Vim Is Saving Me Hours of Work When Writing Books and Courses - <AUTHOR> https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/vim-is-saving-me-hours-of-work-when-writing-books-and-courses <comment><USER2> There are many reasons for doing the things the author did, but I highly doubt saving time is a valid reason. The amount of time spent on setting this up and learning these tools and optimizing the workflows and writing scripts will most likely be much more than any time saved (real or imagined).

It is a similar pitfall that developers step into when they optimize their code before profiling where the bottlenecks are at.

But of course you should still do all of this, because it is a lot of fun and Vim rocks.

<comment><AUTHOR> > It is a similar pitfall that developers step into when they optimize their > code before profiling where the bottlenecks are at.

Author here. For reference I've made 5 courses over the last 4 years and have written over a million words. I also have 200+ blog posts and have hundreds of thousands of lines of code written across a bunch of projects.

In other words, I hope I know what my bottlenecks are with my environment. It's not specifically editing text, but it is managing a shit load of words across many hundreds of files and also switching between projects.

With no real prior Vim knowledge (I looked at it once many years ago) it took a solid weekend, and when I say solid, I mean I spent 10 hours both days researching Vim features, watching tutorials, following along with tutorials and slowly introducing a couple of plugins I knew I wanted (based on exact problems I had).

That got me to the point where I had the environment mostly working with a decent enough config file. Then I spent days floundering around like an idiot while I hardcore failed to even do simple things like "move to the 2nd to last word in a sentence and then wrap the last 2 words to a new line". Doing that without arrow keys and no mouse almost killed me initially.

After about a week of immersing myself I got to the point where I didn't feel like I was completely destroyed by a foreign environment. During this week I wrote about 10,000 words and worked on a couple of freelance programming gigs.

In my opinion, it was worth the 20 hours of set up + 20ish hours of not being as productive to set me up for the next 5+ years.

Plus as you mentioned, a side effect is it happens to be a fun too. That's a win win!

<comment><USER3> Nick I started doing the same thing a year ago and I was very nervous about getting too abstract with all the tooling and code and writing. It's challenging—and I definitely take breaks to really feel the difference—but it is so, so worth it.

I do it more with emacs and self-made CLIs, but I think the person choosing the path is the right way. It melds it perfectly to your tasks and mind.

<comment><AUTHOR> Glad to hear it's working out for you.

I'm pretty content with this current set up but I'm always learning, so I have to ask, what made you choose Emacs in the end?

Was it org mode exclusively, a general disinterest in Vim keybindings or something else?

<comment><USER4> Not the poster above but emacs' evil mode has really good vim emulation but the yak shaving rabbit hole goes much deeper. Emacs isn't stellar when it comes to large files and long lines although that's mainly for code and not plain text.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Let's be honest though; vim saves you hours of work if you're already good at vim. If you're not then it'll just slow you down. It takes practice and daily use to learn. I love vim but let's not sugar coat it.

<comment><USER6> Even if you are very good at vim, it's still debatable.

The thing is, vim forces you to do a lot of stuff that the machine could do for you. E.G: you need to remember states and how to transition between those states. Plus the human mind sucks at context switching.

All in all, this adds up, and there is a limit to the cognitive load you can accumulate. You only have one brain and you need to share it between all tasks, including solving the problem at hand and using tools to do so.

Half of my income comes from training professionals on site. Experience taugh me that every time somebody uses vim, 4 things will happen:

\- the person will be one of the best of the team

\- the person will have some weird bug/config problem/compat issue at some point and will waste time fixing it at least once during the training, swearing it never happens (also the person with vim usually has a very custom setup so this compounds)

\- at the end of each day, the person will be one of the most exhausted, and will make way more mistakes than the others compare to the morning baseline

\- at equal technical level, the person with vscode/sublime/jetbrain will be faster on average. Maybe not the first hour. But it will come.

So, yes. Vim may be fun. It may suit your workflow and ecosystem, and even your sense of aesthetic. But I don't buy the productivity boost.

<comment><AUTHOR> OP here. What I'm noticing is that Vim kind of helps you not have to switch contexts.

For example, let's say you want to put the cursor next to a specific word in a sentence.

If you use the mouse, now you need to stop writing, goto the mouse, find your mouse pointer, look at the mouse pointer, then move the mouse to the word you want to be at, click the mouse and start typing again.

I'm an avid gamer. I'm super used to this. I can move my mouse at pixel precision and do it very quickly, but even if it's fast, it's still a context switch.

With Vim, it almost feels like Vim itself is another input device that's almost a mind control device. I can just direct my eyes to the word I want to move to, hit 3 keys and then have my cursor jump directly to it (by using vim- sneak and pressing any 2 characters of the word).

Even if doing this is only equal speed to the mouse, it's still a win in my book because it feels less of a context switch. Plus if you want to talk about mistakes, looking at the word you want to jump to instead of your mouse cursor forces you to look at the word, so you have 1 more chance of avoiding a spelling mistake -- although to be fair, most editors including Vim can visually show you these errors.

<comment><USER7> _by using vim-sneak and pressing any 2 characters of the word_

wow, that's pretty cool!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Learn Emacs and then you can save hours of work doing anything.

All you do is learn how to write Elisp Macros. And then you automate your knowledge. Think of it like programming a text pad(s)(Like how excel is programming a list(s) of cells). You realize that the text buffer is your programming environment, with cursor movement as your basic control, and text output as your end goal. Then of course other programmatic facilities apply.

Only recently wrote a piece of Elisp code at work, that takes a file, does a bit of error analysis and gives me offending lines and other inputs like ids. I take them in a buffer and do all kinds of set operations(intersection etc) from inputs in other buffers(Elisp code for that too). Then take them and have Elisp generate a email message for me(Again Elisp code to do this). I just copy paste and send it to respective stake holders.

And I'm a novice who barely started with Emacs. I only imagine what I can do when I get fully proficient with it. It's like automating yourself.

I guess we are only lucky our work happens to be mostly in text and we get to use emacs and vim(vim macros are just insane), just like accountants can put spreadsheets to crazy use as their work happens to deal with tables.

<comment><USER9> Yeah, but you're basically just programming. Does Emacs really matter to what you listed?

You could do all of that with Python and any programming editor.

<comment><USER8> You have _basically do programming_ to do anything anywhere. There is no magic.

>>You could do all of that with Python and any programming editor.

Perl is better at these text manipulation things than Python.

Lisp will be around for a lot of time than these languages. Though I expect Perl to be around too. But then vim is literally a kind of VisualPerl. Emacs feels like VisualLisp.

Before learing Elisp I was writing tons of Perl scripts to tasks like these. Perl is just insanely good at all things text. But Perl doesn't have Lisp like Macros. And eventually you realize you can weaponize Macros to all kinds of things you can't do in Perl. In short Elisp is better at a few things than Perl.

<comment><USER9> > Lisp will be around for a lot of time than these languages.

Are you sure about that? Lisp is old, and it has survived many old languages. But many of those were from the Computer Science/IT early teens age... Now CS/IT is quite mature.

Mainstream languages, especially Open Source ones, will probably outlive us both.

Even Perl ^.^

<comment><USER10> > _But many of those were from the Computer Science /IT early teens age..._

Nah, that's when the maturing process happened; what we have today is mostly middle-age crisis, running in circles with occasional small step forward.

Lisp will survive because it's essentially the fundamental core of programming. When you're writing Lisp, you're essentially writing an AST. The elegance, flexibility and powerfulness of this is exactly why every new runtime that shows up gets a Lisp made for it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Just throwing out an alternative: for work, I have a 230k word file of notes I've taken that I edit with emacs org mode. I add to this file 2-3 time per week (so, not every day, but pretty frequently). With org mode, you get the "folding" of different sections for free. Plus, org mode has different tools for converting content, so no need to build one-off bash scripts for many common use cases.

</comment><comment><USER12> When writing a large document, I prefer to use a file format that has a way to import the contents of other files. When writing a long document in LaTeX, I would have separate files for different sections, plus a main file that had the overall layout and imported each section in the right place.

This approach allows you to easily insert/remove/rearrange sections and doesn't require having a giant file open in your editor. It also makes viewing the compiled version easier, as you don't have to compile the entire document to see what the part you're working on looks like.

<comment><AUTHOR> But then we're back to the same problem in the article where you have 150+ numbered / referenced files.

<comment><USER12> They're not numbered. Referencing doesn't have the problems the article complains about. Also, you can go between these extremes and have a handful of medium-sized files.

<comment><AUTHOR> The numbers are very important because the reference has to happen outside of the editing tool / structure.

I need to be able to identify that lesson 'xyz' is lesson 50 so I can say to check out the code in folder 50 inside of a git repo.

<comment><USER12> When you compile the document, the numbering is automatically added just like it would be if you had a single large document. The importing gives you the same final result as having a single file, but gives you the flexibility to put individual lessons in separate files for easier editing and reuse in other course plans.

This also makes it easier to do things like print out individual lessons if you need a hard copy but don't want the entire document.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> My e-book pipeline consists of:

Markdown + VSCode (for editing)

Pandoc to generate DOCX from Markdown

Calibre CLI to generate MOBI from DOCX (and to fill in the e-book metadata)

This seems to be the cleanest way I've discovered for generating nice Kindle books that have full table of contents, etc.

</comment><comment><USER14> I just wrote a little e-book in vim using reStructuredText and Sphinx for all the bookkeeping. It took a bit to get started, but ended up being a really nice combo. Vim for all the editing and navigation, of course, and RST+Sphinx for all the hyperlinking, footnotes, TOC, glossary, index, headings, images, etc. Then I just rendered it to HTML, PDF, ePub, and pure text (for grammar checking). I think RST is less popular than Markdown, but it's really incredibly powerful. You can in-line LaTeX formulas, a Tikz image, a graphviz dot, and all sorts of things.

Formatting and theming is a bit of a pain, but I think with just a little more work, it'd be easy to recommend this path for anyone making technical books, courses, etc. Lightweight markup languages and vim feel like steampunk at first, but they're actually more productive than mainstream modern tools.

<comment><USER15> My favorite so far is the org-mode format. It has more features than Markdown(like tables) and can also be mixed with LaTeX syntax.

RST seems pretty interesting and versatile as well.

<comment><USER10> Org is absolutely amazing, though unfortunately as a markup language defined by its reference implementation (Org Mode in Emacs), it won't gain much popularity. If you're working alone, and especially if you're already using Emacs, it's the best tool out there. If you have to collaborate with non- Emacsers on a document, RST and Markdown are unfortunately the better choices.

<comment><USER15> You don't need Emacs in order to work on org-mode documents, in the end it's just a text file. I write all my org documents in Vim and then convert them via Pandoc or with a keybinding making Emacs convert it in batch mode. It's barely different than working with Markdown, it just offers much more.

<comment><USER10> You don't need Emacs to work with org-mode, but without Emacs, org-mode is just marginally better but much less popular Markdown. Org-mode really shines through its Emacs implementation - the absolutely magical interface for working with tables, the TODO/agenda capabilities, spreadsheet capabilities, the executable source blocks and literal programming - which turn it into a better version of Jupyter notebooks, etc.

<comment><USER15> I don't need any magical features, I just looked for something like Markdown but with support for tables and LaTeX, so this format is perfect for me.

Also, table support and LaTeX commands bring far more functionality than all of Markdown in the first place, I wouldn't call that marginal.

<comment><USER10> Table support is one thing. Conveniences for editing those tables are another :).

Still, it's great to know org as a format fills your needs outside Emacs. Maybe I'm being too pessimistic about it's adoption potential.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I think the most interesting thing about the article isn't the solution. It's the problem: how do you organize a long piece of writing (O(100k) words) into logical units whose length isn't dictated in advance, and which don't force some kind of manual global refactor (e.g. renumbering chapters) every time a change is made.

The author's solution (one big file created with Vim) is reasonable and seems to work well for him. However, it seems to trade modularity/reusability. I'd be interested to hear about a microcontent solution (and the attendant tooling) that doesn't make this tradeoff. Or if I'm wrong about the tradeoff, I'd like to hear why.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think it depends on what you're working on.

When it comes to creating a course, there really is no way to reuse those files in a way that makes sense. A course on Docker and Flask have nothing in common for example.

Also, a course's writing isn't the only aspect. There's video too. Each video is its own individual unit of output.

Once a course is delivered on video, you really can't go back and start adding in new lessons to the middle because your previously recorded videos depend on things being in the old order. When you record lesson 103 and it expects code to exist in folder 103/ in a git repo, you can't just add a new lesson after 57 because now 103 becomes 104 and it throws everything off.

So in my case, once I complete the course, its TOC is set in stone. Those numbers won't change, but I want the flexibility to change them as I actively make the course which is when they change a lot.

<comment><USER16> That's fair. My specific interest lies in Help Center content / software documentation, in which some degree of reusability is critical.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> If I were to write an article on how increase productive with Vim I wouldn't focus on its plugins (after all many other editors/IDEs have great plugins). The power of Vim relies in its multi-modal editing. It requires time to get used to it but... once you're comfortable switching between modes it quickly pays off in productivity.

I think the text editor is the most important tool of a developer and Vim outperforms any non-modal editor. My thoughts on Vim are summarized in this quote by Abraham Lincoln: "Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the ax."

</comment><comment><USER18> It seems like the author's file numbering problem could have been easily solved with a slightly different numbering scheme -- reserve a couple of digits for additional content. So start with 0010, 0020, 0030 ... and if you wanted to add something between 0010 and 0020, it becomes 0015 and so on. Then you would have to renumber the files only at the very end of the process.

<comment><AUTHOR> The problem there is the lesson numbers need to be displayed in the course platform's UI.

I can't have my course's lesson numbers be increments of 10. It's too confusing for end users, and they also can't be different than what I have on file because then it would be a nightmare to maintain (as the person who created the course).

Using gapped numbers is a great way to solve certain ordering problems though. That's a common thing to do with database position columns for ordered content.

<comment><USER18> I meant to say that you would use that scheme while you were working on your lessons, and at the end of it all, do a single pass of renumbering all the lessons with an appropriate number scheme.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Interesting because this post is not about anything people typically focus on -- navigating, hands on the home row, etc -- but mostly about plugins, tools, and performance.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think things like home row typing are very human specific.

I don't type properly and I never rest my hands on the home row. My hands fly all over the place and I only use half the fingers on both hands. After 20 years of typing, that's what feels natural to me. It felt natural on day 1 and the same 20 years later. I can type at about 75 WPM using online tests with really high accuracy, so I haven't seen it as a real bottleneck.

Call me crazy but I think home row proper typing is the most non-ergonomic and painful layout possible. It's not natural at all to keep your hands completely stationary for hours and while making subtle finger movements. Even if I try that for 5 minutes straight I get all sorts of cramps and weird pains in areas of my hands and arms that I didn't even know existed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Today was the 3rd time I've tried to come into VIM.

I've stopped as soon as YouCompleteMe came into play. Instead of just git clone you have to do this and that just to have a damn autocomplete...

And after time wasted - vim segfaulted on me.

Sorry, but I really can't see how this can be better than, say, IDEA. Installed it once, git pushed my settings - and never had any problems with it. Shortcuts are almost 100% universal these days.

<comment><USER21> While it is fair that some of the plugins are problematic, in general the plugin space is fairly easy to traverse. Most plugins take at most 2 steps to install (add to .vimrc, run update command) when using a plugin manager. Those that have external dependencies that take extra work are often packaged for distros. I know YouCompleteMe has an emerge package that bypasses all the setup hassle.

<comment><USER20> As a final attempt I've just installed SpaceVim. A distro. Full of features and whatnot.

lang#go layer enabled - check.

I go to the first .go file I can remember of and... autocomplete works. But only for the packages provided by the go iteself. Not the 3rd party. Kind of... what the point really?

As a final word: I'm trully happy for people who have found their happiness in Vim. Nothing can be better that having a tool that satisfies your needs to the fullest. But I still can see it as a capable DE. Navigation is great and I use it in Firefox everyday via Tridactyl. All those hacky '3ytcvnsdg' whatever commands are super nice when you are working with some kind of csv dump of an oracle database via ssh (I had this moment!). Editing some configs on my Raspbery Pi? Sure. Writting books and such? Maybe, never had such experience.

But software development? Seems like a nightmare to me.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think one difference you and I have is, I've pretty much ditched the idea of autocomplete being a useful thing so I don't depend on it with any editor. This is coming at it from a Python, Ruby, Elixir point of view.

This is mainly because of 2 things:

1\. 99% of the apps I develop are Dockerized and there's no editor that flawlessly handles that

2\. I've tried PyCharm, RubyMine, etc. and the autocomplete never really saves me that much time. In my mind "pretty good autocomplete" is worse than no autocomplete. Pretty good autocomplete usually slows you down overall because it's good, but not good enough. I still always find myself referencing documentation which means autocomplete didn't really do anything except maybe save typing a few characters.

<comment><USER20> I've been coding in Python and Ruby most of the time and now it's Ruby with Go. And while I agree that autocomplete is less usefull with Ruby due to it's nature - it saves a ton of time while developing in Go. And sometimes you simply don't have any documentation to reference. So it's 'go to definition' and autocomplete all the way through.

1\. What's the problem with it being Dockerized? I have my current project Dockerized too. JI just have :volumes in my docker-compose for development. If source code access is what we are talkig about.

2\. see the above

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Hmm. I use vim sometimes to edit text, and I find it markedly less ergonomic than using vim for editing code, for one key reason: text is typically organized in paragraphs, rather than lines, and all the vim movements make much more sense for lines.

Like, if I'm editing a block of text in a long paragraph that looks like a single line to vim, I don't have a mouse anymore, and up-down movements just leave the paragraph, so I usually find myself with awkward commands like `50w` to try and guess the number of words to move to the point where I'm trying to edit. Sadness.

Then again, this might just be because I don't have enough vim skillz yet. There's probably some command to make vim pretend a visual line is a real line...

<comment><USER23> I agree that it can be a bit annoying for working with visual lines. You can move up and down visual lines by using 'gj' and 'gk' instead of 'j' and 'k'.

<comment><USER22> Ooh, I'll try that. Thanks!

<comment><USER24> :nmap j gj :nmap k gk

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I just tried out editing a 1300321 word file with Emacs. Running in text-mode, I notice no lag. CPU usage tops out at about 3% on my machine (i5 MacBook Pro) when editing. Markdown-mode pushes it up a few points, but not a lot.

Long live command line editors!

<comment><USER26> How long were the lines? From my experience (as a pretty heavy emacs users, so not knocking it) when I have a 5K+ word paragraph, quite alot of operations become laggy when within that paragraph/line (regardless of whether visual- line-mode is on or off). Fontlock makes it, yet, worse.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Am I missing something obvious here? I'm a heavy VIM user myself, but for documents, I use a word processor.

Why mess with filenames and sequence numbers, when any basic word processor handles this for you?

<comment><USER28> A couple of reasons:

1\. Version control

2\. Simple text files that are easy to maintain and convert into different formats

There are other reasons I can think of but those are the biggest two. Personally, I hate using word processors and would love to never have to use one again. Their GUIs and learning this and that shortcut key (which usually don't transfer to other apps) used to be tolerable but I can't stand them now.

<comment><USER27> 1\. Most word processors have revision control and multi-author options. They even allow comments etc.

2\. You have all kinds of open formats such as MS Word, RTF, OpenOffice, that can basically export to anything you want.

The only reason I do see is that you can use the tools that you already know, such as code version control and your code editor. But other than that, it seems strange to try to do this thing in plain text files. Because then you have all these problems that shouldn't be problems in the first place.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Is VS Code really that bad in CPU/memory usage?

<comment><USER30> Yes it is. [https://github.com/jhallen/joes- sandbox/tree/master/editor-p...](https://github.com/jhallen/joes- sandbox/tree/master/editor-perf)

<comment><USER31> As an Atom user I wanted to try this because historically Atom has been worse than VS Code at large files.

I don't have a 500k word text file laying around, but I tried an 80k line SQL script. FWIW, it's 8.5mb and the Atom wordcount plugin claims it's about 1.5 million "words".

Atom opened this file in 3-4 seconds and memory usage only increased about 30mb.

Navigation grinds to a halt with the wordcount plugin enabled. Once I disable its "always on" feature (normally it doesn't pay attention to .sql), navigation and editing seem snappy.

Just a data point. VS Code should be able to get much better...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Vim is great, but I'm very glad that I learned it early in my life as an engineer. The learning curve slowed me down at a time where it was understandable if I was slow at doing something. I feel like I would have had a much harder time if I had tried to learn it after I was already completely comfortable with another editor. That doesn't stop me from recommending it to everyone.

</comment><comment><USER33> As much as I have been using VSCode as a coding and writing 'Swiss army knife' lately, tmux and good editors like Vim and Emacs are great because context switching is easy.

I have a similar workflow as the author of this blog, often writing a book manuscript in markdown while working on code examples for the book that I am working on.

</comment><comment><USER34> I used to think Vim and company are only worth it when you work with structured text (like programming languages) most of the time.

I'm not so sure nowadays. I had to work on big prose document in Libre Office. I hated every second of it. It might be because I used to modal editing. It felt like typing with one finger when you are used to touch typing...

I got question. It here anyone who learned Vim editing model and decided it's worse than "traditional" Cua, mouse oriented editors[1]?

I can't remember seeing any blog posts like "I used Vim for X years but I switched to Cua editor".

[1]: well, I switched to Kakoune from Spacemacs but that's another modal editor (not Vi clone tho) so it doesn't count ;)

<comment><USER35> What exactly were you missing? Could it be that you're just not used to the shortcuts that let you navigate with the cursor, remove previous word etc.?

<comment><USER34> That was an issue, yes. I know basic shortcuts ({ctrl, shift} + arrows, ctrl+backspace) but I assume someone used to Cua editor would know more tricks. I missed actions like:

      - select to given character
      - select to begging/end of the line/whole line
      - select sentence/paragraph/text with the same indentation

I know some of those actions are available with multiple mouse clicks (3 clicks to select paragraph If I recall correctly) but that means you have to use mouse.

Beside this ctrl+f search is not as good as / in Vim. It has no regex support for example (you can open dialog that has option to enable regex but that's more than one shortcut away).

Actions in Cua editor cannot be composed and reused, that's also an issue for me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Editing is where the dangerous stuff happens.

I was editing a traditional document on a processor called Scrivener, and my worst fear is an errant change unknown to me after saving the file. Going strictly on something like vim might be too hardcore, but if I started out with something like Scrivener, then port to .txt and commit my edits, and bring it back out to Scrivener for compiling, it may make sense.

I haven't looked into too many of my options, but if anyone else doing a decent amount of writing can share their tips, please do!

<comment><USER37> Sounds like you should version control your files...

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I've used vim for years, have vimium / vimperator installed in all my browsers, use vim navigation bindings in i3, etc.

I still broadly prefer using ST3 with vintage mode over classical vim. It doesn't have the performance limitations of electron editors, doesn't _force_ keyboard-only interaction and has a package ecosystem that is easier to maintain and navigate. Best of both worlds to me, just IMHO.

</comment><comment><USER39> Well you seem to already have solved your problem, but if you haven't it might be worthwhile to consider using Latex, the ToC and everything else is already handled or its very likely that a plugin already exists. You can also have separate files and just include them on a main file. Converting Latex to Markdown is also pretty seamless so it's (relatively) easy to convert to use in your website.

</comment><comment><USER40> Sublime Text handles large files with ease. I routinely hand edit 5MB CSV files (with a color-coding plugin) and have had zero performance issues.

<comment><USER41> I'm not arguing for or against sublime's performace, but I'd suggest you need to redefine what a large file is!

<comment><USER14> For example in the nuclear industry we regularly view and edit 1 GB text file inputs and outputs from chain reactor simulators. Vim, grep, tail -f, and awk, and Python are all essential tools in our belts.

<comment><USER8> Wow!

That's the coolest thing I've read in a while. I can only imagine how much fun it must be to work as a Nuclear Physicist.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> > A big component of my overall problem was dealing with individual file > names.

umm, I know naming is hard, but xx_chapter_name.md?

<comment><USER43> This is covered in the article. In particular, it makes inserting and rearranging hard.

<comment><USER44> I can't find anymore where I read that Niklas Luhmann's "Zettelkasten" (slip box or note repository) was filed according to the following rules:

(1) If there's no related note in the box, give it number $last_number+1 (2) If there's a related note in the box, say, number 103, file it 103/A, 103/B, 103/C, etc. (3) If some subtopic of 103/A comes up, file it 103/A/1, etc.

I did that with Markdown and an iPad app for a while. Now I have an actual paper slip box. It's very time-consuming but gives you space to think. Also it's interesting to see notes spatially over an entire living room once in a while.

\--- I'm lost in a digression. But it seems rather trivial to use a system like that (maybe with dots -- 10.1.1 etc. -- ) and write a script that reads a list of chapters in the order they're going to be used eventually and assembles a book. Heck, from my system I may be able to sort, scan and have someone at Upwork type it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> I use Tmux + Vim.

It's pretty nice. The investment time is big but it's a one time investment with minimum upkeep.

I don't use any plugin other than language plugin.

</comment><comment><USER46> I've written my first book entirely in Vim. Using Leanpub's support for Markdown+LaTeX was a very pleasant experience.

</comment><comment><USER47> My take-away isn't 'switch to Vim' rather just how rewarding it is to master a smaller set of powerful tools.

</comment><comment><USER48> while I use vim a lot at the console, I still use GUI for real coding, I use geany which is super light, but geany is not strong in markdown editing(sadly). I really hope vim has a light-weight GUI version, better than the existing gvim and geany, that integrates nerdtree and bundles a few "must- have" plugins out of box.

<comment><USER49> I recommend using an IDE with a good vim plugin. I predominately code this way and I feel like I get all the benefits of both vim and the gui. I can use the intuitive UI of the IDE to navigate through the project (using IntelliJ, find usage and shift-shift search are clutch) and handle builds/test/refactoring partly visually, and then I can edit individual files very efficiently with vim.

also it's really nice being able to click around in vim if you think it will be faster than navigating to the desired point using the keyboard, really reduces the cognitive overhead

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> OK, I'm sold. I finally have to learn vi[m].</comment>


Swift Standard Library Preview Package - <AUTHOR> https://swift.org/blog/preview-package/ <comment><USER2> I love this part:

> Note: The Standard Library Preview package itself is a product of the Swift > Evolution process!</comment>


Opera Browser AMA (Ask Me Anything) on reddit - <AUTHOR> http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/dtbcz/hey_reddit_join_the_opera_browser_team_for_an/

<comment><USER2> I've been using Opera for many years. I'm so used to its features that I have a really hard time using any other browser.

Some people think it has site compatibility issues. That was certainly true back in versions 7, 8 and even 9, but with the latest 10.6 builds, I rarely, if ever, find a site that doesn't work. If it doesn't it's usually due to browser sniffing rather than actual functionality problems.

My favorite features are:

(screenshot: <http://dl.dropbox.com/u/114028/OperaScreenshot.png> )

1\. Left-side tabs - I have a wide-screen monitor, why waste the vertical space on tabs?

2\. Visual tabs - thumbnails of the pages on the tab. I can't get along without tab thumbnails!

3\. Speed Dial - My top 20 sites sitting right on the new tab screen. If a site isn't on my speed dial, I probably don't visit it

4\. Address bar - type in anything and it'll search bookmarks and previously visited sites, including the site's CONTENT, not just the URLs.

5\. Custom searches - Just right-click in any search text box and create a new search. Assign the search a shortcut (g=google, i=google images, wi=wikipedia, tv=tv.com, etc)

6\. Built-in IMAP/POP3 client - I use Opera's built-in email client exclusively for personal email. The email search engine is _extremely_ fast. Type in any word and get a list of emails in less than a second, despite having 25,000 emails indexed. Also, whenever I get email I get a notification right in my browser window. The sidebas constantly shows me the number of unread emails, so no need to open Gmail in a tab to see if there's new mail. I can also click on mailto: links and they work =)

7\. Mouse gestures - Although I only use one, I can browser with out it. I use right-click to left-click flip gesture to go back a page all the time. I find myself doing it in every other browser and it takes me time to figure out why it's not working

8\. Opera Turbo - I travel a lot and use a lot of crappy hotel internet, so Turbo is great because it compresses all the pages before downloading them, making my browsing much faster on the slow connection

9\. Built-in RSS reader - Any page that has an RSS feed shows an icon in the address bar. Click it to add the feed right into the Mail panel. I have a whole list of RSS feeds I read right in the browser every day

10\. Built-in ad-blocker - Right-click on any site and choose "Block Content" then click on the content to block. Easy.

I think most of these features are unique to Opera, and if not, many were copied or implemented by as extensions to other browsers. Does anyone else do visual tabs on the left?

<comment><USER3> Different strokes for different folks, but this is precisely what turns me off about Opera. I don't want a kitchen sink. I want an uncomplicated web browser.

That web browser used to be Firefox, but it got too heavyweight for me and Chrome's more minimalist approach became my preferred experience.

The Opera vs. The Rest argument feels a lot like the endless emacs vs. vi war :)

<comment><USER4> Opera is just flexible and customizable. Mine doesn't even have a toolbar, because I use gestures for everything _(edit: I mean I don't see/feel any of the "kitchen sink" — I haven't enabled it, and I could even disable things that clutter other browsers)_

Opera with the kitchen sink weighs less (14MB download Mac UB) than barebones Firefox (19MB) or Chrome (30MB).

<comment><USER5> Kitchen sink is something you feel (UI clutter, features most users don't want), not something you measure (megabytes).

<comment><USER6> Firefox used to have an actual kitchen sink as an easter egg:

[http://www.mozilla.org/docs/web- developer/samples/kitchensin...](http://www.mozilla.org/docs/web- developer/samples/kitchensink.xml)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Reposting from: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1790843>

Why you should care about Opera:

1\. More minimal interface than Chrome. New-tab Speed-dial can be a solid background [or image] with no extra cruft. Unlike Chrome which adds bookmarks, recently closed, help links etc.

2\. Equivalent performance to Chrome including JavaScript.

3\. Firefox-isms while offering chrome performance. Aka Pop-in sidebars for downloads and history rather than new tabs.

5\. CTRL-Tabbing is similar to operating system alt-tabbing. _You don't even need a tab bar occupying screen real estate._

6\. Password manager light-up button is a superior user experience to saved password autocomplete in Chrome and Firefox.

7\. Right click mouse gestures. [and fully navigable keyboard only]

Also, it has a very good Firefox style "Awesome Bar" that can even search inside the text of pages in your history.

<comment><USER8> You will tear noscript from my cold, dead hands.

<comment><USER7> Opera is getting extensions, in the mean time you can use the built-in functionality:

Preferences > Advanced > Content. Uncheck Enable JavaScript to disable it globally.

Then when you want to manually enable JS for a single site:

Right-click anywhere on page> Site Preferences > Scripting. Check Enable JavaScript.

<comment><USER8> Yes, it is extremely inconvenient (available exactly as you described), and JavaScript is a small portion of what NoScript does for you. A quick rundown of features as I understand them:

* blocking is the default, with whitelist enables

* quick script block for individual sources on a page; I can disable content from turner.com and revsci but can allow cnn.com when I am viewing cnn.com pages

* block is for plugins, too, and I can left-click the plugin image to selectively enable that specific plugin, whatever site it is from -- flash, silverlight, java, and other embeddings

* blacklisting sources per site or for all sites

* XSS protection

* weird script behavior protection, such as malicious attempts to overlay controls so that a user accidentally activates the wrong thing

* global override (allow all scripting temporarily)

* some cookie control

Here is a more comprehensive description: <http://noscript.net/features>

Maybe there is not a one-stop shopping for Opera, though, and I can get all this with multiple Opera extensions? I did run down a path at one point that made the JavaScript control more NoScripty, but the rest of NoScript's benefits provide a too-nice user experience and sense of safety.

Note: I am not a Firefox fanboy. I just really love NoScript's help. The only other real advantage I feel Firefox has over Opera is its JavaScript support ([https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/JavaScript#Ve...](https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/JavaScript#Versions)). I periodically check to see if the next version of Chrome will support the hooks a NoScript clone would require, and Opera periodically grabs my attention.

<comment><USER9> > Yes, it is extremely inconvenient (available exactly as you described)

There is a shortcut key for that - F12, so it's actually quite convenient :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I worked for Opera from the start of 2007 until the start of this year, (webapps team). It's really fun seeing the company from the outside again, great people, great place to work, great product; I just wish Norway suited me better.

My main hope for Opera 11 is that they focus more on their Mac version.

</comment><comment><USER11> I've moved on from Opera. It took them forever to implement basic usability features such as text box spell-check, and inline password remember/find in page. They also removed great features such as one click bookmarking. Their widgets used to be great, one hot-key and they'd all pop-up on screen like on OSX. Now you have to basically manage each one individually with multiple clicks and they clutter your taskbar like crazy. Meanwhile they focus on low value features like Unite. In the default install, it takes several clicks just to get to your list of bookmarks (ignoring hotkeys or custimization, from a business perspective this is bad.)

These aren't just flukes, it seems to be a pattern in their priorities that has shifted in the past few years. Away from low friction usability and innovative features to something a bit more convoluted. Opera used to be top of the pack in usability, even for non-power users. But now for some reason they lost their edge. And aside from this reddit AMA, it seems to be very difficult to have a discussion with them about changes to the browser. They have a suggestions forum but it seems to be mostly ignored, at least in terms of feedback.

How about a UserVoice for Opera?

(just my analysis/opinion)

</comment><comment><USER12> I have been doing massive Web Development targeting Chrome (Safari), Firefox and certainly IE.

I also give Opera a shot from time to time. My review is: Their rendering engine is fine, though not perfect. They have some minor problems. However, the JavaScript engine is awful. It doesn't behave like FF or Chrome engines. It's stupidly slow and sometimes freeze the browser. Font rendering isn't optimal, still better than IE.

<comment><USER13> I work as a core QA at Opera. Do you have examples of the javascript problems that you experienced? We rewrote the engine for 10.50 so it's possible that that has fixed the issues you saw. On the DOM side we are working hard with other vendors through W3C / WHATWG / etc. to make the web specs precise enough that we can all converge on the same behaviour.

Any bugs that you report [1] would be much appreciated.

[1] <https://bugs.opera.com/wizard/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I just came here to post about it.. there are a lot of Opera engineers there replying to questions, so this may get interesting =)

</comment><comment><USER15> I met some of the Opera devs at a conference a while back. They seem like they have a lot of fun.

</comment><comment><USER16> Unrelated question: Is Opera paying Reddit for use of their website?

Reddit should really look into this if not. There could be real money in this, plus the community loves it!

</comment><comment><USER17> wow nice configs there <http://twitpic.com/2z0tdb>

[http://files.myopera.com/ruario/Pictures/eeepc_toolbar_confi...](http://files.myopera.com/ruario/Pictures/eeepc_toolbar_config.png) !!!</comment>


Microsoft To Do gets new features as Wunderlist goes offline - <AUTHOR> https://www.androidpolice.com/2020/05/06/microsoft-to-do-new-features-wunderlist-goes-offline/ <comment><USER2> So I'm currently a todoist user, I tried to check out Microsoft Todo since we're an Outlook shop and it doesn't seem that Outlook (the app or web version) todos are at all tied to the Todos _product_.

I think I may have missed something, any links or pointers there? It'd be great to have those minor savings on my todoist pro subscription, and work more efficiently by being able to rapidly log and work todo items in one less app, since much of my workflow is inbox driven.

Willing to try it again since the "Today, tomorrow, this week" feature is without question the most used view of mine in Todoist, even though things are neatly bucketed between projects and labels.

<comment><USER3> > So I'm currently a todoist user, I tried to check out Microsoft Todo since > we're an Outlook shop and it doesn't seem that Outlook (the app or web > version) todos are at all tied to the Todos product.

They are. To Do is an Exchange Online client behind the scenes and pretty much reads your tasks and flagged email from the mail server (and Planner tasks from SharePoint). If your company has an on-prem mail server, it won't work though. As far as I know, MS has thrown out the old kludgy Tasks module from web Outlook and replaced it with To Do.</comment></comment>


Space Yourself (2015) - <AUTHOR> https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2015/10/space-yourself/ <comment><USER2> It's amazing how much power we -- developers, users -- have at our hand, at least if everything runs smooth (most likely with UTF-8 and the like). Somehow we are left in a world where I need the feel to transliterate German umlauts (ue instead of ü, ss instead of ß) while somewhere else I happily can use all the symbols so easily reachable on smartphone »softboards«. I guess software support still has a way to go, such as some help from the GUI for proper whitespace characters, especially when doing copy&pasting.</comment>


Think web browsing has hit a wall? Futureful's approach proves otherwise - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2013/08/02/think-web-browsing-has-hit-a-wall-futurefuls-design-led-approach-proves-otherwise/

<comment><USER2> These are not the futures you were looking for.

Move along.</comment>


VCs, don't compare me to your wife - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/life-tips/vcs-don-t-compare-me-to-your-wife-just-don-t-9dc2c8c1ac93 <comment><USER2> So, I wrote the article and the thing that is the most interesting to me is that I am getting an incredible amount of positive responses to my post (outside of HN). Especially from women who feel like I expressed something that they are struggling with.

We want to be taken seriously for our companies and our minds. All we want is to walk into the room and be an entrepreneur. Not a woman, or looked at through the lens of a "wife" or "mother"

I don't know if it is the anonymity, but the discussion here seems so negative. With a lot of cheap shots at me, and hell of a lot of assumptions made. Really lacking in nuance and honestly- lacking in respect.

This was hard for me to write. It has been hard for me to deal with and I didn't take a cheap shot at the VC. I could have ruined his life/career but I just wanted to make a point, and show people what women have to deal with in an honest and frank manner.

<comment><USER3> See my other comment but I wanted to let you know that I am glad you posted this and I think there's a lot of value to pointing this kind of thing out. I have no idea what kind of business you're trying to start or whether or not it is a good or fundable idea but I do hope that you get to the finish line you're trying to get to - good luck!

<comment><USER2> Thanks so much! I have a startup in stealth mode and it is funded. It is early days but this is my second funded startup and I see this as being much better than my first. I'll be making it all public soon.

I closed my first startup because I didn't feel like I could fight on both levels- having to fight the odds to launch a successful company while fighting the industry itself.

I could only come back in, if I came in swinging. So I am taking it all on and I feel ready for it now. That is why I am speaking my truth and willing to take the risks that come along with that. I hope that women coming after me can just launch their companies without having to deal with all of this crap.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> jesus christ! what are these comments? there is a valid point here. i don't even like how the author writes but the point is this, taken from a response: >> Imagine how many opportunities this firm has walked past because they're old school. Shouldn't their LPs be concerned?

What do you mean "old school?". I am from the other side of the planet than the US and i am statistically flooded with stories of the problem of under funding women, with discrimination based on sex and with the pregnancy issue as a roadblock to career for women. how can a manager in a VC have an "old school" opinion in 2016? these days you either have one opinion or the other, there is nothing "new school" in realizing that women are less funded because their biologic life is seen as a liability by the males of the species who have all the money. Jesus!! Old school??

Your wife? You are someone who should be smart enough to predict success and you bet other people's money but you know so little about a woman's determination that your best answer is by proxying to your nearest women.

This is like me having a billion dollars explaining that i believe rockets are not funded as easily as dating apps because I am old school and i think all physicists are nerdy introverts and they'll never be good at running a business because they rather stay and read science fiction books all day long, and i know that because my physicist cousin who is also a drunk is exactly like that.

And quotas? Who is even talking about quotas? Amazing!

<comment><USER5> _This is like me having a billion dollars explaining that i believe rockets are not funded as easily as dating apps because I am old school and i think all physicists are nerdy introverts and they 'll never be good at running a business..._

A direct translation of the VC's theory would be that "that's [nerd hypothesis] why I think there are less nerd founders...which translates to less funded companies by nerds". Fewer apply so fewer are accepted.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> _Entrepreneurs - and we are a totally different breed of human being than just about anyone else._

Anyone else cringe at this part?

<comment><USER7> It's hyperbolic, stilted, but not necessarily cringeworthy. It comes from the perspective of someone who believes they have been treated unfairly.

It's like when you go on an interview for a job and you say something, the interviewer understands it one way, you try to correct them, but you know their fist take is the one which will linger and you feel it's unfair.

<comment><USER8> >It comes from the perspective of someone who believes they have been treated unfairly.

It comes off as someone who is very pretentious.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> These threads on HN are always extremely rough to read. I wonder what would need to happen for a more productive conversation around this topic to be possible? More participation, more moderation, better understanding, what would it take?

<comment><USER2> I think that a lot of these conversations are happening at "Women in Tech" events and it would be great if there was a way for men to be more of a part of that

<comment><USER10> > it would be great if there was a way for men to be more of a part of that

I for one am too scared that I might blurt out something offensive inadvertently and get labeled a 'misogynist' which can pretty damning to one's career and something you cannot defend yourself against. All it takes is one person with an agenda to tarnish your reputation forever. I don't want someone tweeting at my employer with "are you ok with this .."

thanks but No thanks. I am going stay far far away from "women in tech" business .

<comment><USER2> There has to be a more and better inclusive model. Because we really need to all learn how to get past this

<comment><USER10> >There has to be a more and better inclusive model.

What are some of your thoughts around how to achieve this.

<comment><USER2> I am not really happy with "Women in Tech" movement in general, I think that it should be broader and more focused on diversity.

So, I would like to see events that are more focused on bringing people together.

<comment><USER10> Agreed. I know that when I am speaking to a "women in tech" I know that my every word would be put under microscope. I am a result of society like everyone else with its baises and prejudices.

So instead of talking about and examining my/our own prejudices, i have to pretend to be a morally infallible saint who is incapable of thinking "wrong" thoughts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > When you ask me about having it all, or how am I going to manage my kids, I > seriously think that you are insane. Because in my head, I can't imagine a > scenario where you trust someone with millions of dollars to run a business > but think that they don't know how to deal with childcare.

Is that not why they ask the question then?? If they don't think someone can handle childcare, then the author is right, they won't trust that person with millions of dollars.

<comment><USER12> I disagree that that's an appropriate or useful question, but if the VC truly thinks it is (and it's even actually legal), then shouldn't they ask all their potential entrepreneurs this question?

<comment><USER13> Not sure about legality of asking but woman statistically (80%+) are main caregivers to kids so asking this question only for females make sense.

It works both ways though - one well known company gives 4 month leave to primary caregiver and only 2 weeks to secondary on child birth. If you are female - you get it by default. If you are father and not single one at that - good luck. Every single person (from your boss down) will ask you why you are primary caregiver.

<comment><USER14> "asking this question only for females make sense"

This is a dangerous attitude. One other poster talked about "old school" but the truth is that things haven't improved for anyone. It's attitudes like this quote that are indicative of how it's always been - some people are sexist and some people are not.

We should not justify differentiating genders. People who do this(eg. Australian police who are mandating 50% female employees, regardless of suitability) should have the book thrown at them. In this day and age, gender should not be a variable in almost any job.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I wouldn't want to invest in or work for someone who was so quick to play the victim card.

<comment><USER16> Where is she playing the victim, exactly?

<comment><USER17> The conversation that made her post the rant was obviously she asked the guy why there is less women entrepreneurs, the guy made clear he was uncomfortable with the questions and replied with a reply that is common sense ( ie: most women aren't entrepreneurs, thus there is less women wanting vc money) and she took offense at the reply.

<comment><USER16> I agree his comments were taken out of context.

I don't see where "the guy made clear he was uncomfortable" but I could guess he probably was. And again, it probably was taken out of context. However,

I don't see how his reply, in any shape or form is common sense. And it explicitly not the reason you give. "( ie: most women aren't entrepreneurs, thus there is less women wanting vc money)". He actually says, the reason is women are being mothers. That's why. But he's just old fashioned. And then guesses that most women prioritize that "[my wife] would rather be a mother and be with our kids" with respect to # of female ent.

And she took offense to that -- and so do I.

<comment><USER18> # I'm the wrong person to ask

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Much like confessing a dark secret, breaking-up, asking someone out, etc, my policy has never been to initiate or allow any serious, longwinded conversation over mobile/phone text.

</comment><comment><USER5> Wait a second. Is this author saying that as a woman, she _doesn 't_ have any special insight into female users, isn't closer to the female audience, and doesn't bring any special female viewpoints into tech?

And in fact, the only similarity between her and another person is if the person is also an entrepreneur? There is no special female perspective, and therefore we don't get diversity of viewpoints or other cognitive benefits just by having more women?

That sure seems to contradict the narrative.

<comment><USER20> Have you read the entire thing? It's about comparing them to VCs wives, presumably housewives, not about a special female perspective on, say a female focused startup, but being compared to a female who wants to be in a traditional role in a patriarchal society. Not sure how any one can miss it as badly as you did.

<comment><USER5> I read it. She's ranting about something else - a VC suggesting he has no female-founded companies in his portfolio because very few apply - and somehow this offends her.

But along the way, she claims that "the extent to which she is founding a company is the extent to which I have something in common with her", which pretty much contradicts the entire pro-diversity narrative.

<comment><USER21> Seems like the part she's pissed at is "I think mothers have more important things to do...be mothers".

<comment><USER22> Which is true, because your child should be your #1 priority. Regardless of your gender.

<comment><USER23> What if you have 2 kids? Who should be your #1 priority?

In any case, how important children should be for their parents is not the key issue here.

The key issue is how you treat your potential investors (preferably with respect).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I respect the writer drawing this conclusion based on a conversation. But can we have the chat from the beginning instead of just a few texts starting from _Honestly- I 'm the wrong person to ask. I think mothers have more important things to do ... be mothers_?

I am not taking the VC's side but let's see the entire chat then form an opinion as the said VC isn't here to defend himself.

<comment><USER25> I believe the authors argument is that the VC's (or at least this particular one) use the antiquated idea that "mothers should be mothers" to subconsciously look down on woman founders who pitch, because they should be at home "being mothers" instead.

e: this guy said it better [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11105578](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11105578)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Just writing this comment because I think @sarahnadav deserves some support here, from a dude (like myself), but also from the community in general! She is bringing some shit to light that may have not been seen before. If this is how one VC is, in one instance, maybe there's a lot that we're not seeing? This could be just the tip of the iceberg! Maybe other VCs could benefit from seeing this post and thinking, "I wouldn't want to be that guy in this conversation, what a jerk".

I'm pretty upset that most of these comments (well, I guess most HN comments are like this) are trying to be so contrarian - why not just be supportive of something for once? Is the OP someone with a horrible track record of lying...

...or is she just a woman honestly trying to raise money and start a business, something many of the posters on here are trying to do as well?

</comment><comment><USER26> A VC should focus on the profitability of the investment, everything else is potentially noise.

<comment><USER27> Nobody wants to discuss stress tests as part of that focus?

Under the assume the best case scenario situation, dude wanted to see how she responds to ridiculous stress. Well, we have an answer here. Hmm. Wonder what happens the next time something stressful happens. Some obscure legal thing or a reviewer makes fun of them or ...

The unfortunate part is being a woman she has an obvious stress test point of commenting on her gender. I suppose I'd get stress tested by asking how a non- ivy grad could ever play on a strictly ivy grad playing field. Or they'd make fun of my kids or ancestry or where I live. Ah I know, I suck because I should have been born to richer parents, that one is a classic. Anything to see how I respond to ridiculous stress levels seems like fair game.

Its a little further than your average HR drone would go when interviewing your average customer service rep, but, its kind of an important stressful job.

<comment><USER26> I think you raise a very valid point.

> The unfortunate part is being a woman she has an obvious stress test point > of commenting on her gender.

We all have stress points. Research has shown men react to stress by isolating themselves, while women react to stress by looking for the company and support of their female friends.

Besides the obvious publication of her point of view in search of said support, her behaviour is more consistent with belief of being entitled to the VC money than anything else.

<comment><USER27> I think if she had disciplined the VC she'd have her money right now. Or at least this wouldn't be in the way. One fundamental responsibility of leadership is disciplining misbehavior. In this case the VC provided a ridiculous over the top sexist commentary somewhere between illegal and merely unethical, and instead of standing up for what is right and/or threatening discipline as best she can, she blogs about a private conversation. Not good at all. Is that how all ethical problems or discipline problems will be handled? VCs may as well pile up their money and burn it to save time.

The other side also earns a demerit. Come on, you stress test a female applicant by going for the girl angle, could you possibly be a little less creative? Previous people have probably noticed the whole "girl" thing, her being a female and all that. You could at least try, look into her childhood or education or management style or past employment or almost anything else to stress her would have been more creative. Still if a dud torpedo blows her out of the water, it wasn't really a dud, was it?

And an IM conversation isn't as under pressure as face to face, none the less I'd give her some credit for not doing as well as carefully reasoned "monday morning quarterbacking".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Seeing the text thread just reinforces my opinion that "VC's" are semi literate morons who happen to have stupid money.

I'll be a programmer until the day I die, but FUCK that aspect of this industry. The information age was born in California, in the most liberal, feminist, and intelligent crucible of the Bay Area, and these shit weasels have come swooping in to scrape their money of the top. It absolutely sickens me, and I will jump with joy the day this bubble bursts and leaves these fuckers high and dry.

</comment><comment><USER29> I suppose that VCs can compare you to whomever and whatever they like when they have money that you are professionally begging for.

<comment><USER16> I'm trying to give your comment the benefit of the doubt, but I can't help but read that as "well, beggers can't be choosers so just deal with it".

> I suppose that VCs can compare you to whomever and whatever they like

Generally true of all people, not just VC. Is it not, therefore, reasonable then to in turn judge said person for that behavior?

> when they have money that you are professionally begging for.

Which is cool because they are in the position of power?

Could you clarify? The author did not take the money. Politely declined and moved on.

<comment><USER29> What do you think I'm trying to say?

If you don't want to be in a position where someone can hold power over you and judge you, then don't put yourself in a position where someone can hold power over you and judge you.

It's that simple.

<comment><USER30> As a profession supplicant, I'd expect the people I beg to be at least professional as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This "female founder" lacks diligence. There are many wrong things:

1\. The guy on the conversation has an opinion. Everyone is entitled to his opinion. He is clearly not the guy doing the picking/selection. Just a stuff crew. Shaming people for their opinions (it'd have been worse to name him) is just as racist/sexist as you endure.

2\. Every one, race, religion... goes through this. You can't prevent selection bias. But you might be able to defeat it with your startup performance. Human are biased, and trying to change their minds will not work. Which will lead us to the third point.

3\. Markets will decide. In a capitalist market, the inefficient guy will not stand for long. In the long term, the efficient guy will win. Which is probably why software is eating the world. If women are better (or equal), things will work out in their favour on the long term. (e.g.: a VC that keeps an eye on female-founders because they are under-valued).

Conclusion: Don't write offensive and controversial blog posts when you are trying to raise money.

</comment><comment><USER31> Just curious: have any male founders here been asked the childcare question whilst pitching VCs?

</comment><comment><USER23> This blog article is a good test of prospective startup founders. Ask startup founder what they think and you quickly know if you do not want to work with them.

</comment><comment><USER32> At first, I was thinking that "your wife" was a stand-in for someone who is not involved with your business, in the context of figuring out who your customers are.

</comment><comment><USER10> > tell you to STFU every single time

People who have be told to STFU over last 2 weeks.

1\. marc andreessen

2\. gloria steinem

3\. stephen fry

4\. margaret albright

5\. richard dawkins

6\. Meryl streep

If ppl like these who have public speaking experience are getting stfu then what chance do ordinary people have .

<comment><USER33> There is a corollary to First amendment (Freedom of Speech), it is Freedom to not listen. I think people should exercise it more than trying to shutting others.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> OP here. AMA

<comment><USER24> Hello.. Is it possible to post the entire chat conversation?

<comment><USER2> I went back and looked through the conversation. The entirety of the discussion only makes him look worse.

It starts by me asking if they have invested in any women, him saying No and then I say "Isn't that weird" and then the screenshots start.

Then we continue to chat and it turns into an argument.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Super unpopular opinion incoming.

The guy was taken out of context and clearly said he was trying to explain why the number of female founders was less. His thoughts had to do with not many of them applying because they prefer to be mothers. Does not matter if thats true or not, what matters is less apply.

Also, the affirmative action think irks me. Statistically 99% of pitches dont get funded. If there is 19 male pitches for every female pitch, does that mean that the female should get funding because its less common?

I would feel disgusted as a woman to know I got funded just to have a quota filled and a box checked. When a woman pitches with a great idea, it should be seen as a success, not as a VC giving out charity. This stuff really takes away from the accomplishments of women and I hate it. The fact that you think that more women should have been funded just because they are women lets your bias shine through. Newsflash, Women and minorities can have, and usually do, just as shitty business ideas as CIS white men.

<comment><USER35> ... Except that he's quoted as saying, "I think mothers have more important things to do [than be entrepreneurs]" which, while certainly a position that can be defended (though you won't see me doing so), is inarguably prejudiced against female founders with children: he is explicitly saying that _mothers should not be entrepreneurs_ and implicitly saying that _he would disfavor such a founder_. He's very openly stating his prejudice against an entire class of people, to a member of that class.

<comment><USER36> Personally I want to make the right money now so that I can be the father I want to be in the future. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that my future children will be the most important things in my life for several decades of my future.

I don't think that it is unreasonable to consider any parent as having more important things than startups to do.

<comment><USER37> Equating "women" with "mothers" is the first prejudice (she asked about the former, not the latter):

 _" According to the U.S. Census Bureau's Current Population Survey, in 2014, 47.6 percent of women between age 15 and 44 had never had children"_

<comment><USER38> What about the majority of them that did?

<comment><USER37> What point are you trying to make? All I said is that Women is a (significantly!) larger group than Mothers, so it's wrong to equate the two. The latter is a subset, and an explanation that only covers them, as valid as it may be, is insufficient to explain something about all women.

<comment><USER38> Yeah, but while doing risk analysis it's definitely a thing worth considering.

<comment><USER37> Which wasn't what he was doing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I don't know the author, or her life circumstances, but to believe that 'Because in my head, I can't imagine a scenario where you trust someone with millions of dollars to run a business but think that they don't know how to deal with childcare.' Is just sexism is idiotic.

It isn't the childcare itself, is the pregnancy and the 1st year that is the 'problem'. Women can and are as good entrepreneurs as men, but if for a second you think (exceptions excluded) women, during pregnancy and first months of a newborn can run a business without sacrificing something you must never been around that scenario. And if I was going to put a million dollars in your business and there is even a 5% chance you may end up pregnant, it will indeed be a minus in my book (as an investment though)

You either sacrifice the health of your baby with long nights, long working hours, stress, etc, or you sacrifice the company when you take those 2-3 days because morning sickness or tiredness don't allow you to be on your best.

Is it unfair? Yes, very, but pregnancy and breastfeeding is something that takes a toll on women and no matter what a partner tries to do to help, he can't really carry the baby in is belly or start producing milk. Think of it this way, if the entrepreneur was a man, it would be akin to asking how he would expect to keep focusing on their sports career (5+ hours practise a day) and running a VC-based startup.

<comment><USER40> Good point, however all of this only holds in the American west coast bizzarro world where the only way to build a successful company is to work 80 hours a week, not sleep, and ruin all your relationships.

There are plenty of examples of companies where sane working hours are the norm (irrespective of founder gender) and in those companies, the impact of a single founder/manager being less available/dependable for a while is also smaller.

Of course, there's a pretty large class of VCs that will only fund founders who're willing to go 100% kamikaze just for a spot on their power law curve, and your argument holds for them. But I know where I'd want my money from.

<comment><USER39> It's not even that.

Stress (and being a founder is a very stressful time) is a very big no-no during pregnancy and can influence the gene expression of the baby.

But Even sane working hours are a problem. Here is a bit of a cognitive dissonance for the folks here at HN to ponder. I'm pretty sure you support maternity leave and even a leave on the last few weeks of pregnancy right (I do)? If that is the case, why? If you believe being pregnant/childcare (lets say only first 3 months) isn't a big hurdle and a job onto itself and as someone pointed below, a women may even work harder while pregnant, why support the maternity leave?

<comment><USER16> > Stress (and being a founder is a very stressful time) is a very big no-no > during pregnancy and can influence the gene expression of the baby.

[citation needed]

"Systematic reviews have generally concluded that standard working conditions present little hazard to maternal or child health. A woman with an uncomplicated pregnancy who is employed where there are no greater potential hazards than those encountered in routine daily life may continue to work without interruption until the onset of labor."

[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23472500](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23472500)

[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22355087](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22355087)

"Psychosocial work stress (high demands and low control) was not associated with an increased risk of congenital malformations in a population-based cohort study"

[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24593253](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24593253)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> You asked this guy why there weren't more female founders, so he gave you his personal opinion backed with his personal experience with his wife. Would you prefer that he lie to you instead?

<comment><USER42> No, she just happens not to like the way he (and apparently a good number of other VCs) mentally navigates the issue, and chose to write a blog post expressing these thoughts. She doesn't like the idea that mothers can't be founders because they "have better things to do".

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> It's the same when an investor ask you do you have a job? are you going to quit it for your project? are you going to stick with your project long enough? Investors want you to have 100% of your time to your project, it's just how it works.

<comment><USER25> This would make sense if they same VC also asked a male founder if his wife was pregnant, and if he was going to abandon the startup for his family. Except we all know they wouldn't dare ask that question, because it would be extremely rude and potentially illegal (?). But for some reason it's ok with the female founders, again because of the idea that "mothers should be mothers" that this VC expressed in the text message.

<comment><USER44> Why do you think this doesn't come up? As a single father of course it came up in every funding/hiring discussion I ever had.

And it was perfectly reasonable for them to ask, due to the roles I was being offered. If I got offended by that, I didn't understand the sheer amount of work and effort those positions were going to entail.

If I'm hiring a 9-5 support tech, it's irrelevant. If I'm hiring a "kills the company if it's the wrong hire" position, you bet your ass I'm looking at it from every angle. And someone being able to commit 100% to that is very key - doesn't matter if it's kids, sports, hobbies, whatever. If you decide you want work/life balance, a startup founder is not for you. At least one that is funded by VCs.

<comment><USER37> _As a single father of course it came up in every funding /hiring discussion I ever had._

Did it come up before you were a father?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Should gov.uk run a bug bounty? - <AUTHOR> http://shkspr.mobi/blog/2014/02/should-gov.uk-run-a-bug-bounty/ <comment><USER2> I think it's impressive how far they've come the last few years. Props to the gov.uk team if any of them lurk here, they even came and commented when the initial designs were posted here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3811052](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3811052)

Yes, the probably eventually should, but given how we've gone from terrible websites by contractors to decent ones in a short time, I'm not going to start jumping up and down about it yet.

Although if they could get round to redesigning the 'gateway' crap sooner rather than later it'd be much appreciated. I have already been given 25 different gateway IDs.

<comment><USER3> I am and I'm not impressed.

Whilst the outcome is positive, the technology churn isn't. In fact, it's a right mess. They've ended up with a huge stack that doesn't need to be there. They're there to provide content efficiently, not redesign the infrastructure. They're using tech because it's cool and fun rather than suitable for the task and cost effective.

I know people are going to compare them to EDS and say "look how far we've come" etc but they are still spending public money and are not beyond scrutiny from us tax payers.

They're not a startup either. The ground they're standing on is different to what they think they're standing on.

Edit: downvoters, please at least have the honour to explain yourselves.

<comment><USER4> Having a central body which sets government digital policy on how to provide information across departments is great.

That they're doing a fantastic job of providing content to users efficiently, using appropriate technology and without favouring commercial solutions, is incredible.

Compare the clusterfuck that is [http://www.cyberstreetwise.com](http://www.cyberstreetwise.com). Contracted- out websites cannot match the quality and cost effectiveness.

I downvoted you because it's really very difficult to understand what you are actually complaining about: you are trolling.

<comment><USER3> I'm not trolling. I've watched them build their own stack, throw it away, build it again, throw it away. That's waste.

<comment><USER5> How close are you to these guys? When you say "I've watched them build their own stack", are you referring to having read some blog posts, or do you know them personally?

The money that the fairly small team are spending is a drop in the ocean compared to many government funded projects. If you want to get angry about misspent public funds, I can think of countless other areas that are orders of magnitude worse. The reality is that a small team of people directly employed by the government working fairly effectively can build and discard their stack as many times as they want and still be significantly cheaper than getting a big company to do it.

<comment><USER3> I watch github, I watch their blog, I read interviews, I get the picture.

It's my job to look at dysfunctional teams both from a technology and a process perspective. I've seen teams like this many times before. They are expensive, inefficient and the return is considerably lower than the investment has promised.

Just because the historic approaches are worse doesn't exclude these guys from scrutiny. They'll quite happily piss £40k of dev cost up the wall while other departments are arguing over £200 ultrasounds for cancer patients. Scrutiny must be universal and unforgiving.

<comment><USER2> So long answer, short, you don't know.

I've not been watching them closely, but they are delivering, which seems an extremely strong indication they're not dysfunctional at all.

Every now and then I end up on a gov site they've redone and it's immediately obvious they've had at it because it's easy to use, responsive, etc.

You're sounding like one of those pointy haired bosses that don't understand that good developers play to succeed, and it doesn't always pay off. But if you stop them you end up with crap because the good people leave.

<comment><USER6> Got to say it sounds like you were pretty far away too, but the page loads quick so it is ok they redeveloped the stack with Ruby, Scala, Go, and when they get bored and want to learn Elixir or Erlang, maybe they rewrite it again. After all, it is only our taxes paying for it.

Sounds more like a pointy haired boss to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> No. They shouldn't. They are publicly funded so efficiency of cash flow is important. No reward should be required in this circumstance apart from perhaps an acknowledgement.

They should operate an open submission policy though i.e. a bug report form and actually feed back to people.

<comment><USER7> > They are publicly funded so efficiency of cash flow is important

Bug bounty rewards are orders of magnitude cheaper than the damage the bugs can cause.

If they have a bug report form at all and employ people to screen and respond to bug reports, the bounty costs probably wont even add up to the cost of 1 additional employee

<comment><USER8> I disagree, when you understand the way UK government works, any compromises will be cheaper in nearly every case along with requiring no action on their part in the first place which is even better. Planning the creation of a team to handle this will likely run in to the millions before you've even begun, that is the way it works. And noone resigns they just go in to hiding for a while ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm still waiting for a response on what sort of privacy analysis took place when they decided to use Google Analytics to track and analyse UK citizens interactions with UK government.

It still doesn't smell right.

</comment><comment><USER10> Maybe there should be a public record of the bugs and who found them, something you could point to on a CV.

<comment><AUTHOR> That could be a very interesting idea. I know Google run a Hall of Fame, and Facebook do something similar.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> If bugs are an issue, why not get started and fix them?

* [https://github.com/alphagov/](https://github.com/alphagov/)

* [http://alphagov.github.io/](http://alphagov.github.io/)

* [https://gds.blog.gov.uk/2012/10/12/coding-in-the-open/](https://gds.blog.gov.uk/2012/10/12/coding-in-the-open/)

Looks great on your CV, you're helping your government do it right, everyone's a winner.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not specifically talking about [https://gov.uk/](https://gov.uk/) but rather all of X.gov.uk - like HMRC, DWP, etc.

That said, is there a way on GitHub to _privately_ raise a security related issue without the whole world seeing it?

<comment><USER11> Many of them are now open source too:

* [http://government.github.com/community/](http://government.github.com/community/)

For example:

* [https://github.com/hmrc](https://github.com/hmrc)

Sure it's not everything yet, but it's progress. You can still reach the right people and get involved.</comment></comment></comment>


Too Cold for an Oil Cut? Russia's Move Reveals a Long-Running Bluff - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/04/world/europe/russia-oil-cut.html <comment><USER2> [http://archive.is/9a5K1](http://archive.is/9a5K1)</comment>


Oakley's Airwave brings heads-up display to mountain sports - <AUTHOR> http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2226005/Workaholics-dream-gadget-Goggles-let-read-emails-ski-slopes.html

<comment><USER2> This page has autoplaying audio. I navigated off the page immediately. I wonder what they were thinking?

<comment><AUTHOR> ugh. i have noscript on, so didn't notice. considering this is an article about visualizations, I agree with your point.</comment></comment>


Andy Rubin and carriers meddling with Android - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/10/08/android-carriers/

<comment><USER2> Carriers or OEMs certainly don't have the users in mind when they're "adding value" by disabling features or shipping uninstallable apps.

We already know how well that worked out before 2007, why would it be different this time?

Also, it's really handy to be able to redefine what openness means depending on who's doing the asking and when they're asking you.</comment>


Linear Congruential Generators - <AUTHOR> http://www.eternallyconfuzzled.com/tuts/algorithms/jsw_tut_rand.aspx

<comment><USER2> > However, because the implementation of rand is unknown, it is impossible to > tell whether or not using modulus to shrink the range will result in an > acceptably random sequence. The reason that this might not be the case is > due to the very definition of linear congruential generators.

Using the modulus operation to transform the range of std::rand is problematic, but it isn't because of any attribute of the implementation of std::rand or of linear congruential generators.

One problem with using modulus to scale a random distribution is that it fails to preserve uniformity. For example, consider a function 'rand150' whose result is uniformly distributed on [0, 150); that is, each number in the range [0, 150) has the same probability (1/150) of being returned by any given call to rand150. Now, if you use modulus to scale to [0, 100):

        x = rand150() % 100;

there are 100 possible values for x. For any value greater than or equal to 50, there is exactly one result of rand150 which could produce that value; therefore, the probability of x being that value is 1/150\. But for values less than 50, there are _two_ results of rand150 which could produce that value, giving it a probability of 2/150\. Since half of the possible values of x have a probability of 1/150 each and the other half have a probability of 2/150 each (you can check that this adds up to a probability of 1), the distribution is very much nonuniform. This result does not apply just to small ranges; it applies any time you scale down the range by anything but an integer multiple, although it approaches uniformity more closely the smaller the target range is compared to the source range.

The other problem is that you can't make the range bigger. Well, you actually can— but some of your "x" values will have a probability of zero, which probably isn't what you want. Considering rand150 again, if you try to scale to [0, 300) by doing:

        x = rand150() % 300;

how often do you expect to get 250?

> The common solution is to use the constant value RAND_MAX, defined with > every standard library, to use the high-order bits of a random number > through division rather than low-order bits with the remainder of division

I'm not sure if there's a typo in the code, but if RAND_MAX is, say, 200, then

        rand() / (RAND_MAX / 100 + 1)

gives you values on [0, 66]. Probably not what you want.

> An alternative to dividing RAND_MAX by N is to force the expression to > floating-point and multiply RAND_MAX by N

Mathematically, this would be a sensible way of scaling _continuous_ uniform distributions, or at least it would be if floating-point numbers weren't so imprecise. When dealing with discrete distributions, though, this approach still has problems. For example, what if rand gives values on [0, 30) and I want values on [0, 20)? Let's see what values of rand map to, assuming perfect real numbers:

        rand  x
        0     floor(0)   = 0
        1     floor(2/3) = 0
        2     floor(4/3) = 1
        3     floor(6/3) = 2
        4     floor(8/3) = 2

Unfortunately, 1 will only be generated half as often as 0 or 2.

> Yet another alternative is to utilize the uniform_deviate function provided > not too long ago

Mathematically, this is equivalent to the above. The floating point arithmetic may be very slightly different, but it will make the result worse if anything.

<comment><AUTHOR> You make many fine points.

Paul Hsieh goes into some ways to properly correct for the modulus effect here (as well as debunking commonly suggested ways that don't work): [http://www.azillionmonkeys.com/qed/random.html](http://www.azillionmonkeys.com/qed/random.html)

Alternatively, especially if you have specifically chosen an LCG because you need the periodicity, you can come up with appropriate constants to generate a perfectly distributed set of integers matching the period of your choosing: [http://mathaa.epfl.ch/cours/PMMI2001/interactive/rng4.htm](http://mathaa.epfl.ch/cours/PMMI2001/interactive/rng4.htm)

This second approach not only solves the modulus issue, but can be very useful for things such as parallelizing the shuffling of an array. Your shuffle won't be perfectly random (as in, some sequences will occur more often than others), but it will be properly distributed in the sense that each index will only be used once.

<comment><USER2> My preferred method—well, actually, my preferred method is to use std::uniform_int_distribution—but in lieu of that, I prefer to use an adapter that builds values in a target range bitwise from values in a source range.

The basic idea is to drop off the top of the input range so it's a power of two wide; this makes the bits of the input values independent (i.e., each bit has equal probability of being 0 or 1). You gather enough bits this way to span at least the target range, then again drop off any values exceeding the range's bound.

The drop-off method preserves uniformity because any variable uniformly distributed over a set is also uniformly distributed over any subset of that set. Breaking down and building up the binary representation works because uniformity is preserved by the Cartesian product (i.e., X is uniform in A and Y is uniform in B iff (X,Y) is uniform in A×B, where X and Y are stochastic variables) and the binary representation of an integer is just {0,1}^n for some n.

The advantage of this method is that you can adapt any input range to any output range without introducing any nonuniformity, cycles, or other "flaws" in randomness (though it will certainly preserve them, if not amplify them).

Another interesting thing to note about this algorithm is that you don't technically have to use binary or even a fixed base; given X in A and Y in B, where A and B are subsets of the natural numbers and |B| ≥ 2, (X,Y) ≅ X * (sup(B)+1) + Y. You can, if I'm not mistaken, use this property to derive the first "more reasonable answer" in the first link you gave from the algorithm above, assuming a smaller target range than input range. And if you look closely at "X * (sup(B)+1) + Y," you'll see a relationship with quotients and remainders and, I think, the LCG itself.

This is quite interesting stuff.</comment></comment></comment>


New Indianapolis Hackers and Founders Meetup - <AUTHOR>

We've started a monthly meetup for Indianapolis Hackers and Founders. This is our 3rd meetup, but the first with the new affiliation with H&F.
The next one is Monday, February 1 at the Upper Room in Broad Ripple (upstairs at the Broad Ripple Steak House)
You can checkout our meetup site here: http://www.meetup.com/Hackers-and-Founders-Indianapolis/
Don't be shy about letting us know what you'd like to see come out of this group. Right now we're keeping it casual - it's basically an excuse for startup-minded people in Indianapolis to get together and hang out. <comment><USER2> The past two events have been great. There is a surprisingly high concentration of startups in Indy and the evens have made it easy to connect with others starting companies or working at them.

</comment><comment><USER3> Looking forward to growing the group with all of you. See you at the Upper Room. @hunckler

</comment><comment><USER4> Looks very cool. Hopefully, there will be a good turnout of interesting people!

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm looking forward to meeting more people interested in start-ups.

</comment><comment><USER6> Looking forward. I'm sure it will be a great event.

@agouty

</comment><comment><USER7> I'll be there!</comment>


2 Monitors : Portrait or Landscape - <AUTHOR> http://media.glassdoor.com/m/2a/8a/6b/2e/workplace.jpg

<comment><USER2> I would like to try out portrait, but I rarely work on monitors that can easily be mounted/stood that way. With two in portrait and a relatively high resolution, I think it would be pretty awesome.

<comment><USER3> I have 2x24" widescreen Dells in portrait and it's not great. They're just too big top to bottom to be comfortable.

(On the other hand, in landscape, they take up most of the desk and lead to me looking like a bobblehead all day as I pan back and forth.)</comment></comment>