Ask HN: Pros and Cons of Living/Working in a technology backwater - <AUTHOR>

This is a question for those of you that don't live in a major city, or anywhere that has a population remotely clued up.
I live in an area in the UK that I can only describe as a 'technology backwater'. I see a few iPhones around (but I would guess most people struggle to use them), I've never seen an Android phone here although I do see a lot of £10 pay&go specials. I can count the number of 'decent' developers in the area on one hand.
A few people have tried running different types of meetups, etc... but, at most, 5 people have ever turned up.
One the one hand, it's easy to differentiate yourself from the rest, get freelance work, etc. It's kind of an easy gig.
On the other hand, there's no one to chat to, challenge yourself, or use for motivation to improve. It makes it difficult to 'talk shop' with anyone... the closest you get is "how can I get a website setup?", which as you can imagine gets boring pretty quickly.
The same can be said for business issues.
Does anyone else have a similar experience? How do you deal with it? <comment><USER3> @avalore: What, if I may ask, is stopping you from getting the hell out of there? I have faced similar experiences,albeit far back in history, and in a non-technocratic context, and managed to overcome them. In fact, I once again feel the urge to move on, and am faced with questions similar to yours. Nothing beats being in a thriving, vibrant intellectual live environment - <USER2> even being wired in to the Nobel Corps -and yet being top-dog of nowhere. Pardon the bluntness - it is not intended to discourage or discredit. However, calling a spade a spade has always been a good starting point for me. Cheers!

<comment><AUTHOR> Be as blunt as you like, I don't mind.

A few reasons I guess. 1) Cost. Because it's such a backwater it's incredibly cheap. I can still get a lot done here and communicate with others online... but I guess that's only good for so long. Face to face is so much better.

2) I guess, if I'm honest, fear of not being good enough. I make good money here but worry that I wouldn't if I went somewhere else where there are much more talented developers. Maybe it's justified, maybe it's not. I guess I won't know unless I try.

Thanks

<comment><USER4> _I guess I won't know unless I try._

Speaking from my recent experience, having moved from a Texas town with about 350 people to New York City a few months ago, I had some of the same concerns. In my case, I took a slight 'cost of living vs. salary' hit, but the increased opportunity more than makes up for that.

As for your second point, unless you're lazy, competition is a good thing. Being around better developers should challenge you, and you'll get better yourself. If that's what you're looking for, I'd encourage you to go for it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _Does anyone else have a similar experience? How do you deal with it?_

Move. No joke. There no substitute for a place where there are actual opportunities. I'm going to Edinburgh.

</comment><comment><USER6> I can't help directly with your specific question, but you might like to email me and see if we can meetup sometime.</comment>


Human Learning == Machine Learning - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@srkiranraj/human-learning-machine-learning-6a930bfd5d32#.rnmzqxaca <comment><AUTHOR> A blog on how human learning has evolved over past decades, how we are learning actually the way computers are learning today i.e. using machine learning. Please read and share your thoughts.</comment>


Twitter Is an Unsafe Public Square, Facebook Is a Private Living Room - <AUTHOR> http://www.sanspoint.com/archives/2016/01/30/twitter-is-an-unsafe-public-square-facebook-is-a-private-living-room/ <comment><USER2> It's said in the article, but...

* A private living room with a telescreen that watches and records you 24/7, for your own good

<comment><AUTHOR> For values of "your own good" equal to "for advertisers" but yeah.</comment></comment>


DNS tools for developers - <AUTHOR> http://www.viewdns.info/ <comment><USER2> A friendly reminder from a sysadmin/web app developer who has to deal with dns and network issues in the real world and would like to use a nice clean UI tool like this: Lack of IPv6 support is a deal breaker.

EDIT: for friendliness.

<comment><USER3> This is very useful, and to call it disappointing is rude to the creator of the tool. Why would you say something so negative just because it's not perfect? This is the problem with Hacker News these days - people can't wait to say something nasty.

<comment><USER4> Pointing out the flaws in a service is better than not posting at all. The creator can then use these criticisms and make the service better.

<comment><USER5> "Better"... according to a guy on the Internet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's a nice website, but _developers_ would be more inspired to try tools such as dnrd which allows one to run multiple dns servers on one machine and reverse-proxy the requests.

Ex on my dsl modem where I love to test stuff:

dnrd-port53 -a 192.168.178.1 -m off -s 127.0.0.1:mydomain.com -s 127.0.0.2:local -s 127.0.0.4:fritz.box -s 127.0.0.4:178.168.192.in-addr.arpa -s 188.8.131.52 -s 22.214.171.124 -s 22.214.171.124 -u dns -R /tmp/dnrd -l

This runs dnrd (hardcoded to bind on port 53 - I sometimes use other ports), and case switch the requests : if it ends by .mydomain.com, it goes to 127.0.0.1 if it ends by .local, it goes to 127.0.0.2 if it ends by .fritz.box, it goes to 127.0.0.4 if it ends by .178.168.192.in-addr.arpa (reverse), it goes to 127.0.0.4 everything else goes to 18.104.22.168, 188.8.131.52, 18.104.22.168 : if one stops responding it's removed from the list and the others are used.

 _THAT_ is a tool for developpers.

Shameless plug : bind6.c on <http://code.google.com/p/guylhem/source/browse/bind6.c> : if you also have a fritzbox dsl modem, you can "force bind" its default dns server to a given ip:53 instead of *:53, allowing another servers on say 127.0.0.1 :

killall multid; LD_PRELOAD=bind6.so BIND_IPV6=::ffff:127.0.0.4 /sbin/multid -v -d -U -P

</comment><comment><USER7> robtex.com is my go-to for DNS/AS/IP info.

google.com domain report: <http://www.robtex.com/dns/google.com.html#summary>

google AS peering info: <http://www.robtex.com/as/as15169.html#peer>

netblock info: <http://www.robtex.com/route/18.104.22.168-16---google.html>

</comment><comment><USER8> Very useful!

It seems this was posted by the developer of this site himself, so I've got a feature request: combining these tools. For example, you enter a domain name or IP address and you get the following information:

\- DNS report

\- Reverse IP

\- Port scan

\- Chinese/Iran Firewall test

\- DNSSEC

\- IP location (maybe of nameserver IPs as well?)

\- PageRank check

\- Traceroute

\- Ping

\- DNS records

\- HTTP headers

\- Spam DB lookup

\- ASN

Adding this would make things a whole lot easier, I hope you will consider it!

<comment><USER9> There's an API[1], so this is something one could throw together pretty easily, assuming there are no limits to prevent it.

[1] <http://viewdns.info/api/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> If this is interesting for you, you may also be interested in my <http://www.oriontransfer.co.nz/gems/rubydns> tools.

</comment><comment><USER11> Seems a little buggy:

"Oops! Your SOA serial number (2012041402) doesn't seem to be in the recommended format (YYYYMMDDnn - where nn is the revision number)."

Looks like it's in that format to me?

</comment><comment><USER12> The command-line tools bundled with djbdns are nice (<http://cr.yp.to/djbdns/tools.html> & <http://cr.yp.to/djbdns/debugging.html>) and IMO are easier to use than dig.

<http://www.dnsvalidation.com/> is also a nicely done site for checking DNS configuration.

<comment><USER13> The drill tool that NSD built atop ldns[1] is pretty sweet too. Some of the other ldns tools are quite useful too.

[1]: <http://www.nlnetlabs.nl/projects/ldns/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The DNS propagation checker -- is there an existing framework that this site interfaces or is it something that they rolled out on their own? I've seen some services that use a dozen of servers to run the check, but this is hardly sufficient ad it excludes the last mile (where all the fun stuff is).

</comment><comment><USER15> I think it is especially amusing that (according to viewdns.info), dnssec.net itself does not have DNSSEC enabled (while it is producing a response for verisign.com for example). Thoughts on the virtues of DNSSEC? Why are you (not) using it?

</comment><comment><USER16> I'm interested in more details about how the "Iran Firewall Test" works. It shows my site as blocked, while I can confirm it elsewhere, it would be nice to know how this determined that.

<comment><USER17> I suspect it's getting hammered at the moment -- the Iran check returned an error for me, and the Google page rank check for "google.com" or "yahoo.com" still reports "Sorry, we couldn't seem to find that domain in Google's cache."

To the developer: this is a great time to refine the error handling (plus scaling, of course). :)

E.g., make sure when the requests fail (for whatever reason) that it can report this back to the user clearly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Awesome! It's like dnsstuff but free again! Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER19> I woulnd't say this is just for developers, I'm a sysadmin and this is definitely something I'll add to my toolbox.

</comment><comment><USER20> <http://mrdns.com/> is also good

</comment><comment><USER21> I love the Chinese Firewall Test XD

</comment><comment><USER22> +1 for having an API. I'm increasingly on a rampage to replace anything I currently have to do via GUI or web browser with something I can do via CLI or API. So much faster, more automatable, less visual fluff and cognitive overhead.

</comment><comment><USER23> Cool! "Chinese Firewall Test"..</comment>


Stippling - <AUTHOR> http://roberthodgin.com/stippling/

<comment><AUTHOR> Here's a stippling implementation in Processing, inspired by the above:

[https://github.com/jordanorelli/stippling](https://github.com/jordanorelli/stippling)

</comment><comment><USER2> It would be neat to do something like this but by detecting high-frequency regions of the image (possibly using a wavelet transform) and placing smaller circles in areas with more high-frequency detail.

</comment><comment><USER3> Something that might be really interesting: do it with moving video rather than a single image. There are several ways it might work, each of which could look very different.

</comment><comment><USER4> Beauty emerges from insight, understanding, first principles, and rigor.</comment>


The 'Collapse Gap': the USSR was better prepared for collapse than the US (2006) - <AUTHOR> http://www.resilience.org/stories/2006-12-04/closing-collapse-gap-ussr-was-better-prepared-collapse-us?2014

<comment><USER2> So this strikes me as complete shit.

The GULAG system is nothing like the United States justice system.

The United States political system is not incapable of reform. Reform is _hard_ , but not impossible. In fact, that's the whole point of our system of government -- it facilitates reform. That's why the Supreme Court exists. That's why we have elections. Look at the evolution of rights for black people, or gay people, or women's rights. Look at how we started a stupid war, championed by one party, and then how that party got booted out of power once the public realized the casus beli was totally invalid.

The United States clearly is not a utopia. We have problems, quite alot of them. But to say that we're pretty much the USSR is completely ridiculous.

And the latter half of the essay -- am I being trolled? Is this actually serious?

</comment><comment><USER3> Compare and contrast:

>Slide 18 Energy -- US: Dwindling Domestic Production

vs.

[http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-07-04/u-s-seen-as- biggest...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-07-04/u-s-seen-as-biggest-oil- producer-after-overtaking-saudi.html)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Previously: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6118861](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6118861)

I'd be interested to see more discussion on this topic, maybe others as well.

</comment><comment><USER4> An interesting essay.

<comment><USER4> I would suspect the economically stable neighbours is not fully abscent though. As if the internet networks is kept up, the internet will allow people to work for overseas companies. I doubt we will ever end up seeing any of this play out. Since it would hurt economically many countries if the usa economy completely fell down.</comment></comment>


This past week, I stole a design. - <AUTHOR> http://www.jayhuang.org/blog/this-past-week-i-stole-a-design/

<comment><USER2> There's no real point of not naming the other guy. It only takes a few seconds and a single search to find the original: <http://www.nealke.mp/>

Your email (where you say "Neal") confirms it too...

<comment><AUTHOR> yea, I know. Either way if someone wanted to find out, they would. But since he didn't say I could link to his site and provide his full name, I won't.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Did you ask his permission before posting his emails?

<comment><AUTHOR> yes.</comment></comment>


Petition: Put a Donate button on the NASA home page - <AUTHOR> https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/put-donate-button-nasa-home-page/XHmtZBVs

<comment><USER2> While this would certainly be nice, it's actually illegal for NASA (or any government agency) to use additional funds for purposes that are handled by what's termed appropriated funds (the money that comes from Congress passing a government budget).

There are non-appropriated fund activities in the government, but those are generally focused on a specific mission area. I'm not sure which NAFI's NASA might have that it would be able to use donated funds for, but I suspect this wouldn't be nearly as helpful as one might think.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm in Australia and would happily donate a few bucks to NASA from time to time. Anyone who recognises the value of expanding our knowledge of the universe would happily throw a few coppers their way.</comment>


San Francisco's Dominance Over U.S. Innovation and Technology Patents - <AUTHOR> http://www.citylab.com/tech/2016/05/san-franciscos-increasing-dominance-over-us-innovation/484199/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheAtlanticCities+%28CityLab%29 <comment><USER2> People in Peoria pay into pension funds.

People in Wall Street invest that money in Silicon Valley startups.

Silicon Valley people get rich and look successful because money is being showered on them.

People in Peoria lose their jobs because their own money is disinvested from their community and worse, used as a weapon against them.

People in Peoria vote for Trump and say "burn baby burn".</comment>


What kind of people are startups (and big companies) hiring? - <AUTHOR>

I see job posts for Rails, Django, iPhone, Python, Javascript, and User Interface developers, many on YCombinator.  I am especially interested in finding out what kind of interns have been hired at your companies or colleges, but I'm pretty curious about full-timers, as well.  What kind of people actually end up being hired?  What did they do?  Did they create a simple web app with an MVC framework?  Did they create their own lisp dialect?  Did they have very good grades?  My biggest question, especially for an internship, is if creating a bunch of web apps using recent frameworks pretty good evidence of ability, or are interns and full-timers expected to have run their own very successful business for years (of course, in which case, they would likely not even look for a job)?  I'm probably over-thinking this. :)  I ask because it feels like the more I learn here on Hacker News and at college, the less I know anything.  Thanks! <comment><USER2> I would say to start building things, not for the purpose that someone will hire you for it someday, but because you actually want to build it.

If your goal is just to get hired somewhere, what happens when you finally get a job? Do you stop learning until the threat or reality of unemployment forces you to learn again?

If you want to do great, cool, and fun things then _you_ have to do them. Don't expect or wait for a job to allow you to do it, just get started. You'll learn much more much faster than most jobs (especially big companies).

</comment><comment><USER3> Startups hire people who can build things end to end once given a high level vision.

The other kind are who need spoonfeeding with specs, UI wireframes etc. Those people goto big companies :).

Having run own business is not required at all because you will be joining as an employee

<comment><AUTHOR> That is not as specific and actionable as I would have preferred, but thank you!</comment></comment>


Create a News App in React Native - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> You should contact to app developers in this regards.</comment>


Why Americans avoid the doctor-Despite having insurance, the costs are too high - <AUTHOR> https://www.marketwatch.com/story/why-americans-are-avoiding-the-doctor-2018-04-04?ref <comment><USER2> I have one thing that keep me away from doctors, and it's not cost: I don't want my doctor sharing my healthcare details, and choices with my insurance company. I don't want some middle manager at Blue Cross Blue Shield to be the one who looks at my history and decides based on that whether I get coverage or not. For years I avoided the doctor because heaven forbid I didn't want to go to the doctor and that somehow influence my rate next year.

I guess that's a fundamental question: Should insurance companies be able to know all of your details, or are they just a payment system?

</comment><comment><USER3> My doctor, a general practitioner, recently dropped all insurance. His prices are still affordable. And I can still submit my work receipts for compensation to my insurance carrier.</comment>


Learnings from the 2008 Great Recession - <AUTHOR> https://shan.io/writing/learnings-from-the-2008-great-recession/ <comment><USER2> Never trust rating agencies,also it helps to have a ground level understanding of your investments before you make a decision. To quote "truth is like poetry, and most people hate poetry" \- big short, 2015

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed but what's the best way for a main street investor with a full time job and families to research? Ratings distill research down into a single number. Super efficient when they work.

<comment><USER2> I'd say carry on your investment study in increments, over the years you'd research in far more depth in fraction of the time you would initially.

<comment><AUTHOR> There's something to your idea of breaking this complicated problem in smaller chunks and tackling it over time. Would you like to write about this together?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Buy the dip</comment>


Linux Kernel coding style [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://slurm.schedmd.com/coding_style.pdf <comment><AUTHOR> This is still pure gold. To the point and full of sarcasm.</comment>


Ask HN: Do you limit your code to a certain line width? - <AUTHOR>

If yes, then 1. How much? 2. How strict are you in following the limit? 3. What do you think about this?
I'm interested because I was trying to format code to 80 chars wide, but I find that a little less. I think between 100-110 is a sweet spot for readability.
PS: I write Ruby/JS. <comment><USER2> 80\. It shocked me to learn that some people don't hard-wrap their code _at all_. I ran into some github repository with comments which went on for 200+ characters and couldn't figure out what kind of maniac would inflict that upon the world.

I wrote a post about it which generated some responses, and it seems IDEs are to blame. Once you get into some of those environments, keeping things (relatively) narrow for the sake of others might just go out the window.

I covered it here, including a screenshot of what a typical dev session for me looks like: <http://rachelbythebay.com/w/2012/08/31/lines/>

<comment><USER3> When I code C for embedded hardware, I agree 80 is more than enough, but that's because that is a simple language and the artifacts always lead to smaller widths.

Now, try that in C++. You can loose 10+ chars to indentation (namespacing, etc) alone. I think the 80 chars puritanism is just plain idiotic, specially in some languages like Obj-C.

Take this kind of bureaucratic crap:

[[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] addObserver:self selector:@selector(whateverChanged:) name:UITextViewTextDidChangeNotification object:nil];

If you start hard wrapping every long call you find you will end up with incredibly long files, filled with framework crap instead of useful information.

<comment><USER4> And yet, Google's Objective-C style guide (adopted by many) is uncompromising in its 80-character line length:

[http://google- styleguide.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/objcguide....](http://google- styleguide.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/objcguide.xml?showone=Line_Length#Line_Length)

<comment><USER3> Utter BS. "... We realize that Objective C is a verbose language and in some cases it may be more readable to extend slightly beyond 80 columns, but this should definitely be the exception and not commonplace"

Edit: One single attribution that crosses the 80 columns rule (4 levels of indentation - 4 spaces each)

placeHolderLabel.lineBreakMode = UILineBreakModeWordWrap;

The person who wrote that is obviously not fluent in Obj-C and even says the rule is 'controversial'.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I used to be fanatical about 78 character width because we would print code from time to time and following wrapping lines can be a royal pain (ahh, the 90's).

Anymore I have been "ok" with 120 characters for most code, mostly because screen sizes have gotten so nice and I rarely print code anymore.

That said, I do still try and keep code around 80 characters wide where ever possible though, I just find the formatting and code legibility to be better in most circumstances. Also, I find this keeps people from nesting things too deep (C/C++/C# come to mind), because it becomes hard to follow the code, hence they start breaking code into more modular components.

My other reason, I sometimes work off only my laptop monitor and while it gets wide, I find myself scrolling left and right when code exceeds 90ish characters in width and that bugs me.

<comment><USER3> Programmers using line lengths as a reason to building modular software is something that I never heard in my life, not even as a joke.

<comment><USER6> For object-oriented languages, long line lengths are signs that you are violating the Law of Demeter: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_Demeter>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I have a column usually set to 80 chars, or sometimes 100, and I manually make sure that it's not much longer than that unless it would hurt code readability to make a new line.

I try to have two windows open on my MacBook Pro 80-100 chars per line allows me to do that, most of the time.

It is a pet peeve of mine when developers try to fit as much on one line of code as possible. There are tools to compile code, you as a developer should try to make your code as human readable as possible, that is unless you like being the only one to maintain your code.

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm not strict about column widths. If it starts to look too long (100+?), I check the column position and see if I shouldn't hard wrap it. Most of what I write isn't super long or super complex one-liners.

If I were working on a team based project, then I would absolutely adhere to a basic style guide regarding whitespace, line widths, etc.

</comment><comment><USER9> I am not very strict about it. I generally try to keep it on my screen. If it starts to horizontally scroll, I will split it up. This used to come up a lot while crafting longer SQL statements. I just started writing them on multiple lines instead of out habit.

</comment><comment><USER10> 80 as well. Keeps stuff tidy across many monitors, and as a lucky bonus at work a NERDTree window and two 80 column windows fit perfectly on one monitor.

Edit: guess I should add I primarily work in Python, C, and Javascript.

</comment><comment><USER11> 79, narrow columns easier to read (think newspaper), printable, keeps nesting to a minimum, and helps keep edits (in version control/diffs) reasonably surgical. On widescreen allows two windows to be side to side.

</comment><comment><USER12> I used to wrap to 79 because I used to write a lot of Python but once you get to the world of Java, 79 hampers readability. I still feel uncomfortable (and guilty) going beyond 79 though.

</comment><comment><USER13> I'm pretty strict about 80. For whatever reason I find it easier to scroll down with my eyes rather than read across a long line.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm sure _everyone_ would find it easier to read scrolling down rather than horizontally.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> 80, if possible. Some places dont follow that practice, though. 80 keeps it tidy.

</comment><comment><USER15> 80\. So I can have 2 code windows side by side. Be it emacs or eclipse.

</comment><comment><USER16> I limit it to 132 characters, the standard line printer page width.

I follow it completely, regardless of language.</comment>


New study says single finger-prick tests aren't necessarily accurate - <AUTHOR> http://ajcp.oxfordjournals.org/content/144/6/885.full <comment><USER2> The article actual says that anything less than 4 drops is inaccurate for measuring haemoglobin.

If you can't get an accurate result measuring the most common protein in blood then the concept is not going to go far unless you can get a few ex-generals and war criminals on your board of directors.

<comment><USER3> That's one weird thing about the theranos thing: Won't a good lab-on-a-chip device to replace medical labs be profitable enough ? risky enough ?

Why add an extra huge risk in the form of finger pricks ? Why did Holmes and investors even began to consider it ?

<comment><USER4> What you're referring to has existed since the 90s[0].

0: [https://www.abbottpointofcare.com/products-services/istat- ha...](https://www.abbottpointofcare.com/products-services/istat-handheld)

<comment><USER5> But the iStat focuses solely on clinical chemistry assays. Theranos was trying to add microfluidic immunoassays, which is something even Abbott has been trying to do since the first microparticle ELISA technology was invented.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is no surprise whatsoever to anyone (e.g., diabetics) who uses glucose test strips. Small sample + cheap small battery-powered measuring device = high variation.

Is it good science? The study had a mere 11 "donors"! I know Rice is a small school, but there are plenty of people around the university to volunteer. Its within throwing distance of Houston's Medical Center!

<comment><USER7> That struck me too. Not only did they have a laughably small sample size, they didn't compare the results they got against gold-standard venous blood tests.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Part of could be that it is easier to fuck up a finger prick blood draw and cause inaccurate results. Improper cleaning [1], not getting the blood out in the right way, or even certain patient conditions. Less likely to mess up (in a way that causes test inaccuracy) when you drain a whole vial out of their arm.

[1] [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1238762/pdf/brjg...](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1238762/pdf/brjgenprac00036-0046a.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER9> Good. Maybe they should consider getting blood from somewhere within the 99% of the body's surface area that doesn't have as many nerves as the tips of the fingers.

</comment><comment><USER10> I thought this has been known for quite a while. I keep seeing articles and comments by people who have worked in this field for years saying finger-prick blood is unreliable. I'm unclear why another study is needed.

</comment><comment><USER11> Is it just me, or is "not necessarily accurate" just weasel words for "not accurate"?

Either something is accurate, or it is not.

<comment><USER12> You can't argue that one failure to achieve accurate results mean that it's inherently impossible to achieve accurate results.

In this case, it's conceivable that there could be a tip geometry, tip composition, cleaning technique, normalizing strategy, prick location/depth, etc (or combination of the above) that leads to good data. Of course, that's not a guarantee that it _is_ possible, and it still puts the burden of proof on Theranos (for example) to prove that they have actually overcome this problem if they want to run tests that way.

It _is_ mighty suggestive though.

<comment><USER7> I don't think I'd be worried about this if I were running a company like Theranos. There's probably still a huge market for that kind of multitest product even if the draw was venous.

<comment><USER13> And you can always draw multiple small samples, as recommended with actual pinprick glucose meters.

Or you might be able to take smaller vials.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Simplest way to accept credit cards? - <AUTHOR>

Going to spin up several SaaS websites as a test project, and I wonder what's the easiest way to handle credit cards?<p>I want to avoid incorporating for each project if it's possible. <comment><USER2> Stripe: [https://stripe.com/](https://stripe.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> I've already Stripe for a former startup, but I think they have asked me for a EIN.

<comment><USER3> If you are a sole proprietor the EIN is your SSN. So you can still use Stripe and not worry about it.

You can also setup one llc and have multiple d/b/a's out there so you use one EIN and have multiple trade names but one company, one bank account etc. You need to do some accounting around it all, but its not a big deal.

<comment><USER4> > If you are a sole proprietor the EIN is your SSN.

An SSN is a federal tax ID. An EIN is a federal tax id. An ITIN is a federal tax ID. But an SSN (or ITIN) is not an EIN.

Most businesses should have an EIN, even if they are sole proprietorships (if you have to pay employment taxes, among other things [0], you _must_ have an EIN.)

[0] [http://www.irs.gov/Businesses/Small-Businesses-&-Self- Employ...](http://www.irs.gov/Businesses/Small-Businesses-&-Self-Employed/Do- You-Need-an-EIN)

<comment><USER3> Yes, you are correct, they are not the same, one applies to the individual the other when you meet specific rules by the IRS as your link points out. At one time I am almost positive the EIN field was required by Stripe (it is possible I confused it with Balanced or First Data) and for sole proprietors you were to use your SSN in that field. Effectively the field should have been labeled TIN if they were using it as a dual purpose field as the IRS uses TIN as the overall classification for SSN and EIN's (but again they usually provide two separate fields for them, just look at a W9).

So I should have double checked the form before replying to make sure I didn't provide potentially inaccurate information. Glad you pointed it out.

A quick double check on Stripe's FAQ just now shows this link, which says the EIN is optional: [https://support.stripe.com/questions/sole-proprietor- without...](https://support.stripe.com/questions/sole-proprietor-without- federal-ein)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


McFriends: McDonalds Reimagined - <AUTHOR> http://tech.li/2012/02/mcfriends-mcdonalds-reimagined/

<comment><USER2> > Users could come log-on to McFriends, and meet fellow fast-food goers around > world.

And I would want to do this because...</comment>


At Odds: Hackers at Harvard - <AUTHOR> http://evangastman.tumblr.com/

<comment><USER2> >I don't buy that as an excuse for why there aren't any intensive courses on Ruby on Rails, Node.js, Objective-C, HTML/CSS and JavaScript.

For the same reason why there aren't any intensive courses on Windows, ASP, or GNOME. Because technologies come and go --- nowhere more so than in software --- and those left standing are the ones who grasped the fundamentals of their field, not the ones who blitzed their way through a Node.js hackathon. The former are the innovators, the latter are the guns for hire.

All the things you mention can be hacked in under a week by a motivated student. If your objective is to hack (and that is entirely fine for many purposes), you don't need a traditional college course to do so. In fact, I would argue that is entirely antithetical to the essence of hacking!

If you're a Harvard student, you have an amazing opportunity to learn the truly difficult subjects with some of the best people in the world, the kind of stuff you won't learn in two hours in an online tutorial. Take advantage of that; for everything else there's the internet.

<comment><AUTHOR> I appreciate this response a lot, especially the last sentence. My takeaway from it: Search out those things that you can't find on the Internet. Believe it or not, that sentiment really does offer a new way of thinking about things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Expecting Harvard to teach you how to be a hacker is about as far from the hacker mindset as you can get.

<comment><AUTHOR> Clarify, please?

<comment><USER3> In my mind the "hacker mindset" is something along the lines of

"I want to do X, so I'm going to go off and do whatever it takes to figure out how to do X".

Not

"I'm going to complain that no one is teaching me how to do X".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> As an undergrad I found myself thinking similarly. Looking back, I definitely think I rushed some things and agree with most people in this thread. The stuff you described won't and shouldn't be taught in schools. You're there to engage in thoughtful discourse that will help you come up with better solutions to the worlds problems. Node, RoR, etc. are just tools to make those ideas come to life. You can be a code monkey, but that doesn't make you a good software engineer. Find the right balance and I think you'll find the quality of your hacks will improve as well.

</comment><comment><USER5> If what you want is "intensive courses on Ruby on Rails, Node.js, Objective-C, HTML/CSS and JavaScript", save yourself four years and save your folks $200K. Drop out and get a public library card.

</comment><comment><USER6> Schools like Harvard should have a major (or at least a concentration) in Web Development. Without that, they're missing out on setting up thousands of students for success.

<comment><USER7> "Setting up thousands of students for success" is not the goal of a university. If it were, they should also offer majors in underwater welding, computer-aided machining, and other currently-understaffed specialist roles where a person with only one or two years' experience can earn good money.

It's worth remembering that "web startup engineer" is to Computer Science what those vocations are to Physics. It is a craft, not a discipline and best learned through experience rather than theory.

<comment><USER8> I think they were being sarcastic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "there seems to be some sort of disdain for the inelegant style of cut and paste hacker programming ingrained in the startup community"

Wait, what?

<comment><USER10> I think that the author means is that Harvard places a high value on "perfect code," when "just ship it," is closer to the mantra of the startup community. Goes hand-in-hand with "do things that don't scale," which is another bit that follows the same ideal of "get it out the door."

I don't think that there is any reason to rush in University though. Take time, learn the fundamentals. There is plenty of time to corner cut later.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> _I have delved into the theoretical side of computer science, learning about lower-level languages such as C, experiencing faint tastes of web programming, and more recently, an introduction to the beauty of recursion in functional programming languages like OCaml... but I know I haven't experienced that "hacker" oriented style of programming that I was hoping for through Harvard._

You keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd like to clarify some things that are not clear in the post. I am finding a lot of value in the CS courses I am taking in their rigor and the way they are changing how I think about problems. I also feel like I am in the company of some incredibly smart, talented, and driven people. I feel awfully fortunate to be in the position I am in. This all said, I also think that being able to build hackable and scalable projects is really powerful, and that the education I want meshes these areas together- instruction directed towards the theory as well as with the projects.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Please upvote when you comment if you find the post interesting, otherwise it will get "controversy banned".</comment>


IT graduates not 'well-trained, ready-to-go' - <AUTHOR> http://www.networkworld.com/news/2011/022511-it-graduates.html?hpg1=bn

<comment><USER2> I am shocked, _shocked_ that our universities are failing to give graduates an adequate grasp of Sharepoint administration</comment>


MSN Messenger is shutting down after 15 years - <AUTHOR> http://mobile.theverge.com/2014/8/29/6082199/msn-messenger-shutting-down-15-years-history <comment><USER2> The life: Begin-Plot-End Does not happend only for humans, but also for objects. I imagine that after some year, we will here somthing similar to WhatsApp.</comment>


On the Tenth Anniversary of Quitting - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/this-happened-to-me/a1ba4aec950

<comment><USER2> I have been down this road before. But what I realized was, when you quit work to go find the "deeper" meanings of life, it is very easy to convince yourself that you are actually making progress when the opposite may be happening.

What I also realized when I did get back to work (and satisfying work at that) was all the philosophical stuff took a back seat and that was not a bad thing.

Uncertainty imho doesn't correlate very well with long term happiness.

<comment><USER3> At the risk of sounding Zen, the philosophical stuff taking a backseat is the progress. Even if you wind up in the same place doing the same job as before, there was progress if you no longer wonder 'what if'. It's when you believe that the grass is greener on your side.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Amazing story - I applaud the intestinal fortitude. I have long though about doing this myself. I have travelled quite a bit more then any other 24 year old that I know, and while I love travelling, I also love too many things about home to become a permanent traveller. I love the adventure of travelling and meeting new people, there is also tons of value in long term relationships with family and friends, and those are things I could never give up. Satisfying the travel bug while still maintaining strong long term personal relationships is hard!

</comment><comment><USER5> I love reading things like this and it inspires me to travel and be different. However, as much as this appeals to me and I want to quit and travel, doing something like this is definitely a career wrecker. That and student loans are my biggest hindrance.

</comment><comment><USER6> As someone aged 25 - who is really just beginning on the exact same journey, and feeling the freefall a little strongly - this couldn't have come at a better time.

Fantastic piece!

</comment><comment><USER7> Very good piece of writing. Describes a feeling that many people share without admitting, IMHO.</comment>


Too Many Kids Quit Science Because They Don't Think They're Smart - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/11/too-many-kids-quit-science-because-they-dont-think-theyre-smart/382165/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> Tangential to the article, I have two hypotheses:

1) There is not a shortage of scientists.

There's loads of kids going to graduate school to become servants for mediocre, yet politically-connected scientists. Then, once they have spent the X years and $Y in opportunity costs to get a PhD, they have to figure out a career for themselves. This is a bad, not a good, thing. It reduces early- stage career experimentation and encourages low-quality science.

2) You don't need to be smart to be a scientist; you need to be stubborn.

This is similar to the argument that ideas don't matter for entrepreneurship. There are loads of theories and ideas in any given field about the way that things may be. What you need, as a minimum, is the ability to stick the course to figure out a way of testing those theories and ideas and do the (extraordinarily boring) legwork to get it done. I know a lot of scientists (physicists and mathematicians) and all of them are stubborn, but not particularly brilliant. 99% of physics and mathematics are made up of people who will do drudge work for years with very little recognition or reward. Very, very occasionally, one of them hits the jackpot. It's not brilliance that defines a professional scientist; it's a willingness to be bored and work weekends for very little compensation.

<comment><USER3> I almost stopped reading the article after the sentence, "A self-esteem expert offers a way out of the conundrum." I should have. This is psychobabble rubbish, written by people who have not done science, and who do not know the life histories of people who have studied science to any degree. The main encouragement I had from my parents was to visit the library. They definitely discouraged me from taking apart the blender and refrigerator when I was in the 3rd grade. They did eventually buy me and my sisters a radio shack computer; there was no special encouragement for me to hack assembler as a kid, but I did, and my sisters used it to play video games. Curiosity comes from within. The blank slate theory is as rubbish as the theory of reincarnation.

I share your two hypotheses to the point I consider them ansatzes. Most of my peers have Ph.D.'s in hard sciences or engineering as I do. Most of them wasted their time on their thesis research; it's just a certificate meaning "certifiably smart, persistent, and able to do self guided study." I don't particularly regret getting my underwear drawer liner autograph from the governator. It was a poor financial decision, but I had fun playing with big toys, and it provided enough meaning to my life I avoided ending up a glue sniffer or drunkard.

Attempting to convince more people to do this is a fool's errand: we can't even employ the ones we have. I've been lucky in that I have mostly worked on interesting things and been reasonably well paid for it, but doubling or tripling the number of science people in the world is foolish unless you give them something useful to do. My last job hunt, I ended up talking to an awful lot of people who thought a good use of my time would be building data pipelines to some Hadoop atrocity. You don't need a Ph.D. in physics or machine learning to do that. Yet a lot of Ph.D. types are doing this sort of plumbing for a living, because there are not enough jobs doing actual science.

<comment><USER4> Carol Dweck hasn't done science? Why would you say that? Do you say that because you don't feel that psychology is a science or is it because of something about her work in particular?

In any case my impression is that the article was about different strategies for improving achievement. I'm not a psychologist, but I've seen some pretty convincing articles that show that praise for how smart a kid is versus praise for how hard they work affects how they handle failure. Increasing perseverance would be a good way to be more successful in academia, I would imagine.

<comment><USER5> Agreed. It's a shame to write off Dweck's research because of poor phrasing on the part of the writer of the article. Her work is massively important. If you're not willing to understand the psychological underpinnings of motivation, then you're leaving out a big part of the puzzle.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I really liked this part, and if there's one thing I'm taking away from the article, it's this:

> "Actually, praise may not be the optimal way, but we are so praise oriented. > We can ask the child questions about the process: "How did you do that? Tell > me about it." As they talk about the process and the strategies they tried, > we can appreciate it. We can be interested in it. We can encourage it. It > doesn't have to be outright praise."

<comment><USER7> This is one parenting technique that seems to be a part of a lot of different parenting classes, philosophies, &ct. but is, IMO underused.

Most kids crave attention from the adults they look up to. Merely paying attention to something and expressing an interest can be hugely rewarding without needing to praise.

The flip side of this is why parents who have busy schedules for one reason or another often have kids with behavioral issues; the only reliable way for the kid to get attention is to piss off their parents.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> > When students thought of their intelligence as a thing that's just fixed, > they were vulnerable. They were not willing to take on challenges that might > test their intelligence, and they weren't resilient when they came into > obstacles.

And this is also why so many gifted children become mediocre adults.

<comment><USER9> Those who are interested in this will want to read the book "The drama of the gifted child."

<comment><USER10> The book _Mindset: The New Psychology of Success_ by Carol Dweck (the psychology professor at Stanford mentioned) also offers great insight into this. It is also a very well written book, and if you are into audiobooks, the narrator for this one does a splendid job.

[0] [http://www.amazon.com/Mindset-The-New-Psychology- Success/dp/...](http://www.amazon.com/Mindset-The-New-Psychology- Success/dp/0345472322)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> If education is anything like it was in my school years, I wonder if children are actively discouraged from pursuing science by educators that find the subject difficult or impractical to teach within their provided constraints.

I have a very clear memory of an after-school workshop I attended in early high school to prepare students for the ACT, a college entrance exam that was common in that time and place. This exam tested students on math, English, reading, and science reasoning. When it came time for the teachers to provide advice on science reasoning, they basically told the students to not bother, and just guess as best they can. I was completely floored at this extraordinarily defeatist attitude. Sure, this school had science classes, but they mostly taught science memorization (what does ATP stand for?) and not science reasoning.

<comment><USER12> To be fair, the science section of the ACT is testing the ability to understand graphs and read short passages on scientific topics. In this sense, it is more of a reading comprehension section than a science section. In my opinion, this is more fair than testing specific science topics that a student might not have been taught in their high school.

<comment><USER11> My memory on the test itself may be a bit hazy (~24 years ago) and my interpretation at that age may not have been accurate, but I do seem to recall some amount of reasoning was required. E.g., looking at a graph and drawing a conclusion from it. Not any great feat of reasoning, but still one that the school faculty felt was beyond the reach of their students.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I've read a couple of Dweck's books and highly recommend them—probably "Self- theories: Their Role in Motivation, Personality, and Development" for the crowd here. Her other book is branded like a self-help book, and it's still good though I imagine many won't like the style.

Her theory hinges on the concept of a 'declarative knowledge system' as a component of cognition, which could be described (in an over-simple manner) as "beliefs are significant determinants of behavior." This structure is also at the heart of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, which is the dominant paradigm for treating anxiety, depression, ocd, and others. It also works by correcting problematic beliefs in patients.

The belief in question in Dweck's work, which has so much impact on people's learning efficacy, is whether intelligence is changeable or not. If someone thinks it's changeable, they work hard to change it, and value effort. If they think it's something fixed that they're born with, they hold out hope that they might be brilliant for as long as possible, trying to make sure they and others think that's the case. You can imagine how this impacts people responses to failures in intellectual domains: if you think intelligence is changeable, you are glad to be given information on a weakness that you can now improve; if you think it's fixed, you become scared and discouraged.

I think this article focuses on the praise aspect, because it's easy to communicate the idea to lots of people; but the reason the type of praise matters is because one type or the other leads (on average) to the formation of one belief or another on the question of intelligence mutability. If you're not a parent, but someone interested in being able to learn more effectively, the praise aspect is probably less relevant to you—but the books are good.

The thing to keep in mind though, is that the only way to reap the benefits of what she's talking about is to understand that intelligence is changeable (to deeply believe it—that's where it's going to impact your behavior). Reading her books can help instill the idea—I'm still looking for other ways to prove it to myself and have had some success.

</comment><comment><USER14> Science these days is mostly done in institutions of higher learning, where 1) it is a pretty rigid process with slightly counter productive incentives (publish papers! Any papers!), and 2) it is available only to a select few who've made it through a rigid and ivory-tower-esque formula (i.e. the universities themselves).

I think that's a big problem, and one that makes the self esteem issue worse (if you don't fit the formula, you'll feel inferior).

I always wanted to be a scientist, but then gravitated towards entrepreneurship because it's less rigid and defined.

</comment><comment><USER15> To my fellow hackers/programmers out there: I worked as a mentor on a startup for a while that taught people how to program. One thing that's really frustrating to a beginner to hear is "it's really not that hard." Actually I would argue this is the single biggest deterrent to people learning, and it's completely avoidable. Hackers like to say this to encourage people to learn how to code, I've seen it happen in casual conversations, but it has the unintended consequence of making the beginner think if it's hard, then they must be stupid because this other person told them it's not hard. It's actually really hard to learn to program, we just easily forget about that. And we also forget that we had other people help us along the way, we didn't learn it inside of a vacuum.

If you're a hacker, you owe it to a beginner to let them know it's difficult but if they persist they can overcome the learning curve (for some people it's steeper or wider, but it's still not easy no matter how you look at it). We're very honest about how difficult starting a startup is, so we should be equally honest when it comes to learning to code. Hope this helps anyone out there interested in learning.

</comment><comment><USER16> The crux seems to be this:

" _They often praise the ability, the talent, or the intelligence too much. The opposite of this is the good process praise_ "

I've been hearing variations for this for years, often in the context of comparing educational traditions of Asia to Europe-US. It seems each has their advantage. I haven't heard any smashingly convincing evidence that there is some insight which can be applied across the board. It mostly sounds like people picking a preference and arguing for it. I don't see whay science is special here.

If I was to pick my own bias and go with it, it's that education at some point (I don't know if it's at 5 or 25) needs to get students to really internalize the actual process of learning and practice. Spend a quality hour a day on piano and you will get good at piano. Same goes for maths, painting, fiction writing, foreign languages and lucha libre.

They needs to realize that they _can_ get good at stuff. They need to realize how much work it is and they need to internalize that they (specifically) can do it.

I have another pet peeve here. These discussions start with a problem and the immediate assumption is that the educational establishment needs to fix it. Well, the educational establishment is a huge lumbering giant and it's not necessarily the right man for the job. What about the ballet instructor, mother or godfather.

We're talking more about child psychology than science education here. Raising kids better is certainly an admirable goal, but is this best addressed at a humanity-as-a-whole level? Do you have a daughter, nephew or godson? Can you make a difference as an adult in their life? Why not start there. At least it's something most of us can do something about.

<comment><USER17> "They needs to realize that they can get good at stuff".

Each time I begin to learn something new, as a new programming language, the beginnings are very hard and you feel dumb, this is the most difficult part. Once you have practice a lot, then all goes smoothly.

Add to this that everyone seems to forget quickly how hard was to give the first steps. When you are learning something new people take for granted that you should be ready, but may times you are in that stage in which progress is hard and slow. So we should emphasize this point when we start learning.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Chemist here. If there's one thing that being in a research lab does to you, it's that you feel dumb almost all of the time - and it's generally not because of your coworkers, it's because the vast majority of experiments fail. There are rare feelings of success, and many moments of feeling that you are in a dark hole trying to climb out. To make significant headway you need a thick skin, and even then it can be extremely hard dealing with failure after failure. My unpopular opinion is that, given that there is currently _not_ a shortage of scientists in the USA, it is not a travesty that many people who feel "dumb" in the early stages of learning science opt out of a scientific career that will only exacerbate these feelings, and thus save themselves considerable opportunity costs by seeking a profession that is easier on the ego.

<comment><USER19> I would agree, but only to the extent that our society doesn't value science enough to effectively use all the scientists we produce already. Rather, it values more business and pushing money around, of maybe building things.

If there was some kind of crisis (say cold war) and we needed new inventions to survive, things might be really different. But right now, we are just comfortable with the world as it is with not much demand for radical transformation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'm currently work as a full-time developer, and I love it.

I never thought I'd be a developer, though.

I was beginning to learn programming around 8th-9th grade, but I was only creating webpages, simple CRUD apps, and other things that weren't very "serious".[1]

At this time, I _knew_ I didn't want to be a programmer because I _knew_ the job equated to sitting around doing math problems all day. It's not that I didn't think I was smart enough—I was a very good math student. I just couldn't think of anything less appealing than doing math problems all day, every day for the rest of my life. I didn't know what the job actually entailed, but I thought I did.

[1] I thought of "programmers" as people who built 3D engines, used complex math to render interfaces (shapes, colors, animations, etc). By that standard, I'm still not a programmer. :)

</comment><comment><USER21> Should we be encouraging people to stay the science course? There are a glut of science phd's in the workforce. I dropped out of my phd program to just do an MS because I found I simply wasn't smart enough to hack it. My research wasn't going anywhere, and I was barely holding on with my grades. After school, I will stay in engineering. I wish someone had told me I wasn't good enough rather than spending 3 years here.

Science is hard, soul-crushing and not that well-paying. Better to quit before they go into grad school than to waste years to be me. Only the truly dedicated and brilliant will survive.

<comment><USER22> Studying science doesn't mean pursuing a science degree or a job in a scientific field. For myself I've always been enthusiastic about science, I learned on my own, I took pretty much every science class available in my high school and took AP tests in physics, chemistry, and biology. In college I got a degree in math and pursued another degree in chemistry before finding a career as a software developer.

I'm a huge critic of the flaws in the educational system, but I wouldn't give up my experience studying science in school for anything. It's molded who I am, it's made me a better person and a better developer, and I wish that more people would share that experience.

There are many people who defend studying "the humanities" as something universally valuable and universally desirable, and I think there's truth in that. I think there's just as much truth that studying science is universally valuable and universally desirable, regardless of ones eventual career aspirations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> As a math writer (math entrepreneur?) I talk to a lot of people about math and I'm often shocked by the reactions I encounter. Introducing math into a conversation has a consistent effect of making 30-40% of people _very_ uncomfortable, and they usually try to quickly change the subject.

I was perplexed by this, until I realized what is going on. Many people are convinced of the implication:

       person is smart  -->  person is good at math

So if you're not good at math (e.g. bad grades in high school), the rules of logic (specifically _modus tollens_ ) implies that you're not smart! Since nobody wants to feel unsmart, or recall painful math experiences from their schooling, they avoid the subject as much as possible.

In the light of this, the first few chapters of my book[1] serve to help readers get over their math fears. Honestly, I feel I need to learn about psychology to help people with their math phobia... Once you get rid of fear, math can become an amazing source of _knowledge buzz_.

[1] [http://minireference.com/](http://minireference.com/)

</comment><comment><USER24> The expert in this article is very subtly suggesting that parenting that does not acknowledge a biological difference in behavior between boys and girls is a factor in _fewer_ women in the sciences.

<comment><USER25> The unfortunate reality is that boys and girls are different, radicals would have you believe otherwise, but if you care about your children you should learn about these differences and nurture them to their fullest potential.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> there is no boring subject, just boring teacher.

someone smarter than me said: teaching is not filling a cup. teaching is lighting a fire.

i still remember how some teachers sucked at knowledge, and/or knowledge transmission to students. math is actually pretty easy if it is explained to you in a words you understand. i think feynman said it.

some of best teaching i've seen is walter lewins mit 801 and 802. it's available on mit ocw. it's not just about teaching but also lighting a fire of students' willingness to start to learn for themselves . and always teach via example (sokrat, i think).

</comment><comment><USER27> More likely they are quitting science because they know it's a lot of work for not very much pay and it's definitely not a sexy profession.

<comment><USER11> I see this sentiment elsewhere in the thread, but my thinking upon reading the article was that these children are not just abandoning science research jobs by quitting science, but also relatively well-paying jobs in fields for which science is prerequisite -- medicine, engineering, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I don't understand the American fixation with being "smart".

I have worked 15 years and coded low-level, applications and ops. I've always kept an interest in this and keep a few side projects.

But I am not smart. Anyone could do this, given the right training.

If what you want in life is a science PhD, go get it. Anyone can do it. You may have to work more for it, but that's it.

<comment><USER29> > You may have to work more for it, but that's it.

Fortunately getting a doctorate doesn't have a hard deadline, or at least that's my impression (of course it may vary).

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Science is hard work, and not always high reward. If a kid has a natural aptitude for numerical thinking, logical thinking, etc., but no strong affinity for science, they may just be smart enough not to enter that field.

Very often, being really "smart" in a subject is dependent on having a sustained high level of interest in that subject. Not at the grade school or high school level, but at the graduate or professional level. It's possible to fake it, relying on raw intelligence and forcing yourself to perform well in a mentally-demanding field that you're not genuinely interested in, but it's way, way more work.

</comment><comment><USER31> I don't think the main problem is _what sort of praise_ these kids are being given.

I remember being told, at a seminar on exactly this sort of thing, that _more than half_ of students entering high school here (Australia) still did not understand fractions.

The high school curriculum then steamrollers on to try and teach these kids about algebra, calculus, trigonometry. Not once do we stop to check that the students grasp the prerequisites necessary to _understand_ the material, rather than just faking enough to get 50% on a test.

Is it surprising that people develop learned helplessness about mathematics?

</comment><comment><USER32> Dweck's last comment really got struck me. By virtue of being taught to place authority and trust in the parent, the child generally wants to do what the parent says is "right". Some children, by virtue of their nature or peer pressure in their surroundings or whatever in addition to parental disapproval, begin to feel that negativity toward their interests reinforced. Had my exceedingly conservative grandparents and parents actually been able to "okay" my early interest in engineering and the sciences at the very least instead of telling me it was unfeminine (as well as my brother's early interests in fashion and mathematics, which were strongly labelled both at home and among our peers as faggy and uncool) I think both of us would have had less anguish and self-doubt and emotional issues as teens and in our early twenties.

If children are stubborn enough, they can overcome this kind of negative reinforcement at home of the societal norms they see expressed at school and throughout much of whatever culture they belong to. However, as is the case with other people I grew up with who had similar backgrounds, without stubbornness and the willingness to recognize where one would be most happy and useful it is possible to drift for a long time without understanding why everything about one's identity is orthogonal to how it feels it should be, or even to just end up in a mediocre paper shuffling job forever.

Imo it isn't about encouragement or positive reinforcement, but rather (as a parent) helping your children to figure out what _they_ want to do and what they are interested in without projecting your own hopes and aspirations on them. Regardless of if your kid wants to live in a garage in Monterey and make sculptures of feet (or, hell, move to India and build water treatment plants, or study blue whales, or whatever), even if you think they'd make an amazing neurosurgeon/NFL player/xyz, don't push them to be something they're not. They get enough backlash from their peers and the rest of the world as it is.

Too many kids don't just quit STEM (or never start) because they're pushed out of it or excluded for one reason or another, too many kids go into what seems socially acceptable because they aren't allowed space to grow into whatever the hell they are.

</comment><comment><USER33> This seems like a problem made worse by the similar appearance of intelligence and experience. Growing up it can be hard to understand how the skills of others can be acquired given enough time and effort.

</comment><comment><USER34> This is how I interpret "not smart".

\- If I have to be scientist, I have to demonstrate certain level of competence in science and maths.

\- I can achieve that in 2 ways. 1. I am so brilliant that I reach that level without breaking a sweat. 2. I will have to put in more efforts to reach that level.

\- Kids are not interested in putting those efforts, neither do their parents put in necessary efforts to convince them.

\- Kids are getting lazy, running away from personal responsibility and ambitions. This is bad because eventually they will end up living on welfare money taxed from the hardworking students.

<comment><USER35> > I will have to put in more efforts to reach that level.

I think that is a valid point for some students, but for others I think it is more: "I don't want to put in all that effort only to fail because I'm not smart enough"

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I think there may be a realistic perception of the difficulty of academic competition, as well as the number of open positions and the compensation. And there are definitely a lot of smart and hard working people there.

It's one thing to ask, "How smart do you have to be to do useful science?", and it's quite another to ask, "Do you think you can make it in the field of competition?"

</comment><comment><USER37> Kind of niche comment BUT this starts in kindergarten. I'm a fan of staving off kindergarten until a kid is 6. If they feel smarter than the other kids at that young age, it'll become how they view themselves. They'll step up to their own self-perception.

</comment><comment><USER38> Forcing people who genuinely are not smart enough into sciences is sure to cause a lot of suffering and wasted time, though.

Many of us here have social circles that consists only of the highly educated; in these bubbles it's easy to forget that many people simply are not capable of higher level mathematics, and are not capable of becoming even mediocre scientists. It's likely that the average child - and the vast majority of all children - would be happier and more productive in other professions.

It's harsh, but try to judge your child's talents objectively, then encourage them to do what best for them.

</comment><comment><USER39> Public education is about imposing class structure, not encouraging excellence. If we decided to execute for real, we could be swimming in young engineers.

</comment><comment><USER40> The entering of people who are unable to do meaningful research into the science field is a blatant waste of social resources.

</comment><comment> digital-rubber "I know that I am intelligent, because I know that I know nothing." \- Socrates

Maybe they are all little socrates'es

</comment><comment><USER41> Everything that I understand, I understand only because I love.-- Leo Tolstoy

</comment><comment><USER42> Too many adults quit science because it does not pay enough.

</comment><comment><USER43> Can I be really cynical here? I might rephrase this "Too many kids quit science because they're wise as well as smart".

I've been on this hobby horse for a while here on HN, and I'm worried people are getting tired of me. But seriously, think about it. I don't have attrition rate numbers for typical undergraduate STEM degrees, but I do know that undergrads don't drop out of Economics or Poly Sci or Literature to major in CS, Engineering, Physics, and so forth. Where I do have data, look at attrition rates for graduate schools, especially at the elite level. A typical attrition rate for an elite Law or Medical school is below 1%. A typical attrition rate for an elite Engineering or Science PhD program is 35-50%! MS programs aren't s studied, but nation wide, attrition rates are about 33% (I'd have to dig though my HN comments to find the cite for that one, and it was behind a paywall).

So, considering how difficult all this is, outcomes must be much better for those STEM grads, right? Well, no, not really. CS is a good major at the undergrad level, and grads do pretty well. But again, at the elite level, top software developers, even from elite CS schools with grad degrees, just don't pull it in like dermatologists or radiologists. I read a pretty heartbreaking story about a woman who was denied the right to use sick leave for maternity leave from her grad program. My cousin, a radiologist, worked part time (20 hour weeks) for a while when she had a kid, and she still pulled down more than my salary as a developer. I know another woman who is an emergency medicine physician who did the same thing. They are so, so, so much better off not going into science. A RAND study found that the American aversion to STEM graduate degrees in favor of professional degrees is economically rational and shouldn't be a head scratcher. The head scratcher is why people still act like the only thing we need to do to get more people into science is "make it cool", or "improve middle school math", and so forth.

We have got to stop acting like there's something surprising here. Science gets kids who are very smart and utterly devoted but perhaps lacking in wisdom, and who just can't believe that they might be in the bottom half of a cohort with high grades in STEM coursework and test scores above 95%ile. Or, alternatively, they are students who don't have these other options (US med and law schools are not nearly as accessible to international students as engineering and science PhD programs are). So if the "professions" are cut off to you because you aren't a US citizen, your decision to go into a graduate STEM program (especially if it fast tracks you to US residency) may be rational in a way that wouldn't hold for someone who already possesses US citizenship (who typically shun science PhD programs).

</comment><comment><USER44> Perhaps the solution is to make science 'easier'. Works just fine with arts.</comment>


QuickStart for a SQL Database with Blockchain Features - <AUTHOR> https://testnet.covenantsql.io/quickstart <comment> daniel-l Great work, I have Stared your project, so what's the difference between u and bigchain?

<comment><AUTHOR> First, we have SQL support, Bigchaindb is MongoDB. CovenantSQL is written in Golang and C. Bigchaindb is written in Python. For more, you can refer our README</comment></comment>


GSoC wrap-up – Splitting Servo's script crate - <AUTHOR> https://blog.servo.org/2018/08/09/gsoc-generic-servo/ <comment><USER2> Sure, compilation time and memory usage was improved, but what about the runtime performance and memory usage?

</comment><comment><USER3> If Servo has a script crate does this mean that rust programs have the option of having an embedded JavaScript interpreter?</comment>


What is the minimum budget to promote a site? - <AUTHOR>

I have a site, and I would like to know what do you consider it is the least amount I should spend promoting it and where should I spend it? thx <comment><USER2> I know of a couple places you can get listed for free and get decent traffic for early startups.

The Museum of Modern Betas always good for a couple hundred visitors. <http://momb.socio-kybernetics.net/>

Killer Startups is an ass ugly site but can send some traffic. <http://www.killerstartups.com/>

Simple Spark has not sent me a ton of traffic but they have a nice looking site and will hopefully gain more of an audience. <http://simplespark.com>

I'm also looking for more ways to get the word out so the more advice the better.

<comment><USER3> add <http://spicypage.com> to this list

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you're selling things, you might consider an affiliate program. In one of my startups, I had a couple of hundred affiliates signed on before I launched by giving away free copies. It resulted in hundreds of thousands in income the week we launched. Most of the sales came from the top 20 affiliates.

Potential affiliates are not hard to come by and you only pay if they perform. Just pretend you are a customer, search for your product/service in Google and contact everyone who is on the first page as ads or natural search and give them a copy of your product and ask them to promote it if they like it in exchange for a healthy commission. They've got the traffic, and many of them probably don't know how to monetize it.

It also helps to suggest ways for them to promote your product. For instance supplying custom emails for them to send out to their list, promoting it in their blog, adding your product as an up-sell when their customers buy their stuff from them etc.

You can also setup things like cross-promotional auto-responder messages, where you have a message in your auto-responder promoting them, and they do the same for you. No commissions required.

It all depends on what you're doing. If I knew what you were doing, I'd have much better advice.

Despite what at least one person said, article writing is a great way of getting natural traffic and being slowly gaining traction in Google. It just takes time and has to be done right. Don't over post and make sure you post it to your own site and get it indexed by the search engines before syndicating it.

There are other things you can do as well, like buying domain names that have pagerank and putting content on them that references your site. Risky if you ask me. Google will eventually black-list everyone who does that sort of thing.

</comment><comment><USER5> $0.00

Techcrunch, Twitter, YouTube, Digg, Facebook, news.yc, etc. are all extremely effective places to create buzz for no cost.

<comment><USER6> Unless you're building the next social news site or a bittorrent client, this is the wrong initial audience for your product. You want to find people that are actually in your target demographic, not the fickle digerati that try 10 new web services a day but never stick around at any of them.

You want your initial customer base to be your target demographic because their initial feedback will help shape future iterations of your product. If you just launch with the web 2.0 social news scene, their feedback will be less relevant and will take your product down a distracting path.

<comment><USER7> I never really thought of the "digerati" as actual _users_ for the product; they're more like "carriers" for a (memetic) disease--they'll talk about it to their non-technical friends, set up their own stuff using it as a platform, and so on.

(Not that I have any idea how the religious book market works, but) if you want to sell Bibles, do you go door-to-door, or do you just go to churches and try to get the preachers to use you as their source? The tech crowd are the preachers to the regular joe user--they're the ones interviewed for tech color pieces in the news, they're the ones deciding what software to install in your schools, libraries, workplaces, and government buildings; they're the ones who set your router filtering policies. If the students in a school can goof off on Facebook but not Myspace, guess which one the school's network will live on?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Ignore standard (and popular) BS of "promotion through blogging and social networks", that's a myth. A successful blog is a business on its own. PR companies have full-time bloggers, Facebook "friends" and even wikipedia editors to spread the word about their clients, and it will cost you serious money: on par with several full-time yearly salaries. And don't expect to become a Facebook after spending that much. Building a brand in consumer-space entertainment business costs millions of dollars (and some luck, still)

That is a bitter truth, assuming you're after building a sustainable business. That doesn't apply to you, however, if all you need is to get a couple thousand "early adopters", living mostly in Bay Area, create some awareness of what you're doing in SV-circles, hopefully reaching an ear of a potential acquirer so you could flip it for a few million, then hire a good SV-connected PR firm: that will cost you $10-20K/month or get admitted to YC and their PR machine will do the trick.

</comment><comment><USER9> Spend nothing, at first.

The first thing you need to do is create an "engine". Something where you can reliably introduce a user to it, and have that user ultimately invite at least 1 other user (on average). In modern hype-infused parlance, this is a "viral loop" (with a viral co-efficient of more than 1). But really, it's as old as the Internet.

You can achieve this in one of 3 ways:

1) Be surprising, controversial, funny, or useful. People always tell their peers about fabulous products.

2) Get scientific about viral marketing. Widgets, facebook apps, etc. This is hard for most businesses (but for others-- it's laughably easy... I know a guy who is serving up hundreds of millions of widget views on a product that essentially didn't evolve past the first 20-30 man hours of work).

3) Get smart about SEO (if your biz is a content play). This is really just a different flavor of viral marketing. Yelp, Digg, and other UGC sites have a great viral loop. Visitors come. Some create content. Content gets indexed. Indexing generates google traffic for new page, which brings in users. Rinse, repeat. Wait 2 years and you have a vast pile of indexed content.

If you can't do these, then you're stuck buying attention with time or money-- which scales VERY poorly unless you have a great opportunity for revenue/profit. If you can pull these off, then marketing dollars/time is just adding gasoline to a healthy little fire.

</comment><comment><USER10> I find low traffic sites on adbrite.com and use there CPM option to advertise on them. A website might have 500 visitors a day and cost .05 cents per CPM. So I can spend a few dollars (a month) and get full time advertising on a number of websites. For higher traffic sites use the fixed rate pricing if it is available.

<comment><USER10> Another idea

Step 1: Write an article between 300 and 500 words on your products target market, then suggest your product as the solution

Step 2: Submit your article to article submission sites such as articlebiz.com, crixi.com, electrictext.com, contentdesk.com

Step 3: Rework your article into a press release and then submit. PrLeap.com or PrWeb.com (about $120)

Step 4: Rework your article into a video. You can read your article over a slide presentation. Submit this to Youtube and other video sharing sites

Step 5. Turn your article into a podcast (audio only) and submit it to iTunes <http://www.apple.com/itunes/tutorials>

Step 6: Create a blog intro with your video code in it.

Step 7: Create a Squidoo Lens

Step 8: Social bookmark everything you have just done at propelier.com, digg.com, del.icio.us, stumbleupon.com, twitter.com, reddit.com, tagza.com, fark.com, newsvine.com, furl.net, swik.net, connotea.org, sphinn.com, blinklist.com, faves.com, mister-wong.com, spurl.net, netvouz.com, diigo.com, backflip.com, rawsugar.com, bibsonomy.org, folkd.com, linkagogo.com, indianpad.com, plugim.com, myjeeves.ask.com, jumptags.com, mixx.com, wirefan.com, danogo.com, ka-boom-it.com.

Repeat process!

<comment><USER11> Have you done this? What were the results?

<comment><USER12> I once paid a guy to write articles and submit them to these article sites. There were a few visitors coming from those sites at the beginning, but it didn't help much. (This has also been 2 years ago, things might have changed)

<comment><USER11> It sounds a bit like a plans sold by get rich quick sites. Instead, spend time improving your site.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> You really need to work backwards from the value of the customer. If you have something that directly monetises then you can calculate value of a register user and of a visitor. Back out your marketing budget from there.

However I am assuming you have a consumer app where it is very hard to calculate the value of a visitor/user. In that case you are looking at viral, social media, SEO and paid ads. Viral works if your product is intrinsically viral product (send to friend doesn't count). Social media works if have rich content (how to's, great photos, recent news). SEO is what you do if you can't do the first two (I know of one of the world's biggest travel social networks who never paid a penny on SEO). The problem with SEO is it takes a lot of time to build up traffic.

That brings you to paid advertising. I think paid advertising is great for getting everything kick started but the business model for paid ads doesn't stack up for free consumer apps. Hope that helps.

</comment><comment><USER11> With social media its hard to get above the noise level. To start out, you should have a company blog.

Also look for advertising coupons for Yahoo, MSN and Google. You need good analytics so you can tell what keywords/ads do the best. Only target search ads, avoid the spammy content networks when starting out.

Once you have some traffic coming in, look at what users are doing, tune your website to try to increase conversions.

Spend more money as you bring it in. What type of site? How does it generate money?

<comment><AUTHOR> used cars ads, it is by google ads, and an option to add photos that cost $4 - freeusedcarsads.com

<comment><USER5> I hope you guys realize that the above comment is the OP answering questions about the site trying to get marketed, so there's no need to vote him/her down.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> the minimum budget is whatever you can afford...

The standard (2) options are search engines and their paid advertising platform.

The "2.0" option is social media.

Option (1) __Search Engines __

have SEO done on your site; any traffic you don't have to pay for is the best, second register with only Google, Yahoo and MSN paid ads; spread your budget according to engine traffic and technology to catch click fraud, 65% google, 25% yahoo and 10% MSN (live).

\- adjust your budget according to cost per action on your site (setup analytics) to the correct engine for your audience (google = mainstream, every genre) (yahoo = less technical audience) (MSN = industrial and older)

option (2) __social media __

this is the hardest option and unless your site is naturally viral or something people would care about (in which case it would have probably already got "buzz" or users) trying a social media campaign on a site that your mom,dad,sister,brother or friend wouldn't visit more than once a week probably isn't worth your time (unless you have that in abundance)

if you need any free advice email me.

</comment><comment><USER15> We've spent 0 so far, and have had pretty good results. The blog is huge, and I started the company blog almost six months BEFORE launch. I'm also active in the general tech community and try and leave meaningful comments on the blogs that matter to what we're trying to do. And it has paid dividends. We're still in private alpha, but will be opening up our doors in 2 weeks.

Then its SEO, SEO and more SEO.

</comment><comment><USER16> _".. What is the minimun budget to promote a site? ..."_

How much does it take to make a demo, blog about it? Show don't tell. Tell some friends & let them loose on a demo. Getting users is the objective, then some feedback. Create your (scalable) feedback loop: email, blog comments.

</comment><comment><USER17> Agree with Kyro. Try to go as far as you can without any marketing budget. It takes a lot more effort, working on getting discovered by users, but I don't think it's any less effective than paid marketing, and possibly even more effective in the initial stages.

</comment><comment><USER18> 0 bucks.

</comment><comment><USER19> Your all living in dreamland. No one is going to really give a toss about an article here or there, in whatever blog or whatever advert they see. The point is: The internet works a specific way. People who are 'in need' can find that on the net by 'search'. These are the only people that are worth targeting because they are the only ones who give a shit about what your selling/offering. The point is very simple. If you want to launch a Website you have to spend a small fortune, and heres what on:

0) Have an old domain, New domains are penalized thus take 6 months or more to get top for 2 word search terms. 1 word search terms can take 2 years.

1) Correct SEO, your site will be indexed properly and optimized for your targets. Miss this and miss your target.

2) Link building, this is getting harder all the time. Google see link building as the enemy and are doing all they can to discount unnatural links.

3) Remove all barriers to entry, no sign ups etc, immediate gratification.

4) Innovation and content. Killer apps that people find useful and content that is compelling.

For the record, I have about 10 popular domains, have been recently featured on Techcrunch twice and all of the suggested blogs, which are all good, but at the end of the day, search traffic is what counts in the long run.

This is precisely why Facebook and other social platforms perform so badly for advertisers, people using them are simply not in search mode. That and the adverts online are totally crap!

<comment><USER9> Here are a few examples of companies that didn't follow this path (at first): Google, Apple, Craigslist, Ebay, Yahoo, Microsoft, Facebook, Youtube... I could probably think of more, but you get the jist.

SEO is important to a lot of businesses (especially ecommerce and UGC plays), but not worth early focus for a lot of others.

<comment><USER19> so when i search google for a red widget i never see ebay listings? are you f kidding? MS was before the net, as was apple, so count them out as they are manufactures not websites, google came up with the best search (given my argument is that the net is all about search) algo and thus gained success, so they dont count. Myspace made its way through the fog with SPAM, youtube got big because they tapped into myspace offering the best music video service, and lost 1 million a month in the process (im still not even sure if they have actually made any profit and I seriously doubt it), social networks have poor quality traffic, albeit alot of it, which costs them a fortune in data centers and makes no cash, Can I safely say the only social network to be in profit is linkedin.

"but not worth early focus for a lot of others" Total crap.

<comment><USER9> "Total Crap"? Normally I don't respond to people who can't manage to be polite, but I'm going to make an exception. Here's the quote you should re- read:

"Here are a few examples of companies that didn't follow this path (at first)". Note the "at first". Ebay is certainly focused on SEO right now.

The point is that you can get great without SEO-- and companies often do. And the (unspoken) point was that for some companies, search isn't how their products are found.

Low cost distribution is key for startups, but SEO isn't the only way to get that, and often it's a really inefficient way.

If you were starting salesforce.com today, would you hire an SEO specialist among your first 5 hires? Your first 20? How about 37 signals? What percentage of their traffic do you think comes from generalized search (beyond search for their brand name(s)). How about Slide and RockYou? iLike? Do you think SEO should be an early priority for a widget company?

FWIW, I ran a web consultancy for 7 years with a lot of focus on SEO. I'm a big believer in the value of SEO for many types of businesses... Just not all.

Also FWIW, I'm currently running a business that is growing 7-9% per week for the last 16 weeks (that's 3000%+ annual) with no marketing and negligible SEO (virtually all organic search is for a brand name search). We've got some interesting SEO plans, but I maintain that it's a bad thing to focus on for us right now.

<comment><USER19> This response is at least an argument! Sorry to sound impolite, but bad advice/decisions costs money. Your main point is that there is another way. OK of course I accept that, but your examples are pretty lousy mind, these are not mum and pup stores, (like the free car ads site the author of this question is promoting).

I insist, even if you have a viral web app/widget, to not focus on SEO from day 1 is missing the whole point of the net and will cost you bucket loads in the long run at best.

FWIW I would be very interested to hear of the app / widget that you are enjoying the 8% weekly growth. Mine is myplaylist which is also enjoying high viral growth.

<comment><USER9> RescueTime.com is my current startup (YCO8). Previous startup (which sold in 2006) was an SEO play, so I've done it both ways.

Again, the point I was making (with 10 years of professional SEO experience under my belt) was that for some companies, search isn't how their products are found... If that's the case, an early focus on SEO (the time consuming part-- not the "low hanging fruit") is distracting from more effective distribution channels.

The degree to which you focus on SEO should be proportional to how much your customers are searching for what you offer (you should also roll into the equation the KEI/competitiveness of the target keywords).

There are plenty of businesses whose target customers do NOT USE GOOGLE as a tool find the product. 37Signals is a great mom-and-pop example. Building the next great search engine is another example (people wouldn't search for "search engine"). There are countless others. In addition, any business that's diving into mature verticals where Google is claiming the "2nd click" (weather, images, etc) ought to seriously consider eschewing SEO as an early strategy in favor of other distribution efforts.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you list your skills on your resume? - <AUTHOR> How do you separate all the different types of tools? Do you use bullet points? Or paragraphs? I always have trouble deciding how to list skills such as programming languages, cloud provider tools, databases, frameworks, processing tools, etc. without using too much space.<p>Thanks. <comment><USER2> As someone who has been on the interviewing side of the table, here's my unsolicited advice.

Highlight the skills that are relevant to the position you're applying for.

Don't list absolutely EVERYTHING on the resume. Leave something for the interview.

Bonus points if you can tell me how you used $RELEVANT_SKILL to solve $RELEVANT_PROBLEM that $PROSPECTIVE_EMPLOYER is needing solved.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's what I do normally. But the rule of the 5 second look is what makes me doubt about how to structure the skills. Thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> At the very end, just before education (the only "required" item that's less relevant to a thoughtful hiring manager once you're a few years into a career but that too many recruiters will screen on).

I use one bullet point for each of several topics and then a list of terms for that topic. The main purpose is to get through keyword matchers.

For instance:

* Languages: Python, Swift, Java, Ruby, PHP, Perl

* Databases: MySQL, PostgreSQL, Cassandra

Etc

</comment><comment><USER4> It's usually more insightful if you name the tools in the subscription of the job you had/have.

</comment><comment><USER5> I don't list any such thing on my resume. I consider such listings junior or entry level attempting to gain attention of automated filters.

Instead I list the major public projects I have completed and describe contributions to group efforts.

In an introductory paragraph I explain the few language I prefer to work in and that I am not interested in spending time with frameworks or configuring tools. My reasoning for this is to intentionally make my resume less popular so that I capitalize on my skills and accomplishments opposed to jumping into the common mediocrity. As a senior developer with many years experience, a strong portfolio, and two employers I can afford the patience to look for work I would rather do instead of the paycheck I immediately need.

<comment><USER6> You can be selective about your work without being a snob.

<comment><USER5> Not in my experience as a software developer.</comment></comment></comment>


A Truly Fancy Bear: Did Trump Win Because Russia Hacked the Election? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@DaleBeran/a-truly-fancy-bear-2384f413df1c <comment><USER2> I don't understand why any machine has to be involved in the public voting part.

I've worked as a volunteer in elections here. All paper, no electronics or even mechanical systems involved. It's relatively hard to compromise such a process, you would need to corrupt all the volunteers at one voting place, with different party backgrounds etc., and even then it would only affect a tiny portion of votes and probably wouldn't make a big difference.

When the count is done, you see the paper stacks for each party.

The per-district counts from the central counting places are published, so you can easily see if something is wrong compared to what you saw at the voting place.

Also from it's trivial to verify that the totals match on the higher levels, it's just addition. So from that point on, it doesn't matter if they use computers or not.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Even the fact that this is a serious possibility is an indictment of the machinery of US elections it seems to me. A free and fair democracy pretty much depends on the trustworthiness of it's electoral process.</comment>


Are Computer Languages Irrelevant? - <AUTHOR> http://broadcast.oreilly.com/2008/11/are-computer-languages-irrelev.html

<comment><USER2> _Virtualization of the operating system is also taking place. Most languages written this decade do not talk directly to the underlying system. Instead, the language is intended to run a virtual machine that in turn performs the execution at the lowest level._

Virtual machines virtualize the _processor_ , not the operating system.

Leaving aside the nitpicking, the basic argument appears to be that imperative languages will be replaced with "standardized abstract declarative descriptions". Of course, these are just another kind of programming language.

<comment><USER3> I don't think he's referring to "virtual machines" (which I think tend to run one operating system 'within' another (ergo much more than the processor)).

He's talking about programming languages which generally run in a virtual machine (e.g. the JVM) or other interpreted environments (e.g. ruby, javascript, et.al).

<comment><USER2> Right. The JVM implements a virtual instruction set (JVM bytecode); it does _not_ virtualize the operating system.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I found this a difficult read, and difficult to draw a conclusion from. I think partially because I think the title is quite misleading - it should be "how will languages evolve?".

Also, it's surprising that this article doesn't touch on the Semantic Web; which is clearly one of the initiatives that is key to all of this... Although he does mention the important of ontologies.

Right now I don't buy the premise that we'll just be wiring (mashing) together components in any near future.

<comment><USER3> Yes, it was a bit longer than necessary to make his point. I think the general point is that programming is more about information and system architecture and less about the details of one particular language. I tend to agree with this view.

I agree that RDF and the semantic web folks are also working on related concepts (as are the PBEL / web-services folks). The programming landscape seems to be changing faster and faster, so I do think that we will end up with several good meta-programming environments in the near future.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Someone needs to read, or re-read, "No Silver Bullet"

<comment><USER6> Brooks somewhere notes that the only/best candidate for a 'silver bullet' is reuse -- and I see that as the backbone of the article, or at least the proposed vision. Essential complexity cannot be eliminated, of course, but it can be avoided -- and that can be done more effectively.</comment></comment>