Stanford CS enrollment increase "downright scary" - <AUTHOR> http://computinged.wordpress.com/2011/04/13/guest-post-eric-roberts-on-the-dangers-of-escalating-enrollments/ <comment><USER2>
      When expensively educated, fashionable young graduates
      start showing up in your field, you're in a bubble.
       - Kevin Marks

I fully attribute the increase to The Social Network movie coinciding with the ballooning of Facebook's market cap. Flipping tech startups is the hot new get rich quick scheme. Just like flipping houses and subprime mortgages before it.

<comment><USER3> I think people who got into programming very early in life can be naturally condescending against those who found it later. There is some reason behind this: if you were programming Basic at 6, made your first mini game at 8, and had your first webapp in the dotcom boom at 14 you probably have a ton of programming experience that those who learned later don't have.

But, it still seems odd to me. Most fields want to encourage smart, young, undergrads to enter them. Sure, they might have shallower passion for the field at first, the point of the article was that many people were developing real love for the field.

While Stanford undergrads are expensively educated and (maybe?) fashionable, they are also incredibly smart. Most importantly, learning programming isn't like selling subprime mortgages. For someone to buy your startup you must have added some value to the world. Trading subprimes arguably does not, or has a net negative effect.

<comment><USER4> "For someone to buy your startup you must have added some value to the world."

Not necessarily so. All it takes is the buyer or investor to believe he'll make money.

There were a lot of dot coms back in that bubble that had no business existing, yet everyone wanted to throw money at companies that added nothing to the world but paychecks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> As someone who's been regularly interviewing Stanford students and grads for internships and full-time positions, it's worth pointing out that lots of these CS students don't want to program. I've been surprised at how many of them are getting a CS education as a platform for a career in product management, or even marketing.

It makes some sense, given the makeup of the companies that are exciting to work for nowadays. I think especially if you want to join an early-stage startup, there are lots of benefits to having a technical education, even if your role isn't expressly technical.

<comment><USER6> This sentiment is identical to what I experienced interviewing and hiring Stanford CS grads, even though it was back in 2002-2005. Not all, to be sure -- one of my top-performing college hires was a Stanford CS grad! -- but it was certainly the trend. Unlike MIT grads, who were just drooling to find a good problem and required intervention to worry about things like career trajectory, etc.

I think it's more of a cultural bias from certain universities than a global economic trend in the field.

<comment><USER7> That's good to know. I've always suspected MIT students to be hard nosed technies above all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Capitalism happens? Seriously, anecdotal fresh-out-of-school salaries for talented CS people are near $100k. Anecdotal fresh-out-of-school salaries for talented English majors are near... well, they get discounted frappuchinos at any rate. This is Mr. Market saying "Thanks, I've got enough literary criticism -- can I please, please, please have more code monkeys?"

<comment><USER9> "well, they get discounted frappuchinos at any rate"

I've noted your past fixation on English majors and their lack of financial success, and not sure why you single them out. Lit crit-saddled academia and coffeeshops aren't the only path for the English major. Writing is not only a noble pursuit but a lucrative[1] one (even if you skirt the legacy publishing industry), with as much a combination of hard work and dedication to craft (and luck) as, for example, selling bingo card generators for a living, or mobile phone games, or b2b CRUD apps, or facebook farming simulators.

Aside from fiction writing, there are ad copy and marketing writers, technical writers, screen and television writers, bloggers, journos, etc. Most of those are salaried positions, not necessarily part time/contract work.

It's really not that bad out there. For the record, I've never worked at a coffeeshop :D

[1][http://www.bnet.com/blog/technology-business/will-write-e- po...](http://www.bnet.com/blog/technology-business/will-write-e-porn- for-1-million/9888)

<comment><USER10> True, but I'd wager the most lucrative forms of writing (outside the lottery win of a fiction bestseller or successfully navigating the Hollywood game) are only minimally related to the passions that drive people to major in English.

Majoring in English to write marketing copy is like majoring in CS to write soundboard Android apps. It'll help, but ...

<comment><USER11> Majoring and doing well in English develops good analytical and analysis skills. You learn to read between the lines -- it's not a trivial field of study.

Also, going to college is supposed to be about training your mind. Writing an Android app doesn't require a CS degree, but getting a CS degree instills certain habits that enable you to succeed in programming.

If you want job training, go to welding school.

<comment><USER12> Humf. I took many semesters of welding and it taught me a great deal about how the human world is bodged together at the very lowest levels. Welding as a major is as hard a science as Mechanical or Electrical engineering. Its two parts mechanical engineering, one part chemistry and one part electrical engineering. Lives almost always depend on your work, there's rigorous certifications and civil engineers treat you with almost religious respect.

I'm just sayin'.

<comment><USER13> I'm really liking this thread. Everytime someone tries to dismiss a major or course as being somehow inferior, another person chimes in with a view point that blows said dismissal out of the water.

I'm sure there are CS majors now in the workforce that just crank out their requisite number of lines each day, the work that many like to deify as an analytical blend of art and science becoming a routine drag.

And there are welders who take pride in their work and are treated with religious respect by civil engineers.

Maybe it's more about the person than the major.

<comment><USER14> CMU is big into big robots (as opposed to e.g. MIT's Randy Brooks' little robots), and in one book or article on their program one of their CS undergraduates who was "perfect" at welding stainless steel was mentioned. "I don't think we're going to let him graduate", one of his professors said in jest.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Who are we kidding. This is a symptom of the economy. There is money in software.

What does the economy of the future look like? Millions and millions of programmers. Manipulating technology is where value comes from and software is the most efficient way to manipulate technology.

I just hope we have enough robotics and computer engineering people to improve the platforms all these programmers are going to work on.

The web browser is pretty limited in its ability to improve human life. We need other platforms to target.

<comment><USER16> "improve the platforms all these programmers are going to work on"

I'm intrigued. Do you have specific ideas in mind? Do you mean like self- driving cars? Or in home helper robots? All of the above?

<comment><USER15> How about cars with software interfaces so you can download software that will assist with driving. Download driving software from an app store. Everything from red light timers to voice activated mileage calculators to self-driving apps. Little toy apps that let you take pictures of the license plates of douche-bag drivers and tweet about them, to sophisticated safety apps that apply the brakes if you're going to run someone over.

How about bathrooms with some hardware installed that controls valves on your shower, drain, toilet, sink, etc. Has some sensors: temperature, pressure, whatever. Has an exposed "reset" button that, when pushed, allows it to be connected to through WiFi. You connect on your laptop through WiFi and configure it like a router, or you give it your wifi password and configure it through an internet webapp.

You could have it do things like automatically adjust the temperature of your shower so it never goes cold. Put a limit on the temperature of the water coming out so your kids don't get burned. Tell you when the drain is getting clogged. Shut off the water when the toilet is overflowing.

Put a few hardware controls in the plumbing, expose the controls to a software interface, launch an app store and let people make apps for your toilet and shower. We need this.

Ditto for smart houses. Create little wifi plugs that you install in your light fixtures and then have a software interface that lets people write apps to control lights from your iPhone, or from a remote web interface when on vacation.

Plug a little hardware device onto your blinds that will open/close them based on a software interface. Hooks up to your wifi. Lets you program it to open with the sunrise and close at sunset, or whatever the programmer wants. Have toy apps that communicate with neighbours using morse code for $4.99 on the app store.

There is infinite potential. A wifi connection, a microprocessor, and some piece of hardware to plug everyday things into. Every single morning I wonder why someone has not invented a simple hardware unit to plug into your shower that lets you regulate the temperature. I want to have an interface on my iPhone where I set the temperature of my shower in degrees fahrenheit and then push "start" and the shower turns on and heats up to my desired temperature automatically.

<comment><USER17> Sarcasm?

<comment><USER15> No...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The same thing appears to be happening here at the University of Chicago -- increased numbers of undergraduates in the sequence as well as greatly increased Ph.D. student applications over the last couple of years. And not just money-grubbers in the undergrads as well; many refuse to interview with the previous staples for our graduates -- the finance industry here in Chicago or "big companies" such as Google and Facebook (one of them said to me during a lab, "I mean, really, PHP? Who wants to work with THAT?").

I haven't seen as many Ph.D. students from other disciplines coming through our intro sequence and regretting their current path. But, I do see quite a few juniors and seniors who only started taking CS classes as a sophomore or junior (usually because their advisor told them the classes were too hard and would make it difficult to do their Core Curriculum) and really wish they had evaluated the major earlier before they made choices that prevented them from switching majors and still graduating in four years.

<comment><USER18> _one of them said to me during a lab, "I mean, really, PHP? Who wants to work with THAT?"_

You speak as if disdain for PHP was a bad thing. I know a lot of very experienced and competent programmers who feel the same way, and it is not a slight on their competence that they do.

<comment><USER6> I apologize if it came across that way! I was impressed by their desire to work with cool tech and on interesting problems instead of being dominated by economic fear and just going wherever they were most likely to get a big payout (whether or not joining Facebook _now_ will get you a big payout is another question <grin>).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is a good sign! The general public is just realizing how important computer skills are, no matter what you are trying to do. A well rounded CS major can learn something new and apply those skills to something else. I think public schools and high schools need to start integrating and making CS/programming courses necessary just as basic math and science courses are required -- then once people reach university age, they can focus on different topics without having to take CS courses to learn the basic skills they require to approach those topics like a CS major would.

<comment><USER20> I don't think that CS should be included in a high school curriculum. Programming is a valuable skill, sure, but I don't think that it will be applicable to 95% of students. There are such a broad range of jobs in the world, and very, very few end up doing programming, despite increasing numbers for university CS course registration.

<comment><USER21> I don't think that calculus should be included in a high school curriculum. Differential modelling is a valuable skill, sure, but I don't think that it will be applicable to 95% of students. There are such a broad range of jobs in the world, and very, very few end up doing differential modelling, despite increasing numbers for university calculus course registration.

<comment><USER22> At my high school, Calc was only offered as an AP course. If I so wanted, I could stop taking math after Algebra 2 and still graduate.

<comment><USER23> Then perhaps there's ambiguity in the phrase "included in a high school curriculum." I consider calculus to have been included in my high school curriculum, but I chose to take it.

<comment><USER24> Wouldn't AP CS then satisfy such a definition of "in the curriculum" then? (Granted I know a lot of schools don't offer that class - it still exists).

<comment><USER23> Yes, per how I was using the phrase. My high school had an AP and non-AP version.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I know it's in vogue to throw the word bubble around, but I'd be interested to see the CS enrollment stats worldwide. The first generation of kids that spend more time in front of their computer than the TV are starting to hit college. More screen time is bound to create more people interested in how they can program the thing they sit in front of all day.

<comment><USER26> I kind of wish for that to happen, but for children of friends / relatives that do sit in front of the computer all day I do not see it.

The problem is that many things are taken for granted (normally) and there are lots of distractions available -- when my parents bought me my first computer (in 95) I only had games like Doom to play and no net available, and I got bored easily. Loved sitting in front of the computer, and there was nothing more interesting than learning to program it.

Kids nowadays only stay on chat/facebook/myspace all day and/or play games, which is understandable to a certain point since there's lots of stuff to do with a PC that's attractive even to non-technical people. You don't need to program it to feel good about yourself, to show off, to have some fun or to get some work done ... that's the difference between now and the nineties.

<comment><USER27> I too had my first machine at a super young age in 1994 and learned to program just the same. Our only difference was that I was still on chat/IM all day back then too, a distraction, but not as big of one as doing anything on a 25mhz Mac with a 33.6kbs modem.

What really made me learn to program was the NEED to figure out how to work the machine and network to be as fast as I could. I do doubt I'd be as interested in learning the innards on a smartphone or netbook...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I graduated in '01 with an EE degree. At that point in time, engineering, including software, seemed like a field where you were ushered down a career path towards a pigeon-holed role at a large company. The advice was to get into a) technical sales, b) product marketing, or c) consulting if you wanted to start a career towards being an entrepreneur.

Now, its much different - the technology is more empowering and much cheaper. I can build stuff, and if I can build stuff people want, its a direct path to starting a company. Constrained by my ability to build stuff, I committed myself over the last 2.5 years to focusing on becoming a better engineer.

What is interesting, is that many of my peers that I thought were done coding have come to this same conclusion. In the last 6 months I have had 3 friends - 1 a successful consultant at a big firm, 1 a successful tech salesman and a fortune 100 company, and 1 a VP of engineering at a mid-sized firm. Each of them is coding on nights and weekends now.

Why? 1) Paul Graham - 'build stuff people want' and the subsequent success of that strategy, 2) It is really hard to hire developers to build stuff, 3) Facebook, Twitter, Groupon, Zynga and other companies that used tech to change the world in insanely short periods of time.

So, from what I am seeing, its not about people gold-digging (as many comments have suggested) - its that the skill of engineering has turned from a boring career skillset into an incredibly empowering tool. I imagine many undergrads are seeing it this way too.

</comment><comment><USER29> I was a section leader for CS106A/B/X at Stanford and Eric Roberts was my undergrad adviser. I graduated in 08 and all through my 4 years, the number of students majoring in CS and taking CS106A/B/X was increasing rapidly.

Personally, I think that it's fantastic. Programming is a great skill to be exposed to even if you're not a programmer. There's no shortage of hard problems to be solved in CS and the more the merrier as far as I'm concerned.

From my experience of teaching at least 100 kids who have taken the CS106s, no one has done it for a higher salary out of college - a lot of non-CS majors take it to satisfy the Engineering GER (a requirement) and the rest take it out of interest.

<comment><USER30> I only knew Eric as a TA/grad student at Harvard (I was undergrad--this is back in the Stone Age--mid-70's), but he was already then a fantastic, enthusiastic teacher. I imagine he's only gotten better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Rinse and repeat everywhere, and we're likely to see an overabundance of computer scientists in three or four years.

Developers: may I suggest getting a second degree?

<comment><USER32> Seriously? Just because there are waves of people enrolling in an _introductory_ CS course at an extremely high-level CS school like Stamford doesn't mean that any reasonable percentage of those students will actually end up getting degrees. I'd estimate that less than 10% of the people enrolled in the intro CS course at my university ended up getting a CS degree.

Sure, there's bound to be an uptick; demand for developers is huge and all, but it's still a rigorous course of study and I think you need to be pretty driven to "get" it all. I'm not even remotely worried, because even if there were an overabundance of "computer scientists", there would still be a dearth of _good_ computer scientists.

<comment><USER31> You actually make a fair point: I forgot the difference between the UK education system (which I went through) and the US.

In the UK, you pick your entire major over a year before you ever go to university. In fact, it depends on your A-levels, so you're effectively picking your major at age 15 or 16. Whereas, of course, in the US, you have far more room to pick and choose.

Nonetheless, this uptick in interest is almost guaranteed to result in far more computer scientists. I agree that the number of good computer scientists is a fraction of that, but you'll still have far more chance of standing out from the crowd if you have a bunch of additional skills.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Can't they just accept fewer students? Seems odd to get worked up about something you directly control.

<comment><USER6> I don't think they're like CMU, which has a separate school of Computer Science you have to be admitted to in order to be a CS major. If Stanford is like the University of Chicago, the only thing stopping students from majoring in CS are the registrar-imposed limits on the number of students physically enrolled.

<comment><USER34> Stanford doesn't even have those "registrar-imposed limits." Classes almost never fill up; they just get larger rooms or add TAs. Students don't usually register for classes until after the term has started!

I was an undergrad at a more traditional school where we registered for classes months in advance. I was amazed that the Stanford system was so informal, but in practice it worked just fine. It's wonderful to be able to audit a few classes before deciding on exactly what you're going to take; you may learn that you can't stand a professor, or love a surprising subject.

<comment><USER35> Wow, as an undergrad who has endured years of stressful schedule twiddling followed by a 2-week sprint to figure out how I'm going to replace all the crap courses I naively selected months ago, that sounds like paradise.

<comment><USER36> It's not exactly paradise. Because classes are only ten weeks total (slightly less in spring), you can't exactly spend the first week or two shopping around without doing non-trivial work for every single class you're shopping --- an approach which doesn't scale, to say the least. There's still a sprint the first few days. But still, it's nice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> At my school the first 2 CS courses were always packed... in the initial weeks of courses beginning at least.

I had a professor in one of those courses once say something like this:

        Look to your left, look to your right,
        because one of you won't be here by
        the end of the year.

Both these courses were considered weed out courses. They were Java based and most majors I had heard required at least one or both of them.

$100k in San Francisco is less than $50k where I live. I rent a single bedroom, no debt in Oklahoma. My good friend lives in San Francisco, single bedroom apartment, doesn't even need a car. I take home after taxes, expenses, etc about 50% to 25% and I make almost half of what he makes. Anecdotal, yes. Maybe not typical, but it does show that cost of living is a major factor on salary.

</comment><comment><USER38> Maybe there is a more simple explanation. I speculate it is just that computers (and programming) are becoming more of a required skill in many fields. I know psychologists and MBAs who use programming to data mine. I myself am a bioinformatician and heavily use programming to answer scientific questions.

It could also be that kids are being introduced to programming at a younger and younger age. I started learning programming in my early teens, but I have a little cousin who has a Java class in her private school. She is about 8 now and can program Java better than I can...

</comment><comment><USER39> I think this is cyclical, and to be expected. I had a conversation ~2 years ago with the head of a CS Dept in Boston who was anticipating this. He explained that enrollment in his department had grown by an order of magnitude (or more) during the dot-com bubble and shrank by a similar amount after the bust. Just as Lehman et al. was occurring, he was bracing for the same thing to happen again...and here it is.

<comment><USER14> It depends. MIT has seen something quite different, EECS enrollment from at least the '80s to the dot.com crash was ~ 400 students per class of ~ 1050. Then it crashed hard down to as low as 180 and only very recently got over 200. MIT hasn't seen anything like Stanford's increase but that probably has a lot to do with the different student bodies and the very different introductory courses (e.g. they no longer have a hard introductory course suitable for non-majors).

<comment><USER14> Update: enrollment in 6.01, MIT's "CS1" course for majors, just jumped to 380 this spring from 250 last spring.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> The courses that were mentioned were all 100 level courses. Can anyone who went to Stanford(or knows the courses) comment on how technical they actually are?

It's a good sign if these are actual technical courses, but if they're just Word/Excel "programming" non-technical courses, we're just seeing a lot of people padding their resume in a bad economy.

<comment><USER41> Come on, you think a _computer science_ class at _Stanford_ is Word/Excel? Fortunately, they created a search engine that let me find the class in question: <http://www.stanford.edu/class/cs106a/> It's Java programming.

<comment><USER40> >Come on, you think a computer science class at Stanford is Word/Excel?

Intro, non-technical course? These are more common than you think. CS105(<https://agora.cs.illinois.edu/display/cs105/Course+Syllabus>) at UIUC is a course that covers exactly that(it was 101 when I went there). It's meant for non-engineering or science students to cover a general education credit. CS101(which was 105) is in C and matlab, and that covers some more techincally difficult stuff. This is meant for technical non-CS majors.

CS125 is the true intro CS course, which covers data structures, recursion, etc.

<comment><USER41> That sounds pretty sad; I wonder why that class isn't in the MIS department or something.

<comment><USER40> Keep in mind that neither 101 or 105 actually count towards a CS degree in any capacity(either major or minor), so those aren't courses that anyone getting a CS degree would take anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I'd attribute part of the increase to what I call the "Top Gun Effect."

When Top Gun (the Tom Cruise movie) came out, there was a big increase in the number of students signing up for aerospace engineering courses and programs.

The trigger doesn't have to be a movie, just something in popular culture. In this case, I think it's all the positive media around Facebook, iPhone, iPad, Kinect, Google and more (including at least one Oscar-nominated movie).

<comment><USER43> The increase in aerospace engineering was driven by the launch of the first Space Shuttle, not by Top Gun.

<comment><USER42> The launch of the first Space Shuttle happened April 12, 1981.

Top Gun, the movie, came out about _five years later_ , on May 16, 1986.

Maybe the Space Shuttle launch did cause an increase in interest in aerospace programs, and maybe it didn't. I don't know. What I do know is that Top Gun did cause an increased interest in aerospace courses and programs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> This is more likely due to a generational shift than anything.

People between the ages of ~23 and ~28 are sort of the go-betweeners with roots (and maybe even parents) in generation X but firmly planted in Generation Y. 22 and younger is firmly Generation Y, transforming into Z or whatever you want to call it. Right now, people around 18 have lived their whole life with the internet, and probably half of it with broadband.

</comment><comment><USER45> I blame "The Social Network" movie. That was the first movie that made software development look like a fun way to party, make tons of money and get hot chicks. The Palo Alto dev house pot smoking scenes and the fictional Sean Parker antics were quite amusing in that regard. That, and there's easy money in software these days.

<comment><USER14> But note that the movie came out October 1st of last year, so it could not influence the first of the three Stanford "quarters" in this academic year (summer is the 4th quarter). It very well might have had a effect but in the previous academic year they'd already almost returned to their previous enrollment peak. Plus it can't explain the sharp mid or high 70s% increase in their "CS3" course CS107, since anyone inspired by the movie would right now at best be taking the 2nd course in their sequence.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> >A 20% rate of increase is healthy and manageable.

At this rate, all of mankind will be Stanford CS students by the end of the century.

</comment><comment><USER47> not one mention of The Social Network movie or if a chunk of this influx is looking for a career at making iPhone apps?

</comment><comment><USER48> At my school, CS is the 6th most popular major (out of 135). That's a big deal, especially since we aren't necessarily a tech school (BYU). They haven't had trouble placing grads yet, but they are starting to get worried too.

Meanwhile, EE and CpE are pretty low. Definitely below the job market's demand.

<comment><USER49> What's CpE?

<comment><USER50> Computer Engineering? I think we split them this way at Utah State: Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering (systems/hardware emphasis), Computer Science (software/algorithms emphasis).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Great, that just means more gold diggers for us merchants to sell tools to.

<comment><USER52> what sorta tools you sellin, boss? :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> As technology becomes more ubiquitous, the people who understand technology will become more valuable. This is a symptom of more people knowing what the internet is than did 20 years ago.

</comment><comment><USER54> For a person considering going back to school as a non-trad student for either a BS in Computer Science or Computational Math, is this a bad time to be getting a degree in CS?

<comment><USER14> Well, be sure to e.g. factor in the terrible age discrimination in the former field (I have no knowledge of Computational Math as a career). Conventional, salaried programming careers end around age 35-40 and get totally impossible at 50 unless you can go the consultant route, specialize in one of the fields that respects gray hairs (e.g. embedded to some extent) or walk on water.

I had a friend who did that, finishing at about age 40 (and looking it due to premature gray hair). She never found a job, which is a terrible shame since she has "the spark" for programming which is rare in men and very very rare in women (she's the 3rd I've ever met in my 50 years on this earth---and as someone who until a year ago could pass for a college student my personal anecdotal data on age discrimination is rather solid).

On the other hand, if you're going to go the YC sort of route to start your own company, weight the risks of course but go for it! You'll get a mental toolbox which will do you well when you need to tackle difficult problems, and in many ways this field is like von Clausewitz's description of war, "Everything in war is simple, but the simplest thing is difficult."

As Microsoft and its competitors' history shows consistently writing software that works is harder than most people think. pg commented in one of his essays that a whole lot of the dot.com bubble era's failures were technical---well, their business model also may have had no chance, but they never got to the point of trying that. Friendster lost to Facebook if for no other reason than that for too many years they didn't solve their capacity problems which made the site painful to use.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Anyone know if the life sciences ever experiences this as part of hype for a biotech boom? I'm sure they have a constant stream of enrollment for the med industry.

<comment><USER55> I took a few life science classes in college. I would say about 80% of the class was pre-med. Only a handful were in it for a PhD/industry.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> This isn't the guy from "Best of the Best"?

</comment><comment><USER57> For anyone still saying "there is no bubble"...

<comment><USER58> There is no programmer bubble. There is a massive shortage of highly competent programmers that has very low correlation to the trend of more people taking intro CS classes.

There may be an investment bubble, but I don't think the average person taking CS106A this quarter has any idea of that beyond maybe that Facebook is a bit overvalued.

People are taking CS 106A (and B) because

* They're humanities majors that want to fulfill their engineering requirement to graduate

* Our intro CS classes are very well-regarded as fun and approachable.

* It's interesting, and people see that computers are getting more and more important.

Honestly, almost none of the people in A this quarter plan on using CS in their jobs. People in B are considering a CS major/minor and/or just enjoy CS.

People in 107 are probably going to major or minor in CS (or EE), so there will be an increase in majors, but not a huge one. Not enough to create a bubble, at least not yet

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> One of the problems that I see is that perhaps "Computer Science" is too broad. MIT has been mocked by some for having a "humanities" department, where Theater, Foreign Languages, Literature, etc., are all combined together, but given how complex the world has become in the world of computer science disciplines, I'd argue that a "Computer Science" degree is almost as broad.

Consider the different sorts of work that a CS undergraduate might pursue: Alice could become a CPU architect, working at Intel or AMD on the next micro- archtecture for the next generation of x86_64 chips. Bobby could work on creating a new secure PHP framework that makes security exposures much less likely. Candice could on writing J2EE applets for Ford. David could become a GUI engineer. Elaine could be writing the engine for an amazing new MMORPG. Frank could be working on new compiler optimizations for the Go language. Gerald could be a product manager for an amazing new consumer electronic device that's actually not derivative of other products. Hermione might be a webmaven who can create a website using Drupal, Wordpress, or what ever else is appropriate/demanded by her clients. You get the idea.

All of these require radically different preparation for a successful career, and one interesting question is where should that preparation take place? On the job? At a trade school? At an undergraduate CS program?

Some CS programs focus heavily on Java programming these days. Others still have a very heavy Systems bias (although I lament that MIT is no longer requiring undergraduates to build a CPU out of TTL chips :-). Some try to spread themselves super-thin, and have a peanut-butter coverage of all of these topics, and assume that if student needs to learn the intricacies of the Java standard libraries, they can do that on the job. Others will assume the same about what Virtual Memory is. (No kidding, I was sitting in 1st year introductory CS graduate class at MIT when a student raised her hand, and asked in lecture, "I'm sorry, what is Virtual Memory?". My jaw dropped.)

Similarly I think there's going to be a huge variety in salaries based on both the very wide range of talent available --- both in terms of quality, and their scope of training/skills/experience. If a company only wants the very best and brightest, asking for $100k/year even for a recent college graduate isn't insane. I've done phone screens for people who have been out in the industry for years, and they flubbed amazingly basic questions --- so much so that I wondered how/why their previous employers had hired them. My personal conclusion is that the market is extremely tight for certain classes of software engineers (for example, really good Linux Kernel engineers), and some companies react by hiring anyone they can get, and other companies react by holding the line, only hiring competent engineers, and paying more if that's what it takes.

</comment><comment><USER60> Who is coming in to the programs? And what are their motivations?

You can't evaluate whether this is a good or bad change based on the numbers alone. For example, the legal profession has been swamped with excess entrants and it sucks. On the other hand, programmers tend to be job-creators more than job-takers, even as employees ("intrapreneurs") so I think this is probably a good thing.

</comment><comment><USER61> I wonder what the career counseling office could contribute to the discussion?

<comment><USER62> If so, that might mark a first.</comment></comment>


The Cheapest Generation - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/09/the-cheapest-generation/309060/1/

<comment><USER2> Duplicate of <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4421897></comment>


Slack Connectivity Issues - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/SlackHQ/status/668879517922914304 <comment><USER2> "Disruption update: We are slowly letting teams back on to Slack and watching to make sure things stay stable as we do. Thank you, and sorry!"

[https://twitter.com/SlackHQ/status/668898031471865860](https://twitter.com/SlackHQ/status/668898031471865860)</comment>


Show HN: Multiplayer Programming Game for Learning to Code - <AUTHOR> http://www.codecombat.com/preview

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN, I'm one of the founders of CodeCombat and we're looking for feedback from the community regarding our minimum viable product.

We started the site because I wanted to learn to code, and the existing sites/methods (Codecademy, CodeHS, Zed Shaw's LPTHW, etc) never really clicked for me. I would try them for a while, but I always felt there was a motivation mismatch and would end up falling off the educational wagon. So we decided to put together a game that would teach people the basics of programming using game mechanics as our learning mechanism.

What we have right now is super basic, but we would be really interested to hear everyone's thoughts about how best to improve. Thanks for checking it out, and we look forward to improving and turning the site into a learning powerhouse.

</comment><comment><USER2> Can one restart a level but skip the help dialog?</comment>


You are way more likely to be killed by deer than by sharks, bears, or gators - <AUTHOR> http://www.vox.com/2016/9/24/13032272/killer-animals-deer-sharks-bears <comment><USER2> It references a study by LCB which is Latest Casino Bonuses ( [https://latestcasinobonuses.com](https://latestcasinobonuses.com) ) that's a pretty weird name for a website.

It looks like a junk website trying to drive genuine traffic by lifting quality articles from more reputable websites.</comment>


Ask HN: Can other companies post jobs on HN? - <AUTHOR>

I noticed under the jobs category that it says these are jobs from former and current ycombinator companies. Can other companies looking for good motivated programmers post jobs here as well? <comment><USER2> I don't believe that just anybody can post something that gets filed under the jobs tab. I think that's limited to YC associates, and I don't think that's likely to change (although pg could certainly change his mind).

Honestly, there's nothing stopping you from posting a job posting yourself as a normal submission, but I'm not sure that's best for the board. There's already a lot of noise on the board, and I'm not sure additional job posts are going to help that problem.

There's a "Who's Hiring?" post that happens on the first of every month, and that's probably your best bet.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I agree there is a lot of noise on the board already. I've been meaning to post a solution I thought of for it.

Ok. I'll keep an eye out for that Who's Hiring post that should go up today, right?!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> There are "Who's Hiring" threads in which you can post, if posting directly to Jobs is not allowed.

These threads happen ~monthly.

You can also post to the "Who's Hiring" threads on Quora which get good visibility.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't know why I didn't think of Quora. Good point. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3537881>

And here is February's jobs thread.</comment>


Do things that matter. - <AUTHOR> http://medium.com/better-humans/ce916b423d33

<comment><USER2> So generic. I want to hear more about the epic movement that the people sitting across from you built in months.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, thanks for the feedback! I didn't dive too deep into that story because I'd probably end up going off on a massive tangent about them instead of about the point I'm trying to make. :) They're the ballers who helped get Georgia Tech's Startup Exchange off the ground, we've had a story or two about us hit the HN frontpage before. I understand what you're saying though, cheers.</comment></comment>


Droplan: Manage iptable rules for the private interface on DigitalOcean droplets - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/tam7t/droplan/ <comment><AUTHOR> I don't know if it's well known, but the so called 'private' interfaces DO offers aren't really private. Any other machine in the same datacenter can access your services.

So if you have a redis/mongo/... server listening in your 'private' network, I'd suggest you secure your internal services using a firewall (and droplan is a pretty simple tool to do so automatically)

</comment><comment><USER2> Have you considered using ipset so that rules don't have to change and ip's can by dynamically added/removed?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hadn't heard of ipset before, but yeah, that seems to be a cleaner way to do this. Maybe open a feature request?

From what I can tell, there are still a few minor details to be etched out in droplan (e.g. running as background service to avoid rewriting the rules every time, ...), but it seems to do its job reasonably well (been using it for roughly two months now

I'm not affiliated with the project (I only did a PR once involving the Dockerfile).</comment></comment>


How Airline Pilots Lost the Basic Skills - <AUTHOR> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/richie-davidson/how-airline-pilots-lost-the-basic-skills_b_9415270.html <comment><USER3> I was lucky enough to have a father as a pilot who paid for me to get my private pilots license. Despite the exorbitant price tag, I look back on that education as immensely and uniquely beneficial to my development.

As per his demands, I would complete a solo circuit* in an airplane before I drove a car solo. It didn't help that the airport I was learning was nestled in a tight mountain valley and notorious for it's shifty winds. The best lesson I learned was one of immense personal responsibility. It didn't matter what caused the accident if you ended up dead. That kind of responsibility-at- all-costs mentality has stuck with me to this day. Don't put yourself in a position where something or someone else can cause you to suffer. Check that the fuel attendant put the right amount of fuel you asked for in your airplane. Check that the mechanic wired the flight controls correctly. Check that the weather forecast is rational. The meteorologist isn't going to climb into your airplane and fly into that region-- you are.

This holds true for every part of my life. I don't follow cars close enough so that I depend on their judgement.

If you've got the money, I strongly recommend anyone to get their wings. It's the best education I've ever received.

* American pilots will know this as a 'pattern': takeoff, loop around the airport and immediately land. The shortest complete flight possible.

<comment><USER4> Your diligence was not unwarranted. Before anybody runs out to _get their wings_ , realize that general aviation is quite dangerous. Here are two links that use similar math to arrive at the same 20x-more-dangerous-than-driving figure:

[http://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/198/how- dangerou...](http://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/198/how-dangerous-is- flying-in-a-single-engine-plane)

[http://philip.greenspun.com/flying/safety](http://philip.greenspun.com/flying/safety)

<comment><AUTHOR> "flying is no more than 10 times as dangerous per mile of travel."

That may sound like flying is considerably more dangerous than driving, but this is an overall statistic. Most GA accidents happen because the pilot did something stupid like taking off without enough fuel, or flying into weather they weren't equipped to handle. So if you avoid doing stupid things, you can stack the odds considerably in your favor. The risk of flying can be comparable to the risk of driving.

<comment><USER5> That's true, but not particularly actionable. "Avoid doing stupid things" isn't something you can just decide to do directly. It's a good goal, but you need to find more specific ways to achieve that goal.

There are long established ways to reduce the incidence of stupidity. Always using checklists, always getting a weather brief, establishing personal minimums, etc. Of course, all of this will be covered as a standard part of any flying safety course.

IMO just saying "avoid doing stupid things" is dangerous. It's too easy to take that advice and say, well, I'm obviously not stupid, so I'm safe. And then you fly into a thunderstorm or stall while turning final or forget to connect a control surface, because avoiding stupidity has little if anything to do with being smart.

You can definitely stack the odds heavily in your favor, but it takes a lot of effort.

<comment><AUTHOR> I didn't mean to imply that not doing stupid things is easy, merely that it's possible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Many airlines have policies against hand-flying the airplane. Like the discussion with self-driving cars; the computer is much safer overall to fly than a human pilot. However, the failure modes of the computer don't resemble the failure modes of the human pilot.

Since human pilots (on commercial flights) are either discouraged or prohibited from actually flying (for legitimate safety reasons), when the computer does experience a failure, the human is unskilled to take over. Yet, ironically, it appears that if we encouraged the human pilots to hand fly more, the accident rate would probably increase.

<comment><USER7> That's why the situation with computer-driven cars right now is so strange to me. Even if they're not free of flaws yet, they seem demonstrably much better drivers than humans already, because humans are so bad at it. But everything seems to be proceeding very slowly and cautiously, even though the number casualties from accidents warrants the opposite.

<comment><USER5> I think it's to avoid spooking the public.

Imagine if self-driving cars were at a point where they were 10% better (in terms of fatalities caused) than human drivers. You start flooding the roads with them, and fatalities decrease.

Then the news stories start. "Mother of Four Killed by Self-Driving Car." Video of the grieving children. News shows host "experts" who go on at length about the deficits in computer judgment. The family sues, with their lawyer saying that this death would not have happened with a human at the controls. (And he might be right! Even if better than humans, computers will probably get into _different_ accidents, not just fewer.) Restrictive regulations or even bans start being discussed in Congress.

Maybe it wouldn't happen this way, but it could potentially set things back by years. Looking at the technology, pushing for early adoption might save lives. But looking at the politics, pushing too hard could cost lives, by making people unwilling to accept the technology.

<comment><USER8> There's a lot required before they're ready in any case. (How much probably depends a fair bit on where and under what circumstances they're allowed to be on full auto-pilot.) But you're absolutely right on your basic point. And even if they're safer than humans overall, if they have a tendency (even if rarely) to get into serious accidents in which they self-evidently did something dumb (from a human's perspective), that would be a big issue.

<comment><USER5> It's interesting to imagine an extreme case. Imagine if self-driving cars were absolutely perfect drivers, except every 100 billion miles the car accelerates to top speed and then drives straight into a bridge support.

Such a car would be immensely safer than what we have now. Would people willingly ride in one?

I think I'm pretty good at rationally weighing the risks, but just imagining this still gives me the willies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> What the heck did "Emotionally distraught family members grasped at resolution while the pilots of the crash on the Hudson supported solutions founded in myth" mean? Perhaps this author should spend less time flying planes and more time learning how to write.

<comment><USER10> Making "the crash on the Hudson" a link would've helped a lot. I guess for that the article's main audience, aviators and aviation bureaucrats, this is well known?

<comment><USER11> I thought this was pretty well known [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_Airways_Flight_1549](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_Airways_Flight_1549)

<comment><USER12> I knew what crash he was referring to and even so, his statement made no sense to me because he didn't really explain what he was saying at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> In many ways the weekend warrior that flies his Cessna 172 around for fun is probably a better pilot that a lot of guys flying the big jets. One hand flies everything the other mostly just kicks on the autopilot and sits back.

There are certainly airline pilots that still have a passion for aviation... some even still teach in their down time, but it's increasingly uncommon. Too many don't do enough 'real' flying anymore. They're mostly just sitting up front to make sure the autopilot doesn't screw up... and sadly accident data shows when the autopilot does screw up the pilot forgets what to do (see accident reports where the autopilot stalls the plane and pilots forget basic stall recovery procedures).

<comment><USER14> If you honestly believe ATPs "kick on the autopilot and sit back" you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Note that the author is an "airport owner". So he has a direct interest in more general aviation.

Airline pilots today rarely fly light aircraft recreationally because they can't afford to. Airline pilots are paid much less than they used to be.[1] Regional airline pilots make $30K - $60K. Some bus drivers are paid more. Only senior pilots of major airlines break $100K today. Also, in the US, pilots usually have to pay for their own training.

As for "losing the basic skills", the author doesn't mention the best known example - the crash of Asiana Airlines Flight 214 at SFO. The pilots had to make a manual landing in clear weather, instead of using autoland, and they undershot the runway. Some of that was a lack of manual piloting skills, and some of that was mode trouble with cockpit automation. (This is a huge issue. Read crash reports, and all too often part of the problem was something being in the wrong mode.) On the other hand, the "miracle on the Hudson" of US Airways Flight 1549, which he does mention, was a triumph of automatic control - once the pilot decided to land on the river, the Airbus control system did a very good job of providing a smooth descent.[2]

[1] [http://thetruthabouttheprofession.weebly.com/professional- pi...](http://thetruthabouttheprofession.weebly.com/professional-pilot- salaries.html) [2] [http://www.amazon.com/Fly-Wire-Geese-Miracle- Hudson/dp/03126...](http://www.amazon.com/Fly-Wire-Geese-Miracle- Hudson/dp/031265538X)

<comment><USER14> > _Also, in the US, pilots usually have to pay for their own training._

This is half true. If you're in HS and you want to get a job as a commercial pilot (ATP) right out of the gate, yes you will need to pay for your flight training.

However, the _vast_ majority of ATPs received their flight training in the military, for which they obviously did not have to pay. Part of this is the sheer number of hours you need to even apply for ATP jobs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I have a huge fear of flying (that seems to be increasing), and it's beginning to affect my life. For example, I have the opportunity to go to Portland for a conference at the end of the month but I am convincing myself not to go because I don't know if I can handle a two 6 hour flights in a span of 2 days. I literally have another tab open on delta.com with flights that I _should_ book, but it's more likely that I won't.

I have a doctor who has prescribed me Xanax strictly for flying, in which case I take a lot and it sort of just knocks me out. The problem however is that roughly three weeks out, if I know I have a flight, I will start to really stress, obsess about the upcoming flight, have difficulty sleeping, etc... And like most of us here on HN, I consider myself a logical person who understands the safety of flying, the statistics and the likelihood of events, yadda yadda, but it doesn't change the fact that for me, I feel _extremely_ uncomfortable flying. I don't know whether it's the lack of control or the anonymity of whoever is in the cockpit, but sitting on a commercial jet coincides with me feeling panic.

<comment><AUTHOR> FWIW, commercial airliners are actually incredibly safe. The most dangerous part of flying on a commercial flight is driving to and from the airport.

<comment><USER5> "...I consider myself a logical person who understands the safety of flying, the statistics and the likelihood of events..."

They know. Sometimes that knowledge just doesn't help.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> What the author specifies in the article all makes sense. There's one important thing missing, however- any evidence to support his argument.

I didn't see a single data point that indicates that commercial aircraft are less safe than they were at any previous point in time. With more flights taking off now than 40 years ago and avoidable crashes occurring due to pilot error being few and far between, this seems like nothing more than a guy with an opinion pontificating on a blog as he gazes out his window.

<comment><USER17> Right; and the biggest high-profile accidents in the last decade have been caused when the complexity of the automation overwhelmed the pilots and caused them to make bad decisions because they did not know if they could trust the values the computer was giving them.

Basic flying skills won't help you fix that -- if you're over the middle of the ocean at night at altitude in the middle of a storm with strong updrafts and your instruments are giving you strange readings, it can be really hard to "feel" whether you're actually in a stall. Especially if your airspeed indicators had been acting up earlier in the flight, so you knew you couldn't trust that reading. It's ultimately an interface design problem: with new control systems, it's not always apparent what interface will be required in every edge case.

But ultimately, you're right. Flying is so safe now that major commercial airline accidents require 5 or 6 cascading failures in many different parts of the system (maintenance, design, security, pilots, ATC, etc) to occur. Even in the accidents I mention above there were other failures that happened outside the plane: the plane wasn't de-iced properly, or ATC routed them through a storm they really shouldn't have.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> These threads come up often in various news aggregation sites, and I feel that the comments tend to overflow with people that have no commercial flying experience stating things like, "commercial pilots don't do REAL flying like small aircraft pilots do, they just turn on the autopilot and watch."

This is only true in the sense that there is less hands-on-the-flight-controls time. Flying a large commercial aircraft is actually very difficult - <USER2> difficult, in fact, that the menial tasks like physically handling the controls can be better delegated to an autopilot most of the time. The control of the aircraft has been abstracted out into much higher-level management of systems. It's more like the manager who has one eye on where the company is headed and one eye on what tasks his employees are completing, and it is his responsibility to make sure those things match.

I try to explain this relationship to my friends by likening the autopilot to something more like cruise control in the car: when you turn on cruise control, it allows you to take your foot off the gas pedal, but by no means does it mean you aren't actively managing the safe outcome of the trip; it's just a different tool. Sure, autopilots are more complex than cruise control, but that doesn't adulterate my main point.

Don't get me wrong, it has always been a struggle to make sure that pilots of large aircraft get enough stick time and emergency training; you have to fit recurrent training into an already very busy schedule and spend lots of money on expensive simulators. That being said, the FAA (USA) regulates pretty heavily how much and exactly what types of recurrent training is necessary to maintain your position, and stall recovery is one of them.

This statement: "many pilots struggle to perform the most basic and critical maneuver, a stall recovery" seems like pure applesauce, and if they want to back that up with some better data about how that has changed over time and how it has affected airline safety over the years, I'd love to see it. We are in a relatively safe period of airline travel, and I believe we will continue to be.. [http://www.cnn.com/interactive/2014/07/travel/aviation- data/](http://www.cnn.com/interactive/2014/07/travel/aviation-data/)

</comment><comment><USER19> Myabe i was just paranoid, but i quit flying private after about 1000 hours because of the ever present opportunity to make a mistake and have the FAA come down on me. A private pilot is under the bloodshot eye of the FAA from the time he sets foot on the airport to when he leaves it.

</comment><comment><USER20> The enforcement focus for the FAA seems to be changing, though. The new FAA administrator has stated that they will move from the punishment-focused enforcement to a "standards compliance" focus, where education and training can be a more effective tool than just enforcement. Seems like a promising change.

See e.g. [http://www.ainonline.com/aviation-news/business- aviation/201...](http://www.ainonline.com/aviation-news/business- aviation/2015-08-06/huerta-new-faa-enforcement-policy-big-big-change)

</comment><comment><USER21> > A decade later, many pilots struggle to perform the most basic and critical > maneuver, a stall recovery, and ...

I just flat out don't believe that modern airline pilots have more trouble with stall recovery than pilots of earlier years.

Now I might be wrong, I'm just a layperson here, but my understanding is that airline pilots _have_ to practice stall recovery in flight simulators. A flight simulator can't be 100% accurate to a real aircraft's behavior in a real stall, but my impression is that modern flight simulators are quite realistic.

<comment><AUTHOR> Most of the emergency training that jet pilots go through are system failures -- engine failures, fires, and whatnot. Also, a stall in a sim is a very different experience than a stall in a real plane because in the back of your mind you know that your life is not on the line in a sim. That emotional factor can make a big difference when you have to recover from an unintended stall in a real airplane.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> >However, what if you were a passenger on a commercial jetliner that had run out of gas?

Probably a reference to the Gimli Glider. Airliner ran out of fuel and the pilot used his general aviation background to forward slip it on to an auto race track.

* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimli_Glider](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimli_Glider)</comment>


8,760 Hours: How to get the most out of next year - <AUTHOR> https://alexvermeer.com/8760hours/ <comment><USER2> This is good. Especially this:

> A review of your "ideal you," your ideal future, your major goals and > desires in life.

One 'problem' with many task management methods is that when you slip (which most of us do) there's an aversion to opening up your Wunderlist/Excel/moleskin months later and seeing how far your current self is behind your aspirational self.

Task managers are good at atomizing goals into objectives but overlook motivations and outcomes. They lack a _' remind me again what's in it for future-me?'_ feature.

I'm currently attempting to code such a feature into my app. By way of example, take learning French as a goal:

* Tasks: the usual list of todos. Go to evening classes; Watch 5 hours of TV5Monde each week. etc.

* Resources: links to Youtube videos, uploaded language podcasts, communities on the web.

* Inspiration: images of French cities you want to visit, scenes from a favorite French film, quotes, a mini journal-entry about that French girl or guy you met that one time. Snippets of things the French-speaking-you will appreciate.

* Insights: how much time you're dedicating to the goal, hours already spent and estimated completion date based on your current rate of productivity.

So your task manager serves not only as a checklist but also as a control-room (or if you like, moodboard) for that goal. Tasks, tools, motivation and a feedback loop all in one place.

<comment><USER3> Take a look at Beeminder [1] Each goal includes an open text "fine print" where can put anything like what you describe above.

[1] [https://www.beeminder.com/](https://www.beeminder.com/)

<comment><USER4> Thank you so much for that plug! The author of the article, alexvermeer, is also a longtime Beeminder fan! See [https://alexvermeer.com/beeminder/](https://alexvermeer.com/beeminder/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm trying a new approach for 2017: personal goals, made public [1].

A public GitHub repo where my goals are recorded as issues and accomplishments are closed tickets. I've created milestones for each year (e.g. 2016, 2017) to track my progress. I've backdated some of my 2016 acheivements to get a feel for how it will work.

I hope that writing down my aspirations for the year ahead will help me fulfil them.

[1] [https://github.com/slashdotdash/personal- goals](https://github.com/slashdotdash/personal-goals)

<comment><USER6> I don't mean to be a Debbie Downer, but you should watch this TED talk about publishing goals: [https://www.ted.com/talks/derek_sivers_keep_your_goals_to_yo...](https://www.ted.com/talks/derek_sivers_keep_your_goals_to_yourself) The TLDR is "people who talk about their ambitions may be less likely to achieve them." As with many TED talks, the message is thought-provoking but not guaranteed to be based on solid science.

In any case, best of luck. I hope you achieve your goals -- but please don't interpret this encouragement as false social reality.

<comment><USER7> I've found that using one of Sivers' alternate approaches - "I'm going to do x and please kick my ass if I don't" \- works remarkably well. Of course you need to choose people who actually _will_ kick your ass, otherwise you start figuring out who amongst your network will let you slide and tell only them, defeating the purpose of the exercise.

<comment><USER8> "kick my ass" can also be translated to a major monetary penalty - Steve Kamb tells us about his friend who bet $500 to his friends if he didn't lose weight

<comment><USER9> stickk .com

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Sorry for the potato server everyone. Will fix asap.

Alternate download link: [https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PaeRjVqAN7MngxTXFPQkpLVj...](https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PaeRjVqAN7MngxTXFPQkpLVjg)

<comment><USER11> Do you have a text version of this? The PDF is nice, but a single-column webpage is way easier to read. Thanks.

<comment><USER12> Quick run through pdftotext and minor cleanup: [http://pastebin.com/raw/V7FaFS0Q](http://pastebin.com/raw/V7FaFS0Q)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I don't follow any specific goals or planning but I have come to realise the value of their intended purpose. I think many people — as did I — see these lists as overburdening. But, the more I have worked towards creating or accomplishing something the more I have realised how many things are under realm of attainment with a little push. These small accomplishments make you more confident and happier.

Earlier, I lacked focus to read a book without fiddling around my phone and managing only a few pages in a spurt. Few months back, I pushed myself to concentrate and try to finish even if my mind pushed me towards just checking HN / Reddit. I managed to finish four in a month which is not a bad considering that earlier figure was one. I didn't lose any hours of my happier life but spent some in being more knowledgable.

<comment><USER14> Even without the knowledge, I find intrinsic value in training yourself to focus. Also find it helps to focus on how the activity is enriching myself, or future benefit. I might want to leave a sink full of dishes overnight, but if I do them now I frame it as a gift to my future self and the amount of relief I feel having tied up loose ends like this each day is enormous. The more I do it, the better and more efficient the habit becomes, the less time it takes.

There is more resistance to get started because of inertia but once I get going that inertia works in my favor.

<comment><USER15> I find that thinking about things I have to do is much less enjoyable than actually doing those things. It's definitely true that the more often you convince yourself to just get up and at 'em the easier it is to overcome those mental hurdles in the future.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Slow as molasses here, so archive.org link:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20161221130952/https://alexverme...](https://web.archive.org/web/20161221130952/https://alexvermeer.com/8760hours/)

Also, perhaps a (2012) in the title?

Edit: my bad, there's a 2016 update:

[https://alexvermeer.com/8760hours-v2-update- announce/](https://alexvermeer.com/8760hours-v2-update-announce/)

</comment><comment><USER17> I think I'm just going to enjoy it and do my best not to count the number of hours in it. I imagine I'll probably get some stuff done though.

</comment><comment><USER18> I remember a classic breakdown of 7 areas of life which has in a few places when reading about goals etc: Career, Family, Financial, Mental, Physical, Social, Spiritual. These aren't terrible decent, but I think Alex's breakdown is much better for sparking useful thought:

• Values & Purpose • Contribution & Impact • Location & Tangibles • Money & Finances • Career & Work • Health & Fitness • Education & Skill Development • Social Life & Relationships • Emotions & Well-Being • Character & Integrity • Productivity & Organization • Adventure & Creativity

I actually liked these so much that I integrated them right into the yearly review section of the productivity app I run, Complice ([https://complice.co/](https://complice.co/)). The app is subscription-based, but you can use the yearly review without paying :)

To get to the yearly review, make an account then go to [https://complice.co/YOUR_USERNAME_GOES_HERE/reviews/2016/yea...](https://complice.co/YOUR_USERNAME_GOES_HERE/reviews/2016/yearly)

<comment><USER19> The actual model is [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits)

Almost all these self-help "how to do X" guides focus exclusively on Conscientiousness. Yeah, they all pay lip service to "relationships" but it gets the same treatment as "bigger car": work! work! work! daily goal!

> • Values & Purpose • Contribution & Impact • Location & Tangibles • Money & > Finances • Career & Work • Health & Fitness • Education & Skill Development > • Social Life & Relationships • Emotions & Well-Being • Character & > Integrity • Productivity & Organization • Adventure & Creativity

That list is absurd. If you're unhappy enough with your life to turn it into a 24-point daily checklist you need a vacation and possibly treatment for depression. If you think that's not it, here's some advice:

Get "Values & Purpose" straight and everything else will follow.

<comment><USER18> There is something important to be said about the effect of having a really clear sense of purpose. I think this is seriously underrated.

But I think it's also the case that part of how we discover purposes to orient towards is thinking about areas of our lives and envisioning how they could be different.

(Also I'm not sure why you're comparing the Big Five list with these lists)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Is it really necessary to manage your life like a software project at a big co. Would it be possible to come up with something less intimidating and practical like

'do 10 pomodoros/day for 1 month'.

<comment><USER3> After a couple of weeks it is useful to have some context in writing: why did i set up the goal, what am I trying to achieve?

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> This hyperproductivity might only be advisable in small doses and only when one is young (under 30 if not under 25) Then it has a small chance of leading to some "greater" utilitarian good (ie you become next Elon Musk)

As I get older I realize how little time I have left. There are myriad of things I will never get to do no matter how hyper organized I get.

The worst realization is that there is no real time to master something new when you are older past the age of 40. You can fake it by setting lower goalposts but that feels deeply unsatisfactory.

Only solution is to enjoy the present (family, friends, my existing skills, a good book, a game, etc) as there is no real success in the end (the pieces all go in the same box).

</comment><comment><USER22> Direct pdf link:

[https://alexvermeer.com/wp- content/uploads/8760-hours-v2.pdf](https://alexvermeer.com/wp- content/uploads/8760-hours-v2.pdf)

<comment><USER23> Alternative PDF link:

[https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B-A14CtANtmIX3ZCQmFvVW5neU...](https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B-A14CtANtmIX3ZCQmFvVW5neUk)

<comment><USER24> thank you

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> This guy's guide on Anki (Anki Essentials) changed my life

<comment><USER26> Will be nice if you can give a glimpse of your experience.

<comment><USER25> Anki (and spaced repetition in general) is an amazing tool enabling you to learn more in less time. The problem is that the learning curve is quite steep. Alex's manual holds your hand up the learning curve with clear instructions and practical advice.

I tried maybe two or three times prior to integrate Anki into my flow. It wasn't until I worked through this booklet that it finally clicked.

<comment><USER26> Thanks for the reply!

I am going to give it a sincere try.. Hope I can find some grip in climbing anything that is steep (whether its Anki itself or my other goals).. I guess motivation in itself is another trainable skill..

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I think a good goal would be to do one thing that you are really proud of per year. Much better than trying to be busy every second.

</comment><comment><USER28> I wish I produced content which made my website die, but I also would never want that to happen to me. I can't understand why everyone doesn't just run an S3 static website for most of these personal websites/blogs.

And then I remember almost every tool/plugin/theme/etc. is for wordpress and I think "Oh man, must be nice..."

Always a tradeoff.

</comment><comment><USER29> I keep getting Database Error.

<comment><USER30> Actually it worked for 10 minutes or so. I kept trying and made through it :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Any plans for an ebook version? The older I get the more I find the PDF a frustrating reading experience (especially on mobile).

<comment><USER10> Yes to plans, though not before 2017.

<comment><USER31> Appreciated. Really enjoy the walkthrough.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> And an article about why it's all bullshit. Posted the same day. How ironic.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13235654](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13235654)

</comment><comment><USER33> I get database error when I try to visit the page.

<comment><USER19> At least you'll have an excuse :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> How should some one get the most of anything?

<comment><USER35> Ask a lot and then decrease

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I am not my achievements. I am not my goals. I shall smell the roses and enjoy the process and struggle without lust for result. Namaste, mofos!!!

</comment><comment><USER37> Especially during the festive season one should remember that productivity is not everything. The Guardian has a good write-up:

Why time management is ruining our lives

[https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/dec/22/why- time-...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/dec/22/why-time- management-is-ruining-our-lives)

<comment><USER38> Thanks for sharing that, I hadn't read it before. As an engineer just getting started with my life and career I've been struggling with the sorts of concerns in that article. It was good to read something that was sympathetic to my worries.

That said, the article doesn't really provide answers. It merely points out what maybe should have been obvious: excessive time management is excessive. It's true that productivity for the sake of productivity is a poor goal. However, suppose that with your increased productivity you are able to enrich not your life, but the lives of others. Then you are faced with the choice of working harder or letting others down. It's easy to say that taking a trip to another country for the sole purpose of filling your Instagram is just masturbatory (which might not be a bad thing!). A more difficult question might be whether it's worth taking such a trip to do charity work during a holiday that you would ordinarily spend with your family. The trade-offs between helping strangers vs letting down your family and between getting some rest vs using your time off well are complex.

At this point I am rambling. The shortest answer I have right now is the same, vague answer I have for similar complex things: operate in moderation and things will work themselves out. Finding exactly what the appropriate balance is will probably be a life long struggle.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to Startup a New Country? - user-on1 <comment><AUTHOR> Option A:

1) Find a piece of land nobody wants or has claimed yet 2) Design a flag 3) Erect a flagpole

Option B:

1) Muster an army 2) Claim a piece of land 3) Defend it

<comment><USER2> Option A often leads to Option B

For instance, some guys tried to colonize an island that was just around sea level in the south pacific. The king of the next island over found out about it and sent some big guys over to beat them up.</comment></comment>


Facebook abandons Aquila, its internet drone - <AUTHOR> https://code.facebook.com/posts/190457848334738 <comment><USER2> Thank you for changing the title, as I really cannot believe how deeply they buried that admission.

> Given these developments, we've decided not to design or build our own > aircraft any longer, and to close our facility in Bridgwater.

It's literally one sentence, five paragraphs down, with a few more paragraphs afterwards.

<comment><USER3> To distill the meaning further:

>Making an airplane happened to be harder than running a clickfarm

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I had to read this whole thing twice to find what it is all about.

A lot of self-congratulatory corporate speak there. I wish companies could just clearly state what is going on sometimes. Then I'm not surprised, this is Facebook...

<comment><USER5> I would be surprised if there wasn't corporate speak about it.

Honestly, if you were running the corporation would you just boil it down to "We stopped building our Internet airplane thingy. Sorry y'all" ?

<comment><USER6> There is plenty of honest closure notices, generally along the lines of "lessons learned", "goodbye", and such.

<comment><USER7> Or an honest post-mortem that explains the shortcomings of the proposed aircraft concept: design, aerodynamics, autonomous stationkeeping, RF comms, logistics, or whatever.

The current trend of publishing positive results but completely hiding negative results is deeply harming to research and engineering, since it doesn't allow future attempts to learn from previous mistakes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Hah. The actual title, "High altitude connectivity: the next chapter" and the admission that the project is actually _shutting down_ remind me of Google's corp-speak drenched blog post about Google Fiber, "Advancing our amazing bet": [https://fiber.googleblog.com/2016/10/advancing-our- amazing-b...](https://fiber.googleblog.com/2016/10/advancing-our-amazing- bet.html?m=1)

<comment><USER9> haha - right out of the Veridian Dynamics playbook :)

edit: see also - Jabberwocky [http://www.veridian- dynamics.org/jabberwocky.php](http://www.veridian- dynamics.org/jabberwocky.php)

<comment><USER10> Thanks for the link. I like their disclaimer:

>Here at Veridian Dynamics, we care about you. That's why, by visiting this site, you agree to suspend all of your rights. Because we care.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The bridgwater team was based around the acquisition of a consultancy company 4 years ago:

[https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/mar/28/facebook-...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/mar/28/facebook- buys-uk-maker-solar-powered-drones-internet)

I can't find the exact story, but wasn't there some recent news that they were mostly abandoning Free Basics/Internet.org? From what I can tell Free Basics seems to have been mostly a failure.

<comment><USER12> It was overly obvious capitalist "altruism washing". If they had just come out to say directly that they wanted to provide free internet so that they could monopolize emerging undeveloped markets it might have been better received.

<comment><USER13> __*if they had just offered bags of cash to local politicians in exchange for access to their constituents (like the US), this would 've been a raging success.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I helped them in some of their achievements mentioned there.

The amount of organizational ADD was staggering.

They could actually achieve things when they focused long enough to finish them, which was pretty rare.

They are kind of crazy people.

But they do have a lot of money to play with.

<comment><USER15> What could they have done better?

<comment><USER14> They are sort of a skunkworks lab. So it's natural to abandon lots of ideas after a short time.

Trouble is that they even abandon their wild ideas that _work_.

Everyone involved felt like all the middle managers were on a mission to impress Zuck and not much else.

<comment><USER15> What did we all do before middle managers were invented?

New skunkworks project:

 _Create new org role (and matching business school curriculum) for communication and synthesis, rather than hierarchical packet filtering._

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Anyone know how Project Loon is doing? It's been awhile since I've heard anything.

[https://x.company/loon/](https://x.company/loon/)

It seemed similar.

<comment><USER17> If Musk launches his satellite data mesh, would loon still have a place?

<comment><USER18> With current designs, Musks satellies need special ground stations to communicate with. They can't beam internet direct to your phone.

Loon _can_ connect direct to your phone.

Both will require a fairly decent set of base stations so the balloon/satellite itself can connect to the internet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I skimmed over that post. I had to go through it twice to see where they actually were admitting defeat. Was buried in the middle of the second to last paragraph.

</comment><comment><USER20> Seems rational. I would not count on fb being abke to compete with fulltime airplane design companies when they started focusing on it. Fb instigated the market, others who are more capable are picking it up, so fb handed over the batton.

<comment><USER21> how often does a company build entire research and development facilities and lobby regulators and be the first movers... just to instigate a market? If competition is the problem they're not even acquiring a single company? And if it's just insufficient tech instead of worry over competition, Facebook usually has no problem acquiring what it can't develop. They even acquired oculus to step into VR. It would appear that there's more to it than just that.

<comment><USER22> They didn't want to make an Internet drone. They wanted to make a Facebook drone. When Facebook Internet.org failed, this was sure to follow.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> There is no mention of low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellite providers - SpaceX, OneWeb, Telesat, etc.

SpaceX in particular promises gigabit speeds with minimal (sub 35ms) latency and global coverage within a decade. Perhaps HAPS systems may play a minor role in providing coverage in developing areas, but will likely be leapfrogged by satellite coverage.

<comment><USER24> Facebook might still be salty with the Falcon 9's rapid unscheduled disassembly on the pad with their communications satellite onboard.

"Facebook has expressed disappointment in the loss of its Amos-6 communication satellite. The satellite was supposed to deliver broadband internet access to remote locations in Africa as part of the internet.org initiative. Facebook and satellite provider Eutelsat spent $95 million to license satellite's Ka- band communications array for five years. The satellite is owned by Israel- based Spacecom."

[https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/234845-spacex- falcon-9-e...](https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/234845-spacex- falcon-9-explodes-on-launch-pad-destroying-facebook-communication-satellite)

<comment><USER25> Would launch insurance cover this? I know it exists but I'm not familiar with how it works so maybe someone can correct me.

<comment><USER24> Insurance did cover the loss, but by its marine cargo policy, not the launch insurance.

That of course doesn't cover the opportunity cost of Facebook not having its satellite in orbit.

[https://mobile.twitter.com/pbdes/status/771410879770456064](https://mobile.twitter.com/pbdes/status/771410879770456064)

[https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/18011/was- amos-6-i...](https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/18011/was- amos-6-insured-for-pre-launch-operations)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Now please let's do the same for Wired (and similar) - who not just present you with an opt-out tool designed to maximize the number of clicks you have to do, but they even admit _in the tool_ that half of their partners are not even possible to opt-out of.

</comment><comment><USER27> This is definitely an instance of burying the lead. Perhaps the audience isn't HN, rather it's the engineers they want to keep engaged after their project got sacked.

<comment><USER28> > This is definitely an instance of burying the lead. Perhaps the audience > isn't HN, rather it's the engineers they want to keep engaged after their > project got sacked.

As an engineer, having to parse a bunch of corpspeak to extract the buried lede that my project was canned is _not_ going to keep me engaged. If they want to keep people engaged, they need to be clear and upfront about what's happening now _and_ what's happening _next_.

I worked at a company that hid a layoff announcement in a self-congratulatory email about positive quarterly financial results. I wasn't personally laid off, but communicating in that way lowered my opinion of the executive management.

<comment><USER27> Good point. There's a fine line between a pep talk and losing credibility.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Do Facebook have any patents on HAPS technology? If so, are they going to make a patent grant so anyone else can use them?

</comment><comment><USER30> wow... what happened to hacker ethos? Facebook has hired the executive BSers who are expert at buryieng actual news in a single line deep in the pile of executive bullshitting. For me that's the real news here than closing down Aquila.

<comment><USER30> Here is the post on AirBus partnership by same guy. Again virtually information-less and 99% full of corp-speak. Can't believe such a corporate suit is FB's director of engineering of all things. Is Zuck finally not recognizing talent anymore?

[https://code.facebook.com/posts/2265698886989780/facebook- an...](https://code.facebook.com/posts/2265698886989780/facebook-and-airbus- working-together-to-advance-high-altitude-connectivity/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Iridium has finished launching their Low Earth Orbit satellite system using SpaceX's Falcon 9 [http://www.spacex.com/news/2018/05/22/iridium-6grace-fo- miss...](http://www.spacex.com/news/2018/05/22/iridium-6grace-fo-mission)

<comment><USER32> It's not finished yet and Iridium will never be cheap enough for the developing world.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Does anyone know why opting aircrafts instead of satellites ?

<comment><USER34> Because satellite internet already exists and apparently didn't fully solve the problem.

Better satellite internet would help. But the best way to do that is to fly the satellites lower, which means you need a lot more of them. Unless you happen to own the cheapest space launch service on the market that's hard to do, so only Elon Musk is really pursuing that path.

Aircraft on the other hand are kind of like really close satellites that are cheap to refuel. Satellites (that aren't geostationary) are all or nothing: you either cover the entire globe or it isn't very useful. Other aircraft are easy to keep over one select area

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Somewhere the Eye of Zauron is watching...

</comment><comment><USER36> Possible fallout from Brexit. Not much point in global companies setting up shop in the UK these days.

<comment><USER37> Really? How did you come to that conclusion?

<comment><USER38> Because the country has humiliated itself on the world stage, proved to be run by a scabby band of self interested morons and half populated by backwards facing gullable isolationists, willing to burn 50 years of hard won progress and risk destablishing Europe, just at the point where we face huge global environmental and economic challenges, at a time when it's clear that working togther is of paramount importance.

Just a guess :)

<comment><USER39> Yea, the USA is in bad shape now, but I think the OP was talking about the UK. ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Why using aircrafts instead of satellite?

</comment><comment><USER33> Why not satellites instead of aircrafts?</comment>


thatsmymouse.com - Social browsing - <AUTHOR> http://thatsmymouse.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi All,

I launched thatsmymouse.com this morning. Mashable posted a very positive review; <http://mashable.com/2008/01/31/thatsmymouse/>

I read news.yc everyday (or all day as the case may be), so if you have any questions feel free to post them here.

<comment><USER2> Nice - I can see using this with my older relatives that live far away =)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> hey, congrats, looks cool! I would suggest that the map demo connect users to each other rather than forcing them to invite others (though you should keep that potion)... that way people can use it without going through the hassle of inviting a friend.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, that would be a good idea. I wanted to do it for launch, but didn't have time to put it together. I might give it a go today.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Interesting concept. In the Google maps demo, is it possible to add comments to the pins? That would be very useful I believe.

</comment><comment><USER5> This is pretty cool. Congrats, I particularly enjoy that you have a chat function built in to speak to other users who may be clicking around.

</comment><comment><USER6> Map fight!

</comment><comment><USER2> besides aws - what did you use to build this?

<comment><USER7> Typo on the front page does not inspire confidence (but it happens to the best of us.): "ThatsMyMouse is live! You can now add ThatsMyMouse to _you_ site. Let us know what you think in our blog."

Aaaaand wtf is with the creepy pics of young girls looking into the camera all over the site? This is a good idea* in need of a GUI designer and a copy writer.

*If it's good enough, the rest of this sentence may not matter.

Oh, and I'm not all piss and vinegar: the chat is pretty smooth and nicely implemented.

<comment><USER8> >Aaaaand wtf is with the creepy pics of young girls looking into the camera all over the site?

That was my initial reaction, too. Unless there's a specific reason you're trying to target teen girls and no one else, you might mix it up a bit.

<comment><AUTHOR> There are guys! And a cat!

Yeah it's creepy, but it has a low bounce rate :)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Mysterious but beautiful paper sculptures - <AUTHOR> http://community.thisiscentralstation.com/_Mysterious-paper-sculptures/blog/4991767/126249.html

<comment><USER2> It's so awesome that someone is doing this and remaining anonymous... And yet at the same time so sad.

Reminds me of a documentary on origami called Between the Folds (<http://www.greenfusefilms.com/> \-- I believe it's on netflix) where they showed people doing the most ridiculous things by just folding paper. So cool.

<comment><USER3> It's a great PR move, actually. If the artist now eventually comes forward, he will be instantly famous. Banksy[1] did the same.

Maybe there's something to learn here for startups as well.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banksy>

<comment><USER4> Not everybody is in it for the fame and the money.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I thought I'd seen something similar before, but when I looked it up I realized they're probably different artists: <http://briandettmer.com/>

</comment><comment><USER6> Nice to see a wee bit of Scotland on Hacker News.

</comment><comment><USER7> They look so fragile and beautiful - impressive they were able to get them in and setup without drawing any attention.

<comment><USER8> He's most likely making use of an S.E.P field <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somebody_Elses_Problem>

<comment><USER9> Nice reference, but your wikipedia link is broken (missing an apostrophe) :

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somebody_Else%27s_Problem>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> [http://extras.mnginteractive.com/live/media/site36/2010/0728...](http://extras.mnginteractive.com/live/media/site36/2010/0728/20100728__20100730_D01_AE30SCDINNER~p1_300.JPG)

</comment><comment><USER11> Beautiful? I don't think you know what the word means...

<comment><AUTHOR> do you?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Where is this? Scotland? I'm surprised the bomb-squad hasn't been called in to dispose of these items, the security cameras haven't been checked, and the perpetrator hasn't been tracked down and arrested. . .

<comment><USER13> I guess librarians have enough common sense to distinguish between art and a bomb</comment></comment>