Ask HN: What Criteria Should a Young Hacker Apply to College Choice? - <AUTHOR> Every once in a while a long thread develops here on HN about how colleges choose applicants. To turn that around, how should an applicant who receives more than one offer of admission choose a college? Is list price the most important criterion? Or does prestige (however that is gauged) trump list price? If you were advising a high school student who is choosing colleges this year, what advice would you give about which college to choose? <comment><USER2> It's not the populist thing to say, but I'll say it anyway.

The top colleges are a great place to be because of the friends you'll make and the level of competition at those places. You can meet amazing people anywhere, but generally speaking they are in higher concentration at more competitive universities.

If you're going to be a hacker, go to a top CS school if you have the opportunity. The competition will be more hardcore, the faculty will be great (and will have written some of the textbooks!), you'll be heavily recruited by top software companies, and maybe you'll meet your cofounders there. If it costs a little more, then do it anyway -- does it matter if you're a good hacker? Even at the top schools, if you had to pay for most of them with loans, you'd be making more than enough to pay off the debt in short order after graduation.

Debt IS bad though -- you want to avoid it if you can because it ties your hands when it comes to starting a company right out of college. But then again, working for a few years and earning a solid salary for a bit can be a great thing too. Make your mistakes on other people's time. =) Worked for us.

<comment><USER3> I can second this. I go to one of the top CS schools in the country and people here are, in general, very cool. I didn't have the same experience as an undergrad, despite the fact that I still went to a pretty good school. If you can get into MIT, Stanford, CMU, Berkeley etc, go for it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Don't choose a college. Choosing a college means you are choosing a particular brand of credentials.

<http://www.paulgraham.com/credentials.html>

Instead, the best thing to base your choice on is people. The next best thing is environment. Are there particular professors who you look up to who would want to mentor you? Is there a high potential for meeting the kind of people who will inspire you? Do you have good evidence that being in that environment will inculcate something valuable? (And starry-eyed reminisces of an alum are not good evidence. Lots of things can happen at an institution in a decade or so. Get _current_ information.)

(Another way to put it -- the reputation of a school is _marketing_. Doesn't it seem wise to corroborate that with more direct measures of value?)

<comment><USER5> This is all good advice, but don't underestimate the value of credentials. I agree that credentials are overvalued by society, but there isn't a lot that tokenadult can do to change this or even avoid it.

<comment><AUTHOR> _don't underestimate the value of credentials_

I'm agnostic on this issue, so I'll ask a follow-up question. What would be the value of credentials (in the form of a college degree) for a young person who desires to launch a start-up right after college?

<comment><USER6> If you succeed, then probably not much. But don't assume success -- desires can change. If you get frustrated with the startup and quit, then all of a sudden you're just a person who hasn't gone to college.

Also, the types of places that give you strong credentials are also full of smart people you might want to work with if you launch a startup.

<comment><USER4> Just having the degree period is much more significant than whether or not it's a top-flight school. (We discount schools that are clearly a joke.) Likewise, just being at a top-flight school is more significant than which particular one it is.

Being at a place with smart professors doesn't benefit you much if you don't like them or if none of them happen to like you. Being around smart fellow students isn't so good if you don't get along with them.

Far better to find a dynamite mentoring relationship at a good school than to just float through at the best school.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Here's a list, but don't take the order too seriously:

\- Courses: Do they have courses that you're interested in taking, and is the department strong in those areas? What's the balance between theoretical and more immediately practical classes, and which do you care more about?

\- Professors: How are the professors regarded as _instructors_ by their own students? During undergrad, your professor's quality of instruction matters more than their quality of research.

\- Rigor. Top colleges are pretty comparable, afaik.

\- Class size.

\- Affordability.

\- Quality of environment.

No one criteria ever really "trumps" other criteria. You have to determine your personal weightings for each and decide which place offers the best balance. Also, you may find that your priorities change once you've been at college for a year or two, so unless you have a super good idea of what you want to do, you might prefer well roundedness to strength in only a few key areas.

<comment><USER8> Funny, in my opinion, the first four things you mention do not matter at all. Throughout my schooling, 98% of my learning came from books, self study, and friends. If you can't learn from reading a book faster than you can learn from a professor, you're probably in the wrong field. But if you are choosing a college based on the professors, look for professors doing interesting work, not necessarily good teachers. Basic instruction you can get from a book. But if you can be near someone who's at the top of their field, you can learn stuff that is not written down anywhere, and gain valuable contacts.

<comment><USER7> > Throughout my schooling, 98% of my learning came from books, self study, and > friends.

This is probably reflective of your learning style more than anything else. While I've certainly learned more from the books (there's only so much you can cover in lecture and section), I've also benefited a great deal from instructors who could convey their passion and communicate clearly, and I'd wager this is true for more people than not.

> But if you are choosing a college based on the professors, look for > professors doing interesting work, not necessarily good teachers. Basic > instruction you can get from a book. But if you can be near someone who's at > the top of their field, you can learn stuff that is not written down > anywhere, and gain valuable contacts.

Only a few undergrads will actually generate a working relationship with a professor who's at the top of their field, and this depends heavily on what their priorities are. It's certainly not the default advice I would give to a college applicant.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> None of it really matters. Visit each college until it's just obvious. "I could spend 4 years here and be happy" Stay overnight with a freshman. Get a feel for how things are run. Talk to as many freshman and seniors as possible, candidly, in private. Go to some sample classes.

Don't just take a tour or investigate it online. I chose my college because the people going there were all pretty hard core geeks. And undergrads could get paid to work for Masters and PHD students on their thesis. (I wanted hands on experience) This, naturally, made having a killer social life a little more challenging, unless your definition of a "killer social life" is playing net trek at 3:00am on a friday night in your dorm's computer room.

<comment><AUTHOR> _None of it really matters. Visit each college until it's just obvious._

My son forms some of his impressions of colleges from summer program classmates older than he who have already gone off to college. His current favorite college is the one where most of the summer classmates he likes best have gone. I certainly agree that campus visits are a great idea, and some colleges formalize those for admitted students. They can be expensive for families (like mine) that live in the middle of the country if the colleges being considered are mostly off on one coast or the other.

<comment><USER10> On the one hand, I think too much emphasis is placed on going to the one best college -- for most students, there is likely more than one good fit.

On the other hand, the cost of doing campus visits is going to be a tiny part of the cost of their education, which is, itself, a foundation for their adult life. I think the advice to tackle one coast at a time and make it a road trip is a good one. A week spent doing that is probably at least as valuable as a week spent in high school senior year.

When I was applying to transfer away from the state school I spent my freshman year , was wait-listed by my first choice and we paid the deposit it my second choice. I ended up being accepted by my first choice, but I wasn't going to go, because, among other things, we'd already paid the deposit at the other school. My father put it in perspective for me. The deposit was small change compared to the total cost of my college education.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I would say you should go to the hardest college you get in to (that you generally like). The more smart people there, the better because the classes will be more challenging and likely more stimulating. I went to a hard school, and going from being the smartest to suddenly being average was a stimulating transition. It makes you learn to work hard to get good grades, which are that much more rewarding.

I would also say you should go to a bigger school. For technical fields, the more students, the more choice you will have for courses. Diversity in a technical field is a great thing because you get to see what you are really passionate about. I ended up really loving applied math after going through an engineering track.

<comment><AUTHOR> _I would say you should go to the hardest college you get in to (that you generally like). The more smart people there, the better because the classes will be more challenging and likely more stimulating._

That's my general tendency in giving advice, but I've had people disagree with based on the idea that being a big fish in a small pond can build a student's self-confidence and win the student recommendations from professors and the like. Does that make sense to you?

<comment><USER10> If a student needs their self confidence built, then _maybe_ this makes sense. Otherwise, though, the people who disagree with you are wrong, and probably second rate in their own right (I'm only half joking).

For me, having great profs who were committed to teaching was really important, but even more important that my classmates were smart and committed to learning. Pretty much everything I learned, I learned by working and talking through things with other students. The professors set the stage, and helped us through the sticking points, but for most of my courses, the 3-4 hours a week I spent with a prof were generally met with an equal or greater amount of time spent in academic interaction with classmates.

I know that there are some people who can't cope when they go from being exceptional in high school, to be being average in a school filled with people who were exceptional in high school. To the extent that this can be predicted ahead of time, I think the right thing is not to steer them to a less rigorous school, but rather to help prepare them to find motivations other than being "the best," and, perhaps, to direct them to an institution that where the tone is more collaborative than competitive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I think there are two main benefits that you get from a college education.

The first is your personal growth: what you learn from your courses, what you learn about yourself, what you learn from your classmates. The personal relationships you make with faculty and with other students that last past your graduation. Like stdcredzero said, this is all about the people and the environment.

The second benefit is the few seconds of recognition you get when a new acquaintance or a potential employer finds out that you studied X at college Y, and they think "ah yes, that's a good college" (or alternatively, "I've never heard of it").

If you play your cards right, the first benefit should vastly trump the second one. Unfortunately, the second benefit is much easier to quantify when you're choosing colleges.

Ideally, I guess, you would get both, but that's not always possible.

Within reason, list price should be the least important criterion. At most, it should be a tie breaker.

<comment><AUTHOR> _The first is your personal growth: what you learn from your courses, what you learn about yourself, what you learn from your classmates._

I imagine that some of that personal growth and learning from classmates can come just from being farther away from rather than closer to home during college studies. I commuted to the very nearby state university (but didn't usually live at home) for my undergraduate degree. I thought I learned a lot just from the surrounding environment when I lived overseas after I obtained my arguably nonprestigious college degree.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Since you're young, and you're already a hacker, you might want to look at going to a place where there's an entirely different sort of student body. This would help "balance" things out a bit for you, and would give you a more interesting life. If you take the time to understand and collaborate with your newfound peers, you will also end up with a bunch of great friends whose perspectives are entirely different from your own; this is good for your brain and will keep you from becoming one of those ignorant, boring people.

For example, arts school in another country would be interesting. Oh, and believe it or not, the girls would find it kinda alluring that you're not like the rest of the guys at their school. Probably has to do with our natural desire for genetic diversity...

</comment><comment><USER14> its probably really hard for any of us to give good advice because there are so many personal factors and each of us has only attended one or maybe 2 colleges so we are all biased.

you should just make a list of pros/cons and trust your instincts

<comment><AUTHOR> _you should just make a list of pros/cons and trust your instincts_

Agreed that ultimately the applicant has to decide, if he is in the position of having more than one offer of admission. No applicant should feel bad about disagreeing with someone else's sincere advice, including the sincere advice of a parent. Nonetheless, sometimes an applicant knows himself better after feeling his own reaction to someone else's advice.

I ask here because I was a language major as an undergraduate, and not particularly entrepreneurial, and now I am a math coach and am getting into college advising with my more sci-tech-interested clients, some of whom would like to grow up and run for-profit businesses. Within my own family, I don't have lore to pass on that is fitting for my oldest son (who will go through the application process at the end of this calendar year), so I appreciate hearing everyone's advice here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I went with the college that had the "best" program. I loved every minute of it and got a ton out of it. The quality of the professors and students in a top notch program is invaluable. They provide you with stimulating material while you're in school and great connections when you're out.

People say that just doing something is more important than where you went to college. That's true, but it's not a coincidence that a large number of successful startups and engineers in general come from Stanford, MIT, and the University of Illinois (and a few others, of course). The network can't be emphasized enough.

</comment><comment><USER16> One thing to look for is lots of other disciplines around, where you can interact. I got some of my best experience programming while writing control code for a bunch of mechanical engineers.

</comment><comment><USER8> 1) Go to the best school where you can get a full ride. Convince your parents to use the money they saved to fund your startup some day. It's a far better use of money than college tuition.

2) Either major in a hard, useful, technical subject, like mechanical engineering or computer science, or find a super easy major where attendance in classes is mostly optional. If you do the second, you can work full time on your startup during college, and get it to the point where you can live off of it by the time you graduate.

<comment><AUTHOR> * Convince your parents to use the money they saved to fund your startup some day.*

Would that advice generalize to a student whose parents are not providing any funding for his education? (That's not my son's situation, but it's a situation I've seen more than once, and one of my son's friends is in that situation.)

<comment><USER8> I suppose it depends why the parents are not funding his education. If the parent cannot afford to pay for college, they probably cannot afford to help fund a startup either, no?

Also, it's not startup funding is a better use money than college. A down payment on mortgage, money for travel, or even just an outright grant of cash is a better way of giving your kid a head start in life than sending them to an expensive college.

From the student's prospective, paying as little tuition as possible is even more important if you have to pay for college yourself. Entering life with more than $20K of debt is a very bad idea.

<comment><USER10> <i>Also, it's not startup funding is a better use money than college. A down payment on mortgage, money for travel, or even just an outright grant of cash is a better way of giving your kid a head start in life than sending them to an expensive college.</i>

I strongly disagree. For kids who are self-motivated, but not motivated to go to college, it could be better to give them money for mortgage, travel, etc. For plenty of others, the cash will just postpone the inevitable need to get their shit together and take responsibility for their life. It would be better to send them out on their own and save the money until their is evidence they'd make good use of it. For others, a little encouragement/push to go to college might be just the right combination of structure and self- responsibility that they need.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> For most private schools (and the more prestigious public schools), the only people who pay list price are those most able to pay it. Working class and even squarely middle-class kids will generally qualify for significant amounts of need-based financial aid in the forms of grants. So, to the degree that cost is a factor, you should be considering the tuition in conjunction with the financial aid package offered.

I think neither cost (as long as the cost is affordable) nor prestige should be the top criteria.

I think its more important to find a good match between the student and the environment of the college. The most important aspects of the environment are the professors, the other students and the available academic programs.

I'd discount big research universities, since the foremost criteria used by the institution for evaluating undergrad instructors is 1) are they cheap (ie grad students), 2) does their research attract prestige, funding, and cheap labor (ie grad students). The foremost criteria used by undegrads in evaluating their profs is "coolness" and the ease of getting a good grade. Also, access by undergrads to profs is limited. They are usually teach in big lecture environments, and their office hours are limited.

Focus more on institutions, like small liberal arts colleges, that place a high value on undergrad instruction, while still expecting profs to maintain a level of engagement in scholarship and research. The classroom environment is usually more intimate and profs are more available outside of the classroom.

The students are important too. Every hour spent with a prof will also be spent with other students. Better they contribute to the experience. Also, for every hour spent in a classroom setting, there should be at least as many spent studying and socializing with other students.

Even if you have your criteria firm in your mind, its hard to get enough information to base an evaluation on, so it pays to look for points of leverage among friends, family, family doctor, high school teachers, etc. None of them are going to have good knowledge of more than one or two institutions, but teachers will have a sense of the experiences of former students. Older friends and relatives will know about their own institutions. Parents of friends and relatives will know something about the experience of their own children, and also of the children of their own friends and family. What's most important though is that these people will have an inside perspective not just the institutions, but on the prospective student. So, tell these people what the student is looking for, ask them for suggestions based on what they know, and then ask them why they made the suggestion they did and see if it makes sense.

It's also worth paying close attention to the way the schools markets themselves. If a college manages to communicate a strong and consistent identity for itself in its marketing materials then i'd give that identity some weight unless their is strong evidence to the contrary (particularly if the same message is delivered once they've issued their acceptance). There are some perverse incentives for small schools to misrepresent themselves, but these mostly come into play before applications are received. Also I think these perverse incentives are checked by the fact that they don't have a lot of flexibility with respect to class size. Too many students and their quality of teaching suffers. Too few and their finances suffer. In addition, if its a bad match and the student drops out, it can damage their reputation, and hurt some of the metrics on which they are judged when it comes time for re- accreditation.

Take advantage of the net to get more of an inside view on schools too. We used to have prospective students checking out our live journal group. I think that's died off a bit, but there are still groups on facebook and whatnot, and the school should be able to put you in touch with current students and recent grads.

In the end though, its great to do a campus visit, particularly if you are choosing among just a handful of schools. Arrange it with admissions. They may get you a room for a night in a dorm, and they'll get you into classes, and give you a campus tour. Outside the formal activities, take advantage of unscheduled time to talk to other students.

Regarding the academic program, a lot of students end up graduating in something they might not even have known about when they entered, and they may end up making a living doing a job that didn't even exist when they graduated. For these reasons, I think its important to get a good solid liberal education, with exposure to a variety of subjects and viewpoints no matter what major they choose, and a grounding in the humanities, so they have a perspective on the forces that have shaped society in the past, and can apply that perspective to understanding present day changes.

Last thing, I think the prospect of launching a startup after graduating was raised in another thread. I generally encourage people to keep their options open after graduation by not taking on too much debt. For a student who is planning on a pursuit (like writing a book, or starting a company) where they can expect little or no income for a long stretch after graduation, I think the goal should be graduating with no debt at all. In those cases, cost could become a more important factor; 10K in loans might not be decisive if one expects to have some sort of paying job after graduation, but it could be the difference between having grocery money, or going to bed hungry if you are planning on scraping by while trying to get a startup off the ground.

</comment><comment><USER17> I'm currently a junior in college. I decided on a good (but not great), liberal arts school with about 1800 students over going to Univ of Florida, where I was also accepted. Here's my analysis of that.

Advantages up to this point: * Flexibility -- There is a lot of flexibility in my choices of courses and in life here in general. A lot of students here are able to double-major, travel abroad, etc. because of that flexibility.

* Cost -- with financial aid, it's cost me a little bit more than a public univ but not by much. ($4k/year difference max)

* Personal attention -- I can show up at a prof's office and chat about anything. They know my name, my interests, and my abilities. This has helped with solving bureaucratic problems, enabled me to get great letters of recommendation, find professors to do research with, and helped me to gain access to various academic programs. If you're at a research school, most profs. don't care about you, the lowly undergrad, unless you can do something for them. And some of those prestigious schools have profs. like that.

* Size and Selectivity -- Eckerd is not the most selective school I could have gone too but I have found some peers (although not most) who can challenge me. The advantage of this is that you can quickly find the other cream of the crop and challenge each other, but at the same time, I have found it easy to gain access to research programs, awards, TA positions, etc. on campus because I could easily get myself noticed and show myself as the cream of the crop.

* Time -- My courses aren't always very challenging or time consuming so it's easy to take overload or to use my free time to do other things, particularly things related to research or future academic endeavors.

Disadvantages: * Challenge -- I feel like few of my courses have really challenged me. But, I have friends who transferred here from schools like Rochester Inst. Tech and Univ of Rochester who say that those schools don't offer more of a challenge necessarily, either. However, they have also said that maybe you have high quality peers there in your field, but they tend to lack social skills. (This may change as I get farther into the courses for my double-major in math.)

In my case, Eckerd offers a lot of advantages in terms of accolades, letters of recommendations, good grades, etc. which will help me get into grad school (which is my goal). But at the same time, it's been frustrating over the last few years since I've rarely run into people who know more than I do or who have are more skilled than I am.

(I should also mention that I have done research not only at Eckerd but at the University of Connecticut for the last few years... I've tried to take advantage of resources outside of Eckerd to supplement its small size.)</comment>


Ask HN: Which text editor do you use, and why? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Emacs, several reasons.

I learned to use it circa 2000 (after vim) while in university for my CS degree. It took some getting used to, but it stuck.

It's incredibly versatile once you get to know it. It's wonderful having a properly extendible tool. I wish every program I used was as easy to extend as emacs. This is the same thing that drew me to Common Lisp (running programs can be connected to and extended/debugged without having to stop them).

Lisp, I took to it very quickly. Not sure why but everything about it just clicked in my head after a brief learning period.

It's default installed on everything I use except Windows. The Windows port works well.

With emacs lisp, I have written up a number of (simple) modes to support various esoteric languages I've run across in my career that no editor supports (openly available but uncommon, or internally produced).

I don't have to use a mouse. Everything is available via the keyboard. Being able to type about 100 wpm these days, that means I can instruct it as fast as I can think of what I want it to do.

</comment><comment><USER3> On Linux, Vim, because its ubiquitous and powerful.

On Mac, BBEdit. Like the other BBEdit user in this thread, I've been using it for over 15 years, and muscle memory counts for a lot. I also really love its side drawer for managing dozens of open files (Sublime nominally has one but it's an afterthought and not very functional), and think its symbol navigator is very effective. I especially like the ability to have the same file open in multiple windows in order to view different parts of it at the same time. And nothing else I've used quite matches its incredibly rich multi-file search/replace dialog or its search results displays (with a full listing of all instances, organized by file, navigable by keyboard, opening to the line in question in an editable buffer right in the window).

And it has so many incredible text processing features. Just to name a few, a feature that will replace non-ASCII characters with their nearest ASCII equivalents; a feature to find and process (in any number of ways) duplicate lines in a file; the ability to reopen a file using a different encoding; a built in diffing tool that will work on both saved files and unsaved buffers; preserving unsaved buffers across restarts and system reboots; Markdown and HTML preview modes; a menu for scripts to run against your files/buffers; and the list goes on.

Oh, and it's stable. In 15+ years of use, it's never ever crashed on me. I can't think of any other GUI program I can say that of. I've thrown 4GB files at it on a machine with only 512MB of RAM, and it somehow not only opened and rendered them nearly instantly but scrolled through them (and executed searches and search/replace) like butter.

</comment><comment><USER4> VSCode. The startup time and speed are outstanding for something resembling so much an IDE, specially for Node and other dynamic languages.

<comment><USER5> It's pretty much the only Electron app I don't totally hate. I've grown to like it after using it at work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> vi and Sublime.

On my home (windows) machine I use Sublime. It's the first editor I enjoyed after a long time.

vi: because it's installed everywhere and - after working 20 years as a sysadmin - I can blindly edit whatever config file I need on a terminal.

Some^H^H^H^H time ago I was using the IBM e editor ([https://winworldpc.com/product/ibm-e- editor/3x](https://winworldpc.com/product/ibm-e-editor/3x)) on DOS because it was easy in the eyes (dark and light gray vs yellow on blue) and had autocomplete for C !

:wq!

</comment><comment><USER7> Emacs. I wrote a few reasons why I still use it here:

[https://coffeeandcode.neocities.org/why-i-still-use- emacs.ht...](https://coffeeandcode.neocities.org/why-i-still-use-emacs.html)

Every now and then I play with other editors, but always end up coming back to Emacs.

There are some nice editors out there these days though: Atom, Microsoft's Visual Studio Code is very nice too.

</comment><comment><USER8> vim:

\- I enjoy terminal apps in general due to the uniformity enforced by my emulator's text and color settings. And keeping my editor and shell in one app fosters a custom IDE-like experience

\- I enjoy keeping my hands on the keyboard most of the time, though I have mouse mode enabled for things like resizing splits

\- While I think you can be extremely productive in any of the big editors today, with vim something about its modes and command syntax make it really fun to discover new tricks and simpler ways of doing things

\- Some version of vi is on just about every *nix machine

\- The vim plugin ecosystem is very developed and plenty of useful ones to check out

\- Similarly to plugins, there are thousands of dotfiles to peruse on GitHub for inspiration towards making your editing experience even better

</comment><comment><USER9> Sublime because it's fast, does what I want, and I've been using it since 2012... lot of muscle memory and am too just used to it. I do have Vim keybindings on but I'm a light user of them. I haven't tried much else, honestly.

</comment><comment><USER10> Depends on how much time I plan to spend and the size of the project:

vim - quick edits

Visual Studio Code - medium-sized projects, Python or JavaScript

IntelliJ IDEA/PyCharm - Java, or other large or complex projects

</comment><comment><USER11> On Linux (that is,most of the time) Emacs, because I can't stand modal editors (eg, vim).

When I'm forced to use Windows, I sometimes use Notepad++ for some things.

For coding I mostly use Eclipse.

</comment><comment><USER12> I enjoying using vim plugins in Eclipse and IntelliJ IDEA. I get the best of both worlds: all the features of an IDE + vim text editing functionality.

</comment><comment><USER13> Sublime Text: because EMACS scares me, Vim controls only work well for a web browser, and because my preferred terminal font makes nano difficult to use.

</comment><comment><USER14> BBEdit, since 1995.

</comment><comment><USER15> Vim. Because I hate having to use a mouse to edit text.

</comment><comment><USER16> Notepad++ because of the excellent "find in all open documents" feature. The way search results are displayed is good too.

</comment><comment><USER17>
        Nano (or rather Pico) because I am the perpetual n00b whose mind was stunted permanently by Micorpspft's EDIT.

</comment><comment><USER18> mostly sublime text. I occasionally use vim.

</comment><comment><USER19> vi - it's everywhere by default...

</comment><comment><USER20> Visual Studio Code

Notepad++

Visual Studio Express

<comment><USER21> This is exactly what I use:

Visual Studio Code: Front-end stuff, anything javascript

Notepad++: Scratchpad, any copy pasted code, quick snippets

Visual Studio: Backend stuff.</comment></comment>


Diary: Google Invades - <AUTHOR> http://www.lrb.co.uk/v35/n03/rebecca-solnit/diary

<comment><USER2> This kind of journalism really bugs me.

There are too many ways in which the author strains logic and reason. I think the companies of Silicon Valley are very interested in improving public transportation, but held back by an ineffective transit governance system. I think the comparison to the gold rush is ridiculous, as is the statement that "technology is just another boom" (what?). I think being a technology hub has done more to improve the lives of everyone in the Bay Area than any other human-controlled factor, but authors like this one are too concerned with irrelevant impressions and skin-deep, false comparisons to consider that.

<comment><USER3> If the Caltrain connected to any other public transit system in a reasonable way, I don't think the Google busses would exist. Riding trains is much more pleasant than riding busses, but not if it adds an extra hour to your commute each way.

Furthermore, if you want cheaper housing, build more of it. I don't think there's an easier way around it.

<comment><USER4> It's a tiny piece of the puzzle. To have a really usable public transit network ala Chicago or New York, you have to coordinate zoning with transit.

1) The terminal transit station should be built so as to exit right into the central business district. The Caltrain station is too far from SOMA and lacks decent public transit. Meanwhile, Chicago's three transit stations exit right at the perimeter of the Loop (within walking distance of nearly any office building, and with a transit ring around the perimeter of the CBD). New York's two transit stations exit right into Midtown.

2) You have to allow high-density construction near the transit stations, so people can live within walking distance of commuter transit. Look at the Menlo Park Caltrain station. There's nothing around it. There are far smaller Westchester towns that have a substantial downtown core around their Metro North stations.

With housing prices being what they are in Silicon Valley, there should be 30+ story buildings ringing the Caltrain stations in Menlo Park, Palo Alto, Mountain View, etc.

<comment><USER5> > To have a really usable public transit ... you have to coordinate zoning > with transit.

+1

My position is a bit stronger: It all starts with zoning.

There was a geek news item recently that note the difference in USA and Canadian sprawl, which the authors believed started with how parcels of farm land were measured out. In the USA, parcels were squarish, requiring roads everywhere, requiring everyone to have automobiles. Whereas Canada made theirs long and narrow, to optimize farm-to-market transportation. Subtly different initial conditions causing very different land use.

In the jurisdiction I live, better transit has been actively thwarted for decades by the suburbans. For example, years ago, we got an Oregon-style Growth Management Act, which tries to slow sprawl, preserving farm lands and habitat. The suburbans frame it as anti-growth. But in fact GMO is pro urban and opposition is anti-urban.

I am fascinated by the increasing urbanization of the under 30 demographic: It's happening _despite_ the pro-sprawl incentives and policies. An example of society way out in front of policy.

Locally, I think this is perfectly captured by the head quarters of Microsoft and Amazon. In the 90s, Microsoft created a campus atmosphere in former second growth woods (Bellevue/Redmond). Having nearly everything newly minted university graduates would need right there on campus. It was very desirable.

Now in the 2010s, Amazon is transforming an urban area, South Lake Union. The area now has housing, hip food, great access to parks, culture, etc. In fact, in order to attract the young talent they need, I can't imagine Amazon locating anywhere other than an urban environment.

<comment><USER4> Great comment. Also: where can I subscribe to your newsletter?

My wife and I were just talking about this the other day. The "campus" tendency of old-line tech firms seems to be the result of wanting a smooth transition between college and work for new employees. But the newest batch of college kids is more urban and don't necessarily want their office to resemble a college campus or the suburbs where they grew up.

<comment><USER5> Thanks. Sorry, no newsletter, blog, rss feed yet. Went dark while I recharged my batteries. Been working on some open government stuff. Will hopefully go public soon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Forced myself to read to the end so that I would be justified in saying what I had the impulse to howl from the third sentence: Rebecca Solnit, FUCK YOU.

It's actually quite well-written, but christ, what a pretentious, clueless, holier-than-thou, pseudo-pious pile of crap. Blamey dirges like this are why people hate liberals. It makes me hate them, and I am one. It's hard to know where to start, so I'll just dig in:

Why do you demean and dehumanize tech workers, while glorifying Latinos, homeless people, coal miners, and anyone who's lived in San Francisco since... 2006? 1996? 1976? How long do you have to live in SF to be fully human and deserving of empathy?

What do you have against German tourists and "Asian male nerds?" You are a bigot.

Why should people "drive themselves?" That's not noble-prole, it's stupid and wasteful. Fewer people should drive, period. Private or public, mass transit is mass transit. It's a Good Thing.

Why is capitalism "Janus-headed?" I think you don't understand capitalism. It has one face, with dollar-sign eyes. Which is ok. It's capitalism, not poetry. It's about capital.

Are rents being driven up, does growth create problems? Yes of course. Let's deal with those problems. Whining about them is just annoying, and paints you as a bitter person.

There's a solution, though. I say this as an erstwhile journalist, now software developer: Rebecca, you should learn Python. Then maybe you can get on the bus too.

<comment><USER7> I get what you're saying. I think your response captures one part -- the id, if you will -- of a pretty common refrain I've heard about this article amongst my other nerdy, SF dwelling friends.

And in that respect, you're right and certainly entitled to that opinion and entitled to express it however you'd like.

While her piece has a lot of problems, not the least of them being a tortured metaphor about gold miners, there is still certainly a kernel of truth to what she's saying. The city is growing at a boom-town pace and infrastructure is not keeping up with that growth, which affects everyone, longtime residents who make less money than young tech workers with higher salaries especially.

Where I'll emphatically disagree with you is your "solution" -- it isn't to turn every resident of San Francisco into an engineer. Much of the attraction of cities is the diversity of people who live in them, which mean ideally they are places that can support poets and programmers. San Francisco, even with its recent influx of tech workers, is not nearly the industry town that the valley proper of San Jose, Mountain View, Cupertino, and Palo Alto are. This is a good thing. This is why people choose to live here and commute there. This is why we have those buses.

This was a frustrating article to read because dealing with the massive, largely tech-fueld growth really is an issue worth exploring. But for all the problems this city has, Google buses ain't even close to the top of the list. Here are some that I think about on my walks home through the city:

* Why are there parking lots adjacent to public housing? Furthermore, why are blocks of public housing (walk up Turk from Market to Divis some time, just not at night) amongst the least dense in the city?

* How do we allow things like AirBnB to exist but not create loopholes in the housing code, which has the effect of further constricting the already tight supply of housing?

* What can the city do to encourage development in the Tenderloin to replace the far-too-many SRO's?

* The high-rises going up in SOMA are great and will hopefully provide housing for the influx of young, mostly single, tech workers. What's the city going to do about encouraging more single-family residences, say, between Van Ness/Masonic and Geary/Market?

* How does Western Addition avoid becoming the next Hayes Valley?

<comment><USER8> Even New York City has parking lots adjacent to public housing. I don't know why either.

<comment><USER6> Perhaps having public housing adjacent makes them less desirable to developers?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Want cheaper housing? Make it possible to build more. The fact that quaint New England towns have taller apartment buildings than most of the city of SF pretty much tells the entire story.

The busses are basically the opposite of government intervention in a free market; instead of the government stepping in to correct for a market failure, private companies are stepping in to correct a public sector failure (to provide usable transit for their employees).

<comment><USER10> This is a classic urban problem: the people who are already in SF and own places don't want more housing built, because the shortage drives up the value of their own homes (and anything that blocked their view would reduce it.) The best solution (which SF is kind of pursuing) is to add more high-density housing in post-industrial areas being converted to residential, where developers have big incentives to construct larger buildings.

SF always does a ton of hand-wringing about how white collar workers are driving moderate-income renters out of the city, but it also doesn't make it easy to construct the new housing stock that those white-collar residents would prefer anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I stopped reading at " It means that unlike gigantic employers in other times and places, the corporations of Silicon Valley aren't much interested in improving public transport, and in fact the many corporations providing private transport are undermining the financial basis for the commuter train."

This is such complete bullshit i don't even know where to start. Every single company in the area has either offered to help, is helping, or had their help refused when it comes to public transport.

It's not even a Google vs Apple vs whoever, they are _all_ trying to help here _in any way they can_.

Of course, since the author cites absolutely no statements or support for any of their claims, i'm just going to file this in the "not even wrong" category

<comment><USER12> People are getting mighty touchy from this piece.

How is it bullshit? For one, cites on any of Google, Apple, Ebay, Facebook, etc. either offering to help or helping and getting rebuffed? A quick Google doesn't bring anything up, though I suspect I'm missing out on a key word.

But even granting that, the saying "the proof's in the pudding" is pretty relevant here. If it were a priority for them in the same way it was for corporations in the past, it would be done. But because of our current economic structure, corporations no longer feel strong incentives to build out public transit.

<comment><USER11> Look at public meeting minutes for various towns and you'll see it.

Past that, most of the companies do it smart, and let the towns take the credit, and keep the rest quiet.

It is a priority for them, but unlike in the past, if you tell san francisco you want to spend 50 million providing public bus service, their answer isn't "sign us the hell up", it's "sorry, no".

<comment><USER13> For the first time in my 40-something years on this planet, I utilized passenger rail in the US. I recently took a vacation on a leg of the California Zephyr Amtrak route (which goes from Chicago to San Francisco). During a wait one of the stations, I picked up copies of the industry rags. Though I never would have guessed, it seems that there are strong political and financial forces that are very much _against_ a prolific public transit system in the US, with California being quite a battleground of the pro and anti crowds.

Whether or not the tech giants in Silicon Valley are in fact trying to improve the public transit situation, they have a steep hill to climb in order to make any progress.

Though I am constantly surprised by public transit initiatives in smaller inland cities. Salt Lake City has made substantial public transit improvements in the past decade. Tuscon, already having a decent bus system, has a modest 3.9-mile light rail project slated to be completed late this year.

So I have some hope for public transit in the US as a whole.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is absolutely ridiculous. I don't live in SF, nor California for that matter, but this comes across as "I was living in SF before it was cool. Money is evil and so is anyone with it. Especially if they are young."

Every paragraph includes an insult, but one of my favorites was comparing tech companies to coal mining companies. Wow. Couldn't be further from the mark. The tech industry frees people to work remotely and is even willing to ship them in expenses paid in luxury. The coal mining companies enslaved people, paying pennies in fatally poor conditions.

Runner up was:

"...but still has a host of writers, artists, activists, environmentalists, eccentrics and others who don't work sixty-hour weeks for corporations"

This insinuates that tech is less honorable than these jobs. Again, missing the mark, assuming that tech can't somehow help these people. Or perhaps people in the industry aren't creative or some other dismissive nonsense.

This is borderline bigotry.

</comment><comment><USER15> I was wondering what these " _gleaming white, with dark-tinted windows, like limousines, and some days I think of them as the spaceships on which our alien overlords have landed to rule over us._ " actually looked like:

[0] [http://sfcitizen.com/blog/wp- content/uploads/2012/06/ip2ku-c...](http://sfcitizen.com/blog/wp- content/uploads/2012/06/ip2ku-copy.jpg)

[1] [http://sfcitizen.com/blog/wp- content/uploads/2011/12/IMG_003...](http://sfcitizen.com/blog/wp- content/uploads/2011/12/IMG_0039-copy.jpg)

[2] [http://missionlocal.org/wp- content/themes/calpress/library/e...](http://missionlocal.org/wp- content/themes/calpress/library/extensions/timthumb.php?src=http://missionlocal.org/wp- content/uploads/2011/09/IMG_2133.jpg&w=620)

<comment><USER16> The bus in the first one almost looks stuck by how sharp the grade change is. Is this common in SF?

<comment><USER17> Look at the front of the bus; you can see some towing cables attached to it.

<comment><USER18> That's just the MUNI track.

<comment><USER19> No, it's actually stuck. [http://sfcitizen.com/blog/2012/06/10/noe- valleys-23rd-street...](http://sfcitizen.com/blog/2012/06/10/noe-valleys-23rd- street-proves-too-much-for-this-google-bus-its-rear-end-gets-stuck-at-the- chattanooga-intersection/)

<comment><USER18> ahhh. cool! (?)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> > but the passengers were tech people, so withdrawn from direct, abrupt, > interventionary communications...

Not sure this writer has actually had to deal with many "tech people".

<comment><USER21> My anecdotal experience suggests that the author's point is rather accurate.

This was Spain, not SF, but I witnessed a bus filled with 50+ tech people (videogames & CGI) remain completely silent while the driver did the route speeding like mad, eventually hit a car, then refused to stop and assist. I was the only one to ask the driver to stop, the only one to offer assistance to the car dude when he followed the bus to our destination, and the only one to report the bus driver to the company. Everyone else just looked, commented among themselves, and walked away as soon as possible.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Interesting point about public transportation -- by creating a private bus system, tech companies are actively suppressing demand for better public transport between SF and the valley.

<comment><USER22> So why do we need the public to run mass transit in the first place?

<comment><USER23> Because it's a natural monopoly.

<comment><USER12> How are buses a natural monopoly? I could see trains with right of way issues, but buses on publicly accessible roads?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I think the piece illustrates a very good point that the general public would enjoy reading about. Which is that booms can push out diversity and that a tragedy of the commons is occurring in SF with people driving out the character they came to SF to experience.

The problem is that:

a) It's taking about _us_. People who are not software developers would brush past the descriptions of developers as mere scene setting. But it's rather insulting to those being described. b) If it is true, it makes us the villains. And we don't like being the villains. We believe our motives and actions are reasonably noble (or at least not harmful). It hurts to be told that their not. c) It's colored with a lot of emotion from the author. I get the sense that this is precipitated by an underlying feeling of: "Does my time in SF mean NOTHING!?" Which is a reasonable emotion, but comes across to the subjects (us) as a sense of superiority.

I believe that it conveys it's point much better to a "lay" audience than it does to us because we (rightly) get lost in the details.

I'm very luck that I like what I like and that what I like is the "hot" industry right now. I do want to remember that everything isn't roses and sunshine. That this boom does have losers. But I'm still moving to SF because that's where the place I want to work is and because I like the city. And screw you Rebecca Solnit for making me feel like I don't belong. You were new to SF once and you don't have that right. But I might just take the train instead of a shuttle.

</comment><comment><USER25> For further reading on the geography and political economy of California, I strongly suggest Mike Davis' City of Quartz, which is a series of essays about LA:

[http://www.amazon.com/City-Quartz-Excavating-Angeles- Edition...](http://www.amazon.com/City-Quartz-Excavating-Angeles- Edition/dp/1844675688/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1360355406&sr=8-1&keywords=city+of+quartz)

Warning for HN readers: the book is written in the same critical and class conscious vein as this article, so you may not like it.

</comment><comment><USER26> Someone doesn't like young people who work in tech.

<comment><USER27> I'm a young person who works in tech in Oakland, and I don't like the young people who work in tech in SF and ride the comfortable google bus every day to their jobs in the valley.

Ride public transit. Get out of your tech bubble and experience a sliver of the lives of other people who live in your adopted city. Not everyone owns an iPhone 5 and is downloading the latest app.

Work on something that will actually "change the world", not just disrupt a market and make you rich.

<comment><USER26> That's just a complicated way of saying that you think some people's social choices are inherently worse than some idealized social path that you are advocating. Not everyone is the same as you, or even wants to be the same as you. Not everyone gets social satisfaction from "getting out" and "experiencing the lives of other people" in the way you're talking about, and that doesn't mean there is something wrong with them. Some people derive satisfaction from finding cool phone apps, some don't. Not everyone wants to "change the world," or disrupt a market, or get rich. Et cetera.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Man, people in the tech bubble really don't like being reminded that everything their industry does and the effect it has had on an established community isn't all perfect. This doesn't surprise me in my (anecdotal) experience in the industry I've run into a lot of "those are problems caused by other industries, not us", but the author raises some good points about the effects of booms (and particularly this one) on the people who were established prior but not part of it. Some can't be avoided but some can be mitigated - and some people have been less defensive here and offered some solutions to things like public transport and housing.

</comment><comment><USER29> The article mentions ways the gold rush was bad.

The article mentions ways the tech boom is like the gold rush.

But the first set of ways does not intersect the second set.

I also found it ironic that the old "Yankee Go Home" sentiment was being expressed by an expat.

<comment><USER12> How exactly is Solnit an expat? She grew up in Novato and lives in SF and has since well before the '89 earthquake, at least. I suppose she is if you interpret expat as "moved into SF from outside the city limits of SF," but that's an odd usage.

<comment><USER29> I stand corrected; I guess it's just the traditional old-fashioned form of xenophobia then. In that case, the irony is that she waxes nostalgic about SF's history as a place that welcomed everyone in the same breath as she's making fun of and rejecting the latest newcomers for being different.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> _The whole of the US sometimes seems to be a checkerboard of these low- pressure zones with lots of time and space but no money, and the boomtowns with lots of money, a frenzied pace and chronic housing scarcity. Neither version is very liveable._

After taking a few extended cross country road trips over the past couple of years, this sentence from the article rang the most true.

<comment><USER30> I was about to just make the same comment. I think the "tech boom" has done a lot for SF, but it's a great example of how wealth and investment is highly concentrated in just a few areas of the country.

Ideally, startups would look at those costs, do the analysis, and make the decision to locate elsewhere in order to minimize risk. But SF (and NYC) have a kind of legendary status as being where successful tech companies begin. I think that status makes it difficult to consider the value of location based on a cost-benefit analysis.

Paradoxically, the sector that has the knowledge and employee base to be geographically independent are also the ones that pay the most for their location. At a gut-check level I feel there is quite a bit of "Irrational Exuberance" going on in the VC/Tech sector right now.

<comment><USER31> > the sector that has the knowledge and employee base to be geographically > independent are also the ones that pay the most for their location

I agree that more tech companies should be okay with remote workers. But its not the trivial thing you make it out to be - it takes work, especially in larger teams. And unless you're going to put that work in and make it a part of your team's identity, you have to be where the talent is. I don't think this concentration of tech companies is nearly as surprising as you make it out to be.

<comment><USER30> Right, it's a self-reinforcing trend. Companies move to locations where talent exists, talented individuals seek those locations out.

But my point was that this makes it really difficult for startups (or any tech company) to make a calculated decision about whether or not location is worth the extra expense. I don't think it's surprising that tech companies are located together, but I think the community would do well to investigate whether the costs provide adequate returns in a majority of cases. (TWGS;IHRTS)[Take with a grain of salt; I haven't researched this shit]

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> This article raises interesting observations. I find it fascinating to see how technology might be perceived as a distant animal. The tech industry, like most schools of thought, regularly faces the danger of becoming an Ivory tower, disconnected from the real-world. After all, technology bubbles hurt us all in the past. Similarly, technology is hard to understand, it is magical in a way, an alien tool. If you work in tech, don't be offended. Solnit is not claiming an absolute truth. She's raising awareness of potential collateral damage by tech companies.

</comment><comment><USER33> Public transit, even in the densest of American cities, is a money loser and often pollutes more than if the riders were taking cars. It's badly in need of innovation and revolution.

Fixed-route transit is a mess. That's why I can't _wait_ until we have self- driving cars. Most public transit would die on the vine as cars, which typically are utilized perhaps 10% of the day, can increase toward 100% utilization. No more need for inefficient and inconvenient fixed routes and no more need for giant empty buses riding around during non-peak hours.

<comment><USER34> Self-driving cars don't necessarily help. Really, it's more a routing problem. Buses with human drivers would probably be fine if you could come up with a working system to route them on demand. Self-driving might save money in the long run, but cars are probably not as efficient as buses in a big city.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I've been looking at homes recently and it just depresses the hell out of me.

I'm not in my twenties anymore, don't work for the googles etc. although I have a relatively good tech job.

A semi decent house on the peninsula is coming in around 1 mil. And that's often for much less than 2000sq feet.

And this is for a house that has doubled in value since 1999. Afaik, salary increases are nowhere near that and certainly not mine.

<comment><USER35> Looking around San Carlos, there are entire stretches of houses going for $1.5 to 2mil.

This are for houses that in my mind, are the idealization of the American Dream. 3-4 bedroom, nice yard, 2 car garage. Not the McMansions of lore.

Taking that same amount of money and going to say Texas, would likely yield a ridiculously large house.

But more importantly, I keep wondering, are there really that many people around me that make so much money to be able to afford this without blinking an eye or is it more just keeping up with the Joneses....

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> If housing is so expensive why the hell aren't they building more?

Lumber(or brick) doesn't cost more in California.

It's not a lack of capital. Interest rates are extremely low thanks to the fed.

It can't be a lack of labor. I personally know several carpenters and electricians who would happy to work in California for 6 months building apartments. I don't think my experience is that unusual.

What is going on?

<comment><USER37> Incredible building regulations. Trying to build anything in SF is a giant clusterfuck. Propose anything over 4 stories outside of Fidi/SOMA? People will complain that its "blocking light" or "out of character", or that it blocks their legally unprotected views. Propose too much parking? Pro transit people get mad. Propose too little parking? People with cars will get mad about the increased competition for street spots. It goes on and on...

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Not much about bus but other problems in city like rent and housing that we already know about.

</comment><comment><USER39> What a truly terrible article, how on earth did it get published? This is the type of small minded, stereotyping, garbage that should never make it past some hack's crappy blog.

I looked up the author on Wikipedia and I find it rather ironic that there are quotes of her priding herself on her critical thinking abilities. Reading the article, I saw very little evidence of critical thinking or thinking of any kind for that matter.

As a side note, I see that she has a Masters of Journalism. Why on earth would you need a masters degree in Journalism? Find a story, research it/fact check, write about it. Do you really need to go to a university for 6~ years for that?

<comment><USER27> The London Review of Books is not "some hack's crappy blog". Check your critical thinking skills again; you might actually need a Master of Journalism to get published there.

<comment><USER39> I did not say that The London Review of Books was a crappy blog. I said that the article belonged on a crappy blog. Implying that it was like a poor quality rant from a personal blog and not worthy of being published in The London Review of Books.

<comment><USER18> It's not really that bad, as far as these types of articles go. The opinion column staff at the NYT churns out a worse article nearly every day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> A pretty resentful and bitter piece by someone who seems to feel personally wronged by an industry he is clearly not a part of, but feels above on a moral and personal level.

</comment><comment><USER41> TLDR

</comment><comment><USER42> I'm not really buying it...</comment>


Meet YouTube Red, the Ultimate YouTube Experience - <AUTHOR> http://youtube-global.blogspot.com/2015/10/red.html <comment><USER2> Is "YouTube Red" seriously the name? They must be aware of the association.

<comment><USER3> Mountain Dew: Code Red? Pepsi Blue? Soylent Green? Khmer Rouge?

Help me out here, I'm not aware of the association.

<comment><USER4> Red Tube.

<comment><USER3> OH!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Getting 10x Developers 10x Pay - <AUTHOR> http://develodex.com/ <comment><USER2> 1\. 100/hr is not 10x pay. I wouldn't change the site, just the tagline.

2\. Fix this on your join page "If you're too at the moment, ..." (too busy?)

3\. I do not believe you have jobs. If you do, you should explain a little about how you source them. If you don't -- as I suspect, I don't think there's a good reason for me to sign up. You might want to study airpair.com to figure out how they solved this problem. I believe they found customers first and fulfilled them themselves -- then recruited devs when they had enough flow.

4\. I expect an explanation of your fee

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, thanks for the heads up about the spelling.

I honestly didn't mean to give the impression that I had jobs lined up. However, I'm working on building a two-sided platform and decided to start with the side I know best.

No fees at the moment. I'm not even sure what business model I'm going to persue. I'm currently just emailing people who signed up and seeing what they're looking for and how I can add value.

<comment><USER3> That's the problem with every "We're fixing hiring!" website.

There's no reason for candidates to join unless a lot of employers join.

There's no reason for employers to join unless a lot of candidates join.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> You face the classic problem of the 2-sided market.

You need clients to attract developers and you need talented developers to attract clients.

This model normally fizzles out due to 1 or both sides of the market failing.

Good luck though, I'd use something like this.

</comment><comment><USER5> Wouldn't 10X the most junior developer hourly rate be $200?

</comment><comment><USER6> The best way to get 10x pay is to get paid for project completion, not by hour.

<comment><USER7> and in addition don't do the work. Hire people to do the actual work and just project manage it.</comment></comment>


How a 38 year-old with no computer science background made an iPhone app - <AUTHOR> https://scott.silvrback.com/how-a-38-year-old-with-no-computer-science-background-made-an-iphone-app

<comment><USER2> sigh ... sometimes I wish it was common knowledge that computer science != software development.

It feels like I'm reading a sentence that said "How a 38 year-old without a biology degree made a large family."

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hi, this is me. For the title, I was going for something like 'guy with no formal software development education/training', but that was too wordy. I guess I'm stuck with what it's at now.

Reason for the post: I didn't start learning with a decent roadmap. So at the very least, I figure I could provide the path I followed. Thanks for the kudos!

</comment><comment><USER3> Great Job dude!</comment>


China only makes $8 from an iPhone – and that's why Trump's trade war is futile - <AUTHOR> https://theconversation.com/we-estimate-china-only-makes-8-46-from-an-iphone-and-thats-why-trumps-trade-war-is-futile-99258 <comment><USER2> I don't think it is about the $8.

Previously, China outsourced social and ecological cost of producing iPhones and other technology. That outsourcing is not covered in the price.

Recent political changes in China such as environmental requirements cut the key profit: the outsourcing.

If the US has the choice to either have a factory in China, or have a factory with roughly the same standards at home, the trade-offs are different: you might want the jobs at home then (given that the wages are competitive, which they currently are not).</comment>


Good and Bad Procrastination - <AUTHOR> http://www.paulgraham.com/procrastination.html <comment><USER2> A (2005) designation should be added to the title to alert readers that this is not a new essay (although it's a good one IMO).</comment>


Google Open Source Manager Says "Android Is The Linux Dream Come True" - <AUTHOR> http://digitizor.com/2011/07/12/google-android-linux-dream/

<comment><USER3> I can't say I think much of an article talking about Android as "The Linux Dream" that doesn't clearly articulate the difference between the Linux kernel and the rest of userland. Android has really demonstrated that Stallman's convention of referring to GNU/Linux and not labeling the whole OS with the name of the kernel should have been adopted for purely practical reasons.

If people are happy to call Android "Android", then we should have been calling the desktop os with Linux kernel "GNU" and not "Linux" all this time, shouldn't we? The full names should be Android/Linux and GNU/Linux to differentiate the phone and desktop operating systems.

It seems that the power of a corporation to create a brand and call it whatever they want is uncontroversial, and nobody seems bothered by the name Android which makes no mention of the Linux kernel whatsoever, but RMS' thoroughly rational and sensible idea that the right name for the desktop OS should correctly label its major components has been very controversial.

I think there are a lot of lessons to be learned here about naming and power relationships, and our implicit acceptance of the dominance of corporate entities such as Google over our discourse.

<comment><USER4> "Android" is just a far better name than "GNU." The main difference is probably just that it's easily pronounceable, but it also connects to images in people's minds that make it easy to remember.

"Linux," like "Android" is most importantly clearly pronounceable. And anytime you have two words like "GNU/Linux" people are just going to use one, likely the one they can read.

<comment><USER5> I liked 'Gnu', but you're right. While such issues might seem trivial, the fact that Gnu has had the same crappy drawing as its logo for >15 years has always struck me as proof that almost nobody in the Gnu project understands or cares about user experience. I got quite excited when Tux the penguin showed up because it suggested there were still people out there who thought the GUI desktop was rather important.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It won't be until Motorola and anyone similar to them dies in a fire. I cannot tell you how much having made the mistake of purchasing a Motorola phone has made me absolutely loath those MBA-led jackasses. Get an Android they say. It's open source, they say. Oh, you didn't know about the locked bootloader? Oh, you expected software updates and bug fixes? LOL. Enjoy your abandoned phone and thanks for the purchase. Android has been far from anything Linux- like so far. The term "Android" does not equate with the types of control over my devices I expect from something that is Open Source. I did learn my lesson and my wife has a Nexus. This Android = Open Source lie is completely misleading bullshit, though. Nobody sells AOSP phones except Google's Nexus line.

<comment><USER7> Well, if you care about a locked bootloader and similar restrictions (99% don't), but didn't put the effort into googling your phone to find out about them, you can always root your phone and put on the the newest version - <USER2> you didn't get a Nexus in the first place, that is. Also, you'd have to live in the US for it to matter, the vast majority of carriers actually deliver Android updates pretty timely.

I agree Android isn't anywhere near a perfect linux dream of open hard- and software, but it isn't as awful as you depict it either imho.

<comment><USER6> From my position now, I understand that. It is however not: "Get an Android phone it's open source." Instead, it's find out about all sorts of technical minutia and then find a phone that actually allows you to use the open source.

I do live in the US. My phone (Milestone XT720) was released running 2.1 over seven months after 2.2 had been released and I bought it only both _after_ verbal and email confirmation from Motorola support that a 2.2 update was on the way.

Nevertheless, Motorola officially abandoned the phone at 2.1 three months after release. They claim it was an honest mistake and the support personnel were confused. Whoops. Motorola has recently confirmed that we will never even get a security update. I didn't know at the time that Motorola were such incompetent assholes and would both lie and never ship updates. Maybe if I had known that I would have learned beforehand what was the locked bootloader.

Like I said, I've learned my lesson. My family will never, ever buy anything made by Motorola. Motorola points their fingers at the carrier and the carrier points their finger at the manufacturer. I'm tired of these games. That's it. End of story. It's Nexus only from now on. I don't trust any of the assholes selling phones. Period. If I wanted to buy a locked down phone, I'd buy an iPhone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Wow, a lot of people are unhappy here. I suggest that you try the OpenMoko, if you want more freedom: <http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Main_Page>

I for one am extremely happy that google exists, and is pushing a linux-based, mostly free operating system. The fact that it's gaining so much traction and market share compared to the linux desktop is a dream come true.

To develop an app for your mobile device, Apple requires you to:

1\. Pay them $99 / year. 2\. Use a language mainly specific to apple development 3\. Buy their IDE through their App store (or download an older version from their password protected developer website. 4\. Run development software on their proprietary operating system.

I don't know what Microsoft and other giant companies are doing, but I imagine the development process is not much better.

Conversely, I can download eclipse to any computer and write and android app in Java for my phone for free in about an hour.

That feels a lot more free to me, even if there are a few locked parts under the hood.

<comment><USER9> (I'd say MeeGo is fine, but)

OpenMoko? How about WebOS?

OpenMoko was a great idea. It's more the HURD of mobile operating systems though.. A failure - it never worked well, was rewritten a thousand times and it sure seems to be dead.

Now, MeeGo could've started something new. But - here we're getting into the 'WTH did Nokia think' discussion. I'll leave this discussion to bergie, I guess.

WebOS is the sexiest option for me. It runs a real linux stack (like MeeGo), has a great UI (haven't used the N9, but before that I'd say it topped MeeGo and probably Android in most cases) and your applications are by and large web apps, written in JS (lately, using node.js).

If I could steer the market with my mind alone, I'd decide this to be the winner/future. Back to my Android now. Need to install another CM release..

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> If you're looking for a GNU/Linux mobile device, try MeeGo (currently only the Nokia N9) or Maemo (Nokia N900). MeeGo and Maemo are GNU/Linux with a few small proprietry components.

</comment><comment><USER11> Wait, wait, wait. Android has realized the dream of fully open hardware and software? This is the same Android that comes with a bunch of closed-source stuff [1], stores your data on servers which are not yours, and runs primarily on proprietary handsets?

I'm happy for the success of Android and it represents a significant step towards openness in both the mobile phone space and the personal computer space, but this is certainly not the end of the war, nor is it the beginning of the end. Perhaps it is the end of the beginning.

[1] - <http://www.fsf.org/bulletin/2008/fall/mobile>

<comment><USER12> yes it is. if you don't like the closed-source apps, you can run your own pure replacements.

<comment><USER11> Obviously, and if I don't like Windows, I can install a BSD or anything from <http://gnu.org/> and run a fully free computer (or Kolibri or Haiku). That is relevant to the success of the open-source movement on the desktop, but it's not the end-game.

<comment><USER12> that's a bogus comparison: if you replace windows with BSD you aren't running windows anymore. if you replace google's maps app with one from openstreetmaps you are still running android.

<comment><USER11> That isn't the point, though: the point is that people are using closed-source software by default.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I disagree strongly.

Now - I'm an Android user. I just bought one of the upper-class dual core phones and went with Android instead of waiting for the Pre3, giving the N9 a try or something similar.

But that's because

* I love Google's services. More or less every single one. I don't extend that love to the company, but I like using their stuff.

* Innovation seems to happen in the realms of popular and therefor attractive markets. If there's a new thing (tm), it won't be available on WebOS (or MeeGo, or maybe even WP7) for a while. It's more or less iOS vs. Android. RIM's dead in my world.

But - am I happy with my choice? Nope.. My choice (Another Android device: Yes/No) was basically accepting defeat and choosing the best compromise, something that worksforme. It's not the Linux dream come true, it's why I installed (among other systems) Windows on my desktop..

</comment><comment><USER13> The interview that this article excerpts is at [http://derstandard.at/1308186313932/Interview-Google- Android...](http://derstandard.at/1308186313932/Interview-Google-Android-is- the-Linux-desktop-dream-come-true?linux)

</comment><comment><USER14> If the Linux dream was to randomly pick versions of the kernel, deem them "unsuitable for public distribution", and not release them, sure!

I suppose it depends on whose dream they're claiming it is; much like the article notes, I'd imagine most people dream of it being a mainstream desktop OS (which it isn't yet).

Perhaps in time desktops will be irrelevant, but until they are, success in the mobile space doesn't seem like much of a dream come true to me, especially with the proprietary aspects to be paid.

</comment><comment><USER15> It is interesting to see content spam which targets the HN crowd. This article is clearly web spam, between that ratio of 'written text' to 'ads' to the various typos (common on rapidly written and pushed out type articles) to the disjoint connections (we got Linux, Google, Ubuntu, and Android all in one paragraph). Add to this that we've got a 'private' domain registration hosted out of India by ZDNET and well, it pretty much screams content farm.

</comment><comment><USER16> The headline article is a refutation of Di Bona's statement, not an endorsement, so please read the article before commenting. Thanks.</comment>


Building a Farnsworth Fusor - <AUTHOR> http://www.erikburrows.com/index.php?node_id=342 <comment><USER2> Real mad science stuff.</comment>


Kill 'Save for Web' - <AUTHOR> http://www.netmagazine.com/news/dev-argues-kill-save-web-132668 <comment><USER2> This reads like a big fat advertisement for CDN Connect more than it does a valid argument for ditching save for web in photo editing applications. "Save for web is redundant, use my paid product instead", I'll bite...

Considering photo editing applications like Photoshop serve many purposes; magazine photography, advertising, hobbyist and web user I don't see the reason to remove such a fundamentally and very relevant feature like, 'Save for Web'. Not everyone takes photos for display on the web and some people like control over the finer details of their imagery before saving them out (that includes for web).

Not once did Adam Bradley offer any sort of compelling argument here. His argument is that people upload large images and resize them in the browser, only developers who don't care about the end-user do this. CMS's like Wordpress handle image resizing out-of-the-box and for free too, who would have thought? Developers have been cutting out images at a fixed size since I can remember, why is it all of a sudden a problem we need to throw money at? Considering the file size difference between an image saved for web and an image saved for desktop use or for printing in a magazine can sometimes be tens of megabytes opposed to kilobytes, I'd rather save out web optimised versions of my images when I need them instead of relying on a paid product which is essentially doing what Photoshop or Fireworks would do in behind-the- scenes anyway.

CDN Connect sounds like an over-glorified and by the looks of it, expensive image resizing and content delivery network service, I'm not impressed.</comment>


See your contacts' event plans on Twitter.com with the Lanyrd browser extension - <AUTHOR> http://lanyrd.com/blog/2011/extension/

<comment><USER2> Nice one. Does this mean an API might be just the other side of SXSW? :-P

P.S. This post dedicated to Tristan, who asks "what's up with you commenting on every Lanyrd thing on HackerNews?!"</comment>


A Brief, Incomplete, and Mostly Wrong History of Programming Languages - <AUTHOR> http://james-iry.blogspot.com/2009/05/brief-incomplete-and-mostly-wrong.html <comment><USER2> I've read this several times now, but I still laugh when I get to this sentence:

"Lambdas are relegated to relative obscurity until Java makes them popular by not having them."

</comment><comment><USER3> It might be a duplicate, but I didn't see it last year and I'm happy you posted it - I laughed, I cried; it became a part of me.

</comment><comment><USER4> This made my day. :D Sorry this was too funny had to paste my favorite:

1983 - Bjarne Stroustrup bolts everything he's ever heard of onto C to create C++. The resulting language is so complex that programs must be sent to the future to be compiled by the Skynet artificial intelligence. Build times suffer. Skynet's motives for performing the service remain unclear but spokespeople from the future say "there is nothing to be concerned about, baby," in an Austrian accented monotones. There is some speculation that Skynet is nothing more than a pretentious buffer overrun.

</comment><comment><USER5> My intellectual curiosity has been gratified to the fullest extent.

</comment><comment><USER6> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=599164>

<comment><USER7> The small print says it was updated September 2010.

(I know, it's April 9th. That date format/ordering just gets my goat.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I thought I saw this just a few days ago, so I googled. This was posted here 6 days ago but got only five upvotes and one comment. <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1310127>

<comment><USER9> This seems to happen a lot. Someone should do some A/B-style testing to figure out why. I nominate you. :-)

<comment><USER8> The obvious reason is here "HN is getting too big" <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1329147> many articles are disappearing off the new posts pages before many people get a chance to see them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Had me rolling. Great work. Somebody knows computer languages too well. :)

</comment><comment><USER11> That is pretty funny. Had me laughing out loud which pretty rare for nerd humour (which is usually cringe worthy).

By the way for future editions there has to be a good joke about Haskell being lazy because it was created by a bunch of hippies.

</comment><comment><USER12> "lambda the ultimate kitchen utensil"

</comment><comment><USER13> I think we need Clojure in there.</comment>


Dope New Embeds - <AUTHOR> http://blog.angel.co/post/40713654027/dope-new-embeds

<comment><USER2> I like the embeds, but "dope" seems like terminology from a different domain.</comment>


Show HN: Find remote jobs with great culture fit - <AUTHOR> https://www.remotefit.io <comment><AUTHOR> Hey! Maker here. Thought it'd be cool to mention this is a 100% static website (Jekyll + Netlify). No back-end whatsoever (e.g. Firebase, serverless functions).

It's amazing what one can create with the constraint of keeping things simple!

<comment><USER2> Looks really good! Thanks, I'll need to keep this bookmarked.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Refind – The home for the best links on the web - <AUTHOR> We're building Refind, a community of founders, hackers, and designers who collect and share the best links on the web. It's super early but we're on Product Hunt today and we don't want to miss the opportunity to reach out to HN too! Founders, hackers, and designers are the audience we had in mind when building this so we'd really love to know what you think!
https://refind.com
HOW IT WORKS Save great links that will come in handy in the future. Discover what others save. And then find everything again when you really need it – for example when you later search for this topic on Google, Refind highlights links you or your friends saved (optional).
DELICIOUS? Delicious pioneered social bookmarking in 2003. We're trying to take up on where they left off. And here's how we believe Refind fits into today's landscape: https://refind.com/home#difference
READ LATER? Refind is complementary to Instapaper or Pocket: Read Later is a reading list, Refind is an archive. Read Later is todo, Refind is fire and forget. Here's how we see and use the two in combination (with the example of Pocket): https://medium.com/@refind/refind-pocket-a0ecb08de814
WHY? Here's why we're building this: https://medium.com/@refind/this-is-why-we-re-building-refind-7e7229bee370
We really hope you like it! Again, it's super early but we're going to work on this for a very long time so we'd love to know what you think! I'll be around here and you can also reach me on Twitter (https://twitter.com/dominikg) or at firstname.lastname@example.com.
Thanks a lot,
Dominik (Founder) <comment><USER2> Many of the comments here are by first-time users, registered in the last 30 minutes, just to upvote this:

\- [https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=patbreitenmoser](https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=patbreitenmoser)

\- [https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=nettra](https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=nettra)

\- [https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=babalunda](https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=babalunda)

\- [https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=adsons](https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=adsons)

\- [https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=xbertschy](https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=xbertschy)

\- [https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=MarcoGrue](https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=MarcoGrue)

This is very gross behavior, dominikgro / Refind.

EDIT:

I'm also skeptical about these accounts:

\- [https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=firmasaga1](https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=firmasaga1)

\- [https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=andreasbrenner](https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=andreasbrenner)

\- [https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=geo_O](https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=geo_O)

<comment><AUTHOR> Before HN, Refind had about 900 users (half of them very active). We just announced by email and in the product that we're on HN today.

<comment><USER3> It breaks HN's rules to solicit votes (see the FAQ), which promoting a submission often has the effect of. This often gets the submission, accounts, and/or site banned or penalized, so please avoid this. HN's software, moderators, and (as you've seen here) community are all sensitive to it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is interesting, I've signed up and I'll see how it goes.

Your Pocket flow seems to ignore the fact that Pocket has an archive though?

I suppose the Google search integration is useful, but Google does already have the "you visited (x|many) times [on y]" text (that you override?).

It would be good if the "You | Friends" portion of the filter was visible (and usable) even without searching. Maybe right now I don't care about others, and I'm not looking for something specific, I just want to browse things I saved.

If things I upvoted on HN were automatically added, that would be great.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, OJFord!

\- Pocket: It does respect 'Archived' – it only suggests links to save to Refind that you've archived on Pocket. \- Google: No override! \- Filter: When you search on refind.com, you can search in All, Friends, You... \- HN links: Great idea! :)

<comment><USER4> Sorry, what I meant was that with regards to not competing with Pocket (instead 'working with') it seems to me that Refind is a slightly enhanced Pocket archive?

What I meant about the filter was that it would be good to be able to do that when _not_ searching. I want to browse everything that was saved by _me only_. At the moment, that doesn't seem to be possible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I am a user for a while now and Refind has become part of my routine.

The biggest part for me is not the repository of knowledge that I am building though - is is the social aspects of the product. A new tab extension allows me to see the links stored by people I follow and the quality of those links has been very high - although I have to be diligent with unfollowing noisy people that do not fit my interest spectrum. The Refind stream has drastically reduced my Twitter usage as I just get my daily dose of inspiring articles and content there.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'd rather not be forced to sign up with twitter.

<comment><AUTHOR> Understand! In the long run, we'll open this up.

<comment><USER7> I just hope that Twitter is not working on a similar app …

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've used a number of similar services; delicious, spurl and now diigo.

I've been very happy with diigo for a long time, but I feel like I'm a bit of an outlier on the service. Most users are in the education sphere, so using it to discover similar content to what I'm bookmarking isn't as good as what refind seems to surface.

Still, if anyone is looking around for something to use; diigo is worth checking out.

</comment><comment><USER9> Two thinks I especially like:

\- Fire away. No bad feelings as with e.g. Pocket that I am delegating too much stuff to my future self. But I still have a place where I could find again important stuff.

\- Finally a nice way to be inspired in my areas of interest besides the stuff I follow activeley/is easily accessible, eg on HN or reddit.

Edit: formatting

<comment><AUTHOR> Great, that's really part of why we're building this. Fire and forget, Refind will remind you when you really need it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Great to see 'Refind' made it to HN. I've been using Refind for 2 months and it has completely replaced Pocket in my workflow. Better browser integration, better search, and I really like the social twist of it.

</comment><comment><USER11> Anyone else having issues with the Safari extension? After clicking the trust button the extension still failed to install.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hm, weird. Can you email me at email@example.com and I'll ping you once I know the issue / have a solution.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> after delicious went down, I moved over to google bookmarks. it works sort of, but I have trouble searching for my older links. Do you support importing an xml file from google bookmarks?

I tried pocket for saving links, but it reformatted articles with code in a way I could not use.

</comment><comment><USER13> A few questions come to mind: how do they make money out of this? Can I export my data?

<comment><AUTHOR> No revenue plans at this point. I want to createsomething useful first! Sure you can export your data.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> have been using refind for some time now. i really like the content that my network shares through it. found some great articles.

</comment><comment><USER15> Refind has become my no. 1 source of valuable content. It filters the noise and delivers only what's valuable and useful.

<comment><USER7> How does the filtering work? I have to admit that I have not 'gotten' Refind so far but that might change with some help!

<comment><USER5> The filtering is basically done by the people you follow. They add what they find interesting and that is a pre-selection.

<comment><USER7> Most users seems to add all links from their tweets. Maybe that will change!

<comment><USER5> Not in my experience. But as I have mentioned in my own top-level comment, I have been fairly diligent about unfollowing the people that produced noise in the stream.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It's Pinterest for links!</comment>