A Field Guide to Genetic Programming (2008) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://dces.essex.ac.uk/staff/rpoli/gp-field-guide/A_Field_Guide_to_Genetic_Programming.pdf <comment><USER2> I've always been fascinated by genetic programming, and I've always wondered why it isn't more prominent. Is it not actually that useful? Is it too hard to use? Does building magic black boxes scare people?

I'd love to hear from anyone who's used genetic programming for... well, anything really.

<comment><USER3> Only because you asked, this has been my pet project :)

Using Artificial Intelligence to Write Self-Modifying/Improving Programs

[http://www.primaryobjects.com/CMS/Article149](http://www.primaryobjects.com/CMS/Article149)

<comment><USER2> Thanks for posting - I've had a quick skim and it looks really interesting. Bookmarked for weekend reading :)

Have you seen Clojush? It's "the Push programming language and the PushGP genetic programming system implemented in Clojure." I haven't had a chance to play with it yet, but it seems to be in active development. [https://github.com/lspector/Clojush](https://github.com/lspector/Clojush)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> [http://www.amazon.com/product- reviews/1409200736/](http://www.amazon.com/product-reviews/1409200736/)</comment>


DuckDuckGo Returns No Results for Soft Robotics - <AUTHOR> https://duckduckgo.com/?q=soft+robotics

<comment><USER2> Try reloading the search. I think there is an intermittent DuckDuckGo bug which can result in no results being displayed. I have seen it a few times, and reloading the page or resubmitting the search has always resulted in a page populated with results. Indeed, your submitted story link pulled up a full page of results for me.

</comment><comment><USER3> Interestingly, when I click to Turn On "Region", it shows a bunch of results</comment>


The Elusive Big Idea - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/14/opinion/sunday/the-elusive-big-idea.html?_r=2 <comment><USER2> Social networking as conversation is a good analogy, and one that Gabler doesn't follow through on in this article. Yes, the vast majority of conversations are banal, and always have been. The only difference is that, because of social networking, we now have a lasting record of how mundane our conversations are. Most conversations are not three-hour monologues about the End of History (and thank God for that). That doesn't mean that the quality of discussion has declined, or that we are in a post-idea era. It just means that throwaway small talk is located on the same global platform as the big ideas.

A positive side effect is that the _interesting_ conversations are now available to everyone. For example, most chatter in a Philadelphia bar in 2011 is of no interest to anyone except the people having the conversation, but chatter in a Philadelphia bar in 1776 would make a fascinating read. I sure wish we had a record of that. Take Twitter as an example, since Gabler singles it out for criticism. Most of the time, I don't care what Muhammad Everyman in Cairo is tweeting about, because the quality level is the same as that of ordinary conversation. But when a revolution breaks out, I can listen in on tens of thousands of conversations talking about what is happening on a street-by-street level. Conversation is mundane, except when it isn't.

As for the comment about the Internet following a sort of Gresham's Law, with trivial information pushing out the big ideas, I think it's off the mark. Nothing is getting pushed out because there is nothing to get pushed out _of_. More bytes of kitten photos does not mean less bytes of Nietzsche. The amount and availability of big ideas and trivial data are increasing concurrently. The issue is one of attention: You can seek out and pay attention to big ideas, or you can look at cats. Most people look at cats. But that's always been true.

<comment><USER3> > As for the comment about the Internet following a sort of Gresham's Law, > with trivial information pushing out the big ideas, I think it's off the > mark. Nothing is getting pushed out because there is nothing to get pushed > out of.

I disagree. What it gets pushed out of is human thought. Both that of individual humans and of our collective processing of notions.

I notice it in my own life for sure. I read more now, but I read a lot fewer books, and I spend less time thinking about what I read: I tend to leap to the next shiny thing.

I'm using tools like LeechBlock to claw back some of that time. And the time spent on lighter-weight web stuff isn't totally wasted; it allows me to maintain a much larger social network, which is both enjoyable and professionally useful. But I'm starting to feel about the web like I feel about modern grocery stores: I don't mind that they _have_ candy, but I kinda resent having to run a junk-food gauntlet to get to the broccoli.

<comment><USER2> _I notice it in my own life for sure. I read more now, but I read a lot fewer books, and I spend less time thinking about what I read: I tend to leap to the next shiny thing._

I know what you mean, and I have the same problem. I think that the big difference between the present and the past is that the monetary value of our attention has increased dramatically, and companies are spending hundreds of billions of dollars just to get us to look at them. It takes a lot of discipline to keep yourself from looking at a trillion-dollar lightshow.

I just don't buy the premise of this article, which is that because of all of these distractions, people are no longer grappling with big ideas. To extend your grocery store metaphor, it's as if the author were to argue that because there are so many candy bars, vegetables no longer exist. He mentions Richard Dawkins and Stephen Jay Gould as examples of people who would be superstar public intellectuals in an earlier time period, but I think that they are _now_. This is pure conjecture on my part, but I think that the percentage of the population that knows who Richard Dawkins and Stephen Jay Gould are is higher than the percentage of the population that knew who Marshall McLuhan and John Maynard Keynes were when they were active. In fact, I would venture a guess that Marshall McLuhan and John Maynard Keynes are _also_ more well-known now than they were in their day. It's a lot easier for big ideas to reach the general public through the Internet than through old media and local word-of- mouth. Most of these people will never penetrate beyond the surface level, but at least they're aware that these big discussions exist. For the people who want to go deeper, they still can, will, and are, even if it means taking dramatic measures to focus their attention.

<comment><USER4> I don't think he means people are no longer grappling with big ideas. He is saying the people that are "thinking big" are not being recognized due to the huge information overload. We are focusing less on whats important and more on what generates buzz.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Every generation has said something exactly like this about the generation before (modern, postwar, postmodern, etc). However, I agree that we are in an age where most (if not all) big fuzzy ideas have already been thought of. People have already suggested that "God is Dead" (or nonexistent) or "God is all knowing and all powerful", and everything in between (even that a flying spaghetti monster controls all). Nobody is going to come up with something more radical on that spectrum. Its now on to morality and efficacy. Morally, there are still active debates on topics such as gay marriage, abortion, scope of the government, and cloning. Everything else is about efficacy, and what actually works. Big ideas are the easy part. Proving they work requires intellectual vigor, experimentation, data, and analysis over long periods of time. If big ideas are dead, then its only because we are on to the good stuff, figuring out if they were worth anything.

</comment><comment><USER6> I, for one, welcome the post-idea world -- consider that the rise of Nazism and Communism was primarily driven by the so-called big ideas that helped the masses "make sense of the world" not unlike in the way the article seems to espouse.

I've known people consumed by ideas (nearly all of my college friends who were into politics). They were antagonistic, insincere, subtly hypocritical, and appeared simply brainwashed. You would not want to have them as partners neither in a business nor in a family. Not a pretty picture.

<comment><USER3> I think you're half right here, both on your examples and on your conclusion. Communism was definitely built around an idea. Nazism, though, wasn't; it's just tribalism dressed up a little.

By generalizing from a few data points without looking for other examples, you come to a false conclusion. The fight against both communism and fascism was helped greatly by fighting for ideals like democracy, individual freedom, and the right of peoples to avoid oppression.

What we should learn from this isn't that ideas are bad. It's that ideas are very powerful, and that we need to be extremely careful with the ideas we support. That in turn argues for the sort of careful thinking that the article recommends.

<comment><USER6> > What we should learn from this isn't that ideas are bad. It's that ideas are > very powerful.

Actually what we should learn is that ideas are powerful and especially dangerous if they are combined with a general lack of information and alternative viewpoints as was the case in the first half of the 20th century.

You are incorrect in stating that Nazism was not primarily idea driven. The whole "nationalism" thing started off as a powerful idea in the early 19th century spearheaded by the Romanticist zeitgeist. Previously, people imagined their "tribes" as consisting of their immediate family, relatives, and perhaps friendly neighbors. Europe consisted of multiethnic empires at the time. With the rise of nationalist ideas, people started to imagine their tribes as all people speaking the same language and being of the same "race". Also, don't forget the "socialist" part in Nazism, which was also idea-driven. I recommend watching "The Goebbels Experiment" (IMDB: <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0458375/>) to get a hint on how significant the idea-driven propaganda/brainwashing was in the rise of Nazism.

The nationalist wave started off somewhere in Central Europe and reached other parts of the continent much later -- it is still causing trouble in Russia (the surprising rise of neo-Nazi skinheads there with the fall of the USSR), Northern Ireland, the Balkans, and the Basque Country in Spain, for example.

<comment><USER3> I'll definitely check out the video, but I'm not yet persuaded. I think nationalism _is_ dressed-up tribalism. Further, propaganda, especially of the Goebbels sort, is directly opposed to the pursuit of widespread thinking and big ideas that this article is promoting.

Also, nationalism isn't a big idea in the same sense that communism or western democracy are. Communists and democrats of many nations work in common cause for their ideals, but nationalists of many nations are by definition opposed. What they share isn't so much an idea as a set of behaviors and a style of thinking. In Gabler's framework, nationalism is more an observation than it is a big idea.

<comment><USER6> > propaganda, especially of the Goebbels sort, is directly opposed to the > pursuit of widespread thinking and big ideas that this article is promoting.

The problem I have with the article is that many of the "big" ideas that happened during past history were only big and influential because they were absorbed by vast numbers of ill-informed people. In other words, it wasn't so much that an idea itself was big, but that most people didn't have alternative sources of information and therefore were ripe material for absorbing the given idea. Totalitarianism thrived on persuading people through clever control of the (new at the time) mass-media channels to believe into this or that idea.

> nationalism isn't a big idea in the same sense that communism or western > democracy are.

You are equating "big" with "well-intentioned," which I believe are different things. There can be no doubt that nationalist ideas had a major impact on modernity, from Nazism to Balkans to post-colonialism. Regarding tribalism, it can take many forms, not just nationalism. One of the channels which the early USSR used to spread communist ideas was precisely tribalism. Russians were imagined as good and communitarian "by-nature" while people from Western countries were portrayed as more mean-spirited and selfish.

<comment><USER3> > many of the "big" ideas that happened during past history were only big and > influential because they were absorbed by vast numbers of ill-informed > people

Sure, and I think Gabler would agree. He is, after all, arguing in favor of "rationality, science, evidence, logical argument and debate". He doesn't want people to have a single big idea; he wants lots of them to be discussed.

Your basic argument is that if X sometimes causes problems, we should be glad to see X gone. On its own, it's a weak argument, because it ignores the positive side of the ledger, and it supposes that the problems you associate with X won't occur in the absence of X. Neither looks true to me; big ideas also have plenty of benefits, and a vast number of ill-informed people isn't going to get any less dumb or manipulable if Enlightment culture dies out.

> You are equating "big" with "well-intentioned,"

Not at all. American nationalism isn't the same idea as Chinese nationalism or Indian nationalism. Nationalism is an observation about ideas (or perhaps a meta-idea), not an idea in the sense that the author is talking about.

<comment><USER6> > Your basic argument is that if X sometimes causes problems, we should be > glad to see X gone.

That's not my basic argument. My basic argument is that the very concept of "big" ideas as defined by Gabler is fundamentally flawed because: (1) the "bigness" factor of an idea he uses is a measure of how influential the idea is; (2) ill-informed people (think children, some rural communities etc) are much, much easier to influence than well-informed ones; and finally (3) there were proportionally many more ill-informed people in the past than there are today.

So we might as well be in the golden age of ideas but neither one of them ever becomes "big" because they are all in fierce competition with each other. Or perhaps not -- but the basic point is that the way we measure this "bigness" is flawed.

> American nationalism isn't the same idea as Chinese nationalism or Indian > nationalism.

Of course it isn't. America was founded before the wave of nationalism took over Europe. American nationalism is to European nationalism as ham is to hamster -- only the name is similar. Nationalism in most countries in the world was modeled on European nationalism. Examples: Lebanese nationalist Kataeb party was modeled on Spanish and Italian Fascist parties (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kataeb_Party>). Pakistani nationalism stems from utopian visions of Muhammad Iqbal, an idealist poet influenced by Romanticism (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_Iqbal>). Ukrainian nationalism holds as holy populist-Romanticist ideas of Taras Shevchenko (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taras_Shevchenko>) and owes its ideologic form to Dmytro Dontsov (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmytro_Dontsov>).

One of my biggest realization in the past years has been that nationalism isn't some "natural" tribal tendency but an ideology like any other that only uses ("perverts") the tribal tendencies for its own purpose and which was built and formulated nearly exclusively on a populist form of Romanticism that spread throughout Europe in the middle of 19th century (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutions_of_1848>, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romantic_nationalism>).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> _"We prefer knowing to thinking because knowing has more immediate value. It keeps us in the loop, keeps us connected to our friends and our cohort. Ideas are too airy, too impractical, too much work for too little reward. Few talk ideas. Everyone talks information, usually personal information. Where are you going? What are you doing? Whom are you seeing? These are today's big questions."_

Knowing is also what gets you brownie points from academia & from most cubicle jobs. Rote memorization has become the litmus test by which many seem to measure intelligence. And most on the receiving end oblige because hey, do what your told and while society might suffer as a result of your lack of imagination & ideas, at least you'll get that A. Or the promotion you so desperately want. So to me, our learning institutions and a great bulk of corporate America are to blame for big ideas dying on the vine just as much as new media.

The author makes some salient points though, particularly with the concept of "information narcissism." That's certainly something I can see becoming more & more prevalent with the rise of the social graph.

<comment><USER8> And with efficient search, sometimes as simple as find in a text file, memorization should not be a priority.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Ideas such as the death of God or the end of history, ideas that can't be nailed down, much less verified, serve as food for enlightening discussion. And we're tired of discussion. We can't take any more. We want ideas that can be settled in labs or supercolliders or computer simulations. Why don't we want to talk about ideas any more? Actually, it was a single idea killed our appetite for discussion and hence our appetite for big, open-ended ideas. That idea is that everything has political implications and because of our concern for the well-being of others we are morally obligated to prioritize politics above all else.

Because of that belief, we cannot indulge in honesty, good faith, or curiosity in any intellectual discussion, lest the enemy steal a march on us. Lest a child starve, a woman be raped, a citizen be robbed of the fruit of his labor, or a nation decay, we must treat every discussion as a political battlefield. Talking with someone you disagree with on their own terms isn't stimulating or educational; it's legitimizing a harmful ideology. Conceding a point isn't part of a healthy interchange of ideas; it's emboldening a dangerous mentality. Even the goal of changing your conversation partner's mind is self- indulgent, since what's important is not changing the mind of the person you're talking with but convincing the spectators that you're winning. It doesn't even matter whether your partner thinks you are sincere. Since the spectators are the point, he is obligated to argue with you no matter how uncivil or insincere you are. It would be immoral of him to concede the field to you, because of the damage you could do with it.

This view of conversation as political struggle, which ruthlessly extends into every sphere of life through the habits we cultivate in public, has banished good faith and curiosity from intellectual discussion and turned it into an onerous moral obligation. Ideas that stimulate conversation are an unwelcome call to arms for bored and weary warriors. Good riddance to them!

<comment><USER10> Yet here you are having an intellectual discussion, without using it to wage a political battle.

<comment><USER11> Sadly it was more of a monologue vs a discussion

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Perhaps we don't need to consolidate information into ideas (theories), as much because the information is available directly (via internet). We don't need to find the underlying pattern anymore.

Also, _The History of every major Galactic Civilization tends to pass through three distinct and recognizable phases, those of Survival, Inquiry and Sophistication, otherwise known as the How, Why, and Where phases. For instance, the first phase is characterized by the question 'How can we eat?' the second by the question 'Why do we eat?' and the third by the question 'Where shall we have lunch?'_

</comment><comment><USER13> I would suggest an experiment. All intellectuals complaining about the dumbing down of the generation that follows their own should instead compare pairs of past generations and see if they still think that the later generation always has less substance, fewer great thinkers, etc. Because if you read what people write when comparing their own generation (or the one before) to the next you'd have to think the world has been in an intellectual death spiral basically from the start.

It may just take time for great ideas to turn out as such or be interpreted as such. It would be interesting to do an empirical study to see whether the age of ideas at a time when they were first called "great ideas" has changed over time. It would be difficult to do because the concept of "greatness" may itself have gone through fashion cycles.

But maybe he is right and our society suffers from a little bit of "big" idea fatigue after the ideological desasters of the past two centuries that cost many millions of lives.

His complaints about social media seems totally misplaced. Does he really think that the Facebook or twitter event stream is somehow competing with deeper thought in people who would otherwise be thinking more? I don't believe that at all.

Just because a lot of chatter is now public doesn't mean fewer ideas of substance are published or perceived nowadays. Publishing just isn't filtered and curated as hierarchically as it used to be. That may influence the perception of greatness quite a lot.

</comment><comment><USER14> All 3 pages in one: [http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/14/opinion/sunday/the- elusive...](http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/14/opinion/sunday/the-elusive-big- idea.html?pagewanted=all)

Pretty good read, thanks for posting this!

</comment><comment><USER15> I agree with the author in that there seems to be a general lack of thought in society as a whole. However, I would say that the information glut we're exposed to is only one of the reasons - and different reasons apply to different people.

I would include the "rat race" or "daily grind" into these reason pool for a lack of critical thought. So much of our brain power is demanded for tasks that are unoriginal, uninspired and uninnovative that when ( or even if ) we have a chance to sit and think critically, our brains are sapped and it becomes easier to let a pundit or a blogger form our thoughts for us.

Another big reason is the lack of incentive put forth in the article. An innovative idea has little to know value to society if not immediately monetizeable.

</comment><comment><USER16> Ironic that the article is light on fact and heavy on anecdote and unsubstantiated claims.

"For one thing, social networking sites are the primary form of communication among young people, and they are supplanting print, which is where ideas have typically gestated. For another, social networking sites engender habits of mind that are inimical to the kind of deliberate discourse that gives rise to ideas. Instead of theories, hypotheses and grand arguments, we get instant 140-character tweets about eating a sandwich or watching a TV show."

This might have the sound of truth, but the article really gives me no reason to believe it's actually true.

</comment><comment><USER17> It seems like there is a pretty big assumption here, not supported in any significant way. I don't see much evidence that there aren't big ideas being made right now. Not all big ideas make waves right away, for one. And some big ideas might not be obvious to everyone paying attention. How do you define it even? Audience? This post did little in that regard.

Also, who says we don't have and discuss big ideas in social media? [http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/jitk9/how_the_fuc...](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/jitk9/how_the_fuck_does_the_frozen_soap_instructional/)

</comment><comment><USER18> 1: radical ideas break the patterns of your thoughts.

2: patterns are the least resistant way to think -- they are habits.

3: breaking habits is uncomfortable.

So: radical ideas are uncomfortable.

<comment><USER19> _So: radical ideas are uncomfortable._

And this is why I'm writing a programming language that isn't turing complete.

<comment><USER20> > And this is why I'm writing a programming language that isn't turing > complete.

That would not be a particularly new idea. One example is SQL, that makes searching through the data structures of an database much simpler than it would be if a general purpose language was used. Now SQL has been extended to be touring complete, but is not typically used that way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> _"The collection itself is exhausting: what each of our friends is doing at that particular moment and then the next moment and the next one; who Jennifer Aniston is dating right now; which video is going viral on YouTube this hour; what Princess Letizia or Kate Middleton is wearing that day."_

To say this is a modern construct is false. People may not have been following Jennifer Aniston, but they were doing whatever the equivalent was at the time. As with any generation, there will be your rare innovators as well as your 'average chumps.'

<comment><USER22> Great points about the information flood of banality - not just 'facts', but factoids, op-ed pretending to be fact - that has reduced the depth of public discourse to that of a 3-day puddle. And thereby made our society far more prone to twisting in the wind of every blow-hard shock-jock and politician willing to hammer their talking points to death (IF that politician is the recipient of Murdoch press support, of course, otherwise, talking points vanish into the ether).

Far more prone to acceding to corporate fascism (witness the slide of the USA and UK in this direction) dressed up as 'the all-knowing Market'. God is dead (which was Nietzsche's question, not finding by the way), long live The Market!

Uncomfortable, unsettling, mold-breaking ideas - AND a passionate discussion of them in their wake, placing them in context, searching out their salience, noting their blind-spots, etc - and popular curiosity and interest in the writers and thinkers who produce them, are life-blood to a civilization.

Ideas are still at large and very much alive in many non-anglophone countries. is this the saving grace of NOT being native speakers of the the English that rules the internet?

I'm interested in seeing information technology become idea technology. Any ideas about that?

Meanwhile, the internet reminds me of nothing so much as one of those bowls you have somewhere around the house into which miscellaneous oddities accrue over time, none of which will ever be used, but it seemed good at the time to put them somewhere... You know what I mean?

I mean a constant 'feed' of junk...Exhausting indeed, to host it anywhere in your actual head. And so much is coming in that memory is buckling under the strain and having to be downloaded to Google, which just further strip-mines the mind in its effort to retain the component parts that build genuine, socially valuable knowledge.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Love how the line right after the last one - "Think about that." is "Connect with The New York Times on Facebook."

On a related note to the article, I agree with the author that the web is filled with information exchanges that is one reason why the web can end up being anti-ideas.

However, what I love about Hacker News, is that it is one of the few such exchanges that I know of that seems to have a health balance between information and big ideas. Hope it stays this way.

</comment><comment><USER24> _It is certainly no accident that the post-idea world has sprung up alongside the social networking world._

. . .

 _Entrepreneurs have plenty of ideas, and some, like Steven P. Jobs of Apple, have come up with some brilliant ideas in the "inventional" sense of the word. Still, while these ideas may change the way we live, they rarely transform the way we think_

</comment><comment><USER25> I enjoyed the article and generally agree with the argument. However I wonder if we are over romanticizing the past?

How much of an effect did Rawls and Nozick have on the practical political debates of their time?

<comment><USER26> Nozick seems to have had a lot of influence amongst libertarians, though it's unclear to me how much influence libertarians actually wield.</comment></comment>


UK public debt hits £2T – What Happs Next? - <AUTHOR> https://www.henley.ac.uk/news/2020/uk-public-debt-hits-2trillion-what-happens-next <comment><USER2> ELI5 to whom those moneys to be paid?</comment>


Statement from President Donald J. Trump on Standing with Saudi Arabia - <AUTHOR> https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/statement-president-donald-j-trump-standing-saudi-arabia/ <comment><USER2> In summary, money first! Imagine that a similar crime is done by Iran. What would be the statement? I think Saudi Arabia does more harm to the world than Iran. The number of salafist (fundamentalist) is increasing everywhere, including in my country and the financial support for them comes from Saudia Arabia.</comment>


Response to "Math is Not Necessary for Software Development" - <AUTHOR> http://discretestates.blogspot.com/2014/01/response-to-math-is-not-necessary-for.html <comment><USER4> I started a Math degree after 16 years of programming without any Math beyond high school (the highest being high school calculus). Most of my work as a software developer didn't require any "higher" Maths.

Once I began studying math, including Modern Algebra, Analysis, Graph Theory, Category Theory, etc., I realized I understood many topics on an informal level, in a non-rigorous sort of way, through programming. I had a good sense of major algorithms and data structures as well as their running times. Once I did have more math under my belt, things did become easier, and I started to see connections and commonality between problems across different domains, i.e. more than one way to skin a cat.

Part of the reason I began studying math, is that I felt it was my limiting factor. The range of problems I could tackle as a programmer was limited by math. It turns out this was partly true.

The biggest misconception is that in Math there is one "correct" answer. This is almost never the case. Some of the most interesting solutions in Computer Science come directly from Math topics that were once considered "abstract". Likewise, some of the most interesting problems are solved through approximation algorithms of seemingly intractable problems, often requiring a bit of "hacking" and real world experience beyond what you'd get from a formal education in Math or Computer Science.

</comment><comment><USER5> The "math isn't needed for software dev" sentiment is really anti- intellectual. How can you ever have a hope of improving the software stack if you refuse to understand some of the fundamental ideas that inspired/powered it?

I've said it before: the job of college is to give you a solid understanding of fundamental concepts that you can apply to various situations, which [should] confer entry-level employment in various domains. College is not the place to go to learn yesterday's cool framework. Anybody can do that.

<comment><USER6> It seems the definition of math, as defined by programmers, is a moving target. I cannot imagine programming even the most basic of systems without basic algebra and arithmetic, but since everyone knows how to do that, it isn't considered math. Math is what is always beyond what you currently understand.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think a better way to phrase the point that the original post was trying to make is "If you're bad at math as it is taught in elementary/secondary school in the US, that doesn't necessarily mean you'll be bad at software development." It also never claims that math isn't useful, which is what this author is spending a lot of time trying to refute. It just says that you don't necessarily need to know/understand a lot of advanced math in order to write a CRUD app, which should be obvious.

<comment><USER8> And just for fun, I'll reassure everyone here that, "If you're bad at math as it is taught in elementary/secondary school in the US, that doesn't necessarily mean you'll be bad at _real math_."

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> There are much more clear-cut examples of math in programming than this.

3D graphics requires matrices, and more. You'll find blog posts all over the Net of game programmers teaching themselves quaternions. You don't have to be writing a physics engine to need them, just using one. Even 2D graphics often requires pretty fancy high school math, like testing whether a point is in a polygon.

Proofs. Especially when defining new data types, you often want to prove that certain properties hold in a pretty rigorous manner. If you've never had to prove anything before, even at high school geometry level, it seems unlikely you'd sit down and do this. Or maybe that's completely wrong, and proving things about code is just a programming skill like debugging. It seems worth mentioning, however, because proofs come from the domain of mathematics and require a huge amount of creativity sometimes.

Easing functions for animation; being able to reason about binary and modular arithmetic; having enough foundational knowledge to say sensible things about compression and cryptography. If you do anything in robotics, control systems, or simulation -- differential equations.

If you're not doing anything with numbers, graphics, or data structures, you might be safe.

<comment><USER10> > all over the Net of game programmers teaching themselves quaternions

That's what I did too, but I didn't think of it as math. It seemed like a cool trick for working with arrays of floats — not _math_.

"Math" I knew from school was always boring and useless. I was told to memorize formulas that did some abstract operations on on other things I had to memorize — __nobody told me I could be rotating spaceships in 3D! __

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> You can do software development without math, but you can also do aerospace engineering without (advanced) math. Doesn't take much math to draw an airplane part in SolidEdge. But is it a good idea?

I've never been "good at math" (at least not in the Math Olympiad sense of "good at.") I really dislike math classes. But every class I've taken has given me new insights into programming. And I didn't even work in one of those obviously math-y areas like 3D. But so much of programming can be described by graphs, state machines, analyzed statistically or with proof methods, etc. You don't even realize it until you have the mathematical language to describe it.

They say that when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail and with my narrow math education, I definitely feel that way (wait can we model this as a DAG?) But what about someone who doesn't even have a hammer?

</comment><comment><USER12> To disprove that math isn't useful for programming, I don't think anyone has to look further than the source code for Doom [1]. Math tricks were integral to making that game even _work_ back then.

[1]: [https://github.com/id-Software/DOOM](https://github.com/id- Software/DOOM)

<comment><USER13> Could you point out some relevant parts of the code for those not familiar with the codebase( there is a Lot of files ).

<comment><USER14> I don't think this particular bit was in Doom, but there was the fast inverse square root trick[1] that is only a couple lines of code, yet has a very lengthy explanation that requires both knowledge of math and floating point representation.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_inverse_square_root](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_inverse_square_root)

<comment><USER6> I think this may also a good example of why they say programmers don't need math. Very few people have the opportunity to even be in a position of inventing new algorithms like this. They are just going to read the relevant academic papers or use a library that implements it for them to make use of something like this in their own code. Even if you fully understand why the algorithm works, there is still a certain impostor syndrome at play for not being the one to invent it, leading people to believe they do not know math.

<comment><USER15> > They are just going to read the relevant academic papers

And how are you planning on doing that if you have no understanding of Maths?

<comment><USER6> The same way you can write an if statement without understanding of math. i.e. You can't, but we don't label it math, because it is not the invention of new mathematical concepts. Only people sitting in ivory towers doing things with math that the world has never seen before are considered to know math in the eyes of most programmers, it seems.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I've never understood the idea that math is not necessary for software development... It bothers me, math is not just useful but just taken for granted... pointer offsets require addition, looping requires counting - <USER2> useful things in software almost always requires math... it might be super simple math, but it's math... Also typically the hard problems the ones that people will benefit from in software does require advanced math, e.g. machine learning.

If you're chugging out html or css maybe you have used math to calculate an offset?

If you're working in a database maybe you've thought about the intersection of a set of two related collections of data?

Math is used and pretty darn necessary for programming. You are probably just taking it for granted.

<comment><USER17> But math beyond that is what we're talking about. I an am accomplished programmer but I never 'got' math in my later years of high school - <USER3> it was the teacher or me I don't know, but trigonometry and the like are still somewhat of a mystery to me.

But it hasn't really impacted me as a developer. I think there's a separation between specific mathematical concepts and logic - I get the latter, but not the former.

<comment><USER18> You can't possibly know whether it has impacted you as a developer, because you don't know what "you with more math" would be like as a developer. You can say that you're doing fine in spite of no math background, but I don't think you can reasonably claim anything about where you would be if things were otherwise.

For myself, I have experience programming with no math at all, with high school math, and with self-taught axiomatic math (I've been programming since I was quite young). I can say with certainty that every time I've learned more math, I've been able to improve as a programmer as a direct result. This even applies to relatively esoteric parts of mathematics, like category theory.

I don't think anyone's claiming that you can't work as a software developer without a heavy math background. We're just saying that you can go a hell of a lot further if you take the time to learn the math.

<comment><USER17> I never said that I am the best developer that I can ever be without it. After all, the title is "Math is Not Necessary for Software Development", not "Math will increase your skills at Software Development".

If I had better math skills I don't doubt that it would benefit me. As it is, I've got some design skills and some product knowledge, so my broader skills just skew a little differently.

<comment><USER18> Your claim was: "it hasn't really impacted me as a developer." That's the claim I responded to. Also, if you read the actual article, you will see that the majority of the content is regarding whether or not math is useful for software development, not just whether or not it is necessary.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Math is totally unnecessary for everyday software development.

It is necessary for _interesting_ software development though. Someone has to build the core that all the other applications rely on, and these engineers actually need to know all that nerd stuff.

<comment><USER20> >Math is totally unnecessary for everyday software development.

You are writing the simplest possible CRUD app for storing / retrieving some client records. You have a database of these records on the back-end, and users can add/edit/remove these records.

Now, your boss asks you to add a feature of bulk insertion of new client records from some other legacy data source, with proper de-duplication. There are no unique ids across the legacy and new data stores.

I hope this qualifies as "everyday software development". Is math totally unnecessary for solving this problem?

<comment><USER21> Of curse, is unnecesary (ie: the lack of have a math solution is not make this task hard/impossible to do).

If a person know database/sql, then "math" is not necessary here. Or what exactly are you talking about?

<comment><USER22> The irony here is that you mention SQL (the language of Relational Calculus) and in the same sentence claim that math is unnecessary.

<comment><USER19> but you see, my point is that the actual hard problem of executing a SQL query has been solved by those who designed the DBMS. our task boils down to writing SQL, which is way easier than designing the machinery that implements relational algebra.

EDIT: not to mention that you don't even have to understand relational algebra to write SQL. There are HORDES of programmers who don't know what it is yet they write SQL.

<comment><USER22> Relational Algebra is about executing the query. Relational Calculus is about formulating the query in the first place. Unless you copy-paste all your SQL code, you wind up using Relational Calculus. I would agree that most developers don't have a formal understanding of it (I sure don't) or even an awareness of it. They may not think of it as doing math. They may be thinking "how do I use a select with a join to get this particular set of data". But it's still math.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> It depends what type of software developer you are. If you're the type who scours the web for open source tools to solve your problems, generalizing your challenges as coding problems, then maybe math isn't useful. Having a logical, structured approach to solving your problems, the way you would with theoretical problems (like in algorithms or discrete math), definitely requires some mathematical maturity. Not to mention, you can't study CS in college without a strong math background. Even outside of math requirements, you would absolutely struggle in core CS classes like algorithms or automata. Then again, a CS degree may not be necessary for software development either. But even from a practical point of view, it's harder to get a job in software development without a CS degree.

<comment><USER24> Why can't you learn a logical, structured approach to solving problems strictly in the context of software development?

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I actually do agree that math isn't necessary for many types of software development. This is one of the reasons I'm angling to get more into data science - I was a math major, and I'd actually like to be doing more math. I would also tend to agree that studying math can sharpen your mind in a way that would help for programming, but you could say that about a lot of mentally challenging fields.

It is, of course, possible to agree with a conclusion while disagreeing with the reasoning behind it. I completely disagree with a couple of statements here. Again, this is probably because as a math major (and as a short-lived doctoral student in an engineering department that was heavy on proof based math theory around optimization and stochastic processes), I've experienced "math" very differently from most people, including engineering or science students who have done a substantial amount of math (say, the calculus sequence through differential equations).

Math (I'm talking about the US based university approach) changes dramatically once you get to "upper division" coursework. Real Analysis is very, very different from the differential equations course that is about one-fifth math majors and four fifths engineering or hard science majors. There's very little "applying an equation" going on. And the notion that there is "one answer" is remarkably incorrect (I suppose it's correct if you define "TRUE" as the one correct answer to fermat's last theorem, but there are often so many different correct ways to go about a proof).

I remember a story about Graham Nash (the Nash equilibrium guy - this is all from memory based on his biography, so I may have some of the details wrong). Nash proved a very difficult and elusive theorem early in his career. It was later discovered that a different mathematician had completed a proof for the same theorem a short time earlier (I think it was a few months). Nash was apparently very depressed by this. However, he shouldn't have been - the other proof was by contradiction, whereas Nash's proof was more direct and contained the structure for an algorithm, and would probably be more influential.

This isn't at all unusual in math. There are a huge number of different angles on a problem.

Part of the problem here is what is meant by "math"... it is a shame that someone could get as far as second year university math in the US and still see it as a field where you simplify things to the point where you can apply a formula to arrive at the one right answer. In Ross Hunter's defense, he didn't say that's all that math is, he said "People who are good at math are good at breaking problems down into parts, recognizing patterns, and applying known formulae to those parts to arrive at the one right answer."

But you know, people who are good at math do far, far more than that. I know, because _oh my god_ math got harder after the standard "calc through diff eq" sequence.

<comment><USER26> > Graham Nash the Nash equilibrium guy

John Forbes Nash, Jr. is the math guy.

Graham Nash was the lead singer of the Hollies and a member of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young.

Both of these guys' work is worth checking out.

<comment><USER27> King Graham was the guy in the King's Quest games. I think we now need a PC adventure game where the main character is a musician king who discovers new mathematical ideas and then goes horribly insane.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> WRT the "only one right answer" argument -- even with math there are often multiple approaches to a solution. See "Pythagorean Theorem" for one example.

Yah I don't get the "math is not necessary" argument either. Perhaps in some very narrow and limiting definitions of either "math" or "software development" this is true. Logic, functions, data structures, all have sturdy foundations in mathematics.

Maybe you can get started in software without good mathematics fundamentals, but you won't get far without them.

</comment><comment><USER28> Software developers don't need to know any advanced math the same way electricians don't need to know quantum mechanics, and plumbers don't need to know fluid dynamics.

</comment><comment><USER29> For web, front-end, or mobile apps (excluding games), I agree math is not necessary. These type of apps rarely uses math, they simply streamline data and present it on the screen. It can't hurt, but it isn't a criteria when I interview developer.

Of course, once you get into back-end systems, data analytics, and algorithms, math becomes much more useful, if not a necessity.

<comment> at-fates-hands Agreed.

I've done quite a bit of front-end work and one of the teams I was on built a large graphing application. It required algebra for some of the plotting routines, but nothing too major.

It wasn't until I got into relational databases that I saw you really needed more applied mathematics to be a good database designer. Then you start to read about Dijkstra and Codd and suddenly realize your HTML, CSS, JS world seemed rather small by comparison.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Math is not _necessary_ , but not knowing enough of it puts a hard ceiling on your skills as a software writer.

I once had to write software that had to determine if two ellipses projected onto the surface of a common ellipsoid intersected in any points. That was a real bitch. In order to get acceptable performance, I had to break it down into a six-step approximation that could calculate the obvious trues and falses very quickly and still calculate the edge cases accurately. You are not doing something like that without knowledge of math.

So no, you're not going to _need_ it, but without it, you are almost guaranteed to be less capable and competent. It's like saying that a carpenter doesn't absolutely need to have a framing hammer when nail guns are available --but if you want to be a master carpenter, you still need to know how to use your hammers.

</comment><comment><USER31> 'Math' is an anti-intellectual term.

Mathematics are wide and diverse, with several branches. Arithmetic, algebra and calculus are not the whole of mathematics. Not even including statistics.

While some kinds of mathematics are not much related to modern development, like calculus, most development includes some kind of mathematics, even if it is too subtle or obvious to be classified as mathematics.

With a minimal including point of view there are discrete mathematics, as described in the Khuth book (the book is called Concrete Mathematics). Programming is full of discrete mathematics.

In the world of videogames, GPU programming is an application of linear algebra. Shaders are understood in terms of linear algebra.

A more including point of view dictates that logic is another branch of mathematics, and no one can't develop any software without logic.

</comment><comment><USER20> Every now and then there's a discussion on HN about usefulness of math in software engineering / data science / economics / or another practical field. Some people claim it's not useful or relevant, and produce some use cases where elementary math is sufficient to solve the problem at hand.

In reality, math is ubiquitous in computing, at every level from hardware design to algorithms and data structures to coding and compression to UI/UX design to graphics to databases to every other field you can think of. People who are not well versed in more advanced math tend to apply simpler, more accessible techniques, and produce sub-optimal results. Which is why we have layers upon layers of broken, barely working, crappy software everywhere we look.

</comment><comment><USER32> I used pythagorean theorem, and cos/sin for my project to calculate speed and trajectory of UI speed. Happiest day of my life :) I think we (I) tend to find out-of the-box solution too often, sometime if you sit down, and use some math - you get some pretty elegant solution.

</comment><comment><USER33> It's certainly possible to do a kind of software development without much math, but having a strong basis in math definitely gives you tools to solve hard problems better. Even fairly trivial apps often need to solve problems (like recommending content, auto-generating playlists, etc.) that are much easier if you're familiar with fairly advanced math topics (like k-means clustering and Markov chains in those examples).

</comment><comment><USER34> There's _much_ bigger problems in the field of mathematics in this world, starting with: it's _maths_.

:-)

</comment><comment><USER35> Have always wondered. Is there any evidence that learning to solve math problems - even in the spirit of this Author's post - makes you a better thinker / problem solver? That is - compared to similarly rigorous problems in other fields - does math come out ahead?

<comment><USER36> The only other field that I have deep knowledge of is Electrical Engineering and I'm hard pressed to find rigorous problems in EE that aren't based on math at some level. The same could probably be said for any other branch of Engineering or science.

What kind of problem from another field were you thinking of that doesn't devolve to a mathematical problem in the end?

<comment><USER35> > at some level.

(Sorry if I'm reading into an implication that isn't there)

To clarify, everything is based on Math at some level, just like everything is based on Physics at some level. My question is does it follow that solving difficult math problems make you better at solving difficult Foreign Policy problems, for instance? That is, if one student studies 10 hard math problems, and another studies 10 hard Foreign Policy problems, which will be better at solving the next Foreign Policy problem? The next Literary Analysis problem?

I don't think it follows that math being a required part of a solution for difficult problems makes it the best tool for the task of solving the problem at hand. But its common to argue that rigorous mathematical education will make you better at solving problems in general; I just wonder if there's any actual evidence to it, or if its all based on belief (however logical and well argued).

<comment><USER36> That's actually what I wanted answered. While I do believe that study of math improves the ability to analyze problems that have an underlying logical framework, I also think it can be a hindrance in some cases.

Something like Foreign Policy involves so much nuance and understanding of History, human and organizational behavior that I think attempting to take a purely analytical approach to solving those problems will fail.

You reminded me of something an English professor said to my class decades ago when one of us complained about the amount of Liberal Arts classes we were required to take. As best I can remember it was, "as engineers, your job will be to solve problems, but you need to understand that not all problems can be solved logically. There probably is no better way to learn that than by studying Literature."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Given math is not going to taught any better than how it has been all these years, I don't see why some of today's and tomorrow's software stacks cannot be created/developed/maintained by say, liberal arts students and professionals.

</comment><comment><USER38> I think every developer should be an engineer. Engineers should be able to take any problem and with time break it into smaller and more manageable problems. I think math is important for developing that kind of toolbox, but it is not always necessary.

</comment><comment><USER39> You are all missing the point. Who cares if it is not necessary? It will enrich you as will a wide variety of other things that can enhance a skill set. Ok?

</comment><comment><USER40> Can anyone recommend a good course of mathematics study for an adult with almost negligible knowledge? Is Khan Academy the best place to start?

<comment><USER18> Khan Academy is great, but only covers through high school / engineering university math, last I checked. Having a good grasp of that is helpful, but if you want to learn real math you'll need to branch out. It depends a _lot_ on what you want to get out of it.

If you want to get actually well-versed in mathematics (say, undergrad math major level), you'll need real and complex analysis, linear and abstract algebra, naive set theory and formal logic, and it couldn't hurt to get some topology and geometry in there as well.

On the other hand if you just want a particular subject (say graph theory), the prereq list will be much shorter. Or if you just want a general competency, just learning naive set theory and formal logic will get you to the point of at least being able to read the notation used.

So again, really depends on what you want out of it. I'm happy to provide specific advice re books etc if you do end up deciding to start studying.

edit for clarity: If what you want is just HS math competency (trig, HS algebra, calculus) then Khan Academy is definitely the way to go, in my opinion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I've been trying to find the PERFECT '2d math' specifically for 2d game development. Anyone got any suggestions?

</comment><comment><USER42> Math is not necessary for software development, as to Codd Normal Form is not necessary for relational database design.

<comment><USER43> If you're designing relational databases then it's absolutely necessary.

<comment><USER42> Sarcasm whooooosh (and edited to add that a lot of people disagree with you, as near as I can tell the vast majority of database designers ... I like that, I make a huge sum of money coming in later to fix their screw ups)</comment></comment></comment>


There IS Innovation in Tablets; Even if there wasn't, Grid is Not the Answer - <AUTHOR> http://www.carrypad.com/2011/08/17/i-disagree-with-fusion-garagethere-is-innovation-in-the-tablet-market-even-if-there-wasnt-grid-is-not-the-answer/

<comment><USER2> I completely agree with the article, that Grid is little more than eye-candy, and I suspect much of it at the detriment of good user experience.

But I think the author's point about how much was spent on the presentation is probably going too far. That sliding 'grid' in the video I'm sure didn't cost them much at all. Having said that, the presentation shows VERY poor showmanship.

I don't think much of Apple products are 'magical and innovative', but there is not question that they are able to put on a convincing show.</comment>


RSS Feed for Hacker News - <AUTHOR>

Why isn't there any RSS Feed so that I can subscribe to hacker news ? <comment><USER2> Look for the word RSS at the bottom of the screen...

</comment><comment><USER3> <http://news.ycombinator.com/rss>

</comment><comment><USER4> a little on topic: i'm generating a simple feed for "newest" here: <http://mimir.pipsq.com/feed.xml> (updates once every 30 minutes, i hope that is ok by ycombinator).

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> But it didn't appeared on Firefox's address bar as it does for all other sites.

<comment><USER5> That would only appear if you put a link on the html header of the website, but you can still use the rss link at the bottom.</comment></comment>


It's official, Linus has won (big time). - <AUTHOR> http://i.imgur.com/iYnGb.png

<comment><USER3> I dunno, this feels like a bittersweet victory to be honest. Android (the Linux variant in question) became big enough to get these Bing applications because it was developed and pushed by a gigantic corporation rivaling Microsoft in power and assets.

It's certainly an interesting victory to have Microsoft who is famous for pushing closed software to write software for an open software operating system. But I don't really think this is what Linus meant.

</comment><comment><USER4> Hm, does Moonlight (linux port of Microsoft's Silverlight - <USER2> "flash/javafx/..." answer) also count as a Microsoft product for Linux? <http://www.mono-project.com/Moonlight></comment>


Experience of a drive by contribution to Python Cryptography - <AUTHOR> http://bitsofpy.blogspot.com/2016/11/python-cryptography-contribution.html <comment><USER2> Nice snippet of reporting on how the cooperative workflow functions in that neck of the woods.

</comment><comment><USER3> as someone who has contributed to python-cryptography, I found the experience helped me understand the open source code development flow better. The team is great and produces a high quality package.</comment>


Megaupload Launches Frontal Attack on White House Corruption - <AUTHOR> http://torrentfreak.com/megaupload-launches-frontal-attack-on-white-house-corruption-130507/ <comment><USER2> Is this a repost? I thought Obama was President now.</comment>


Please review my distro (if you are a musician) - <AUTHOR> http://gnuguitarinux.sourceforge.net <comment><USER2> You've clearly put a lot of work into this (congrats, by the way), so why not spend a little time making the product site look a little nicer?

My first instinct when I saw the site was "abandoned open source project" and a strong desire to click away. Reading the intro text didn't really tell me what your thing was. Only after looking at screenshots, lists of pre-installed software, the title of this post, and making a few leaps did I understand what you're actually trying to accomplish.

So instead of "mumble-mumble-low-latency-mumble-mumble", how about "[BetterName] - A linux distribution for recording musicians" or similar, followed by a list of _benefits_ to said recording musician.

Here is what an OS website needs to look like:

<http://www.ubuntu.com/>

Yours doesn't look like that. At all. It looks like every other sourceforge homepage, which means it looks terrible. Get a domain name (for a better product name), spend $400 on a 99designs contest, and spend 20 hours building a nice looking site for your project.

For the effor you've put in thus far, your project deserves it.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll do my best to clarify what GNUGuitarINUX is in a few words, Regarding the name, what is wrong with it, is it hard to pronounce? I just wanted to honor the GNU project and the linux project. I would be more than happy if I could come up with a name that has GNU, Linux, Debian and guitar in it :)

<comment><USER2> Try this: Ask any of the 500 people who have visited your site today to tell you the name of that Linux flavor for Guitar players. I'd be surprised if a single one got it right first try.

Now imagine it was called "Hendrux - a GNU/Linux distro for recording musicians". Pretty much all of us would be able to repeat that back to you (though a few might misspell the name).

Names have value. They send messages. GNUGuitarINUX sends the message that "The author thought this was a good name, so chances are the project itself will be every bit as opaque. Best stay away unless you have a lot of time to spend getting it working."

<comment><AUTHOR> True, I'll see if HackerNews help me with that ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Please change the name, you've obviously put way too much work into it to have it flounder because of it.

<comment><AUTHOR> I guess I could add a "a.k.a" any suggestion?

<comment><USER4> Hendrix?

:)

<comment><USER5> The estate is _very_ litigious. Maybe try "Hendrux."

<comment><USER6> Hendrix state suing a random Linux guy would be as absurd as Beatles' Apple Corps suing Apple Computer.

<comment><USER5> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Corps_v_Apple_Computer>

<comment><USER6> That's precisely what I meant.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I play guitar, work on linux servers all day long and have professional knowledge of music software... and I can't understand from your description what this actually does. Is it a plugin, host or controller? Does it require other software to operate? What actual guitar playing related functionality does it have? You might want to add this to the opening sentence or at least the opening paragraph.

<comment><AUTHOR> Its a live linux distribution, you burn it into a CD or a thumb drive, boot your pc, and plug your guitar. Then you'll be able to use rakarrack which is a realtime effect box. But thanks for the advice, I'll update the opening sentence

<comment><USER2> That's a lot more helpful. Way better than:

 _"It has a real-time configured kernel and the whole system configured to obtain the smallest latency possible. Everything is configured (or at least should be) to work out-of-the-box."_

... which doesn't mean anything to anybody except you.

Work on that "elevator pitch" description carefully. Get it down to 10 words, then stick it up top in 36 point font so that people stumbling across your thing can figure out what it is.

<comment><USER8> Well, if you are familiar with other audio distribution out there (ubuntu studio, 64 studio), this mean a lot.

This is a system (obviously a linux one) configured for low latency (save me lots of time and messy config) work out of the box (no other download required to go and play)... say no more, i get it.

But i agree that i was looking for something more elaborated, something which tell me exactly what it use and what it does. Why should i use it over ubuntu studio etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> More feedback (since I would actually use this if I could figure out how).

How about some instructions on how to install it? I see a download link that gives me an .iso file. And I see this:

 _Also as live-build (v2.0.3-1) uses squashfs v4.0 it generates an ISO that can be burn into a CD the usual way or it can be dd-ed directly into a thumb drive, which is pretty cool._

... which means nothing. Evidently, it's possible to install it. And it's cool. That doesn't help.

Look. You've spent a lot of time and effort building this thing, but then you just stopped. If you weren't on HN asking for feedback, you'd have lost me a long time ago. But I'm trying my best to actually learn about this thing and try it out, and you simply haven't given me enough information to do so.

</comment><comment><USER9> Awesome! Now I have another distro to play with (also: AVLinux, <http://www.bandshed.net/AVLinux.html>) for getting rove (<http://github.com/wrl/rove>) up and running with my monome (<http://monome.org/devices>)

</comment><comment><USER10> Sort of unrelated, but looks like you just gave me a nice big list of Linux audio programs to check out :)

<comment><USER11> For even more goodness, check out AV Linux.

<http://www.bandshed.net/AVLinux.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Sir, you get an A in my book just for the effort!

I've been looking for a way to get a small guitar recording studio going at home, and I got so frustrated with Cubase messing with my audio card that I sort of "gave up". Nobody writes low latency drivers for Windows, in fact, they've seem to have given up on real time recording. (Disclaimer: I'm still on Vista)

I will definitely be giving this a try as soon as I get home!

<comment><USER13> Try Reaper at www.reaper.fm - you can try it free. It's awesome!

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> How are you meant to pronounce it?

<comment><AUTHOR> No idea, I speak spanish and its quite easy :) could be something like "new- guitar-inux"?

<comment><USER15> The GNU is usually pronounced "gah-new" rather than "new".

<http://www.gnu.org/events/rms-nyu-2001-transcript.txt> "But, when it's the name of our system, the correct pronunciation is "guh-NEW" -- pronounce the hard "G". If you talk about the "new" operating system, you'll get people very confused, because we've been working on it for 17 years now, so it is not new any more. [Laughter] But it still is, and always will be, GNU -- no matter how many people call it Linux by mistake. [Laughter]"</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Learn Ruby by Example with Challenges - <AUTHOR> http://www.learneroo.com/modules/61/nodes/338

<comment><USER3> This might be a fun challenge for experienced rubyists, but I do not think this is a good way to learn Ruby.

I only looked at Ruby Basics, but here's my feedback:

The challenge is to solve: 'true and 0 && !nil and 3 > 2', but this is not a real-life application.

The words 'and' and 'or' should not be used for boolean comparisons, they are intended to be used to join two separate clauses such as "render 'template' and return" in rails.

Comparing a number and bang-nil is not good code. This could actually come to be if you were doing something like: "object.value && !object.value". However, you wouldn't ever want to hardcode "0 && !nil". If you were really checking for nil, you should use "!object.nil?"

I'm afraid that these challenges will teach bad code techniques to newbies who don't know the difference. But again, as someone with more familiarity with Ruby, I think these types of challenges are fun, but if that is the goal there is no need for the tutorial beforehand.

<comment><USER4> > The words 'and' and 'or' should not be used for boolean comparisons, they > are intended to be used to join two separate clauses such as "render > 'template' and return" in rails.

Is that true? Because I found a bug in our code recently that was in a line like

render_error and return

where the return was never getting called because render_error returned false. I don't understand why you would write code like that when you could simply write:

render_error

return

and not have to deal with thinking about whether render_error could ever return a falsey value.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't know Ruby, but this caught my eye:

      true.class #=> TrueClass
      false.class #=> FalseClass

Why would they have two different classes (types?) for what I consider _values_ of a boolean/bit type?

<comment><USER6> TrueClass and FalseClass aren't exactly "classes" in the usual sense - <USER2> instance, `TrueClass.new` throws a NoMethodError.

Under the hood, true and false are singletons - `(1 == 1).object_id` will _always_ be 20. At least in MRI / YARV, that makes booleans much cheaper in terms of memory (a single pointer vs. a pointer + an RObject struct) but means that they don't have their own instance methods.

Keeping the classes separate makes it possible to metaprogram additional behavior onto true and false - for instance, the `blank?` method added by ActiveSupport.

<comment><USER7> Don't rely on that ;)

Ruby 1.9.3

> (1==1).object_id => 2

> (1!=1).object_id => 0

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Ah, made me think of the good ol' days => [http://rubyquiz.com/](http://rubyquiz.com/)

Although this is definitely more tutorial-ish.

</comment><comment><USER9> The design of the site looks strange to my eyes. Colors and fonts doesn't make sense. I'm no expert on design so I can't explain why.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback. I'm going to try to improve the design this week.

<comment><USER10> Shoot me a quick hello if you'd like a few suggestions, my username at gmail.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Great! Diving head first into Ruby so this will come in handy.

</comment><comment><USER12> Is there anything like this for Javascript?

<comment><AUTHOR> Since it looks like this was pretty popular, I'll make one for Javascript too. Meanwhile, check out the original LearnXinYminutes.

<comment><AUTHOR> Update: See [http://www.learneroo.com/modules/64/nodes/350](http://www.learneroo.com/modules/64/nodes/350)</comment></comment></comment>


Google's approach to scalable engineering - <AUTHOR> http://thebogles.com/blog/2010/04/two-weeks-at-google/

<comment><USER2> The scalability of their cohesive culture shows in their apps too. The Google account is so much more valuable than MSN/Hotmail or Yahoo ever did. It's almost as if their hiring process seems to translate to their apps itself i.e. each app is smart enough to play along nicely with other smart apps.

<comment><USER3> I actually find that tying aspect pretty annoying, especially as it relates to Google Groups. Yahoo Groups makes it _much_ easier to subscribe to Yahoo lists with non-Yahoo email addresses and manage the subscriptions and what goes to which address from a control panel. With Google Groups, I had to make a separate Google Account for my .edu email address just so I could subscribe to a GG mailing list with it, so now I'm juggling multiple Google Accounts.

<comment><USER4> I don't like juggling multiple Google accounts either. At my company several of us use the webmaster tools - but that can only be linked to one google account. So whenever any of us checks it, there's a lot of signing out & signing in again. It is indeed annoying.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'd be curious to see if he feels the same way after he has worked at Google for a few years.</comment>


Startup Lessons from 2012 - <AUTHOR> http://stugreen.com/blog/2013/01/startup-lessons-from-2012

<comment><USER2> Very nice review of different learnings. Keep going!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Sujan.</comment></comment>


B2B Is Unsexy, and I Know It - <AUTHOR> http://danshipper.com/b2b-is-unsexy-and-i-know-it <comment><USER2> Good stuff, and I agree with almost 100% of that. The only thing I take exception to is the (seemingly) implicit suggestion that "sexy" is defined by what college kids like:

 _And that's true. B2B is unsexy in that I don't build things that my college friends want to use._

Nah... if you're doing sexy technology, it's sexy even if not a single college kid has ever heard of it.

I'd encourage everyone to NOT buy into the HN echo chamber mentality... there is a _LOT_ more to the business world than consumer facing geo-local-social- mobile-photo-sharing-cat-picture startups.

Do cool shit that solves problems for people, charge for it, and make money... that's not a half-bad formula.

(disclosure: I'm a founder of a very sexy B2B enterprise software startup).

<comment><USER3> I completely disagree with this, this isn't an echo chamber, and no-one's buying into that ethos.

Let's be frank, b2b is boring as shit.

It's not even vaguely interesting.

The only challenge to setting up the ultimate competitor to Sage/Quickbooks is that it's so mind numbingly dull. B2B programming is an utter pile of mind- numbingly boring crap. It's not sexy because it's incredibly simple with a colossal amount of edge cases. B2B is mindbogglingly complex simple software.

B2B is just the edge cases.

It's not in the remotest bit interesting to most people. It's often bound by the most ridiculous laws and covenants.

But it'll make you a lot of money.

Do you want to read about it? No, because it's so ridiculously shallow and dull. That why no-one talks about it.

(disclosure: I am also writing b2b software)

EDIT: There was a very recent post by Intuit about the 10 million lines they've written for Quickbooks and how they manage it. That says it all to me really. 10 million lines means something has gone very, very, very wrong to me. Would you want to write a 10 million line essay about accounting? Think about your average words per line programming, that's nigh on a 50 million page essay. Just to do accounting.

Joy.

<comment><USER4> _The only challenge to setting up the ultimate competitor to Sage/Quickbooks is that it's so mind numbingly dull._

Yes, the dullness of the topic is why no one has bothered to enter the market and compete with the $3 billion Intuit, or the $1.5 billion Sage. It's just too boring for them to bother with that kind of money.

You're fing kidding right?

Do you think that maybe, just maybe, the 17,000 pages in GAAP have something to do with it? Or maybe the 3000+ counties.. or the long list of county/city/state/federal rules and regulations? and not just accounting rules, but employment taxes, credit card processing, invoice generation, etc, etc, etc.

I think you don't understand the complexity of the topic and don't know the full feature-set of sage/quickbooks, and that's why you think it's simple software.

<comment><USER5> I think he understands it rather well - it's "complex simple software".

You can think of any software as consisting of a set of problems of varying degree of "difficulty". Sort them in ascending order and plot them. This graph will give a very tell-tale signature as to what you're facing.

B2B / enterprise / call it what you will software has an infinite number of individually easy but collectively mind-numbingly painful problems. Yes, a lot of that bs comes from laws/rules created by "others".

"Interesting" software has a small-ish number of _very_ difficult problems and then a manageable number of easy ones. These are the type of problems where you can take a small team of very smart people and really knock it out of the park. They are most unfortunately very few and far between.

Social cat photo software I can't speak to. I'm certainly not implying that it's in the "interesting" bucket...

<comment><USER4> No, he definitely doesn't understand what quickbooks is. He says 10million loc is an indication it has gone "horribly wrong". That tells me he doesn't have the vaguest idea what the feature set of quickbooks is.

I've been programming for 15 years, and have personally used sage for 7 years. 10m loc is definitely within reason for the number of features the app has.

If he doesn't understand WHAT the software IS. Then how can he sit there and say what the level of difficulty is.

He DOES NOT KNOW. because HE DOES NOT KNOW what quickbooks is.

<comment><USER6> I parsed his "something's gone horribly wrong" as to mean "wrong with the accounting laws in this country", not "wrong with the software development".

<comment><USER7> Law is complex because the world is complex. We're talking about "essential" complexity; it exists in the domain and it can't be wished away.

<comment><USER8> I have to disagree. Law is complex largely because politicians need to feel like they are doing something. They make changes so they can claim in their next campaign that they've improved things. They make changes to benefit their likely donors/voters. The cruft keeps piling up and it rarely gets wiped away.

Consider tax-advantaged retirement savings. Why do we have: traditional IRA, Roth IRA, SEP IRA, SIMPLE IRA, 401k, Roth 401k, and 403b, all with different requirements and different benefits? The need to have a reasonable amount of savings when you retire is universal, so why this complicated mess? Why are two people doing the same job at two different companies able to save dramatically different amounts based on whether or not their employer chooses to offer a 401k? Why force every taxpayer to do a 10-line (or whatever it is) calculation to determine eligibility to for an IRA just so we can prohibit a few rich people from having a benefit (hint: it would be a lot easier for everyone to make it universally available and just bump the rich people's tax bracket by a hair if you really feel the need to wipe out the pittance in tax savings that they would obtain). This isn't necessary complexity, it is pointless stupidity that we all suffer for (except for the accountants that gain employment from it).

<comment><USER7> Sure, that's one source of complexity in _legislation_.

But really, seriously, the world is complex. Every day people stumble on combinations of circumstances that _have never occurred before in human history_. Some fraction of those people get into an argument about what happens next. Some fraction of those go to a judge and ask her what the answer is.

The judge takes the existing principles, cogitates a bit, then extends the case law to cover the new scenario based on analogy with older scenarios.

This creates a new piece of law. It's never been seen before. But it might turn out to have profound consequences.

Before switching to computer science, I studied law. It's complicated because people are complicated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I wouldn't ever consider building a product for consumers.

Why?

* Businesses are used to paying for services.

* Businesses can typically make judgements about the ROI of software (X saves Maggie 5 hours a week. That translates to $200 in pay. Sure, $100/mo is worth it.) Consumers can't.

* Businesses pay thousands of dollars a month for each person on staff. If you can eliminate the need for a position, a business will probably willingly pay 3 to 4 figures for your software.

<comment><USER10> I've never heard the term '3 figures' before :)

<comment><USER11> Do you mean you haven't heard "three", or "figures"? Because you've definitely heard "six figures".

<comment><USER12> One of those cases where you've heard "three" and "figures" but not "three figures" :P

(I've probably heard it used only a few times in my life)

<comment><USER11> Oh, right. Same here, come to think of it. I wonder what other cliche phrases we can ruin.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This feels like deja vu. I asked a similar question in <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4182993>

B2B is also very dysfunctional. You almost have to operate in a different reality to survive there.

diskdoctor answered with "Marketing and selling software to enterprises is the most dysfunctional cycle of decision making you will ever see in business. In almost all cases the individuals in the business who actually derive value from the technology are entirely disconnected from those who make the purchasing decisions. Many times those purchasing decisions are made based on "perceived" synergies with other software systems already owned from the same vendor, having never been vetted by the actually consumer in the business."

This is probably the biggest difficulty in B2B.

Steve Jobs even said something similar "What I love about the consumer market, that I always hated about the enterprise market, is that we come up with a product, we try to tell everybody about it, and every person votes for themselves. They go 'yes' or 'no,' and if enough of them say 'yes,' we get to come to work tomorrow. That's how it works. It's really simple. With the enterprise market, it's not so simple. The people that use the products don't decide for themselves, and the people that make those decisions sometimes are confused. We love just trying to make the best products in the world for people and having them tell us by how they vote with their wallets whether we're on track or not."

<comment><USER14> Dropbox found a way around that. It's heavily used within corporations, but the adoption decision gets made by each individual acting alone.

Ping Li has an excellent paper on this: [http://www.accel.com/assets/resources/files/17/original_rena...](http://www.accel.com/assets/resources/files/17/original_renaissance_of_business_software.pdf)

<comment><USER15> Apple and Dropbox are both successful in the "enterprise" (and more so in the small business) because of this. They didn't sell to the company, they sold to the users and employees.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Well put. No one has heard of the company I work for, and we do some seriously cool B2B stuff. We're 100% employee owned and are #1 in certain segments of our customers.

No, we're not "sexy", we're not media darlings, and "social media" is really not in our genes. But our products are really awesome. :-)

<comment><USER17> You also have a rack of exotic blue hardware at every engineer's desk, can't complain with that.

<comment><USER18> SGI still exists? What are you talking about?

<comment><USER16> We both used to work at the same company. It makes custom hardware. The company's "preferred" color is blue. Hence, blue boxes at every engineer's desk.

<comment><USER18> So what's the company?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm unsure the perception of B2B among VC's is as bad as commonly thought.

My last startup was pure B2B, and during our valley runs I found most potential partners / vc's / workers were very excited (in part because of the opportunity, in part because of perceived market movements, and in part because B2B can be fun) at the prospect of growing in B2B.

B2B companies may not spawn a media darling, but it doesn't make the business itself unsexy.

<comment><USER20> The problem with B2B is that it doesn't follow the standard startup model.

In B2C, if you have 10,000 users, VCs will just start to look at you. In B2B, except in some specific instances, if you have 10,000 users you're already a million dollar company.

Thus, in B2C the risk/reward inflection point occurs much later chronologically than in B2B, and for a B2B business, I, personally, think that there is far too much ambiguity before that inflection point.

<comment><USER2> > The problem with B2B is that it doesn't follow the _standard startup model_

Is there even such a thing? Anyway, it's not that VCs don't fund B2B startups... they absolutely do, and there are even firms that specialize in that space (or at least have a heavy focus on it). A16Z, for example, are known for investing heavily into enterprise plays:

<http://a16z.com/portfolio/portfolio-enterprise-companies/>

<comment><USER12> If there _is_ such a thing as _the standard startup model_ , then I'd argue that it would be the B2B model.

The current mold of web/social/mobile/location startups is the exception to the norm in the history of high tech startups.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> There seems to be an odd notion that B2B must be about accounting and such. Most B2B stuff I've been involved with the past few years has all been "social".

Because, like soylent green, companies mostly consist of _people_...

</comment><comment><USER22> This article speaks to a point that most miss:

The business model can be as sexy, or sexier than the idea itself.

When we build something that is boring to some, I wonder if we forget the magic of what we do.

What is boring to us is magic to someone, stuck suffering with managing details. It's nice to see the maturation of developers who do for the world what's being asked of us: help everyone everywhere, with software.

About B2C or B2B:

1) It's a preference. A reality is, there is not as much B2C out there as we think. Too many consumer facing "successes" do not take money from "customers". Why? The users are the product that are sold to advertisers. They often ask businesses to pay, maybe by advertising, and it's a lot of work.

2) Consumers are quite fickle, irrational and emotional decision makers. They will often think about any decision over $5/month.

Small businesses, on the other hand, don't think about $50/month too much. They're fairly logical (a good fit for developer's tendencies), and very much understand and make decisions based on value -- saving them, or making them money. They'll also be more forgiving about understanding features-based marketing instead of benefit-based marketing if you can't dial in your copywriting. In short, there's more flexibility to learn and still do well enough to keep improving.

3) If you let a sliver of your talent tackle a B2B problem that customers will pay for, you get to keep the panacea much easier: Work on what you want every day without fear of paying the bills, or pursuing a swing for the fences idea without fear of failure or running out of money. Not everyone gets to live in the Valley. I'm sure I'd be open to other possibilities if I lived there, but I don't right now.

If you're out for the first success or two of your life, consider this: check any ego and immature thought habits to fit in. Exchange them with discipline, to learn what you need to about the fundamentals of building a business, it will serve you very well when going after the B2C ideas.

Almost everyone who tries to fit in, inevitably gets left behind. Do what others aren't willing to do to build a business that makes money, because it's worth way more, to customers, and VC's.

As every single person on HN gets older, they will have more responsibilities because of the other things in their lives they want, and cost money every month. There's a chance now to address those very easily and get some great business development experience. That doesn't sound like much to some, but startups are a longer haul game than anyone ever admits.

<comment><USER23> william carlos williams couldn't have said it better

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> To me, a sexy business is one that helps people and makes money.

By this definition the majority of social startups are as unsexy as possible.

</comment><comment><USER25> We're a B2B shop and have been profitable from day one. Sometimes it takes a while to get paid from the big guys, but once you're in, cash flow is great. There are some downsides (control, last minute BS, corporate things)--but it seems to be easier to get companies to part with their cash than your neighbor or suite-mate.

<comment><USER7> The secret to B2B is that it's almost never somebody's actual personal money.

If I as the manager approve the $5000 WooFiz 7 Platinum purchase, I might feel a some concern to ensure that the ROI is defensible.

But that's it. Because it's not _my_ money. If WooFiz turns out to be junk ... well, that sucks. But I'm not personally out of pocket.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> We're working since 2001 on a b2b software. While it might seem boring, it's not in the least (minus some rare low points, but you get these everywhere).

It's also very rewarding to see users be productive with the software and be grateful for making their lives easier. In fact, many of the end users are to this day computer illiterates and making great software they can use is a very interesting challenge.

Also the technical stuff. Just because it's b2b doesn't mean you can't make it interesting for you. Whatever new technology comes around, I make it a point to try it out and apply it in production where it helps.

We've done AJAX before it was called that. We've been running node.js since the 0.2 days and we've solved interesting scaling problems.

There is nothing we can't do that makers of consumer products can do. The difference is that we are getting paid handsomely ever since and that we don't have to deal with advertisers or, god forbid, VCs.

Thanks mainly to our product Switzerland was and still is one of the countries with the highest percentage of electronic orders among dentists (I only have numbers there. The restaurants numbers might be even bigger).

Combine that with the cool technical challenges to solve and you are left with a very interesting job that just never gets old.

<comment><USER7> I agree that solving people's pain points is one of the best parts of doing enterprise-y stuff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> My response: [http://nbashaw.com/post/28654441223/consumer-internet- isnt-d...](http://nbashaw.com/post/28654441223/consumer-internet-isnt-dead)

In a nutshell, I think there's still a lot of value in creating web and mobile apps for consumers, it's just that there's been a glut in the market, especially for mobile. Too many apps that aren't very differentiated.

In the long run I still think consumer is a good play, though.

</comment><comment><USER28> So I've done a B2B company before and am doing one now (current place isn't intrinsically B2B but that's our main focus. It's certainly not something normal consumers would use).

I think this understates what incredibly hard work selling B2B can be. Large companies will pay you a lot of money, but are ridiculously high maintenance - they expect custom work on your product (often of the "Can you integrate it into our ActiveDirectory/Exchange/etc" form) and the sales process to them is incredibly long.

Small companies on the other hand are often strapped for cash and have weirdly distorted views of the value of their time - If what you're selling them is something they can "do now" by spending 3 hours of an employee per day it can make it very hard to convince them to pay you at a rate you'll be able to sustain a profit on.

Neither of these are impossible to overcome of course. People can and do do extremely well with B2B businesses. I just want to point out that there are real problems with selling B2B as well, and that it's not nearly as easy as it might sound.

</comment><comment><USER29> I'm doing an ad-supported B2B media startup now. So that's doubly unsexy since free ad-supported media is not a very trendy business model right now.

But it works because we understand our market, we understand marketers, and we've had a dedicated sales staff since day 1. You can make a lot of money with ads if you don't treat them as an afterthought.

</comment><comment><USER30> How does one enter the B2B market? Does B2B mean you're solving how two companies do business with each other?

<comment><USER2> > How does one enter the B2B market?

Create a product that solves a need that businesses have and sell it to them. Steve Blank's _The Four Steps To The Epiphany_ is a great resource that is heavily focused on the B2B world.

> Does B2B mean you're solving how two companies do business with each other?

No, it just means that your business ("B") is selling "2" other businesses ("B"). So, when IBM sells WebSphere AS to other businesses, that's a B2B market.

B2C, conversely, is when you sell something to consumers. So, Wal-Mart is mainly B2C.

The lines aren't always clear, and there are other models that don't _quite_ fit either definition.

<comment><USER31> Thanks for that clarification. I too was under the wrong idea that B2B were somehow guys involved in connecting businesses to each other though their solutions. So B2B and enterprise software are the same? Does 37signals/Tello count as B2B or B2C?

<comment><USER12> Enterprise Software is a subset of "B2B". B2B encompasses any business that sells products and services to other businesses. The universe spans Alcoa (the world's largest aluminum producer) to Oracle (perhaps the world's most evil software producer).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Lots of Jason Fried's influence in the subconscious, I should say. Two or three segments seem to be extracted verbatim from 'Getting Real' book. Nice text, congrats.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's funny I've never read that book but love Jason Fried. Thanks for the comment :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> The huge advantage of B2B is that businesses get to write off your payment as an expense, so they are much more likely to pay you more.

</comment><comment><USER34> >The biggest opportunities probably aren't in social anymore

Economy struggles because there almost no new ways to increase labor productivity further. Making business tools more collaborative and social may boost labor productivity to next level. It's too early to dismiss social completely even if it's hit glass ceiling in B2C market.

</comment><comment><USER35> B2B = better to bet for VCs in the coming years.

</comment><comment><USER36> What's B2B?

<comment><USER37> Business to business.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to protect IP on side projects which interest my employer? - <AUTHOR> It seems the question posted (and flagged) earlier today was perfectly reasonable, but for the identifying details.  And it seems also the person asking is dealing with a very serious situation, and could greatly benefit from the HN community's perspective and advice.
So how about we try reposting, sans identifying details?  Like this:
Hello HN,
I've been working for a company for a while and am facing a rather delicate situation:
The company is starting to widen its scope on technologies used within our organization. The Company has started to use, invent, and work on technology that I care about outside of work. I am worried that my existing and new projects, open or closed, could be threatened if I don't protect myself.  I have engaged our Company counsel to begin the process of amending my employment agreement to address this. However, I'm unsure what to explicitly call out to protect past projects as well as potential new ones.
How does one effectively and intelligently detail previous projects while specifying potential new ones as it relates to certain technologies in an employment agreement? For instance, if I were working on a database system off hours, research or applied, how do I protect myself if the Company decides to build database systems? In theory, my employment agreement with the Company says that work is now owned by the Company.
Basically, I am probing for advisement on how to proceed without wasting any individuals time involved in this process. I am looking for other technology professionals to give me guidance navigating this messy and sensitive situation.
Thank you very much for your help. <comment><USER2> I believe it also depends on what state you're working, at least in U.S.

According to Joel Spolsky employer owns anything you do on the side in NY whether it's related to your office work or not. [https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2016/12/09/developers-side- pr...](https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2016/12/09/developers-side-projects/)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> (1) Consult an attorney, please

(2) I found msyelf facing a very similar situation myself recently, and if you contact me via the address in my profile I would be happy to both give you a referral as to (1) and to trade notes about what I was able to find out this (as you have nailed it) rather messy and sensitive subject. Absolute confidentiality will be assured.

Good luck.</comment>


Child Molesters Face Shorter Sentences Than Child Porn Viewers - <AUTHOR> http://reason.com/blog/2017/06/02/child-molesters-face-shorter-sentences-t <comment><USER2> tl;dr 5-10 (for the referenced type of molestation) 5-20 for distribution, in Louisiana. Skenazy, the author, also begins with the non sequitur that distribution is easier to convict objectively.

<comment><USER3> Why is it a non sequitur? The article makes a logical point that possession can be objectively proven by the existence of a file, while molestation usually requires testimony from a child.</comment></comment>