesting to be able to see a test like that with statistics on how many chose each font for each logo.

<comment><USER21> Yeah, going into it I didn't know much about the differences between the fonts but was curious anyway. After getting a few wrong I switched to choosing which ones I thought looked nicer and started getting Helvetica more times. That reminds me I need to finish watching the Helvetica documentary.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> <http://typewar.com/> quizzes you on letters from an increasing number of fonts, and scores you according to how many other people got a particular matchup correct. They also have "quests" that focus on a particular challenge, including Arial vs. Helvetica. <http://typewar.com/quests/> I think my favorite part of the site is the statistics on how many people are confused by particular matchups.

</comment><comment><USER24> This one is fairly easy simply because they show you a comparison. In reality, if they showed you only one type of font and if they had asked you to identify which font it was (Arial or Helvetica), then it would have been a REAL challenge :)

</comment><comment><USER25> The MATTEL one was hard, but I just assumed the one with crappy kerning was Arial, and sure enough...

<comment><USER26> The thing that gave away the Mattel logo was the E. Apparently, the middle bar of the capital E in Arial is not equidistant from the outer bars, whereas the E in Helvetica has equally-spaced bars. (Or legs, or whatever the hell they are.)

This was just something I noticed for the first time while going through.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Yes. Yes I do. 19/20, and the one I got wrong was Mattel.

<comment><USER28> Yeah, the Mattel one was the only one that wasn't instantly obvious. Just happens to have the only few letters in Arial and Helvetica that are actually comparable. 3M was the funniest, looks shocking in Arial.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Good idea to call the images foo-helvetica.gif & foo-arial.gif. :)

<comment><USER10> Now now, that's cheating :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I used the following heuristics (some parts added afterwards):

1\. Helvetica has level edges, Arial is angled (as ef4 said). Particularly important were "t", "e" and "a", "S", "G", C".

2a. For capital letters, if there is an "R", the Helvetica one is curved in the bottom right part while Arial uses a straight line.

2b. For a capital "Y", the Arial one has the same length in all directions while the Helvetica one is shorter at the bottom. (Alexx indicated a difference).

2c. The jags/gaps in the capital "M" extend further to the top for Arial. This can be used to figure out MATTEL.

3\. Otherwise, the one that looks fatter is Helvetica.

</comment><comment><USER31> No typographer nor designer here either, but _subjectively_ speaking:

* This test quickly 'clued me in' that a logo should give a "commanding", "authoritative", "brooks no argument" look. Helvetica, yes; Ariel, no: Ariel made some logos look downright self-satirical.

* An email client I use has Ariel as its default font. In that (two-way communication) context, where accidental antagonisms can arise, Ariel seems to "look less antagonistic"

* So this test speaks to me about appropriate fonts for two different contexts, and personal point-of-view.

* Got 20/20, but might not on a 2nd run. I'm only human.

<comment><USER32> Not a criticism, but I'm genuinely confused about the persistent misspelling of 'Arial' as 'Ariel'. Is there anyone knowledgeable about this sort of thing who can explain why it's so prevalent?

<comment><USER33> If you opened a clothing altering retail shop called "Taylor Shop" WRT your HN name, you'd have to expect a large fraction of the population to write your establishments name as "Tailor Shop"

Likewise there's only one Arial font but tens of thousands of girls named Ariel, so odds are your font is going to get spelled Ariel an awful lot by people who think Ariel first as either a human girl or a movie character.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Fun test. Also if anyone's interested in Helvetica or typesetting in general just watched a pretty good documentary recently that got me more interested in the topic: <http://www.helveticafilm.com/>, also available on netflix: <https://movies.netflix.com/WiMovie/Helvetica/70076125>

Sorta similar to the 'Objectified' doc that was recommended by HackDesign but I actually liked this one better.

</comment><comment><USER35> I am a designer (I mean, actually I am a coder that for some freaking bizarre reason got a design degree), and got a 19/20.

For "Mattel" my choice ended being random.

</comment><comment><USER36> 20/20. Mattel was the only one I was uncertain of, but the correct answer was slightly blurrier, due to it probably being an actual logo copy scaled down or up slightly, as opposed to a "freshly-made" duplicate for the purpose of the test.

Toyota was easy enough, as the capital "O" in Helvetica is more oval than round in Arial, and more round than oval in Helvetica.

I'm not a designer, I'm a developer, but I do enjoy typography.

<comment><USER37> > the capital "O" in Helvetica is more oval than round in Arial, and more > round than oval in Helvetica.

The Os in the Toyota logo have been modified and made more round, though. This is what "TOYOTA" looks like in plain Helvetica: <http://myfonts.us/td-RQ1hNh>

The Os in the Arial and Helvetica are practically identical.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> A much more interesting question than "Arial or Helvetica" would be: "Which one looks better?" Then you could ask how well the answer correlated with Helvetica vs Arial.

This question is good for seeing whether people know what they're looking at, but the point of using one font over the other isn't to show you prefer the 'correct' font, but to be invisibly better than other choices in one way or another.

<comment><USER39> The problem is that there was a lot more effort put into the originals than their knockoffs in Arial. The originals were produced with a designed typeface - and typefaces are tweeked for size. The Arial knockoffs obviously used scaled up versions in several cases. The knockoffs didn't get the same attention to kerning either.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is a question that's close to my heart. As a developer I've spent inordinate amounts of time getting Helvetica working properly in websites.

I can tell the difference between them, it's obvious when you know what to look for. Is it so much better that it's worth the effort required? Definitely not in my opinion.

I have a special place reserved in Hell for that font.

</comment><comment><USER40> As a programmer I got 11/20, so juuuust slightly better than random guessing. And I was trying so hard too!

<comment><USER41> 10/20 - I'm a complete failure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> If you just pick the fuzzier looking image you'll get the majority of them. Very neat idea though.

</comment><comment><USER43> Got 19 out of 20. I missed the Panasonic one.

What I like most about Helvetica is the top of the t is flat rather than sharp and there is less stylizing overall. Arial, for me, breaks the philosophy of stylizing for stylizing sake. Helvetica, IMHO, was already perfect.

This makes me remember the Essay by Adolf Loos' Ornament and Crime (1929) (<http://technical-english.wikidot.com/text-1-2>). Albeit bordering on racist propaganda contains very valid points on ornamentation being wasteful which I believe was a hallmark of Dieter Rams philosophy, "Good design is as little design as possible" which highly influences Apple's industrial designer Jonathan Ive.

</comment><comment><USER44> Terrible test. I got 19/20 based entirely on knowing what the original logos looked like on a few of them (Agfa and DEC, mostly). I thought I'd fail because I've never paid attention to those fonts.

If it was done with novel text, the results would have been different.

</comment><comment><USER45> The bad kerning gives it away on more than one occasion (American Apparel for example).

</comment><comment><USER46> I got about 50/50 but got bored and gave up after 16 so I don't know my score. I don't stare at small details on fonts normally like people here do, so I mostly tried to pick which one looked "right".

</comment><comment><USER47> I got through about 15 questions, had flash backs to the documentary "Helvetica" where it's just never ending stream of examples for 1 1/2 hours and couldn't take anymore. I'll take your word for it.

</comment><comment><USER48> I knew nothing about typography, guessed the first one with a lowercase r right, used that to get the rest of the lowercase ones. I only failed the uppercase ones. 16/20

</comment><comment><USER49> I didn't initially know all the obvious differences, but I picked the one that looked "right" or "better" and still got 16/20.

After reading tip offs here I got 19/20 (all except Toyota)

</comment><comment><USER50> Too bad this test isn't a higer DPI. It's easier to tell the differences, and see the subtleness of Helvetica at higher DPIs. Helvetica is a font designed for print, but it also looks good on HiDPI/Retina displays.

On my Retina MacBook Pro this whole test is a blurry mess. I had to bring it over to my non-Retina display to take it. But the differences between Arial and Helvetica pop a lot more on a better display.

</comment><comment><USER51> Fun short game. Enjoyed it!

I got 19/20. Messed up on "STAPLES" because I got over-confident and started selecting too quickly by the end.

The easiest way to distinguish the two, in my opinion, is that Helvetica uses horizontal cuts to letter strokes. So I should have seen that the capital 'S' in STAPLES had slightly off-axis cuts in my selection. Perhaps what tricked me is that the STAPLES logo itself is off-axis.

</comment><comment><USER52> I'm a lowly developer and have never even heard the debate about Helvetica. I couldn't have told you the first thing about it. It took me two slides to figure out that "the one I like" is Arial, and pick the opposite. I missed three more, but they were incredibly similar (TOYOTA, MATTEL).

Anyway, this difference is quite obvious in general, I'm not sure what the author is on about.

</comment><comment><USER32> This is silly. I know nothing about the difference between Arial and Helvetica. If anything thought that Helvetica was slightly lighter, so in the first question I guessed at the lighter of the two fonts, which it turns out was Arial. Every question after that I guessed the heavier of the two fonts, and I got a 19/20 score.

</comment><comment><USER53> Missed American Airlines. But I think it actually looks more balanced with Arial, the original feels a bit squeezed.

</comment><comment><USER54> There are (at least) three "bugs" in this quiz (i.e. artifacts from the alteration). The person who made them must have a crappy monitor if the differences weren't noticeable. That, or they were just sloppy. Still, fun quiz though.

Here are the bugs:

<http://imgur.com/a/S2aDO>

</comment><comment><USER55> ...wow, this turn my mind into believing Arial looks better than Helvetica most of the time! Blasphemy!!!

</comment><comment><USER26> I only missed one, which was do to negligence and not ignorance. Moreover, I'm not even cursorily trained in design or typography.

This doesn't seem that hard. Any perceptive person can determine the differences immediately through deduction and use them to differentiate throughout the test.

</comment><comment><USER56> I guessed that, given that Arial was probably a Helvetica clone, its designers probably added superfluous flourishes to differentiate it. That led me to notice the weirdly angled edges in Arial, which gave away most of them. So, yeah, proof of why Arial is dumb.

</comment><comment><USER57> It would be interesting to see how purportedly "design-conscious" people performed _without_ the immediate feedback and the juxtapositions. Also, since these are logos, aimed at gut feelings, the test should be timed, e.g. you must answer within 1 sec or so.

</comment><comment><USER58> Got a 18 out of 20. To me Arial looks a bit informal when compared to Helvetica. While Helvetica has level edges, Arial feels more loose and forgiving. I use both fonts in Applications but never really looked at them up close until now. Thank your or this test.

</comment><comment><USER59> Nicely done. I got most of those wrong! Which is why I leave typography to typographers.

Suggestion: wrong response page has a small graphic that emphasises a difference between Arial and Helvetica. e.g. the shape of the top part of the lower case r, &c

Then you have a teaching tool...

</comment><comment><USER60> I'd never bothered comparing them before, never used Helvetica that I can remember, and I got 17/20. 2 at the start till I noticed the obvious lower case differences. The only other one was MATELL which difficult, didn't notice the difference in the As.

</comment><comment><USER11> I used to think that this doesn't matter, as both fonts in text seemed good to me - but now in these logos, all cases where I was able to distinguish them, the Arial version was butt ugly and the original far better looking even to my non-designer eye.

</comment><comment><USER61> Ha, I remember taking this test quite a while back when I was obsessed with typography.

Took it again and got a 18. In terms of the actual font design, Helvetica always felt more "natural" and "composed," whereas Arial always felt much more focused on pure readability.

</comment><comment><USER45> You can clearly see the black brush on the almost black background in the SCOTCH logotype :D

</comment><comment><USER62> I just picked whichever looked better and got 18/20. Failed on Crate&Barrel and Mattel.

</comment><comment><USER63> I picked the one the "looked" better and got 5 out of 20 right. Guess I just prefer Arial.

</comment><comment><USER64> I got 15/20. What I learned from this quiz is I actually prefer the lowercase S in Arial.

</comment><comment><USER65> Here's a handy reference that shows the distinguishing differences between the two typefaces: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helvetica#Similar_typefaces>

</comment><comment><USER66> I played a different game called 'which one appeals to me more on first glance'. I ended up with a perfect 10/10 split.

Could it be that different fonts will be more aesthetically pleasing for different uses? Even if they're typographically similar??

</comment><comment><USER67> Didn't anyone judge them by how good they _looked_ ? Not "pixel peeping" but the general outlook.

Arial looks vertically uneven somehow - the tops of the letters of a word seem to form a more solid straight line with Helvetica.

</comment><comment><USER68> I'm no designer nor typographer and got a 16. I felt that most of the time the Helvetica variant was heavier (as in, more bold) most of the time. I had no idea of the different R and of the right angled stroke.

</comment><comment><USER45> That was easy. I read this article about a year ago and once you've seen it, you can't unsee it :)

<http://www.ms-studio.com/articlesarialsid.html>

</comment><comment><USER69> One service that I like from this site is the shorter thesaurus [0]. You enter a long word and receive shorter synonyms.

[0] <http://www.ironicsans.com/thsrs/>

</comment><comment><USER70> It's the "r" that's usually the give away. However, I would have to say that the capital "S" is also a giveaway, and the I'd have to say that the letters with Helvetica are somewhat _fatter_...

</comment><comment><USER71> Fun game, loved it, though G, lowercase edges can solve most cases. It comes down to kerning in the more difficult ones, Helvetica is a perfect Geometric Sans, and that should help in most cases

</comment><comment><USER72> I like it.

I couldn't tell at the start and so I guessed based on which logos looked best composed, then I noticed the uniqueness particularly in r and t letter forms.

This actually gave me a new respect Helvetica.

</comment><comment><USER73> 18/20, and I'm no design/typography expert. As others have said, it was on capitals. But the point of the site is clearly to show people can't tell the difference, and I can.

</comment><comment> loup-vaillant I got 3 out of twenty, 2 of which I was lucky to see the capital R. I guess I _can_ tell the difference, though I'd be careful to reverse all my answers in the future.

</comment><comment><USER74> "You answered 18 out of 20 questions correctly." I didn't even know the difference between the two until today (can't be bothered with fonts and suchlike).

</comment><comment><USER75> I flew right through them. The MATTEL logo gave me a slight pause, picking the prettier, more symmetrical choice made it easier to identify the remainder.

</comment><comment><USER76> If you know what you're looking for, the test is fairly easy. It get's tricky in case of ALL CAPPS that don't include the letter 'R'. I got MATTEL wrong.

</comment><comment><USER77> I'm not really good with the fonts and their differences, but after the first one which I failed I got 18/20 and the other I failed which was TOYOTA.

</comment><comment><USER78> Fun spoiler: do NOT look at the image SRC. I liked the game, but I did what any idiot would when they see such pages - Inspect Element. Damn!

</comment><comment><USER79> I noticed that I can do pretty good just by quickly detecting which one is the most unfamiliar font, as I am and always have been on Windows.

</comment><comment><USER80> I got one wrong. I attribute that not to my genius but to having seen the excellent documentary "Helvetica".

Turns out that's an excellent home date movie.

</comment><comment><USER81> I found the giveaway is in lowercase t, s, c and uppercase R. Helvetia tries to snap most terminating edges horizontally.

</comment><comment><USER82> Very easy for all but MATTEL. For MATTEL I went with the one which was kerned better, and no surprise, it was Helvetica!

</comment><comment><USER83> Check out <http://typewar.com/quests/quest/1/>

</comment><comment><USER84> It's very easy - all I did was think "Which one looks better?" and I got it right every time.

</comment><comment><USER85> Shame that Arial doesn't come in light & medium weight (as windows alternative to Mac)

</comment><comment><USER86> Apparently, judging from my perfect score, I can easily tell them apart.

</comment><comment><USER87> I got 17 out of 20. I just picked the ones that looked better to me.

</comment><comment><USER88> 20/20, although MATTEL was tricky. That pesky capital 'A'.

</comment><comment><USER89> Apparently, the answer is "Easily, unless it's all caps."

</comment><comment><USER90> 20/20 _BUT_ it was almost 19 because of Mattel.

</comment><comment><USER91> 20/20 - a few hard ones though. Fun quiz :)

</comment><comment><USER92> I got 90%...what is the point of this?

</comment><comment><USER93> Haha, fun test, got 14 of 20 right!

</comment><comment><USER94> can you tell a green field..

</comment><comment><USER95> 19/20 Mattel was impossible!

<comment><USER96> I don't even remember and I'm too lazy to look at it again, but I think I recognized Mattel because of the letter spacing. I just assumed Helvetica is the one with better spacing. Guess what, it worked.

</comment></comment><comment><USER97> Yes - 19/20 Botched Mattel</comment>


ESPRESSObin SBC (2.5Gbps Serdes, SATA, 2xGbE, MiniPCIe, lots of goodies...) - <AUTHOR> http://espressobin.net/ <comment><USER2> Seriously? A modal pop-up with the video I just finished intentionally scrolling past?

Do you think that disrespecting me by trying to force me to do something will endear me to your product?</comment>


Remind HN: Raise your rates - <AUTHOR>

With the new year coming, I think it's the right time for every freelancer to consider raising their rates.
I know this is something that most people hate to do, but we're in business and everyone of us know how hard it is to keep going at certain time.
I've found these templates very useful in my situation: http://freelancember.com/email-templates/
Don't forget that raising your rates means that you'll be able to stay in business for a longer time.
Even if your clients rejects your proposal, it's still worth trying.
What to do with the new money? Start a saving account and use it as your personal insurance for tough times, or invest them in your business to provide even more higher quality. <comment><USER2> The author of those templates should read this...

[http://www.amazon.com/How-Win-Friends-Influence- People/dp/14...](http://www.amazon.com/How-Win-Friends-Influence- People/dp/1439167346)

</comment><comment><USER3> By all means, try to raise your rates. The first step toward being paid a lot of money is asking for it.

But if these templates sound like a good idea to you, you need to focus on something else first. The only way you could change your rate via email is if you're doing your freelance work without a formal contract, which is a colossal mistake.

So, forget these email templates. First, get all your clients to sign a services agreement. The time to negotiate your rate is when you and your client draft and sign the statements of work appended to that agreement.

</comment><comment><USER4> With the new year coming is time to think: how have I improved my value?

</comment><comment><USER5> I've found this is better to do at non-xmas times, especially when you're really busy and need fewer clients.

<comment><USER6> In my experience, customers generally expect new rates to start with your fiscal year, and Jan 1 is an obvious start to a fiscal year.

YMMV

<comment><USER7> January 1st is an obvious start to the _calendar_ year, not the _fiscal_ year.

In the UK the fiscal year begins in early April, and while different countries do have different starts to the fiscal year, few of them (not, for example, UK or USA) start on January 1st.

<comment><USER5> For many types of companies in the US, you have to basically convince the government to let you have one other than jan1 - dec 31.

<comment><USER7> Not according to Wikipedia:

"The U.S. government's fiscal year begins on October 1 of the previous calendar year and ends on September 30"

Or About.com:

"The Federal Fiscal Year runs from October 1 of the prior year through September 30 of the next year."

<comment><USER8> That's the government's fiscal year, not your company's fiscal year.

<comment><USER7> My bad: "The tax year for a business is governed by the fiscal year it chooses."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Those templates are awfully written and I'd do it face-to-face anyway.

I find people who drop bombshells in emails even though I see them all the time to be a particularly distasteful form of business associate.

<comment><USER10> I agree with your latter point, but nowadays a lot of freelancers rarely or never meet their clients (especially if they're overseas).

That said, I'd still put e-mail as a better medium for this than the phone. Even if you worded it just right, it's awkward for the client too because it's not exactly something to celebrate but nor do they want to look cheap. E-mail provides the right level of formality for contractual/pricing discussions, IMHO at least.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> If you don't raise rates once a year you will need another reason when you do decide to. At very least you would want to tie and increase to inflation.

Completely different business but my dad got into the trap of leaving his rates constant for many years, so each year your in effect making less and the client has an expectation that the rates won't move.

</comment><comment><USER12> Hi, I'm the writer behind Freelancember. I agree with the other commentor who said you shouldn't just drop a bomb shell like this in email. That's why, naturally, Freelancember has several other rate-increasing-related guides before the templates:

[http://freelancember.com/top-10-reasons-to-raise-your- freela...](http://freelancember.com/top-10-reasons-to-raise-your-freelance- rates/)

<http://freelancember.com/downloads/FreelancemberDay6.pdf>

<http://freelancember.com/raise-your-rates-checklist/>

</comment><comment><USER13> Is it 'right' to raise your rates on such short notice? Wouldn't most contract work have stipulations regarding changes in price?

<comment><USER14> I've survived, and even succeeded (by some, maybe most, measures) through my first year of full-time freelance web development.

I have some clients, who came onboard very early on in my professional and personal development as a freelance dev, and who are still being billed at their original rates. I notified these clients at the beginning of November that I am working to bring all rates "on par" across the board.

Even clients who are currently receiving the benefit of your older, lower rates will agree to the economics of paying a competitive price for the same quality of service that you provide to your highest paying clients. The dialog that began in November has proven fruitful in terms of developing a strategy to get all of my current, ongoing clients to agree to the new rate structure.

Bottom line: Have too much work, or too many "potential clients" hounding you for proposals? Raise your rates. Want to keep your clients? Give them notice well ahead of time, then raise your rates.</comment></comment>