Getting by in a technical industry without a degree - <AUTHOR> http://rys.sommefeldt.com/2012/07/30/getting-by-in-a-technical-industry-without-a-degree.html

<comment><USER2> From my personal perspective, me not having a degree doesnt matter in the slightest and i think that it probably helps due to my personal preference, because i dont think id want to work for a company that decides my vast amount of experience is irrelevant because i dont have a degree.

It doesnt matter as much because of a number of factors, first, im a contractor and would never take a permie job, also i sucked at school. I left school at 15 thinking i was dumb because i got bad grades. After leaving school and finding computers and learning them myself, i finally realised i wasnt dumb and after a few years in shitty jobs while learning in the off time, i eventually started making an income from my passion.

Fast forward to today and my portfolio and technical knowledge in my field speaks for itself. To me, going to university would have just delayed my career by years and im already kicking myself for not getting my act together quicker.

<comment><USER3> It's possible that you'd miss a theoretically possible "good company with a bad HR department" although one can argue that they wouldn't remain a good company for very long...

<comment><USER4> I don't understand how such a company could be possible even in theory. Seems like an oxymoron to me.

<comment><USER5> Google is trying very hard to be this, for example in not hiring people without degrees.

<comment><USER6> It is my understanding that they stopped such practices years ago. There are several people around here who claim to work at Google without a degree.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Just some advice for the international readers who might be thinking about dropping out: If you want to work in the US you will have have immigration problems if you don't have a degree. Getting a work visa without your degree is semi-imposible (especially if you're in your 20s).

Dropping out was one of the best choices I've ever made but this particular thing is something that has come back to bite me in the ass several times.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, that's biting me right now :/ You need a degree to apply for the H1-B, but I've got a great immigration attorney and am applying for an O-1 visa. Wish me luck!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> With decades of experience, my lack of a degree isn't a large problem. But let's be clear that many companies _will_ cull my résumé in the first pass. I'm fine with that, as I'd rather work for people who pay more attention.

When I was younger and had less experience things were not so easy. Lacking a degree, I had to persevere a bit more when job hunting. Networking was important early on.

</comment><comment><USER10> Here's my (main) problem with what you wrote: in any job there will be many, many problems to solve that you won't love, but you have to solve them anyway.

Passion for the job is a "nice to have," not a requirement. Passion fades, and if your job performance is going to fade along with it, I don't want to hire you.

<comment><USER11> If somebody is all passion and no skill, well that's a total wild-card. They may or may not ever be productive. I do think people like this exist, but only temporarily. If they are truly passionate, they'll get good at their work. If not, then they are just all talk and not really passionate.

A person with great skill but no passion - I'm not sure that person exists. I don't think you can get to the level of greatness without some form of passion. If you have zero passion the you are probably going to top out at "adequate" and your skills will diminish as the industry passes you by.

I would bet that every on this forum has some passion. It wouldn't even make sense, why waste your free time reading tech forums? All of us here have at least a little passion for the field.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Well written, and totally agreed that a degree stamp / piece of paper is not an indicator of the knowledge or passion of the individual.

However, I do know that lack of degree is always weighing heavily on the individual who doesn't have it. This further leads to compensatory behaviour

My 2 cents - I think an individual is better off taking small steps towards getting a degree than justifying it for the rest of their life.

<comment><USER6> _However, I do know that lack of degree is always weighing heavily on the individual who doesn't have it. This further leads to compensatory behaviour_

Care to elaborate? I was unable to obtain my degree, and maybe it is that weighing on me, but it feels like people with degrees spend a inordinate amount of time justifying their accreditation to deal with their own insecurities.

Since I did not have the opportunity to go to college, unlike my friends, I received a lot of ribbing early on about how their are getting their education to get a good job. Once I finally revealed how much I was making, I never heard another word of it.

I never felt the need to make fun of them for going to college though. In fact, I fully supported it. Education is amazing and it truly saddens me that people have to justify it with prospects of future employment opportunities to even justify going.

<comment><USER12> As an engineering manager - I'm all for pursuit of knowledge and excellence. I could care less whether a person has a degree as long as he has the subject matter expertise. Multiple well respected engineers in my group don't have a degree.

I think its really a personal choice. You can get a degree and not have to keep justifying your choice, and how good you are even without it. Or, you can be a strong man and choose to ignore the mainstream perception. Either ways, the knowledge and subject matter-expertise is non-negotiable to succeed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> A degree is like a past proof of minimal performance - ie that you did barely enough to satisfy the requirements at one point in the past. The requirements may or may not be relevant for the job at hand.

A degree doesn't says how good you are either.

Yet many people use that as a proxy, maybe to save themselves the trouble of _properly_ evaluating candidates.

Why not - but they shouldn't complain about mediocrity then. They fuel it (along with the education bubble)

<comment><USER14> A degree also proves that you were able to stay dedicated to something for ~4 years without giving up. There is a lot to be said for showing that kind of commitment to a goal.

<comment><USER6> I'm not sure that is it. I have dedicated far more time than that to other endeavours, but I can likely count on one hand the number of employers who would actually care.

I think the reality is just pack mentality. At some point, one successful business only hired those with degrees, and everyone else adopted the same policies in attempt to duplicate their success.

<comment><USER15> I think it's more an excuse for the employer, if he's an employee too. Imagine this situation:

superior.- This guy is a disaster, why did you even hire him?

employer.- Well, he had a X degree in Y.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I do have a degree, but besides my first job, which I got through the uni's internship program, I have never been asked about it since. Of course, now that I'm cofounding a startup, its unlikely that I ever will be asked about it (though as a technical cofounder, it _may_ help to add to my credibility, though if I can execute, I won't need a degree to prove that I can execute..)

</comment><comment><USER17> While there are many "naturals" that do great without a degree it is still a statistically significant differentiator for the average applicant. When I scan resumes I do look what applicants studied but usually only to get an idea of additional questions to ask that might be a bit outside of the recent experience. I would not hesitate to hire someone without a degree, though.

</comment><comment><USER18> i'm a undergraduate, working as an engineer. i have worked with one of the major brands like Dell. i see no difference between a graduate and an undergraduate these days. All have the right to study and work hard and internet has been a of great help.

</comment><comment><USER19> A degree doesn't matter. Writing solid code does...

<comment><USER10> Depends on what you want to do I guess. I'm a software developer. Less than 25% of my job actually involves writing code.

<comment><USER20> Do you find that frustrating? For me, days with less than 30% time spent doing coding feel like a waste. I think I value coding and the surrounding activities far more than any other type of work activity. For me that other 75% (I'm guessing spent in meetings) would feel like a time vacuum.

<comment><USER10> In any given day, I may have a number of meetings; I have to write any variety of documentation; get into discussions about whether or not a particular requirement is correct and stated properly; answer technical questions of the "what if..." type; investigate strange behavior to see if it's a bug or just normal, but misunderstood behavior; review other people's designs, code, or test cases, etc...

When all that's done, there's not a lot of time coding.

No, it's not frustrating: it's just part of the job. I mentioned in another topic a few days ago that my dept. won't hire people who are "just coders." We expect developers we hire to be able to take on all aspects of the job from gathering requirements though final test, if necessary.

<comment><USER20> Fair enough, I always considered looking into production and customer issues, digging through log files, and doing code review as part of 'coding', even though that's not the literal meaning.

Perhaps I'm using that term a bit too loosely then :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> _The B.Sc...means precious little...What's way more important to me...is the reason why you did it in the first place. If it's not because you love it then I'm going to be much less interested in retaining your services, even if your technical ability is first rate._

Yet another jackass who pushes his own prejudices over ability to do the job. This is why no HR mechanisms work better than random at hiring the right guy.

<comment><USER22> Personally it sounds like a damn effective heuristic to me.

I've found the folk who have a passion for their work are the best employees. Technical ability isn't the only factor in being productive - or hiring. Caring about your work is vitally important too.

Ideally what I want is ability _and_ passion of course - but the world isn't an ideal place.

A technically excellent employee with no passion... well.... in my experience they tend to coast. They do what they're told, and do it well, but they're not the ones who bang on your door first thing in the morning and go 'Have you seen this?!'. The folk banging on the door are the ones that make money.

Give me a passionate employee with a clue and I can coach them into technical excellence.

I've yet to figure out how to coach passion into somebody who doesn't really care.

<comment><USER21> Says someone who's never had to do data cleansing for a living. Try telling me you're "passionate" about _that_.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I dropped out of HS, then dropped out of college. Ask me how my career has suffered!</comment>


Show HN: Blendful–Create illustration art for your project in seconds - <AUTHOR> This is a repost; I posted it yesterday but got no clicks or comments. Going to try posting it one last time.
Hey HN, I have been working to create Blendful [0]. I'm a designer/programmer and I realized how frustrating it is for people who are not designers to create high quality illustrations that fit well with their project. Blendful is intended to fill that gap. I would love to hear any feedback, comments, or discussion otherwise. Thank you for your time.
[0] https://blendful.com <comment><USER2> It seems useful overall but has areas where it could improve. The UI is inconsistent. Inserted art just appears in the "board" but insert shapes require dragging in the board and there's no indication what shape you're drawing.

I could see no obvious way to set outline/stroke width or color for shapes even though art in the library show those properties. There seems to be no way to rotate shapes. There are no line or text tools.

Of course, your art library isn't fully populated yet. For instance, search for "dog", "bird", "dragon", "knight" all return no results. Also, even though the search tool asks for submitted art, it wasn't at all clear how to submit it.

Anyway, the idea of sharing and collaborating around images in a simple environment is appealing. With a few tweaks, it would be something that I would use and recommend.

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow, thank you so much for this comment; I really appreciate it, and this feedback is immensely helpful. Thank you!</comment></comment>


5 Excuses You Won't Tell Your Self for Not Practicing TDD - <AUTHOR> http://armoredcode.com/blog/5-excuses-you-wont-tell-your-self-for-not-practicing-tdd/

<comment><USER2> Whoa. Typo overkill.

<comment><AUTHOR> Where? :)</comment></comment>


Gradle: C and C++ Native Build System - <AUTHOR> http://gradle.org/videos/gradle-an-outstanding-c-c-native-build-system/ <comment><USER2> Sounds good, does someone know how it compares to waf though? I prefer Python over JavaScript (?) or a DSL.</comment>


Labor Board Found Google Was Within Its Rights to Fire James Damore - <AUTHOR> https://gizmodo.com/labor-board-found-google-was-within-its-rights-to-fire-1823086744 <comment><USER2> Discussed: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16396554](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16396554)</comment>


SteamOS: It's here - <AUTHOR> http://steamdb.info/blog/35/ <comment><USER2> I have a huge problem with Steam in general. It's nothing against Valve and nothing against the games on Steam store, but hear me out.

Lets say you buy a game on the Steam store. Now lets say that game is so bug- ridden that you can't play it. It's so bad that you can't even run the game. You check online and it's such a big problem that the CTO has publicly apologized. You contact Steam support to ask for a refund. They tell you to forget it, so you contact the publisher. You explain that you have liked their games forever but this game is not playable. You want your money back. The publisher will tell you that you need to get a refund from the retailer you purchased the game from. It's out of their control because they don't have your money.

You contact Steam again, they tell you that they will issue no refund. You threaten to file a charge back from your credit card company. Steam says that they will disable further purchases from the Steam Store if you do so. They actually state that they will not let you purchase any more games from them if you protect yourself as any consumer should be allowed to.

Somehow, I just can't imagine doing business with them anymore.

<comment><USER3> Uh, that's never happened to me, nor anyone I know. And Steam Quality Control is good enough that games that bug-ridden will very very rarely make it through.

<comment><USER4> Godus has those very issues.

<comment><USER5> As other's have pointed out that Godus is an alpha game much of it has not been written yet. It is probably over a year from being a good game. The issue is this is not communicated well enough to people purchasing, as illustrated by the above comment. If Hooch expected Godus to be a bug ridden when purchasing their wouldn't be any surprise when he discover it was bug ridden. One idea I could see would be for Steam to require developers to list a sample of issues the game currently has in the promotional video. Introversion does this well with their game Prison Architect [http://youtu.be/KDDzSOS0vzc?t=1m6s](http://youtu.be/KDDzSOS0vzc?t=1m6s) . I see this serving a similar purpose to the Risks & Challenges section on Kickstarter, warning the customer that they are not buying a game with the typical protections and warranties they are used to.

<comment><USER4> I expect to be able to actually run the game instead of it crashing as soon as I double click on the icon. I'd probably have no issue with it, if I could actually get it to run. Then there is the whole no refund issue with Steam.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'd rather just go to the official site, myself.

[http://store.steampowered.com/steamos/buildyourown](http://store.steampowered.com/steamos/buildyourown)

<comment><USER7> Anyone know why the hard drive requirements are so large? Also they say 500gb and 1TB in different locations

"The image provided here requires at least a 1TB disk."

<comment><USER8> The 1TB one is due to the way Clonezilla images work, it expects a drive with at least 1TB capacity to mirror the image back.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> A link explaining what SteamOS actually is might come in handy:

[http://store.steampowered.com/livingroom/SteamOS/](http://store.steampowered.com/livingroom/SteamOS/)

</comment><comment><USER10> SteamOS FAQ

        Please use http://repo.steampowered.com[2] for downloading

        repo.steampowered.com goes through the CDN and will spread the load. The steamstatic link people are passing around is not behind a CDN.

        http://steamcommunity.com/groups/steamuniverse/discussions/1/648814395787298909/[3]

For those using the unofficial torrent to download, can verify it with official MD5 or SHA512.

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm pretty excited to see, at least from the steam FAQ, this is going to be a pretty straight forward layer on top of Debian with some back ported changes. I've seen so many crazy rumors about completely custom audio stacks, replacements for X and who knows what else. This is assuming the vague mention of an "updated graphics stack" doesn't mean anything crazy...

</comment><comment><USER12> Does anyone have a torrent link? The installer link is down for me.

Edit: Here is an unnoficial torrent magnet link: [http://mgnet.me/foUDd](http://mgnet.me/foUDd)

<comment><USER13> [http://repo.steampowered.com/download/SteamOSInstaller.zip](http://repo.steampowered.com/download/SteamOSInstaller.zip) is the CDN link

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Is this going to result in better video drivers for Linux feeding back into the open source community? That would be nice!

<comment><USER15> [http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/linux/faster- zombies/](http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/linux/faster-zombies/)

They have been working with various GPU vendors on better Linux drivers for at least a year if not more.

Valve also recently joined the Linux Foundation.

It appears they are working towards making the software in the ecosystem better.

<comment><USER16> It does not state on what drivers/other stuff they are contributing. It sounds they work together with the vendors to improve the proprietary drivers, I think. That would be zero benefit for GNU/Linux environment. Also current state of Steam OS is just a standard Debian with proprietary components added. And those components are what really matters in this field. I do not expect that Valve make their Steam Client open source, but at least not relying solely on closed stuff for the relevant parts. In the current state this doesn't improve anything or makes somehow the "ecosystem" better.

<comment><USER17> There was some recent quote about Gabe saying something along the lines of "open source is the future of gaming". I wouldn't be one bit surprised if that were bull though. In fact a less literal but more likely interpretation of that is "in the future we'll exploit (more) open source for our own benefit."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Running on Debian 7.1 Wheezy, nice. Now I don't have to change operating systems.

</comment><comment><USER19> Can anyone please explain to me how this is supposed to work with the majority of games out there that happen to be only for Windows? Short of a handful of indie games, what exactly are you supposed to play with this?

Many major AAA titles have performance issues on Windows these days, and that's with nVidia and AMD doing their best to optimize their drivers, so please don't try to convince me that you can run the latest Assassin's Creed through Wine or something.

<comment><USER20> It's a project that aims for the future, not the past. Or can you play PS3 games on a PS4?

<comment><USER19> Ok, so it's a concept for a gaming OS that might become viable in the future, provided that developers decide to build for it.

I still feel like there's a ton of misadvertising and misleading in their ads, making it look like it's a full blown OS. Hence my question.

<comment> vertex-four It's a console OS. It's based on Linux, and can run any game that is available on Steam for Linux, as well as any other Linux game or application if you flick a checkbox. Frankly, it's also in a better place than the two traditional consoles that have just been released, as far as game choice goes. There are, having a quick look, 684 games available through Steam for Linux.

SteamOS is being advertised as part of Valve's SteamMachines initiative, whereby hardware manufacturers will build PC-based console devices running SteamOS.

Where are they making it look like it's a desktop OS?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> What I'm interested in is the streaming portion. Imagine a setup where a VMware server with a gaming VM streaming to a RaspberryPi in the family room or Mac.

<comment><USER22> How much bandwidth would that require at 1080p with compression? Well, if we assume 16:1 compression ratio, that's 1920x1080x3/(16x1024) KB per frame, times 24 fps = 9.11MB per second. So a 73Mbit wifi connection would be required. Can the RPi push that?

30fps would require a 90MBit link.

<comment><USER23> Or perhaps we could assume a 32:1 compression ratio on 720p content -- that's about 10 megabits per second. I don't know if the Pi could even do that with sufficiently low latency (the server's specs will probably be more important anyway) but if we're going to give a flea computer a task, at least make it vaguely feasible.

And when did wifi suddenly become a requirement?

And where did you get 24 fps for gaming?

<comment><USER22> 24fps is movie framerates. It's the lowest fps which humans find tolerable.

16:1 compression ratio is based on DXT compression, which looks like ass, but is able to be done in realtime if the server is beefy enough. 8:1 would be better.

32:1 would look so terrible that I'm not sure anyone would be willing to sit through it.

Wifi is a requirement to make it go mainstream. Most people aren't willing to run physical cable through their living spaces, either due to lack of patience or equipment.

<comment><USER24> DXT is extremely lightweight compression designed to be decompressed in parallel during the rendering process. 10mbps is plenty if you're using a video codec, and the Pi has hardware H.264 support.

<comment><USER25> H.264 imposes a few seconds of lag to get to that sort of compression ratio with acceptable quality. Good for movies, not so good for games.

<comment><USER24> Are you sure about that? As I understand it you usually don't want to have more than 4-5 B-frames in a row. And if you use baseline profile you eliminate B-frames and can cut the latency to be less than a frame.

See also: [http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1273759](http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1273759) [http://x264dev.multimedia.cx/archives/249](http://x264dev.multimedia.cx/archives/249)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Can somebody post screenshots if they got it running? I am mostly interested in design. Their release announcements were amazing so I am curious what they pulled off.

<comment><USER27> It basically looks like BigPicture.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Is this some kind of leak? steamdb.info is evidently not affiliated with Valve in any way...

<comment><USER29> nope this is entirely legit. Valve confirmed that when they shipped the 300 steam boxes today to beta testers they'd also push live Steam OS Beta. Check the github and steamstatic.com files.

<comment><USER30> This doesn't mean that downloads from steamdb.info or steamstatic.com are legit. Tread carefully, I'll wait until there's a link from an official site.

<comment><USER13> steamstatic.com is where the deb packages for the Steam Linux client are hosted.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Does anyone know if this can be installed in VirtualBox? I'd like to try it, but I don't feel like setting up a new computer for it or dual booting.

<comment><USER13> I suspect so, it's based on Debian 7.1.

The main problem is they seem to have put it on a single server instead of the Steam CDN and now no one's able to download it

<comment><USER22> If you use wget, the download'll resume automatically whenever it chokes:

      wget http://repo.steamstatic.com/download/SteamOSInstaller.zip

But it's choking every percent for me, so I doubt it'll finish.

<comment><USER31> wget -c will look for a partial file (so when it bombs out you can just start it again). Sometimes it makes sense to force a file name, that one looks like it will work fine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Did GNOME just make it onto a lot of desktops all of a sudden?

<comment><USER33> 300 to be precise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> installed SteamOS on my labtop. Essentially just Debian 7 Gnome (with special steam repository) plus Steam client and all necessary drivers (ie Nvidia) automatically installed. Easy automatic install...just extract SteamOS.zip to usb, boot usb with UEFI enabled, and will install to first disk (just make sure your first disk is unused, as the auto install will not prompt the user for anything). Went ahead and enabled all the debian repos (so can install any debian program, so can function as a desktop workstation or server). So now it is basically like I've had in the past with Debian 7 plus steam client. And of course only the steam linux games work, although you're one "sudo apt-get install wine" instruction away from running most windows programs...

</comment><comment><USER35> Download seems to be awfully slow. A torrent for the installer would be nice.

<comment><USER35>
      magnet:?xt=urn:btih:1e4dae83371ba704d5d89e1828068ef0c4151e32&dn=SteamOSInstaller.zip&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.openbittorrent.com%3A80%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.publicbt.com%3A80%2Fannounce

<comment><USER36> Whoa, this comment ruins the page layout. If you can still edit it, can you throw two spaces in front of it? (That'll render it in a fixed-width <code> block.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Mirrors:

[http://instockalerts.net/files/SteamOSInstaller.zip](http://instockalerts.net/files/SteamOSInstaller.zip)

[http://firefly.epicconstructions.com/files/SteamOSInstaller....](http://firefly.epicconstructions.com/files/SteamOSInstaller.zip)

</comment><comment> mike-cardwell I was hoping that it would have a "streaming only" mode, with much lower hardware requirements. I have a decent spec gaming machine in the study, and a low spec HTPC in the living room that I was hoping I could just stick Steam OS on and stream from the study machine.

</comment><comment><USER38> >> There is a desktop environment. Gnome.

I'm in! I'll give it a try in a VM for a while. That's how I ended up moving home machines from Windows to Ubuntu years ago.

Thanks Debian, Gnome and Valve!

EDIT: DISREGARD. "Keep in mind that we are not affiliated with Valve!"

I guess I skipped past that at the top.

</comment><comment><USER39> Hopefully they make the backported eglibc .deb packages available. I'm betting they'll have an updated version of the graphics driver and possibly mesa too.

On Debian this has been a headache for me, so I'm hoping they'll make these things available :)

</comment><comment><USER40> They should include optical disk instructions (ISO-to-bootable-DVD), given that USB sticks are such an obvious security hazard.

(...I realize it's trivial to create an ISO image for DVD burning, but gee it'd be nice if that was a readility available option)

<comment><USER41> > given that USB sticks are such an obvious security hazard

What? What's less secure about booting some random code you've downloaded from the internet from an usb stick vs booting it from a cd you've burned at home?

<comment><USER40> If you burn a disk, it stays put. The disk will never be changed. Every time you use that burnt DVD, you get the same results, unless it gets scratched.

On the other hand, let's say you have a USB stick.

1\. Download installer package.

2\. Create bootable USB stick.

      ... maybe leave the stick plugged in, and surf the internet.

3\. You boot, successfully install a clean system, then:

      ...leave the stick plugged in, and surf the internet.

      or

      ...leave the stick unattended, and in the physical presence of an enemy.

4\. Fall victim to malware which goes undetected:

      ...specially crafted malware corrupts the USB stick, and includes a malicious payload as part of the *NEXT* install.

      or

      ...someone builds an evil corrupted debian package and slips it into the installer, so that it piggybacks into the *NEXT* install.

5\. Now, you have a corrupted installer spreading its hazards to every installation thereafter. You have no idea whether the installer's integrity has been compromised, because the USB stick remains writable.

With a DVD ISO, there is only one chance to attack, and it's during the download. This is easily mitigated if Valve tells us the exact size in bytes and what SHA-256 hash of the downloaded file is (over an SSL connection), so that we can verify the integrity of the download by matching hashes. If that matches, and we burn the disk, we know the disk remains secure and tamper resistant (more so than a USB stick), so long as it is not damaged or scratched or anything.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10>
      magnet:?xt=urn:btih:1e4dae83371ba704d5d89e1828068ef0c4151e32&dn=SteamOSInstaller.zip&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.openbittorrent.com%3A80%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.publicbt.com%3A80%2Fannounce

<comment><USER42> This single comment really messes up the whole HN comments page by making it really wide. Someone should fix the CSS.

(By the way, you can fix your comment to not do that by putting it in a literal block by prefixing with 2+ spaces.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> After install it didn't boot correctly on my Macbook Pro 7,1. Booted to grub but then black screen. Also note (as now stated in the official documentation) it wipes your hard drive for the initial install.

</comment><comment><USER44> [http://steamcommunity.com/groups/steamuniverse/discussions/1...](http://steamcommunity.com/groups/steamuniverse/discussions/1/648814395741989999/)

</comment><comment><USER45> > Custom graphics compositor designed to provide a seamless transition between > Steam, its games and the SteamOS system overlay

That is the exciting part to me. Anyone have any details? I'm about to go digging.

</comment><comment><USER46> Is there a jigdo link? If they plan to do point releases they should go with that system, it saves quite a lot of bandwidth.

</comment><comment><USER16> Debian with EULA? Hell no...

</comment><comment><USER47> So now I need to set up bootcamp >four< different OSs?

/sigh

<comment><USER5> If you have linux installed already you can just install Steam an it will work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> 2014, the year of Linux on desktop! (meh)

<comment><USER49> > (meh)

I don't get what you mean by that last part. Is it supposed to make your "2014 year of the gnu/linux desktop" remark sarcastic?

Sorry English is not my first language.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> Any word on controllers yet?

</comment><comment><USER51> I am drunk and this is good

</comment><comment><USER52> Do they allow us to install games outside of Steam or does everything have to go through the Steam store and their 30% cut?

<comment><USER53> God forbid a distribution platform be compensated! How _dare_ they ask for money!

<comment><USER54> I don't believe that's the point _she_ is making. Obviously the distributor should be compensated. I believe _her_ point is will 3rd parties that are NOT green lit on steam still be downloadable similar to Android's install from unknown sources.

My initial thought would be they allow 3rd party / not affiliated with steam. They seem pretty open with everything about SteamOS and I would think it would only hurt their chances of adoption if they were to lock it down. Even if they do lock that down I'm sure someone would easily find a work around as it is Linux after all.

<comment><USER52> It's a she, but I agree with the rest of what you said :)

<comment><USER54> Oops my apologies. Fixed :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> It's based on Linux? What about all the games that require DirectX?

<comment><USER56> presumably for many of them you can have a software wrapper that translates directx to opengl calls

<comment><USER57> You'd have to be literally drunk to think that's a good idea.

<comment><USER58> That's actually what the people at Valve did (GDC 2013): [https://developer.nvidia.com/sites/default/files/akamai/game...](https://developer.nvidia.com/sites/default/files/akamai/gamedev/docs/Porting%20Source%20to%20Linux.pdf)

Performance improved as a result. The number they give is ~20%. The other nice thing was that you could use D3D10+ on Windows XP...</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Twitter News - <AUTHOR> http://www.miniurl.com/4516

<comment><USER2> Miniurl is pointing to <http://smashingfeeds.com/tweet.php>

Which doesn't appear to be doing anything.

<comment><AUTHOR> As title suggests, it is a twitter news source...nothing else

<comment><USER2> Sorry, when I first went to the link, it was returning a blank page. I see it's doing more than that now.</comment></comment></comment>


TDD is Behavior Specification - <AUTHOR> http://blog.originate.com/blog/2014/02/20/tdd-is-bs

<comment><USER2> I had a very similar outlook.

However since I have been doing a lot of development for cloud platforms (Google App Engine for instance), I have realized that without tests you don't really have a sane way of debugging and verifying your code.

And since I always write a lot of code during my work (testing stuff out in python shell) I have realized how wasteful my previous approach was.

If I had written that code into a file and added a couple of assertions I would have a nice test suite.

However I still believe that on should not overdo tests from the get go. Write the tests for common cases, then add regression tests as bugs pop up here and there.

That gives the best ROI IMHO.

Edit: I have to confess that indeed I have read the TLDR; then the first paragraph and then I was already writing a comment here.

For the record I think that cargo cultists are going to be cargo culting no matter how we call this or that.

<comment><USER3> If you actually read the article, I think you'll find yourself on the same page as the author.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > Asking people to write tests before they write code is like asking them to > test-drive a new car before it even exists. This isn't possible.

This is an incredibly bad analogy that really doesn't stand up. You _can_ write tests before you write the implementation of them, to define how you want the end result of your program's interfaces to look. The rest of the article arguing the semantics behind calling them _tests_ or _specifications_ doesn't add anything but confusion to the testing discussion.

This:

> Calling tests specifications makes the concept more intuitively available in > several ways.

Is entirely subjective.

<comment><AUTHOR> The point of the article is that you actually write specifications, and just call them "tests". Which is confusing. "Testing" means measuring or checking the quality of something.

<comment><USER5> Well you're testing your specifications that you write later.

I think this is just semantic fencing to be honest.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Isn't this basically what Dan North and Chelimsky said when they started the BDD movement? Is TFA intended to be merely a restatement of the BDD concept from circa 2007? Or is it saying something more that I overlooked?

<comment><USER7> No, BDD was an adaptation of TDD to be something different, this is just an explanation of TDD to people who don't understand what TDD _is_ , and don't understand how you can test code before you build it (which, obviously, TDD doesn't do -- it builds executable specifications for what a unit of code will do before its built.)

BDD is similar, but focuses on higher levels units of change that TDD does, and focuses on accessibility of the specifications to customers / analysts.

<comment><USER6> Well, I'm not trying to snark ... I just don't see the distinction. When BDD first came out, it was based on the premise that, yes, we're really just doing the same thing as TDD, but we're using better words. We use "spec" instead of "test," for example. And merely the act of using more precise words has a deep effect on how we think, and therefore that alone is worthy enough of a basis to launch a new movement called "BDD."

I liked TFA for its clarity and I believe it is accurate. But it still feels to me like it articulates the same thing I read when BDD was new. I wonder if possibly the author has rediscovered, independently, the same thing that motivated the launch of BDD in the first place.

<comment><USER7> > When BDD first came out, it was based on the premise that, yes, we're really > just doing the same thing as TDD, but we're using better words. We use > "spec" instead of "test," for example.

BDD is a higher level framework (focussed on acceptance test rather than unit test) and addresses relationships in a broader scope (customer to dev team) than TDD tends to. Its not just a rephrasing, its a further development.

BDD also focussed on _how_ tests should be _expressed_ based on the combination idea of being executable specs and the idea that that analysts/customers should be involved in, at least, reviewing them.

So, some of the things in the article here might be related to the thinking at the roots of BDD (heck, it even uses the word "behavior driven design"), but its making points about TDD that are outside of what BDD is focussed on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> In a nutshell, he's saying to call it "specification driven development", since you are writing specifications for the code before it exists.

<comment><USER9> Which seems useless to me.. it's still the same idea, the same thing.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, but using the right terminology makes the concept more self-describing and therefore more accessible.

<comment><USER2> I was around when the term TDD first appeared. And I don't think that originally it meant anything more than what you are proposing.

But then some dudes came along and said: "This is awesome, lets make it better!"

And before one could blink, a concept of 100% coverage was born. From there on everything went full retard.

<comment><USER10> I completely agree that TDD originally meant that, and still does. The problem is too many developers don't bother to learn what TDD really means and immediately think of it as a testing methodology because the first word is "test". Maybe changing the language can change the focus to where it was supposed to be from the beginning.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm often frustrated with developers looking at the term "test-driven development", focusing on the word "test", and thinking of TDD as a testing process instead of a development process. The BDD movement made some progress on this front, but it still seems to be a problem. Maybe calling it "specification-driven development" is the next step.

</comment><comment><USER11> TDD is a great way to take the fun out of software development.

<comment><USER12> Au contraire: it makes software development a lot _more_ fun, at least in my experience.

However, it back-loads the fun. With usual coding, the fun part is at the very start, you get to see something very quickly. But then the debugging starts, at least if there is any complexity involved, and the fun quickly wears off. You'll figure it out eventually, but by that time you are worn and tired.

With TDD, the not-quite-as-much fun part is front-loaded: you have to really think about what you are trying to do, almost always start with non-GUI code so there are no quick-wins to show off. However, once the you get all the tests to pass you are done and can check in and/or go home on a high note.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What are the benefits of requiring devs to be onsite? - oh-moses I get the feeling that most jobs advertised here on HN are onsite, overwhelmingly often in the Bay Area.
I've only had experience with remote work in my programming career so far (and no experience actually _running_ a business), so I was wondering if someone more experienced could shed some light on this.
I imagine that requiring your developers not only to live in the Bay Area (and pay rent there), but also to deal with the BA traffic every day would substantially limit your candidate pool/increase salary demands.
What kinds of benefits are there to outweigh this?
I can imagine that other, more "creative" positions can benefit from spontaneous interactions throughout the day and whatnot. But is that the case for programming, which is much more a deep, intellectual kind of work? Is it enough to outweigh the costs?
I spent a few days in my career working onsite and at least for me the experience was that an astonishingly small amount of work gets done (and it's much harder to focus and do a quality job).
What am I missing? <comment><AUTHOR> > I can imagine that other, more "creative" positions can benefit from > spontaneous interactions throughout the day and whatnot. But is that the > case for programming, which is much more a deep, intellectual kind of work? > Is it enough to outweigh the costs?

I'm not sure why you think that deep, intellectual work doesn't benefit from interaction with other people. There are two particular scenarios that come to mind in which personal interaction is a must.

First one: if/when I'm stuck in a particularly difficult problem, I can set a meeting with a coworker of mine who is an expert on the sub-problem I can't solve. For instance, I might have an algorithm that works but I need it to be orders of magnitude faster. In such a situation, nothing beats face to face and a whiteboard, as it makes the exchange much more fluid that it would be over Skype.

Second one: a casual "what you're working on?" with a colleague by the coffee machine turns into a 90min discussion on new ways to approach a specific problem - if you've seen this (NSFW) video from Silicon Valley Season 1 [1], this is exactly the type of environment that you only get in person.

Of course, that's not to say that developers don't need privacy - I think "a door that closes" is an invaluable resource for when you know exactly what you need to do and you'd like other people to leave you alone to do it.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMeqEDEfniA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMeqEDEfniA)</comment>


Notch, when asked, refused to take Minecraft revenue from YouTube - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/notch/status/335045859156819969 <comment><USER2> I think it'd be cool as long as it doesn't reduce the amount of money that the video uploaders can make off of it.

It'd just be more cash to fuel game development.

<comment><USER3> Actually, it doesn't feel like the money from Minecraft's success is being use as fuel for game development. Sure Mojang released a few games in cooperation with other teams. But their real next game, 0x0001c (I can never spell it correctly), is in pause due to Notch not being motivated enough.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What happens to that cut if they don't take it. That is the question and with that I'm sure Notch has a charity he approves of.

<comment><AUTHOR> There're two possibilities, either it goes to Google or the video producer. I would hope - the latter.

<comment><USER5> Last I checked the policy, some went to Google but most to the producer. It's a pretty significant cut, some people make their living off of Youtube. Minecraft is very popular with many successful Youtube "stars", if Mojang were to take a cut there would be a lot of vocal dissatisfaction.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> On a related note: Nintendo is applying a new policy of putting ads on YouTube videos of their games.

[http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/05/16/nintendo-enforces- cop...](http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/05/16/nintendo-enforces-copyright-on- youtube-lets-plays)

Apparently what they mean by "ensure Nintendo content is shared across social media channels in an appropriate and safe way" is roughly "safe means we make money off it"

So it's cool to see Notch mention that he had the same opportunity and didn't take it.

<comment><USER7> Money matters, but "safe" also means that it's not shown in inappropriate places or remixed with inappropriate content. For a family-friendly brand like Nintendo, that's a big deal. Advertisers care a lot about this, too, even though that's less relevant for Nintendo.

YouTube has a playback restriction feature for this very purpose, including domain white/black listing. [http://apiblog.youtube.com/2011/12/understanding- playback-re...](http://apiblog.youtube.com/2011/12/understanding-playback- restrictions.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Why didn't he put it to a charity or ask the money to be given to the uploaders.

<comment><USER5> The money already goes to the uploaders.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> In the next tweet he says he almost did it.

</comment><comment><USER10> Oh Notch, you so generous. Does Minecraft ever go on sale?

<comment><USER11> Minecraft was on sale the entire time it was in alpha/beta. I got it for $5, and bought a copy for my boyfriend later at $10.</comment></comment>


Ohio Man Suing Facebook Saying His Company Invented It - <AUTHOR> http://www.10tv.com/content/stories/2011/08/29/westerville-facebook-lawsuit.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Seriously... hacked into his sons computer and took the code. Why in the first place would your company develop all this code and then just send it to the owners son....</comment>


Business Can Pay to Train Its Own Work Force - <AUTHOR> http://chronicle.com/article/Business-Can-Pay-to-Train-Its/231015/ <comment><USER2> The worst class I had in college was Software Engineering. It was the university's attempt to prepare us for the work force, and it was taught by an adjunct who had plenty of industry experience, but it was already a 10 years out of date.

Industry processes are mostly fads that change with wind. CS fundamentals however, are much more stable. 20 years from now knowledge of automta, graph theory, and complexity analysis will still have immense value--a scrum master certification won't.

<comment><USER3> I think it's a fallacy to assume that anything not based in CS fundamentals is a fad or has only short-term value.

In college, I didn't learn version control, continuous integration (continuously submitting your work in small changelists or patches), unit testing, making sure you're building the right product before building it, delivering the simplest possible code and design that meets the requirements, code quality, working in teams, untangling dependencies and making as much progress as possible today without waiting for all your dependencies to be resolved, and so on.

I expect that all these skills will be very much relevant 20 years from now. So, don't confuse long-term value with "grounded in CS fundamentals". Programming isn't a hard science like physics.

<comment><USER2> >I think it's a fallacy to assume that anything not based in CS fundamentals is a fad or has only short-term value.

I didn't say that. I said most industry processes are fads. I also didn't say that nothing that isn't grounded in CS fundamentals has long term value.

There are plenty of other skills that have long term value. Office politics, salary negotiation, self-promotion are much more valuable than knowing how to run a few git commands. But non of those things should be taught in a Computer Science program.

They are fundamentally vocational skills. Just like version control, unit testing, and continuous integration are vocational skills. Sure they're useful but they should be taught in an internship/apprenticeship or on the job.

>In college, I didn't learn version control...

I learned to use subversion, and other than the fact that they are are both version control systems, what I learned didn't really carry over to distributed version control like Git.

In a CS program you should be learning things like how to implement a version control system, not how to use Git. I would have been pissed paying thousands of dollars per semester for a professor to walk me through a Git tutorial.

I don't have a problem if a professor wants you to use github to submit your assignments or something like that. And sure some of the vocational skills you listed are going to be useful for years to come. But these skills should be ancillary. They should be just a happy side effect--like learning teamwork during a group project.

<comment><USER3> I'm a practician, not a theorist or an academic. I couldn't care less whether something is based in CS theory. I care whether something will be useful to me over the course of my career. If it is, I'd like my education to train me for that.

In fact, some of the academic stuff like compilers and automata have been useless in real life. That's a failing of academia from my point of view.

<comment><USER2> That's perfectly fine. What you're looking for is vocational training, not a liberal college education. Non professional college programs are explicitly not vocational training. If they were, they wouldn't require spending nearly half your time on general education requirements (assuming we're talking about the US here). I doubt art history, physics, or psychology has proven much direct use to you in your career.

>In fact, some of the academic stuff like compilers and automata have been useless in real life. That's a failing of academia from my point of view.

Finite state machines and pushdown automata are an incredibly common pattern, and I can't see how you can work as a professional software developer without running into that pattern time and again. Have you never used regular expressions?

Automata (usually taught along with theory of computation) teaches you all kinds of useful real world knowledge, like why you can't parse HTML with regular expressions, and why you can't write a program to tell if another program will eventually halt.

<comment><USER3> My idea of education is one that teaches you skills that are broadly used throughout your career. I don't a priori reject things that meet this criteria just because it's not based in theory (because theory is not an end to itself), or by applying arbitrary labels like "vocational" (whatever that means), "liberal" or "professional".

As for art history and psychology, that's a different debate to be had about education — whether these should be part of education and how much time they should take.

As for your question, I've used regexes, but you don't need to understand the details of the regex engine in order to use them. Neither do I, in my day-to- day work, write programs that try to tell if other programs halt.

<comment><USER2> >but you don't need to understand the details of the regex engine in order to use them.

Yes, at some point you do. Without understanding how regular expressions actually work, you can't know when it is appropriate to use them. Many things aren't possible with regular expressions and many grammars aren't parsable with regular expressions. You can either waste time trying to write an impossible regex (or write one that works on your tests, but blows up in the wild) or you can study automata theory and understand what actually goes on underneath.

As for the halting problem, I'll leave you this stack overflow explanation for why it is beneficial to understand.

[http://cs.stackexchange.com/a/32853](http://cs.stackexchange.com/a/32853)

Many problems in CS have already been solved, some are impossible to solve. You can either waste time on trial and error trying to reinvent the wheel or you can study the theoretical underpinnings.

Do you want to spend a week trying to model a problem as a finite state machine, only to determine that finite state machine isn't powerful enough to solve your problem?

Do you want to spend a month banging your head against a wall trying to solve a problem that you could have solved in 5 minutes had you realized it was just a well known graph theory problem all along? A problem that was solved decades ago. The only way to know these things is to study the theory behind what you do.

Why do you think Civil Engineers are required to take physics? The difference between an Engineer and an artisan is a rigorous understanding of the formal system underpinning his work. Artisans build through trial and error and experiences, and they leave many failed projects in their wake while they gain this experience. Engineers use theory and modeling to limit the number of failed projects to the net benefit of everyone involved.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> For the most part, bonding agreements ("you can't leave for X years without repaying us for your training") are considered exploitative and usually not legally enforceable.

As a result, a business can't pay to train it's own work force - if a business invests $20k in training and $80k in salary, there is nothing stopping another employer from offering $90k in salary after training is complete.

If an investment can't be protected it's pointless to make it. Having employees pay for (and be compensated for) their own training is the most reasonable workaround.

<comment><USER5> [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_handcuffs](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_handcuffs)

How would training followed by a bonding period be considered differently than other mechanisms inducing employees to stay? Could these other mechanisms also be legally questionable?

E.g. some San Francisco Bay Area technology companies offer large (~$20k) signing bonuses to new uni graduate hires that the employee must return if she leaves within her first year at the company. Similarly, companies offer five- year equity packages that deliver no equity until the twelfth month.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, I heard about companies who pay for college - as long as you stay one year after your last class. If not you have to pay them back. Actually, just pay back just the tuition you spent in the last year.

<comment><USER7> Seeing as Army ROTC will want 4 years, it sounds like a great deal.

<comment><USER6> If you take classes for 4 years then you'll have to stay 5 to get your education fully paid off. If you took 4 years of classes and worked for 4 years then you'd owe them 1 year tuition (the previous year)

That being said, this deal was to further your education for your job. So you couldn't get your masters in finance unless you worked in finance. A software developer couldn't get their finance degree paid for.

This was for a company my friend worked for.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The whole for-profit code school thing has been giving me the creeps since I started hearing about it years ago, precisely because it's the potential employees paying for hyper-specific training. I wonder if there would be fewer outcries about a talent shortage if companies were somehow incentivized to hire these more junior people with the explicit goal of training them up to a productive level.

<comment><USER9> My opinion is divided about the "pay-to-play" model of workers paying for their own training. On one hand, they assume all the risk and financial hardship of training. On the other hand, compared to other developed economies (British, Australian), they have more opportunities to change careers because the risk of training has already been assumed by the worker. I've found that American hiring is far more flexible than the Commonwealth tradition of jockeying for an apprenticeship. And older workers have far less opportunity for apprenticeships.

It's hard to defend the code schools though. There are a high amount of horror stories we hear about them on HN, from both the students' and hiring managers' perspectives.

<comment><USER10> > There are a high amount of horror stories we hear about them on HN, from > both the students' and hiring managers' perspectives.

Can you link to them? I'm trying to do due diligence on some of them, but haven't been able to find much at all of substance. I'm specifically interested in Maker's Academy in London.

<comment><USER9> Just going from what I remembered reading, here are the ones that stood out the most. Comments vary from supporters to detractors.

Ask HN threads I found interesting:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8844848](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8844848)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7147664](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7147664)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9616691](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9616691)

The one I really wanted to find, which accompanied an article about some students who felt scammed by their bootcamp, is eluding me right now. It was an interesting article about how the students were required to post misleading stories on social media that made the school look better than it was.

Edit: I found out why it was hard to find; it was taken down. Here's the link to the comments. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9492381](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9492381)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The Uber robotics talent raid of CMU took piratization to a logical extreme, [http://www.theverge.com/transportation/2015/5/19/8622831/ube...](http://www.theverge.com/transportation/2015/5/19/8622831/uber- self-driving-cars-carnegie-mellon-poached)

 _" They took all the guys that were working on vehicle autonomy — basically whole groups, whole teams of developers, commercialization specialists, all the guys that find grants and who were bringing the intellectual property," recalls a person who was there during the departures" ... Uber snatched up about 50 people from Carnegie Mellon, including many from its highest ranks.

... the deal includes a "transition period" that keeps some of the departed staffers around ... "The work of these employees is very incestuous and loose," says the same NREC insider. "They are given free rein of the facilities as part-time CMU employees, but there are absolutely no checks on the work that they are doing or what [intellectual property] they are taking. Is it for CMU? Is it for Uber? None of us here know."_

Edit: could CMU have gotten better IP licensing terms and ROI for the University, if they had spun out the entire team (with private financing) and had an open auction of RoboticsResearchCo to the many companies investing in this field?

<comment><USER12> I think this is a better example of dysfunction in academia than retaining/training a workforce. In particular, previous articles suggest that most folks saw their salaries _doubled_ , with six-figure incentive checks to lure them away. From what I hear, it's not so much that the new salary is unusually high for industry researchers and engineers, but that the old salaries were unusually low (except in academia).

CMU could probably have gotten better return if they hadn't made it a point to underpay them so much compared to their market value.

<comment><USER11> Historically, university researchers doing fundamental research with mass- market industrial applications have been spun out into a company, so that both the university and the researchers have an upside opportunity for founding equity stakes.

A signing bonus or normalized salary is in an entirely different (smaller) class of compensation, especially since there was already an international track record of investment into the commercialization of self-driving vehicles.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > _The trick is to relabel it as education, then complain that your > prospective employees aren't getting the right kind._

Well, I guess if already-educated workers are the norm in your industry, companies are going to change their hiring practices accordingly. It's okay not to like it, but arguing against it on the basis that 'it didn't used to be like this' just makes you look entitled and whiny.

> _Bemoaning the unpreparedness of undergraduates isn't new. Today, however, > those complaints are getting a more sympathetic hearing from the policy > makers who govern public higher education._

Yeah, well, when policy makers are responsible for all the cheap money flowing into the system (without which the system would probably collapse at this point), I guess that'll happen.

<comment><USER12> > _...if already-educated workers are the norm..._

That's the point -- there's a difference between education and training. It is only an issue because so much of the education looks very similar to the desired training.

It is _not_ the purpose of an education to produce new employees, but to provide a broad basis for experiencing and making sense of the world. It just so happens that you also learn transferrable skills like a basic familiarity with a particular field, along with some tools and techniques that help you organize and solve problems. A proper education is not an extended code bootcamp, nor should it be.

<comment><USER13> > _That 's the point -- there's a difference between education and training._

Excellent point. Two problems:

(1) Over the past ~2.5 generations, the narrative about education has been informed by the conventional wisdom of {grades -> university -> job -> pension}. Hence, education is now only nominally about producing 'citizens of the republic' (so to speak), and _de facto_ about producing well-trained workers. Disambiguating these goals is important, but hampered by...

(2) The perverse incentives created by cheap government money encourage malinvestment (i.e. an English degree [I say this with love — my wife is an English major]), and the consequent propensity of industry to not only see it as a jobs program, but also as a government policy problem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> One possible solution is cognitive screening - the use of tests such as the Wonderlic, SAT/ACT, or Wechsler to find prospective employees who can learn quickly and have good critical thinking skills (and thus would benefit the most from on-site training for technical tasks. training obviously costs money), but unfortunately something called 'disparate impact' makes this difficult to implement, so employers instead have to let colleges do the screening, turning an advanced degree into a very overpriced, time consuming 'IQ test'. Some people are more concerned about hurt feelings than providing equal opportunities. The 'logic' is if the tests expose a reality that isn't politically correct, we must do away with the test, so the result is more student loan debt, a worse labor market, and more credentialism.

<comment><USER15> > The 'logic' is if the tests expose a reality that isn't politically correct, > we must do away with the test

Untrue. The logic is if there is a disparate impact against a legally- protected class, such that the test would be a convenient cover for illegal discrimination, and you allow discrimination using the test without demonstration of relevance, it becomes an easy, obvious, and effective tool for those looking for cover for discrimination on an illegal basis; to avoid that, the logic goes, you simply require those who wish to use the test as a basis for discrimination in that case to actually be able demonstrate that the test is meaningful to the job and that it is applied as a discrimination factor in a manner consistent with the way that it is meaningful to the job.

If they've actually done the kind of analysis that would let them know that the test really is useful, this is trivial; it does, however, prevent adopting a test with discriminatory effect against a protected class merely based on intuition or conventional wisdom.

The type of analysis involved may be costly, but then, if it really is something that those wishing to apply have high confidence would be valuable for their business, that type of analysis would be worthwhile to pay for. The reason it is difficult is because none of the people who like to talk about how useful these things would be when talk is cheap wants to put their money where the mouth is on the issue.

<comment><USER4> Strangely, we are unwilling to apply that same logic to traditional hiring processes. I.e., few companies have ever done a study (sufficient to win in court) to prove that their subjective human opinion-based tests do not have a disparate impact. Yet processes like this are somehow allowed.

I.e., if my subjective human hiring technique is biased, you need to prove I discriminated on purpose. If my objective, IQ-based technique is biased, I need to prove I didn't. Why this disparity?

<comment><USER2> >Why this disparity?

For the simple fact that we already have evidence that some protected classes perform worse on IQ tests. Therefore, simply by using an IQ test you are discriminating against a protected class. The burden is on you to prove that the discrimination is necessary. No one needs to prove that discrimination is happening because you are using a test that has already been show to be discriminatory.

Interview based hiring techniques are much more varied than IQ tests, and they have not been shown to be near universally discriminatory. Therefore the burden is first to prove that discrimination is happening in the particular situation.

<comment><USER6> >they have not been shown to be near universally discriminatory.

They actually have...

I am not going to get fully into it at the moment (but there's a ton of research on the topic) but we know that resumes that say Lakisha are significantly less likely to get a callback than a resume that says Karen.

Another example is blinding in orchestras. When the practice became the applicant played behind a curtain (so they judge didn't know what the applicant looked like) the number of women in orchestras increased.

<comment><USER2> I'm with you on this, but there are differences.

Subjective interview based hiring across all companies has been show to be discriminatory towards protected classes. But that's different than showing a specific company's hiring process is discriminative.

If company A uses IQ test X, and IQ test X has been shown to be discriminatory, then you can say definitively that the hiring process of company A is discriminatory.

If company B uses hiring process Y, and you can show that hiring process Y is discriminatory in 50% of the companies that use it, you can't make a definitive conclusion about company B in the same way you can company A.

<comment><USER6> Yea, I agree, thanks for clarifying.

There is a huge difference is explicit bias (give applicants an IQ test even though we'll weed out the blacks or even _to_ weed out the blacks) and _subconscious_ bias - which is an incredibly complex problem.

Most companies _are_ trying to eliminate (unintended) bias in the hiring process.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> As a lib arts graduate, I might be biased, but I believe that it's still the best education for the type of decision-making that's most useful in real- world business decisions: ambiguous and incomplete information from a variety of sources with competing interests.

That being said, if you're not in a leadership position that kind of decision making isn't what you're doing: you're most likely just optimizing on your own little anthill, so a "profit-centered" education like the article is against might make sense for the worker bees.

Another thing that I think is usually missing from the "train your workers" debate is how much variance there is in productivity, and how actual productivity is usually unknowable unless you have 2-3 months of project data for a given worker (these are assumptions). So hire unskilled contract workers, fire 80% of them, and then train the remaining 20%. They won't have the credentials to work elsewhere, and you've been able to identify the true all-stars using data on their actual work product.

</comment><comment><USER17> It seems expecting schools to do all the training your employees will ever need would not be a good bet from a business point of view either. If your employees have the exact same skills as the competition's employees how do you expect the business differentiate itself?

</comment><comment><USER18> It's true that business _should_ pay to train its own work force, but I'm not convinced it _can_.

Businesses that would like to but that operate in a sector where a competitor can successfully externalize that cost will be at a competitive disadvantage.

And businesses that subscribe to managerialism -- the idea that it's primarily management/leadership skills that differentiate a business, rather than domain knowledge -- may not know how to train employees at all, as it takes someone with domain knowledge to know how that can be done...

</comment><comment><USER19> Companies are often eating the cost of training employees without admitting to it.

Pick some company at random, look around, and there will often be piles of people who have no official training or certifications to speak of, and no relevant degree, but who are perfectly competent at their jobs. Somehow, magic happened, and they were trained, despite no training money in the budget.

A lot of it is just done semi-officially. The boss points at some guy he trusts and tells him to fill them in, and lower productivity is accepted for some period.

</comment><comment><USER20> I thought tech internships were more about recruiting than about training.

</comment><comment><USER21> Students aren't dealing with the proper issues that arise in a regular workplace. Many professors lack knowledge on what has been going on between them leaving the workplace and today. Because of this students are learning principles that aren't fully applicable to many business jobs today instead of learning how to deal with corporate incompetence. If companies train employees on how to deal with personnel, they will learn more of the technicalities on the job underneath a hopefully competent supervisor.

<comment><USER22> Why should they? That's the whole argument of this piece -- that they shouldn't.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is attending tech conferences worth the investment? - <AUTHOR> I am thinking about hosting a conference solely focused on open source and open protocol design for developers and tech execs. Would such an idea get with devs and hackers? <comment><USER2> Valuable reasons to attend tech conferences, good investments:

* Connect with leaders in your field * Generate enthusiasm for yourself and your peers around the technology

Not so valuable reasons:

* To learn the technical things - because this can generally be done more cost-effectively online, or in intense focused training.</comment>


Ask HN: Apartment provides Free Wifi, wan't to create my own network - <AUTHOR>

So I'm moving into an apartment complex with free Wifi (and it appears to be good, high bandwidth, etc) however I want to run my own wifi network for security reasons such as the following.
1) I don't want my neighbors casting to my chromecast all the time 2) I don't want my printer visible 3) I just don't want my surfing habits made public to my neighbors.
Is there a way I can use a wireless access point to connect to the public network create my own secure wifi network and then tunnel all that traffic to a VPN?
Yes I could get my own internet service, but if its free I would prefer not to.  Thanks!

Thanks for any tips and pointers on this. <comment><USER2> Note - you do paragraph breaks on HN by leaving a blank line, not by adding a
 tag.

The answer is yes, but you'll have to set things up yourself. One way involves two AP's, and a computer with two ethernet cards. You'll need AP's that can log into other wireless networks (note, not all consumer gear can do this) so be selective.

Then you'd wire things like this:

AP to apt <\--> computer <-> your local AP.

The local AP should run a different "channel" to reduce interference overlap, and you'll need to setup the computer as a router and let it handle the VPN and routing for you.

You might also look into one of the alternate AP firmwares (Tomato/etc.). They might be able to be setup to work just with a pair of compatible AP's without the computer in between.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks the paragraph tags showed up in my post when I had a title longer than 80 chars and had to edit the title.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> See :

[http://www.dd- wrt.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=76498&view=next...](http://www.dd- wrt.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=76498&view=next&sid=88b8406d9d5f84ecafe7e2566f01a61e)</comment>


Programming Cheat Sheets - <AUTHOR> http://overapi.com/

<comment><USER2> Kudos! I really like it and will use it. There is a problem with RegExp links: 404 errors. <http://overapi.com/javascript/jsref_regexp_charset.asp>

</comment><comment><USER3> Well done. Attractive, useful, succinct. Bookmarked!</comment>


Konrad Kujau, Who Forged Hitler's Diaries - <AUTHOR> https://www.theawl.com/2017/12/fake-art-konrad-kujau-hilter-diaries/ <comment><USER2> I well remember that entire episode playing out in the US press. He also ran for mayor of Stuttgart towards the end of his life.

Here's the New York Times obituary for him:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/14/world/konrad- kujau-62-hitl...](http://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/14/world/konrad- kujau-62-hitler-diaries-swindler.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> There is also a German (comedy) movie about this: [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105328/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105328/)

<comment><USER4> ...and apparently a British TV Mini-Series [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0124256/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0124256/)

<comment><USER5> I remember seeing this. Actually the main thing I remember is Alexei Sayle singing, to the tune of Cole Porter's "You're the Top":

> I'm the top

> I'm Cesare Borgia

> I'm the world's

> greatest forger

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There's a remarkable book about this called "Selling Hitler" by Robert Harris.

</comment><comment><USER7> I found this article very well written and the story fascinating!</comment>


Digsby Joins the Dark Side, Uses Your PC to Make Money - <AUTHOR> http://lifehacker.com/5336382/digsby-joins-the-dark-side-uses-your-pc-to-make-money <comment><USER2> Digsby has never kept secret the fact that they were considering grid- computing as one possible way to monetize their product:

<http://blog.digsby.com/archives/68>

The license agreement is simply worded so as to make this possible.

<comment><AUTHOR> True, but it's not just grid computing they're running automatically.

They also make it difficult to disable the grid computing (It's under "Support Digsby"), and they try to get the user to install six different pieces of crapware.

They do this under the guise of being ad free, but in reality they're advertising by sending out Announcements, which seems pretty shady to me.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: why do we accept that governments may have secrets from citizens? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Because "you can't fight the system."

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the downvote. The inverted commas mean that I don't actually agree with this, just as the original poster probably does not count themselves in the "we".</comment></comment>


Ask PG: Is HN Expired Link Eventual Fix Planned? - <AUTHOR> I believe the expired link issue came from using a new lisp feature, but I'm curious if there is any plans to fix it?<p>It's a little annoying since I constantly pickup tabs that are a day old, and have to start from the beginning. Hopefully I'm not the only one on HN with that issue. <comment><USER2> It's not a single thing. There are multiple places that use dynamically- generated links. They make the source very simple. I've gradually replaced them in the most common situations. Replacing more is not in my top 10 priorities for things to fix. The reason is that it's not really what users want. What people come here for is good stories and comments. I doubt we have ever lost a single user over expired links. Whereas stupid or uncivil comment threads have probably cost us lots of users, and indeed, some of the ones I'd least like to lose. So that's the sort of issue I spend time thinking about.

Incidentally, for those of you working on startups, this is a good example of why making something people want is not a simple matter of making what they say they want.

<comment><USER3> _> >The reason is that it's not really what users want. What people come here for is good stories and comments. I doubt we have ever lost a single user over expired links._

Yes, you probably haven't lost any users over expired links

However, I think you have inconvenienced a lot of users through the expired links. Sometimes, I think it is good to spend a little bit of effort on helping a _large_ number of users.

I'm assuming among readers (who attempt to go past page-1), an overwhelming majority has hit this problem multiple times (and lost time because of this problem)

<comment><USER4> Amen. What a nuisance. You can keep clicking the next page button to see what other stories there are until you actually read one, after which the next page button will fail, and you'll have to start over again. What's the point of even having more than about three pages? The only way to reach those pages is to keep clicking next while carefully avoiding the temptation to read anything along the way, lest you get sent back to Level 1.

I'm not buying the argument that if HN has good stories and comments people will keep coming back and if they come back, it means they _want_ a next page button that fails. A doesn't imply B.

If frequent expiration is to remain a _feature_ , would it be possible to have a preference setting allowing us to put the first four pages or so on our front page? Then we could read whatever looks most interesting among the first 120 items instead of the first 30 before we get that expired next button we supposedly don't mind.

<comment><USER5> To avoid that I use this website: [http://hckrnews.com/](http://hckrnews.com/) Maybe you should take a look. Just simple and useful.

And to share everything I also use a theme for HN. It makes the design a little more as a flat design and with bigger letters which is especially what I wanted. [https://github.com/gabrielecirulli/hn- special](https://github.com/gabrielecirulli/hn-special)

<comment><USER6> There is also [http://hackerbra.in](http://hackerbra.in)

but I always use vanilla HN because I'm fond of it and the UI is pretty much the best for me.

That said, it would be very cool if users could implement their own custom CSS natively like you can on [http://yayhooray.net](http://yayhooray.net)

I personally detest browser extensions and I don't like how they slap custom CSS over the top of sites like make-up. Even those who aren't up for fiddling with style sheets could share in what others make.

<comment><USER5> Thank you to share. For extensions, I do like the good old design of HN but I really prefer to have bigger letters. That's mainly why I use the other one.

<comment><USER4> Thanks for your suggestion, too, nazka.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> They are not going to make improvements to Hacker News. They have proven that.

They don't have to fix it or make any improvements. They can run a very poorly performing site with no features and a horrible appearance, because they are entrenched, and they literally own quite a large portion of their userbase.

Unfortunately no matter how many people invent software that does the same thing as Hacker News but works much better and offer it up for free, nothing will be done.

The owner of the site has too much invested in its technology stack (Lisp) and its particular implementation and appearance. The improvements necessary probably require going back on some of those fundamentals, which is never going to happen, because they are too proud.

<comment><USER8> I upvoted you because I like seeing people who go against the grain here, who hold combative viewpoints and are willing to be blunt about faults, regardless of whether or not I agree.

However, after seeing this:

> ... because they are entrenched, and they literally own quite a large > portion of their userbase.

> Unfortunately no matter how many people invent software that does the same > thing as Hacker News but works much better and offer it up for free, nothing > will be done.

... I have to say, if you are disappointed, have you thought about testing this theory? This website has not been around forever. It isn't the first of its kind either. I'm probably not the only one here who came to this site after having frequented a bunch of others that were essentially the same thing. So I don't expect it to be the last one, either. If someone has the interest and the skill set, I say, please do make this. Worst case you waste a few weekends or something.

<comment><USER7> There are a number of Hacker News clones, i.e. people got fed up and even went ahead and figured out how to mirror the Hacker News content. Far as I know very few if any gained any popularity, but its not because they weren't better.

<comment><USER9> I quite enjoy lobste.rs. Despite the lack of discussion, the majority of the topics posted are interesting and turn over pretty fast (in comparison to some of the other replacements).

<comment><USER10> Thank you for pointing out lobste.rs. I like it. Can you issue me an invite?

<comment><USER9> Of course, email me at firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> They are continuations stored on the server (not a Lisp-specific feature). There is a limit on the number of continuations stored, which is why older ones come up as unknown or expired.

This has been there since Day 1 and will probably never be changed.

See also [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=163696](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=163696) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2677469](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2677469)

<comment><USER2> Closures, not continuations.

<comment><USER12> Could you give a quick explanation or a link that explains how that is set up? (closures stored on server)

Just curious.

<comment><USER13> A closure is a function augmented with implicit references to the context in which it was created. In case of an upvote link it would hold references to the post you could upvote. That reference exists not in the URL but in the closure at the servers side. If you keep these objects in memory indefinitely, you'll run out of ram.

<comment><USER12> Oh, I was assuming some sort of custom implementation for doing that. If it's just hanging around in RAM, fair enough; can't see how that has scaled so well, but hey.

<comment><USER13> Well, a closure can't be more than a couple hundred bytes, I guess.

If he wants to continue with that technique, I'd hack it like this: use reflection to crawl the closure, isolate the variables bound to the closure context, serialize those (the user id's, post id's, etc). Then the closure code, which will be one of only a few "templates", can be put into a global dictionary. The serialized state goes into the URL parameters. The closure is collected, and "reified" from the global dictionary and URL state once the user performs the action.

I don't know if LISP's reflection can pull this off, but I'm pretty sure it's no biggie.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Visible signs of entropy considered harmful: [http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory)

</comment><comment><USER15> Although this is a significant problem, it's probably better to use the bottom-of-page links:

\- "Bugs" (in this case, already seems to be known and talked about; see [1]).

\- "Feature Requests" for anything that isn't a bug.

[1] [https://github.com/HackerNews/HN/issues/11](https://github.com/HackerNews/HN/issues/11)

</comment><comment><USER16> For practical solution: Install "Hacker News Enhancement Suite" Chrome extension, it solves this and godzillion other problems.

<comment><USER17> I loved this extension, and is really the only thing I'm missing now that I've moved back to Firefox :(

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> No, you are not. It is annoying.

</comment><comment><USER19> What sort of data structure do you recommend they use to efficiently reconstruct older story orderings?

<comment><USER20> No one's asking for older story orderings. I'd prefer newer story orderings.

<comment><USER21> Much like every other paginated site with constantly updating content in existence. Just link to the next page with whatever the current content for that page is. People can figure out that items they're looking for get bumped from one page to another semi-frequently.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I think it falls under "Not important enough to fix even though everyone complains about it all the time" \-- luckily there exist browser extensions that fix what authors of this site couldn't. (CTRL-F for said extensions)

</comment><comment><USER23> This site isn't actively developed, and hasn't been, as far as I know, since it was established in 2007.

This is intentional. I forget the specific rationale, however.

So no, to answer your question (though I'm not pg), it likely won't be fixed.

<comment><USER2> Actually we change things almost daily.

<comment><USER24> Any recent examples? (Just curious, not trying to debate you)

<comment><USER25> I'd guess it'd be under the hood tweaks related to building and maintaining the community (comments and stories)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I was about to post about it.

I would definitely like to see this one sorted out.

</comment><comment><USER27> It is a useful feature, not a bug.

People need to refresh the thread before they respond to ot, especially if it is a day old. This ensures they have an uptodate version of the thread and allows them ro see if anyone has already made their point.

People clicking next to read past the first page is good. Open any comment pages you want to read in new tabs, and refresh those tabs just before you comment.

I strongly agree that there are other problems with HN that need fixing.

</comment><comment><USER28> From a UI perspective is it too much to ask that instead of showing a FU expired message, just client side redirect the user back to the homepage - should be trivial to implement.

On a desktop it doesn't save much due to bookmarks bar but on mobile it saves a lot of effort on starting over.

</comment><comment><USER29> _expired link issue came from using a new lisp feature_

I don't think this is the case.

This fix would have a low priority on my list. I would rather have work done on improving the quality of comments and unfortunate high ranking of middlebrow comments.

</comment><comment><USER30> One of the worst things about expiring links is that they punish you for taking the time to _read_ articles and long discussions. If I'm just skimming through, there's no problem with expiring links.

</comment><comment><USER31> The issue at hand never annoyed me too much. It can probably be fixed with a browser extension (I'm using HN Enhancement Suite, maybe contact the author and start a discussion?)

</comment><comment><USER32> I'd just like it if the "expire links page" said "Expired link, sorry. Here is a link to a fresh top page"

</comment><comment><USER33> The word "fix" assumes it is a problem. You load a page and after a certain amount of time, the next page is expired.

I am not saying, "it's not a bug, it's a feature!" I'm just saying that's how it works.

<comment><USER34> It is a problem.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Best way to learn about concurrency - <AUTHOR>

Specifically in Java. Are there any tutorials, posts, blogs or books that the HN community could recommend? <comment><USER2> I found Java Concurrency in Practice to be a pretty solid read.

[http://www.amazon.com/Java-Concurrency-Practice-Brian- Goetz/...](http://www.amazon.com/Java-Concurrency-Practice-Brian- Goetz/dp/0321349601)

<comment><AUTHOR> Cheers I'll give that one a look</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to respond to investor questions about platform dependency - <AUTHOR>

I'm building a startup that is built on top of the Fb API in addition to another API. To some degree, as of now, we are dependent on their access for the purpose of our product. We have an upcoming pitch in a public forum where investors will be present.<p>My question is how to respond to investor questions about being 'platform dependent' on other companies? How do you justify future success when it is dependent on other companies? We plan to make adjustments to get around this issue in the long term, but for now, we are technically dependent on others. Based on how we use their API, it is HIGHLY unlikely that there will be any issues, however, investors are normally observant of all the possible drawbacks. Any thoughts on how to approach this? <comment><USER2> As long as you aren't likely to be banned from their platform I doubt they'll focus on the dependency. Having a plan to wean yourself off it over time makes it irrelevant long term anyway.</comment>


Ask HN: Modern solutions to balance checkbook? - <AUTHOR> With reports of bank glitches I'm interested in balancing my checkbooks again after nearly a decade. Though I hate the extra work and would prefer to automate the process as much as practical. Gnucash looks interesting despite what looks to be a lot of technical hurdles getting it to with with my bank's API.<p>Does anyone have suggestions or experiences to share? <comment><USER2> ledger

[https://www.ledger-cli.org/](https://www.ledger-cli.org/)</comment>


Open-sourcing PalDB, a lightweight companion for storing side data - <AUTHOR> https://engineering.linkedin.com/blog/2015/10/open-sourcing-paldb--a-lightweight-companion-for-storing-side-da <comment><USER2> I wonder why they don't use DJB's cab.</comment>


FBI Most Wanted – Sun Kailiang - <AUTHOR> http://www.fbi.gov/wanted/cyber/sun-kailiang/view

<comment><USER2> The FBI is playing a dangerous game with China. This kind of attacks are generally kept in the shadow.

I don't see what they hope to gain by doing this.</comment>


Show HN: Automatically Pull Insights from Google Analytics - <AUTHOR> http://ga.achivi.com/

<comment><USER2> Just as an FYI your sign up button at the bottom of the page 404s

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I went ahead and fixed that!

<comment><USER3> And it's broken in [http://ga.achivi.com/metaBoard](http://ga.achivi.com/metaBoard) too. `Sign Up For Beta`</comment></comment></comment>


Real Criticisms of Scheme - <AUTHOR> http://pschombe.wordpress.com/2006/04/30/real-criticisms-of-scheme/

<comment><USER2> It is worth noting that this is from 2006.

Also, he missed the main problem with Scheme (and Lisp) IMHO: language fracturing. Want to use Scheme on your project? Not so fast! Which one? PLT Scheme? Chicken? MIT? DrRacket? Gambit? TinyScheme?

...the list goes on: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Scheme_implementations>

Most of these are 95% interchangeable in terms of code, but there are a few differences here and there that make it hard (especially for newbies) to get help from Schemers using a different flavor.

<comment><USER3> FYI DrRacket is an editor and PLT Scheme is now referred to as Racket.

<comment><USER2> True, my bad. It's been almost two years since I was working in Scheme, and I didn't check closely enough.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I haven't used Scheme in a while now, but I remember that in practice every implementation provided CL-style macros. I think the only reason it never became part of the standard, given that it's dead simple to implement compared to hygienic macros, is the whole attitude toward standardizing as little as possible.

</comment><comment><USER5> "Recently I have noticed a tendency in the Common Lisp community to criticize Scheme"

That goes back at least to the mid-90s when I was following comp.lang.lisp. It seemed like Kent Pitman kind of pioneered this field of criticism, though I was never connected enough to be sure.

</comment><comment><USER6> Which Scheme? Most of these criticisms would not be valid for most Schemes.

<comment><USER7> If you read the article, he says that he means _Scheme_ , as in the language itself (RSR5 presumably? I'm not familiar with if RSR6 lacks these things too)

Of course the fact that there is a difference is the _real_ problem Scheme has.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Why does scheme have syntax for multiple values at all?

      (define (g x y z) ...)
      (call-with-values f g)

means the same as

      (define (g . xs) ...)
      (apply g (f)),

and it's _longer_.

If there's room for extra syntax, I think

      (g . (f a b c))

for

      (apply g (f a b c))

would be more useful.

<comment><USER9> multiple return values can be optimized

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> If you want this stuff, just stop using an ancient Scheme implementation and pick up Racket.</comment>