Ask HN: CS major who doesn't want to code. Am I in the wrong major? - <AUTHOR> I am currently in my 3rd year as a Computer Science major. I choose CS cause I love technology and still do. Its just that I do not see myself in a stereotypical "coding job" cause that is not who I am.
I am a very outgoing and people person and am hoping for a job of the business/marketing/management side of a technology company. I am also the founder of the Entrepreneurs Club at Georgia Tech.
I look at my job prospects and people want CS major for coding jobs only.
Am I in the wrong major? <comment><USER3> _Am I in the wrong major?_

Yes.

You (and some others) may not like what I'm about to say, but you asked for it, so here goes...

In all the years I've been in technology, it has typically taken me about 28 seconds to determine if another person was "fluent" more than one or two levels below the surface.

Those that were were almost always programmers, engineers, or technicians at one time or another. Everyone else was at best managers and business people, or at worst, administrators or posers.

I know some might disagree with me, but a Computer Science major who doesn't want to code is like a dental student who doesn't want to look into anyone's mouth.

To get good in technology, and I mean really good, you must get under the hood, deeply and often. The best and most logical way to do this is by programming. And you will have to do this intensely and for long hours, so _you have to love it_.

The single biggest difference I've seen between great programmers and everyone else is a pure love for what they do. Intelligence matters, work habits matter, ability to work with other people matters, but make no mistake about it, there is no substitute for passion.

Great technologists love what they do so much, they can't wait to get back to it. They have to check on their work after dinner. They have to review their notes at bed time. They are often the first in the office in the morning and just as often the last to leave. They read and learn voraciously and can't wait to apply their skills to new problems. They're so busy doing what they love, they don't even think of it as "working 9 to 5".

By your own description, you do not sound like this. So do yourself (and the rest of us) a favor and find something you love and major in that. If, on the other hand, it's too late or it doesn't make sense to switch majors, then go ahead and finish your CS major, but please find a direction to follow that puts you in work you love. Be forewarned, though. Unless you're a programmer first, you probably won't make a very good sales engineer or project manager. You may want to consider sales or even (dare I say) proceeding on to business school for your MBA.

<comment><USER4> This and a thousand times this. If you don't want to code - you are wasting your time being a CS major.

<comment><USER5> I had a lecturer in CS who didn't really code and would freely admit it. A LOT of what she lectured stuck and I've used it everyday in my programming jobs.

CS != programming.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Dijkstra said, "Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes." It's more than that though. Computer Science is no more about _most programming languages_ than astronomy is about telescopes.

There are a lot of people who code giant Java or PHP projects and think it's Computer Science. It's not. It's not even interesting.

Computer Science, at its heart, is a form of mathematics. Its progress, at best, stems from that, and is simple, elegant and beautiful.

<comment><USER7> Too right. People who want to be coders shouldn't be CS majors (though the better coders tend to be CS majors), they should be IT majors and study programming. People who want to understand the theories of computation should take CS. It's that simple.

It's a common misconception that programming = CS. It stems from the fact that programming just so happens to be a very convenient way to compute things, so it happens to be what most people who don't understand CS see.

<comment><USER8> In most universities, the computer science program is the best way for people to learn how to program. In the future, I think CS departments will split into software engineering (which focuses on teaching students how to program and engineer software) and computer science (which prepares students for careers researching in the field of computer science). But that's not how things are in most places.

Also, "theory of computation" is an area of computer science theory. There is much more to a CS curriculum than theory of computation.

<comment><USER7> >In most universities, the computer science program is the best way for people to learn how to program. In the future, I think CS departments will split into software engineering (which focuses on teaching students how to program and engineer software) and computer science (which prepares students for careers researching in the field of computer science). But that's not how things are in most places.

Too right. I agree with this. I think that the "field" of software has generally gone in three directions.

1\. How do you compute it (or Thinking about it)? That's CS 2\. How do you plan to build it (or Planning it)? That's Software Engineering 3\. Go build it (or Doing it)! That's IT

Sadly, at least at my alma mater, the trend of keeping these three fields separate has reversed. Instead, with budget cuts, the departments have merged under the CS umbrella. I think this continues to push forward the layman idea of these three things being equal because of how they are co-mingled -- but really they are as separate of disciplines as Physics is from Road Paving.

Ideally the number of students and practitioners in each fields should be distributed like a pyramid (a la any other engineering discipline). Most people doing, fewer people planning, and even fewer people thinking.

>Also, "theory of computation" is an area of computer science theory. There is much more to a CS curriculum than theory of computation.

I guess I also agree with this. I've always chafed at calling Computer Science the "Science of Computing" though since it's not a science in the classical sense. But everything I ever learned in my undergrad (not counting unrelated curriculum coursework) was definitely related to "computing" in even a loose sense of the term. I just don't think calling it the discipline of "computing" makes it any more clear since "computing" - the act of using a computer (like a Mac) and "computing" the act of performing computations, are easily confused. The "Theory of Computing" has always seemed to have the best balance while providing context for "computing". But I'm open to accepting other 2 word descriptions ;)

<comment><USER8> Software engineering is a young field. While I think separate SE and CS degrees is how things should be in the future, I'm not sure it's the right thing to do now. I recognize that SE programs do exist, but we (as a species) are still new at building software. We've been doing the other engineering disciplines much longer. And as you point out, we're unlikely to see programs split in a poor economy.

(I do have to disagree with your point 3: building it is very much engineering. I consider IT management and service of computing resources and information.)

<comment><USER7> All true, I think the very fact that we can have an interesting discussion about where the three major disciplines draw their respective lines is evidence of the immaturity of the respective fields.

I have a feeling that, with the way the three disciplines overlap, when everything finally shakes out we'll probably see the formation of a few more disciplines. We've been doing math, science, engineering and building things for thousands of years, but software for not even a century.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Maybe. But your major doesn't have to define who you are or will become - it's just a thing.

<comment><USER10> It's also worth remembering that there are vast numbers of jobs that don't specify a CS degree, but where being a technical or semi-technical person helps.

If you're good at interacting with people and have a background in technology that makes you very valuable - look at the spread of jobs in consultancy and team leadership (software development end of the scale), technical writing (aka information development), technical pre-sales (explaining technical stuff to non-technical people).

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Being in a _coding job_ is one thing, _enjoying_ writing code and building things is another. I can fully understand not wanting to be the stereotypical code monkey who sits in a dark room and outputs code. So the real question is, do you dislike the _subject matter_ or the _imagined career_. If the former, then you have a problem. If the latter, you can probably escape the stereotype by founding or working at something smaller.

</comment><comment><USER12> Here's a few thoughts for you:

1 - I know of no major whose job outside of college resembles what you study.

2 - I went to Georgia Tech, '87-'92. Yep, a long time, as I was a co-op student and had several entrepreneurial jaunts along the way. I chose EE as a major as I specifically did not want to study CS since I had been programming for 5 years prior to college and the first 2 years of the CS curriculum looked boring to me. I have not used my EE education any more than I would have any other discipline in my entrepreneurial life.

3 - My work as a co-op student gave me clear perspective that what I was learning in school would not be what I would do afterwards. Changing majors would not have effected this. In fact my work as a co-op gave me a better "MBA" than what I feel most learn from the world's most revered MBA programs. I can't say this is the case for all co-op students as I was handed a dream job surrounded by industry veterans that loved to be my mentor. Even with that, I still didn't know what I wanted to be for the rest of my life ;).

4 - Don't worry about your job outlook. It will change by the time you graduate. Stay the course with your CS degree and continue your entrepreneurial thread. A true entrepreneur is one for life. You have no idea what you will do or if and when you'll make a windfall of money.

5 - I don't always like to code, it just happens that I'm pretty good at it and was able to fall back on coding work to supplement my income to support bootstrapping my own projects. It comes and goes. I enjoy a job well done even when it was tough to get motivated. You will most likely have to bootstrap things yourself and coding skills can play a big role.

</comment><comment><USER13> In my experience, the best managers / product designers of programmers know how to program. This helps them tremendously in understanding how to set goals and expectations. It is very difficult for non-coders to know what is a very difficult task (e.g. data deduplication) vs. what is an easy feature to add.

<comment><USER14> There is a real need for people who can bridge the gap between programmers and non-programmers (end users, clients, supervisors, co-workers).

After graduating with my information systems degree 10 years ago, I started a small software company. Three years later, I was concerned that since my strongest skill was programming that I was doomed to be a programmer. I went back and got my MBA from Texas A&M (2 intense semesters followed by a very light 3rd semester).

Pairing the MBA with my technical background has proven to be very beneficial. I can interact with my customers or occasional clients and really understand their needs from a non-technical perspective and then I can then go back to the office and work with a developer either in pair programming or just in a project management role.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Not at all. If I could choose between either an entrepreneur with an entrepreneurship major or a CS major, the CS major would win hands down every time. It seems a lot of CS/CIS majors prepare you for "coding jobs" in fortune 500 IT, which is a real shame. The degree is what you make of it.

<comment><AUTHOR> That is my problem mostly. I love coding and do it for fun. Its just that I can't convince myself to get a desk job where I stare a monitor from 9 to 5.

<comment><USER16> To be honest, most (professional) jobs nowadays require staring at a monitor 9-5.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> At some point around the third year of my CS degree at Georgia Tech I went through a similar realization (I wonder if it's something about the curriculum): I understood that while I was smart, competent, and able to get through the curriculum with good grades, I was never going to be a "rock star" programmer. And, indeed, I realized I didn't want to become one, because it wasn't really my passion in life.

Do I think that means I finished my degree with the wrong major? No, not really. Like you, I'm interested in technology and I felt I could still contribute something worthwhile to that world. The understanding and ability to code are still things that have a huge benefit.

There are plenty of opportunities for people with that background as well -- from technical sales (on the more people-oriented side of the scale) to program or product management at software companies (on the more tech-oriented side). I'm a Program Manager at Microsoft, and while I don't code as part of my job, I feel like I wouldn't be able to interact with developers and testers nearly the same way if I didn't graduate with a degree in CS. You should look into positions like this and see if they sound interesting. Here's a great writeup by Steven Sinofsky, president of the Windows division at Microsoft: [http://blogs.msdn.com/techtalk/archive/2005/12/16/504872.asp...](http://blogs.msdn.com/techtalk/archive/2005/12/16/504872.aspx)

Long story short: Stick with CS. There will be plenty of opportunities to get further away from the technology if that's what you decide to do, but very few opportunities to get back into it if you let your skills wither while you're still in school.

</comment><comment><USER18> The most profitable ventures are always at a junction of two tings. In your case a junction of someone who can code on one hand and who can see the point of another coder and negotiate to the agreement on the other hand is very valuable in any large company. Product development in large companies always requires more coordination between different teams than is available, so you just can't go wrong by targeting this niche. Do both and you will do well.

As a matter of staging, get a coding job in a large company. Straight out of college the expectations will be fairly low for you, so meeting coding expectations would be easy. Use the spare time to seek out right-sized communication gaps in projects that are important for your skip-level manager, suggest improving it, provide your budget (I will spend one week on this, this and this) and make a tiny but clearly measurable progress. If you make a decent effort you will be noticed, if you succeed after first three attempts you will be fast-tracked.

Remember that engineers respect other engineers, so if you start with coding and especially a coding _achievement_ you will come from the position of strength compared to any regular program/project manager.

</comment><comment><USER19> A classmate of mine graduated with a degree in computer science, and went on to law school. I was initially puzzled by his decision, but now applaud him! Society needs more lawyers with a solid understanding of software technology.

<comment><USER20> I also know several lawyers who started with a degree in computer science. It may be a more common path than you'd think.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I was once at the same place you are with regard to CS, albeit at Virginia Tech (go Hokies!). I would suggest seriously considering an MIS program in your business school. I switched to Business Information Technology (VT's MIS program) after two full years of CS, and it was the best thing I've ever done. The programming experience I gained through CS has served me well, but the business skills learned in the business school have served me far more. I'm currently working on my MBA, something I definitely wouldn't be doing if I had stayed in CS.

If you're interested at all in starting your own company, which you definitely seem to be, I'd definitely recommend switching majors. The network of people you will meet in a business program will prove far more valuable than CS.

Edit: Good luck in the ACC champ game!

</comment><comment><USER22> No, you're not in the wrong major but you do need to look at fields outside just "programming."

A smart girl I used to work with realized that she was more interested in the business than in coding & testing and left to become a Business Analyst. The job suits her personality much more than being a coder did and she's good at it. Basically her job now entails meeting with customers to elicit requirements and understand their needs from a business perspective. Having a CS background gives her the ability to talk to both business people and technical people and be able to translate between either "world."

In software development today, your interpersonal skills are much more valuable than technical skills. I rarely turn down an job candidate for tech skills: it's almost always a personality problem.

</comment><comment><USER23> I am exactly in the same position as you, just got my bachelor in CS - <USER2> in Europe (Switzerland), and don't want to code for a living, even if I enjoy it.

In my opinion one solution would be IT or management consulting. You'll be travelling around, getting to know many people, etc... And I think it gives you the exact tools you'll need if you want to become a entrepreneur later (social network, overview of how businesses are managed, what they need, you get the picture).

Some consulting companies that love to hire CS majors here in Switzerland: \- The big 3 (BCG, McKinsey, Bain) \- Accenture (seems to be present in Europe only) \- ...

<comment><USER24> That's exactly what I'm going to be doing with my Computer Engineering degree (like CS with some electrical engineering thrown in), but in the US with Deloitte Consulting.

I had the exact same conflict, where I didn't want to be programming every day for eternity, and this will give me the opportunity to travel around and see a ton of different companies. Granted, I'm expecting to get worked to the bone and get tired of staying in hotels every week, but it'll be a fun experience that should let me move into something awesome.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Well, I'm a CS major (or whatever you want to call to the european equivalent) and I don't code for a living.

I'm a systems administrator, and while I like to program and do so fairly frequently (both for fun, and on the job), I just can't see myself as a programmer, at least in the near future.

I find most "real-world" programming to be quite boring. And doing it day-in day-out would just burn me out of it real quick.

Of course, there are some programming jobs I can see myself taking. But making business apps or web stuff isn't one of them, and that's pretty much the whole market right now.

</comment><comment><USER26> Nah. I'm a CS major who just left his first job (which was a coding job) for something different and hope to go to law school soon. Half the people I work with are CS majors who decided to go into business.

But being a CS major has helped. From being able to break down a problem and create a concrete solution to the fact that our spreadsheets work better and are easier to read, the things we learned as a CS major are very helpful.

Treat it as learning a particular way of thinking and I think you'll be fine. Treat it as "learning how to code" and you might regret it.

However, now that you've realized other majors might be interesting, I would suggest minimizing your CS courses and finding other courses that interest you. Take a marketing class instead of a class on compilers or something. Get a minor in something you really want to go into. Or, better yet, study something you'll never get the chance to learn about again (at least until you retire).

Edit: Sorry, one thing I didn't consider is that some colleges do core classes for 2 years and then classes for the major afterwards (didn't do this at my college). If thats the case for you, then I'd suggest looking into a CS minor and maybe some other major.

</comment><comment><USER27> Your first job doesn't mean it's what you'll always do.

My first job was a mostly coding job (even tough it was really not "just" coding) but it quickly morphed into something else. If you are good and you are interested, there are many other things possible than just sitting at your desk 9 to 5. Nowadays I very rarely code on my day job and when I do, it usually is fun (unless its Excel macros, that doesn't count).

</comment><comment><USER28> You are not in trade school. Take control of your life :-)

Most things in CS are able to be studied both empirically and theoretically. For example, Scott Aaronson is a CS theorist at MIT who has admitted to doing just a little BASIC programming in school. I took no computer science courses, but now I code full-time.

Are you passionate about _something_? What is it? Do that, and don't worry about your major.

<comment><USER12> Georgia Tech was originally called "North Avenue Trade School" ;)

<comment><USER29> Damn, beat me to the quip :OD

<comment><USER12> I think maybe the OP is just feeling a bit down today about his college life due to our poor showing against UGA two days ago. ;)

<comment><USER29> I was expecting to deliver such a fine fine spanking to the dogs too. Oh well. Piss on them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> No I don't think you are in the wrong major. I was in your same boat, for the majority of college I wanted to switch to being a political science major. But now I started my own company and I code everyday. The worst part, I love it, coding and all.

So I think you have two options coming out of your major in your position. (1) you don't code, but that's ok because at least you'll have a technical background which will enable you to do a lot of cool things (tech consulting, tech ibanking, project management, etc.). or (2) you find out you really do like to code, at which point you're happy anyways.

Last, but not least, most things in college you can learn by simply picking up a book and reading about it. The only critical classes I took in college were several of my upper-division CS classes that I would not be motivated to learn about (ie. how to build a CPU) and accounting 101. As such, whatever your choice, at least you gave CS a shot, and that has defined another set of paths for you given your current disposition.

</comment><comment><USER31> I'm not sure if I want to say you are in the wrong major, but I think there is a current disconnect between what people learn in high school and what people learn in college.

High-schools need to start informing students that what ever their major is in college, it doesn't necessarily affect what they will do out of college. I know a lot of great programmers who were history majors, and a lot of tech industry managers who were engineers.

What matters in college is that you are taking classes that you enjoy. If you are spending $20,000+ a year to just get a piece of paper, you are wasting your time. you need to find something that makes you happy and increases your knowledge of the world. for me, that happens to be CS, but if you aren't happy taking CS courses, get out now! Find something that you enjoy and do it, you are wasting your time and everyone else's if you are in something just for the money.

</comment><comment><USER32> No, you are not in the wrong major. There are many career paths available to you. I work for Boeing, and we have a lot of people in systems engineering roles. They define requirements, perform integration, and generally do a lot buisness like tasks on the engineering side of the org chart. There is Quality Assurance, where you need to understand code but not necessarily write it. In addition to that there is Configuration Management. Our current SCM lead is not a coder but you need general technical ability.

Those are just a few examples, but it shows that there are careers out there that require a technical background but don't involve coding.

However don't expect to jump int business/marketing/management" out of the gate with a cs degree. Your going to be competing against mba's, and people with marketing degrees.

</comment><comment><USER33> I think CS is too heavy for most programming jobs, much less for non-coding technology jobs. You'd probably be much better served having a business major or some sort of technology commercialization or even some sort of technical (or not ) writing, or psychology or math degree. CS is about reading papers other CS guys wrote, writing papers for other CS guys to read, and typically doing very little real world work. There's an exception to every rule, but I had CS professors who I feel would have been amazed if you showed them this amazing Internet concept that had flourished by building on top of the OSI model... :P That being said, your major != your career... though don't tell any HR department employees that or they'll tar and feather you.

</comment><comment><USER34> A few thoughts come to mind here for me.

First ... So don't take a stereotypical coding job; whatever your definition of that may be. I've personally in general avoided big companies my whole career to avoid what I see as the stereotypical coding job - too many meetings, too much waterfall style development and way too much bureaucracy which I find myself unable to navigate. It's served me fairly well in that I get a chance to do a lot of different things. Small companies need more versatile staff - people who can do systems and network work as well as coding. Who can help design and architect systems as well as coding. These things from my standpoint let me enjoy technology while not going insane spending 12 hours a day producing cogs and widgets. And of course the option exists for you to go the route you are obviously culturing of Entrepeneurism. If you can handle both the technical and business sides you may have an advantage as you can work both sides of the equation. But beware of becoming the dreaded business-guy who produces crappy code and expects his programmers to take it as holy writ from upon high. If you plan on blending business and technical keep your skills and knowledge polished and relevant. (Yes, I've had a few of those. Including one who would "Align" all his code in the gutter [aka no freaking tabs] and freak out if anyone reformatted it)

Second... The degree does not make the man. Personally, I'm an autodidact although I originally pursued a Criminal Justice degree. The best programmers I've worked with personally (keep in mind the plural of anecdote isn't data) have all had either no degree, or had a degree in an unrelated subject. I've worked with chemistry, physics, English and history majors all of whom were stellar programmers. While the fundamentals are important, it's the capacity for learning and doing something that you enjoy that matters much, much more. If you think you have the core concepts of CS at a point that they're useful to you, change majors. Go get a business degree, or one in physical education if it makes you happy.

Just use what you know, and what you think you can learn in the future to best advantage.

</comment><comment><USER35> If you're good at interacting with people and a computer science major you do have an edge over most computer science majors:-)

Perhaps you can minor in business or other area and see whether that helps with your job prospects better. I think you're "selling yourself" wrong...

</comment><comment><USER36> No. Despite what people are saying there are a bazillion such jobs for a smart, non-coder, person to grab hold of.

Ultimately "the wrong major" comes down to the course content. CS courses can vary wildly - the one at my uni (I never was on it) was very business oriented for example. If your enjoying the course then there seems no reason to consider it the wrong one.

However beware: do talk to people who are happy to be critical of you (and you trust to tell the truth) and find out if you ARE a people person. With the best will in the world every single person I have ever met claiming to be a "people person" generally isn't. I'm sure you are: but it's worth checking :)

</comment><comment><USER37> Does your college have an MIS focus? When I was in college, you'd chose a few focus areas for some of your electives. In the Business dept, they had an MIS focus which included some of the entry level CS classes, software process type stuff, and then some management-type classes from the business dept. It might be more for you.

Generally though, I'd agree. If you don't want to code, CS isn't the best fit for you.

Although in our field, it is quite unique that what your degree is in really doesn't matter. I several coworkers, who are great developers, with degrees in Political Science, History, and other completely non-tech fields.

<comment><USER29> Georgia Tech doesn't really have a MIS focus for an undergrad degree. They have a MBA-esque degree which is a 60 hours masters which is however.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> What's a "stereotypical coding job"? I didn't know such a thing existed..

Working in a 3 person startup in a loft is very different from Fortune 100 IT dept, different still from writing code in a research lab, or freelancing, or out in the "field" in remote places, or programming lathes and CNCs on a machine shop floor. I know people who started with CS degrees doing all of these things.

Since you're still in college, I'd suggest you just finish your degree and try a bunch of different challenges. If you love coding, you'll find a place where you fit in.

<comment><USER9> I think I had one fresh out of college... It was a Windows shop where everyone was expected to spend the day in Visual C++ and never stop typing in code from 9 to 5 (with small breaks allowed for lunch and pointless meetings). Googling things or reading slashdot was more or less culturally forbidden. Collaboration was subtly punished in the sense that if you spent too much time at someone else's cube discussing a problem, the manager would interrupt and assume we weren't working and were just screwing around.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Yes, you are in the wrong major. If you're looking to be involved in the business aspect of a technology company, a computer science degree will not be very useful. I have a BS in computer science, and in my experience, the curriculum was often too theoretical even for people who become full-time programmers. If you're not interested in the nuts and bolts of software, it offers even less.

Unless you're planning on continuing education to get something like an MBA, switch majors now.

</comment><comment><USER40> Honestly, switching majors isn't that big of a deal. It is better if you figure this out now, rather than after you've worked in the industry for 5 years. Some people see it as a "failure". This is wrong. You are just figuring out what you like, and what you are best at.

I'd imagine a lot of your credits would transfer to a program in management. Alternatively, finish your CS degree and go to law school. There is a shortage of lawyers who understand tech. Or do an MBA.

</comment><comment><USER41> Depends, if you by "I don't want to code" you mean you suck at it so you're thinking of going into management then yes I'd say you are in the wrong major.

Junior year is the point when most CS programs really start to get difficult if it were just about not wanting to code might you not have figure that out freshman year?

</comment><comment><USER42> I don't think the corporate-slave orientation is limited to CS students. If you're into entrepreneurship, you'll probably feel out of place in any technology-related major, especially if you only look for job prospects at campus job fairs.

</comment><comment><USER43> Look at _Product Manager_ and/or _Sales Engineer_ openings. There are a few companies that hire people right out of school for such positions.

<comment><USER44> Agreed, sales engineering is a great way to start if you have a technical background but want to spend more of your time interacting with people. Beyond becoming familiar with the sales process and improving your communication skills, the most valuable part of that position is that you are exposed to real customers with real problems.

<comment><USER45> Just chiming in with agreement on this one. If you are interested in business, CS can be a valuable background to have.

Look for jobs that put you in the more administrative/management side of a software project, and then transition from there to building your own company.

Having CS credentials will give you more street cred with programmers who you'll ultimately try to rope in with a startup you want to found. Without those credentials, they'd likely just view you as "just another business guy with an idea".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Your major doesn't really have much to do with your job. The CS you learn in school doesn't really make you a good programmer anyway...

</comment><comment><USER47> I'd say no. I've been continually disappointed in the coding part of the university education. It is much more about theory than a technical degree. I'm a code monkey, all I want to do is write code, and learn to write better code.

You on the other hand would be great for management, which I've seen lots of my friends with CS degrees who don't like coding more into in the work force. Stick with it, there are plenty of jobs for you!

</comment><comment><USER48> Sounds like you'd be a good candidate for an associate product manager role at Google.

</comment><comment><USER29> Howdy fellow GT CS person (although I graduated many moons ago)

You have plenty with a capital P jobs available to you as a CS major with no love of code.

However, the entry level position with someone in your degree will typically be, pretty much, coding. You don't know enough about anything else to even be marginally useful. (Remember, I have the same degree you're pursuing). Depending on how much you've co-oped or interned, you may be one hair of one bit useful, but chances are you aren't even that, in anything, not even coding, but you're more likely useful in a coding position than in anything else.

Other jobs: MS Has entry level PM track positions

Consulting companies such as Deloite, etc (of which there are lots) have positions which are more about meetings and less about coding (but require ~80% travel).

There are LOTSS of technical sales jobs about. You work on commission though, for the most part, and you often have to have pretty good base knowledge of the field, for some you have to code pretty well, others not so much. Honestly, if you're still a 3rd year, and want to learn sales, I'd go start a Clear wireless dealership right now and sell sell sell (They are in Atlanta at the moment, and appear to be cheap to start. Franchises are the most likely to succeed form of small business out there).

Now onto jobs past the first couple years:

First off: I too am quite "outgoing" as you'd say. I run a small consulting and product development company. But I'm also a deep deep code guy. Liking talking to people does not by any means mean you're going to be one of those unwashed guys in the Old CoC smelling like BO and playing wow all the time in their time off who's height of social interaction is a LAN party or anime fest (sorry to pander to stereotypes).

In our field today, there is a HUGE premium for _translators_. I land so many contracts because I can explain deeply technical issues to businesspeople in the terms that they care about (risks, costs, etc) while still getting across the technology. If you can get fascinated by the technology as well as working on your communication skills, you can land similar positions.

Secondly: CS is still paying well, and hasn't hit a huge of a downturn as many of the other majors available to you that fit your current skill set. If you're interested in doing something entrepreneurial, then CS is by far one of the cheapest fields to do that sort of thing in. That alone should keep you looking at CS as a means to the end and make you learn how to do something deep.

Lastly: CS is not just programming. While I studied systems and embedded programming, there is a LOT of work in software engineering that is pretty much herding people all day long. I will caution you against spending too much time in that department, because you will strangle any entrepreneurial endeavor under too much process if you get that stuff too much in your blood (it's really better suited to mid-large sized companies).

Additionally, if they haven't changed it massively since I went there, GT is WAAAAAAY too in love with somewhat older, non-MS languages.

Try some python or some C#, or even some AS3. You may be surprised how joyfully productive those languages are for you at this point compared to some sort of matlab/C/java/scheme things you've had tossed at you so far. Hell, buy a mac mini or $999 macbook pro and release a iPhone app or two, Objective C is like the best parts of C and Smalltalk rolled into one. (Although apple is a bit controlling).

PM Email me (firstname.lastname@example.com) if you'd like to go to lunch and talk, I live in midtown.

<comment><USER29> Midtown Atlanta, as in where Georgia Tech is. Already had one HN person think I was in Midtown New York

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Yep.

</comment><comment><USER50> Ask HN: Math major who doesn't want to write equations. Am I in the wrong major?

</comment><comment><USER51> We can see you can't code from the
 tags you've scattered everywhere...</comment>


FoxtrotGPS – open-source GPS/GIS for small screens - <AUTHOR> http://www.foxtrotgps.org <comment><USER2> Hah, nice to see it here.

Seems the site is suffering from the load, so unless anything dramatically changed since last time I used it, it's a GTK+ app which uses gpsd and OpenStreetMap (with ability to configure other providers).

It started as a fork of TangoGPS, and they both were once very popular GPS apps for Openmoko devices. I think I've seen it running on Maemo as well. From the fact that it got posted here I presume that it must be still maintained (although probably not in Openmoko/Maemo versions anymore), which makes me pretty happy! :)

<comment><USER3> Google appears to have a cached copy:

[https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:www.fo...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:www.foxtrotgps.org)

[ed: Overviewpage/soruce code on Launchpad:

[https://launchpad.net/foxtrotgps](https://launchpad.net/foxtrotgps)

ed2: The README:

[http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~foxtrotgps- team/foxtrotgps/trun...](http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~foxtrotgps- team/foxtrotgps/trunk/view/head:/README) ]</comment></comment>


Woman's Boston Marathon Bombing Costume: What It Says About Everyone - <AUTHOR> http://ca.shine.yahoo.com/blogs/healthy-living/woman-s-boston-marathon-bombing-costume--what-it-says-about-everyone-205502002.html

<comment><USER2> > " Lynch had once posted a photo of her driver's license online"

Wow! This girl is so brain dead, I'm not even angry; I just pity her.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I pity her also, that she could even conceive to dress up and poke fun of such a tragedy, It just goes to show you how much our society has deteriorated.</comment>


Show HN: Streaker's Journal (focus on what matters) - <AUTHOR> https://streakersjournal.com/show-hn.html <comment><AUTHOR> Well, I guess I won't be getting any feedback...

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The posted link goes to a special "Show HN" page, with screenshots of actual pages, etc.</comment>


1700 Google Employees helping Gov coronavirus website - <AUTHOR> Donald Trump just said, 1700 engineers at Google helping build a website? Anyone knows what he is talking about? <comment><USER2> They are developing an online system to determine whether or not a person who "thinks" they are affected should go get a test done and where they can get it done.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is apparently incorrect. [https://twitter.com/Google_Comms/status/1238574670686928906](https://twitter.com/Google_Comms/status/1238574670686928906)

There are apps and websites that do this e.g. [https://www.buoyhealth.com/symptom- checker/](https://www.buoyhealth.com/symptom-checker/)

</comment><comment><USER4> Answer came through later in the press conference. There's a screening website that will direct people to testing clinics.

Source: watching the livestream. This may get transcribed later. [https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/13/world/coronavirus- news.ht...](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/13/world/coronavirus-news.html)

</comment><comment><USER5> I hear that also, and I'm also curious.

</comment><comment><USER6> Google is not building a nationwide website, just a trial one for Bay Area:

"We are developing a tool to help triage individuals for Covid-19 testing. Verily is in the early stages of development, and planning to roll testing out in the Bay Area, with the hope of expanding more broadly over time. We appreciate the support of government officials and industry partners and thank the Google engineers who have volunteered to be part of this effort."

\- [https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/13/21179118/google- coronavir...](https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/13/21179118/google-coronavirus- testing-screening-website-drive-thru-covid-19)</comment>


British Tourists Detained And Denied Entry to US over Twitter Joke  - <AUTHOR> http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2093796/British-tourists-arrested-America-terror-charges-Twitter-jokes.html

<comment><USER2> Previous discussion of same incident:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3528138></comment>


Getting acquired by Google isn't always that great - <AUTHOR> http://flickr.com/photos/dpstyles/460987802/ <comment><USER2> Dodgeball had an early lead and a decent idea. If they had written an (optional) java interface and really pushed the "no gps, but free" angle, I really think they would have had a strong hand to play.

As they are now, they seem to have been stagnant for a long time. When I was trying to enter the space against them I always assumed it was because they had a big play coming down the pipes, but I see now they just failed.

I also don't have a lot of sympathy for those guys, those two alone should have been enough to engineer the product they needed. From the outside looking in, it seems like they had more than enough time, and they wasted it being complacent.

</comment><comment><USER3> I briefly tried Dodgeball. Wow, what a buggy mess. I don't know if that is their fault or google's, but I quickly switched to something that would actually work and made sense. Anyone else have a good or bad experience with Dodgeball?

</comment><comment><USER4> Google can frustrate me with a few million dollars any time they want.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm sure they got decent paychecks out of it, but I doubt it was "fuck you" money. They're still going to have to start another business or work for someone else in a scenario where making money will still be important. If I was really passionate about an idea and Google bought it just to let it stagnate, I'd be pissed. If someone is going to buy something that I've put my heart into, they're going to have to either pay me enough that I'll never have to worry about money again, or ensure that I'll get to see my vision through. The Dodgeball guys didn't get either of those.

For an example of a situation that I'd like to be in, look at Thawte. By selling it, Mark Shuttleworth got enough money that he could do things he was passionate about but might not be profitable in the near future, like paying people to write open source software. For me, it would be investing my time and money in the education of others to make sure more people could reach their full potential.

So if someone swindled me out of a business I wanted to see actually change the world in exchange for a couple of million dollars and the expectation that I'd be able to keep developing that business, I'd be pissed. It just puts you in a middle zone where you don't have to worry about money that much, but you still can't do whatever you want. That's lame.

<comment><USER4> Looks to me like they got FU money _from_ Google and then said FU _to_ Google.

If they really are so passionate about this grand vision why couldn't they push it through Google? Then they give up and start doing totally different things. Doesn't seem like the dogged determination of visionaries to me.

I suspect they realized how little incentive there is for them to bust their asses pushing the product through Google bureaucracy, and that no one was pulling for them, so they quit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> So why do you think Google more or less abandoned Dodgeball, especially as competitors like Loopt took off?

<comment><USER4> My guess is it just got lost in the noise of Googleplex and these guys weren't able to navigate the bureaucracy well enough to cope.

<comment><USER6> They were also based far from HQ out in New York.</comment></comment></comment>


The only woman in the room - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/code-like-a-girl/the-only-woman-in-the-room-bfde1e7b78ab#.1nj501pyy <comment><USER2> Thanks for sharing Dinah!</comment>


I2P: The Invisible Internet Project - <AUTHOR> https://geti2p.net/en/ <comment><USER2> Appears to be more reliable than TOR, however its just as all software is, there's always vulnerabilities.

</comment><comment><USER3> The less general public knows about I2P, the better :)

<comment><USER4> Doesn't the project require a large user base in order to function?</comment></comment>


The Prime Lexicon: A list of English words that are prime in base 36 - <AUTHOR> http://primes.utm.edu/notes/words.html

<comment><USER2> I set my colleages a challenge: write porn using only prime words.

"WIDEST WOMB WOMAN WATCHED PET PERVERT WHIP BLINDFOLDED YIDDISH BITCH"

"BAREBACKED BARD RUTTED BLINDFOLDED BITCH"

"BAREBACKED BARD PULVERIZED TRUCKMAN RUTTED TORRID"

"YARDMAN WHIP UNUSED WHELP, TROLLOP SUSPECTED SILKEN RUNT. PUTOUT, PARTED, LAIN. EVALUATED FETISH,EXPENDED. DISINTEREST."

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm a little confused...why did he use base 36 instead of base 26? Aren't there only 26 letters we need to convert to numbers?

<comment><USER4> I guess they think words somehow include numbers

<comment><USER5> There are no numbers in English, but some real languages with latinized character sets have numbers in them: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sḵwxwú7mesh_language>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Interesting. Could be fun to combine this with distributions on word length, etc... and compare the number of primes we see to the expected number of primes (using the prime number theorem).

Would be funny if we had a tendency towards prime words :)

<comment><USER7> Zen, zen, zen, zen, zen, zen, zen, zen, zen, zen, zen, zen, zen, zen, zen!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> It seems fitting that 'zen' is prime.

<comment><USER9> And yet I doubt you'd have noticed that zen wasn't prime if it hadn't been.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Since this is a clearly meaningless list, it doesn't really need to be sorted alphabetically. I think it would have been more fitting to sort the list numerically.

<comment><USER11> Won't numerically and alphabetically in this case be almost identical?

<comment><USER12> Kinda, but not really. What you'd end up with is alphabetical sublists organized by length—any word with 4 letters is greater than any word with 3 letters (like in base ten, where any 4-digit number is greater than any 3-digit number).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> My personal favourite:

PRIMETEST

But the list is surprisingly long, so not that surpring that something concerning primes would be in there.

<comment><USER14> More interesting is what isn't there: so prime is not prime.

<comment><USER15> See also: Richardian numbers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> One-third of the prime words are past participles

      [~/misc]$ cat primeWords.txt | tr -cs "[:alpha:]" "\n" | uniq | wc

          2560    2560   21156

      [~/misc]$ cat primeWords.txt | tr -cs "[:alpha:]" "\n" | uniq | grep "ED$" | wc

           843     843    7594

</comment><comment><USER17> One of the words is halloween. How fitting.

</comment><comment><USER18> I wonder if anyone will use this set of words for constrained writing.

<comment><USER19> Restriction? Henceforth, demonstration. You'd thought, "what person couldn't workup contrived composition?"

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I already thought "zenith" was a fun word, and this just makes me like it even more. Yay!

</comment><comment><USER21> Sigh, I thought it would be about PDP-10, the coolest assembler I've ever seen.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's a shame that neither TECO nor DDT are prime. :(</comment></comment>


Presentation from Scala Enthusiasts talk on foursquare's use of scala and lift - <AUTHOR> http://docs.google.com/present/view?id=0ATHAG0M-0vxXZGNicHozY2tfMjVjemNuczJjMg&hl=en Interestingly he strongly recommends postgreSql over Mysql when using lift <comment><USER2> I really like lift webframework with scala, and I have used it on a couple of small websites for my department in work.

I haven't seen any problems with mysql, but then again the stuff I was doing was very simple.</comment>


World Wide Telescope (MS research project) - <AUTHOR> http://www.worldwidetelescope.org/ExperienceIt/ExperienceIt.aspx?Page=Tours

<comment><AUTHOR> I would recommend trying out one of the tours

E.g Using the Observing Time pane Tour [http://www.worldwidetelescope.org/webclient/default.aspx?tou...](http://www.worldwidetelescope.org/webclient/default.aspx?tour=http:%2f%2fwww.worldwidetelescope.org%2fwwtweb%2fgettour.aspx%3fGUID=3cfe67b6-c4c7-4418-965c-448e62e221cf)</comment>


Building muscle doesn't require lifting heavy weights - <AUTHOR> http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2010-08/mu-bmd081110.php <comment><USER2> People who regularly strength train already take this into account. Hence, you will see body builders focus more on high rep workouts, whereas powerlifters and olympic lifters focus more on low rep workouts. (They all incorporate both kinds of training, but what they focus on differs.)

I'm surprised this hadn't already been experimentally established. Verifying this experimentally is good, but it's certainly not a "new paradigm." And I don't like the recommendations from the press release: the kind of training you need depends on what you want to do.

Hmm. I'm not sure if they address the different _kinds_ of muscle that is built. The generally accepted model among strength trainers is that low weight, high rep training builds red "twitch" muscle and high weight, low rep training builds white "slow" muscle: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skeletal_muscle#Muscle_fibers>

The only mention is in the conclusions:

 _In contrast to recommendations [31], that heavy loads (i.e., high intensity) are necessary to optimally stimulate MYO protein synthesis, it is now apparent that the extent of MYO protein synthesis after resistance exercise is not entirely load dependent, but appears to be related to exercise volume and, we speculate, to muscle fibre activation and most likely to the extent of type II fibre recruitment._

If I understand correctly, they're detecting a protein associated with muscle growth. But they're speculating on what kind of muscle is actually grown. Since it's already assumed that high-weight, low-rep training does not lead to significant muscle hypertrophy, it would be worthwhile to find out if the muscle that's developed is, indeed, different. If it is, then there's still value in doing both kinds of training. (Personally, I assume this is the case.)

<comment><USER3> "Hence, you will see body builders focus more on high rep workouts, whereas powerlifters and olympic lifters focus more on low rep workouts."

Bodybuilders usually do sets of 10 or 20 at most, not the sets of 100+ that it would take to reach fatigue at 30% of max. I've done sets of 100 with 95-115lbs, and it definitely does not bulk up your muscles. The only reason to do workouts like that is to improve your muscle quality.

<comment><USER2> What do you define "muscle quality" to be?

<comment><USER3> Well with rowing the goal is to generate the greatest sum total of force with your legs over roughly 6:30 at roughly 37 reps per minute. So it's being able to maximize that stat given a fixed amount of muscle weight.

<comment><USER2> Then you basically mean what I would call conditioning, or maybe just endurance.

<comment><USER3> Maybe. I'd tend to think of conditioning and endurance to both refer to cardiovascular fitness. And while doing 4-6 sets of 100 squats will give you some cardio, it certainly isn't the most efficient way to gain cardio. So if there is any real reason for doing the activity, it certainly must have something to do with the actual leg muscles rather than overall cardio wellness.

<comment><USER2> There's such a thing as anaerobic conditioning. That is, you can condition your body to better and longer well while anaerobic. Think of football players, or combat athletes (boxers, wrestlers, MMA fighters, etc).

Further, there's more to conditioning than just your cardiovascular system - muscle endurance matters for most sports.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This headline is misleading. The answer is not that you need to be lifting light weights. Rather, you need to focus on progressive load.

Repeatedly lifting any weight just gets your body used to lifting that weight. This is how our minds work too. If you do a task enough times, you just get good at that task.

It's not that lifting a light weight would suddenly make you better at lifting a heavy weight, nor that repeating a single simple task would make you better at more challenging complex tasks.

What you really want is your body to get used to progressively lifting heavier weights, just as you want your mind to get used to progressively more challenging tasks.

This translates to starting with light weights and progressively increasing your load over time. Ditto your mind.

Where the body is different is that there are physical limitations. You can't increase weight forever.

Training programes like HST (Hypertrophic specific training) solve this with periodic strategic de-conditioning.

I personally recommend anyone interested in weight training spend some lime looking into HST.

<comment><USER5> I followed the HST routine for all but the last 2 weeks. Started out with 2 weeks of 15 reps per set / 2 sets per exercise and then on to 10 reps a set for 2 weeks and then on to 5 reps per set for another 2 ..

It not only helped me put some muscle on, it helped me knock down 3-4 percent of body fat as well and increase my strength by quite a bit. i ended up benching out at 240 lbs in the last 2 weeks where as my previous max was 170 lbs. I highly recommend the routine.

<comment><USER4> Great work! One of the advantages this program has to me is also psychological. I don't get to choose how much weight to lift or how many reps to do; it's all determined by my progression in the program (which is figured out at the beginning of my 9-week cycle).

For anyone with ADD, executive dysfunction, or just general procrastination, this is a great way to reduce the number of "decision points" that give you an opportunity to break your new habit.

Also: I recommend following through with the final 2 weeks. They can be really hard, but when you then take 14 days off and see yourself get in noticeably better shape during a period of sitting on the couch, you buy into the program big time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Three or four years ago I was really into powerlifting. I always weighed about 165-170, but over the course of a year I got up to about 200lbs, and was lifting a ton of weight. I did a mixture of low rep/high rep workouts, but the emphasis was definitely always on lifting heavier and heavier weights.

Finally after about two years of this my body was completely shot. I was having all sorts of problems with my shoulders, elbows, and knees. I stopped lifting all together and just started swimming and running instead. Eventually I got into crossfit and now do a decent amount of weights every week. But, the huge difference is that now when I weight train I do 30-40% of the weight I used to do, but 3-5 times the number of reps. The difference is incredible. I'm way healthier now, have no problems with my joints, and my weight has stabilized at around 175.

Back in the day I could never imagine working out like I do now, but these days I can't understand why I used to put my body through all of that.

<comment><USER7> I don't want people to get the impression that weight-lifting inevitably leads to injury. This guy was seriously overdoing it or had poor form if his body was "shot" after two years. If you want to do low-rep, high-weight lifting, make sure that you get plenty of rest and don't do tons of volume. Find a program designed by a reputable strength-training coach (such as Mark Rippetoe or Bill Starr) and don't modify it. If your form is good, you don't do more volume than you should, and you're eating properly, your body certainly won't be "shot" after two years.

<comment><USER6> You're right "shot" may be a bit of an over statement, but I was definitely on my way to being there.

That said I was following a great program and training with coaches and athletes at the University of Washington. In hindsight I was probably pushing the weight farther than I should have been, but I think that is the natural tendency when you are trying to continually lift heavier and heavier weight.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Recommended reading:

Starting strength <http://books.google.com/books?id=hq4kAAAACAAJ>

Practical Programming for Strength Training <http://books.google.com/books?id=A5iWRAAACAAJ>

Both are by Mark Rippetoe.

</comment><comment><USER9> I don't get why do marathon runners have skinny legs, while sprinters and body builders have huge muscular legs? You'd think marathon runners would have big legs too, since they regularly train to muscle fatigue.

<comment><USER10> Fatigue means that you cannot lift the weight anymore without resting first. Marathon runners don't train to fatigue. They run 10 or 20km. They could still run more if they wished.

The reason sprinters are more muscular is that they do a lot of strength training outside running, while marathon runners don't -- although there's some evidence that doing more than they do now would improve results.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Makes sense, but I'd still rather lift something heavy 10 times than something light 30 times.

<comment><USER12> Heavy weights are harder on your joints though. As I get older I notice this a lot more. Better to focus on a lower-impact, more sustainable regime.

<comment><USER13> Unless the pain is due to repetitive stress, which tends to be my problem. I can easily do heavy squats, but riding a bike for 30 minutes kills my knees.

<comment><USER14> You might want to talk to people at a bike shop. When a bike fits you and is adjusted properly, pedaling should be very gentle on your knees. You might have your seat at a bad height, point your toes in or out while pedaling (twisting your knees), etc. If you're using clipless pedals, they'll probably need to have their float adjusted.

(If you're riding a fixed-gear bike with no brakes and slow down by backpedaling / skidding, that's another issue entirely. Just get a front brake.)

<comment><USER14> I forgot the most obvious thing: You might be riding in too high a gear! Pedaling should be relatively smooth, more like swimming than weightlifting.

<comment><USER15> This is the most probable cause. Professional cyclists pedal at about 90 rpm! If you are doing 30 rpm that is almost certainly the cause of knee pain.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> it is very well accepted that low rep/heavy weight sets build muscle/strength vs. high reps/lower weights.

the sample set is small to suggest anything empirical and to challenge the set notion that i just described above ..

a nice read on the role of lactic acid w.r.t. muscles:

<http://www.csmngt.com/lactic_acid.htm>

<comment><USER16> To be honest, there's no such thing as muscle toning. Lower weight at higher reps won't do this. Muscles respond to resistance, and you need to consistently and constantly increase that resistance if you want to get larger/stronger.

This is why all of the abdominal infomercials you see are bogus.

<comment><USER5> i think the more correct statement would be: there's no way to spot reduce fat. that's the reason most ab informercials are bogus. You'll see the abs if the overall body fat percentage is low.

When i say toning, i mean aerobic exercises to lower body fat and weight training to firm up muscles. maybe i put it incorrectly in the original post.

this is a nice read: <http://www.exrx.net/WeightTraining/Myths.html>

<comment><USER17> local fat reduction: [http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1463-1326.2006....](http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1463-1326.2006.00600.x/abstract)

search for aminophylline.

<comment><USER5> the 1200 kCal diet for the study is very alarming in my opinion. That's quite a lot of deficit compared to one's BMR and coupled with exercise, the study was bound to be a success. this following post pretty much dismisses the validity of the experiment you just linked:

[http://junkfoodscience.blogspot.com/2008/02/miracle-thigh- cr...](http://junkfoodscience.blogspot.com/2008/02/miracle-thigh-cream-new- medical.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I think one has to realize that being strong does not equate directly to having large muscles. Lifting heavy weights allows you to life heavier weights over time.

I think I would rather have the benefits of being strong, rather than just having large muscles

</comment><comment><USER19> This is already well known. There's a whole school called High Intensity Training (HIT) that promotes doing one set at very low weight to failure.

Periodized powerlifting training starts a cycle off with lower weight and higher reps to build a little muscle and gradually reverses this over 2 or 3 months to train the new muscle to increase one's 1 rep max. Whether doing classic periodization or not though, powerlifters know they need to build muscle, and that means higher reps, and they put that time in somewhere.

I used to do 5 sets of air squats to failure twice a week, and my legs got huge.

<comment><USER2> Cyclists often have better developed legs than many guys in the gym.

<comment><USER20> This is true. However I find most guys at the gym rarely do squats, lunges or leg presses. They tend to focus on their glamour muscles and foolishly ignore the rest of their body.

<comment><USER2> This is _also_ true. But I do squats, cleans and deadlifts [1], and most cyclist have much more defined, and often bigger, legs than me.

[1] Well, I used to. These days I don't do much heavy strength training, and mostly do conditioning as a part of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu practice.

<comment><USER15> When a cyclist trains he is doing 2+ hours of constant hard leg exercise. It's not a surprise that he has bigger leg muscles.

<comment><USER2> Yes, I know. I provided another example to support ellyagg's point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Many programs have been pitching this idea for years, some take it to the extreme and tell you that a single rep should last 20 seconds, (10 up, 10 down).

One thing to keep in mind is that you have 2 types of muscle, twitch and power. Sprinters overdevelop their power muscles, long distance runners overdevelop their twitch muscles. Your best bet is to try to find workout strategies to find a good balance between those two.

</comment><comment><USER22> Very interesting study, if small.

My two questions about it. 1) What's the plateau state and the initial fitness level/muscle density? Many weight-lifters have experienced that after a certain point, they start to plateau and don't gain further muscle density. Is the plateau point roughly the same for the two styles? 2) How does that correlate to strength? It's been hypothesized (but I'm not sure if it's been proven) that strength is a combination of muscle density and motor coordination (i.e. neural connections to allow muscle fibers to fire simultaneously), and that lifting heavy actually leads to additional nerve ends that help coordinate those things (or something like that, at least). So I'd be interested to know how the different lifting programs affected both maximum lifts and the number of reps that can be performed at, say, 70% of that max.

</comment><comment><USER23> In my experience, you will get better results doing 5BX for just doing day to day stuff.

I have done lots of weights, sometimes being at the gym 1.5 hours/day for 5 days a week, but that is basically unsustainable once you get busy with other parts of your life.

Hershel Walker's exercise regimen not only made him look good and fit the part of a big football guy, but he remains one of the least-injured players. He did add weights but only after getting into the pros. [http://www.2fit4you.com/index.php/bodybuilding/herschel- walk...](http://www.2fit4you.com/index.php/bodybuilding/herschel-walker- workout-herschel-walker-exercise/)

</comment><comment><USER24> I'm not sure about these results. Lifting until failure (also with low weight!) taxes the CNS heavily. So I'm not sure about the long term effects of this type of training. Going to failure with lighter weight is usually only recommended once per month exactly because of this reason.

I don't see why people are backing down from lifting heavy weights. Yeah, they can be heavy on the joints, but not so much when your form is good. Look at this guy: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUJFRd4NMvM> (40+, lifts more than 500 pounds, easy.). Once again I argue that people are generally misinformed about lifting weights and think they are too old or too weak to begin with, so they are looking for excuses ("I can't lift weights because, you know, my back/knees/shoulder/eyebrow" ...) or easier routines. That is exactly why we see hundreds of machines in the gyms which are a lot easier to handle than some weight on a barbell.

Rules for heavy lifting: 1.use proper form 2.warm-up properly (too many guys neglecting this!) 3.stretch once in a while - your flexibility will increase and a lot of pain you had will vanish (google "foam roller") 4.use knee straps when your knee is involved in any way (i.e. squats, deadlifts) 5.follow a smart routine (lifting heavy every day isn't going to make you stronger, pal).

</comment><comment><USER25> Nothing in this is new or unexpected. See Ripptoe and Kilgore's Practical Programming for Strength Training for a comprehensive guide in deciding how much weight to lift how many times.

<comment><USER26> I like Starting Strength, but this study seems to contradict Rippetoe and Kilgore. They recommend 3 sets of 5 reps, whereas this study seems to indicate a higher number of reps with lower weight is just as good.

<comment><USER27> Not true. The measure of success in Starting Strength is 100% based on linearly increasing strength, with zero consideration to appearance aka "muscle growth."

As other posters have mentioned, it's well known that high-rep lifting will increase muscle mass, and that's what bodybuilders do. However, powerlifters don't care about anything but strength, so they use low reps, just as Starting Strength recommends.

So if strength is your main concern, like it is for Rippetoe and Kilgore, you would follow their recommendation. A higher number of reps with lower weight is certainly not just as good for strength development.

<comment><USER28> >The measure of success in Starting Strength is 100% based on linearly increasing strength, with zero consideration to appearance aka "muscle growth."

Strength increase and muscle growth go hand in hand.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I've been lifting without gains for a long time. Switched to German Volume Training a while back and am getting good gains in strength, speed and muscle size/tone: <http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/luis13.htm>

Currently doing cycles of two months GVT and one month of more traditional lifting.

Note: I don't do any legs stuff aside from my ultramarathon training.

<comment><USER5> when I started HST, someone told me to look into OVT: Optimized Volume Training. It was supposed to be an upgrade to GVT. You might want to look into that once you're done with GVT. There's a nice writeup on tmuscle.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> It seems like the biggest gain came from lifting until failure. Even bigger gains were made from lifting more reps of lighter weights to failure than from lifting fewer reps of heavy weights to failure.

Personally I prefer to lift fewer reps of heavier weight and just get it over with. The high rep workouts take more time and are somewhat masochistic.

</comment><comment><USER31> Any possibility for a thin, lean 50 year old on a low protein diet building some muscle ? I do use a parallel bar 2-3 times a week (3 or 4 reps of 15). Is there a regimen that does not use weights and bars that one can do at home to build some strength and muscle.

<comment><USER32> To build muscle you need protein.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I may be off but I don't think it's about "low rep vs high rep" or "light weight vs heavy weight", it's about working your muscles to fatigue.

Separately, I know Tim Ferriss wrote a piece on this too.

<comment><USER34> IIRC - Ferriss' point was to go as heavy as you possibly could. Or at least that was my read of it. I've been doing the program myself for the last few weeks and love it.

[http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2007/04/29/from-geek- to...](http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2007/04/29/from-geek-to-freak-how- i-gained-34-lbs-of-muscle-in-4-weeks/)

<comment><USER28> There's not a chance in hell a human can develop 34 pounds of muscle in 4 weeks. That article in pure snake oil. Maximum sythenthesis of muscle is around 3-5 pounds/month.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> This article leaves a lot missing. When was the last time you saw someone who looked ripped but couldn't lift some heavy weights?

Lifting high rep low weight certainly doesn't prepare you for that.

</comment><comment><USER36> 15 people seems like a rather small sample size, but still... looking through the study I don't see any obvious problems with it. Good to know if I ever get any pain in my joints.

</comment><comment><USER37> If you're an ectomorph like myself, this is good news. I think I'm going to change my lifting routine to 20 reps and work more on good form.

<comment><USER38> 20 is too many[1] reps, except possibly when beginning (or for certain exercises where you can't safely do more weight[2], e.g. for legs if you're afraid/unable to bear more load through the spine/knees). Try 12-15 at most. The point is to keep the number of reps nearly constant while significantly increasing the load over time, while getting enough sleep/protein/etc. (of course you'll plateau without steroids).

[1] unless you don't want larger, stronger muscles, but rather more endurance

[2] you should first look for alternative exercises or improved technique, rather than decreasing weight and increasing reps

<comment><USER5> another myth out there is "i don't want to bulk up too much like the bodybuilders and don't want such big muscles" .. the size of the muscle is determined by hormone levels and certain nutrients + the diet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> In the military they've been doing this for decades. High-rep pushups and other calisthenics to failure. It sure built muscle on my brother.

</comment><comment><USER40> Doesn't one method build fast twitch and the other slow twitch?

So it's not the same kind of muscle.

</comment><comment><USER41> Yay! My friend at McMaster was a part of this test. Go Mac!

</comment><comment><USER42> Guess what. People who work out regularly aren't about to lift a light weight 100 times when they can still keep it at 10 repetitions by increasing the weight. There are studies that say working out for longer than an hour or so decreases gains. So really, don't make your workout any longer just because you don't want to lift heavier weights.</comment>


Largest Known Prime, 49th Known Mersenne Prime Found - <AUTHOR> http://www.mersenne.org/#resubmit <comment><USER2> Discussion from yesterday [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10931234](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10931234)

</comment><comment><USER3> Google "hacker news 49th mersenne prime" ... and here it is:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10931234](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10931234)

296 points by ramshanker 1 day ago; 123 comments.</comment>


Ask HN: Review this website I built to track my weight daily - <AUTHOR> http://bajar-de-peso.appspot.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> As the homepage says, it's a clone of Jeremy Zawodny's Excel Spreadsheet (<http://jeremy.zawodny.com/blog/archives/006851.html>) I've been using to help me lose weight.

I built it mostly to learn App Engine and how to use a non relational Database (though I didn't end up doing any hardcore DB stuff).

Bajar de Peso, according to Google Translate, means "Lost Weight". The source code for the site is available at <http://github.com/rmanocha/bajar-de-peso>

</comment><comment><USER2> It looks good. Thanks for making / sharing it.

If you're interested in feature requests, I'd love to see it give calorie intake recommendations, like in The Hacker's Diet.

But I understand if you aren't planning on major development. Thanks again.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd thought about doing the calorie stats/recommendations bit too - similar to what was in the spreadsheet. However, decided against it since I wasn't using that part of the spreadsheet, and 'cause I didn't want this work taking over too much time. If people are really interested in it though, I can take some time and add those features in too.

Thanks for the feedback.</comment></comment>


Beware of sunk cost fallacy when facing a job change - <AUTHOR> https://excelerity.com/blog/arne/sunk-cost <comment><USER2> It sounds like the gambling axiom of "cut your losses before they run". I wonder, though, if salary and debt trajectory were not a factor, would the author have preferred being a researcher than being a programmer?</comment>


Jurassic Park computer system in the browser - <AUTHOR> http://www.jurassicsystems.com/ <comment><USER3> Wow! This is cool.

The computers in Jurassic Park is what got me into programming when I was young. I saw their 3D weather overlay when the storm was approaching and thought "THAT IS IT!". I was 8 years old at the time.

I was determined to learn and create that system - I started learning C, so that I could open and close files. I learnt OpenGL so that I could create the 3D scene. I learnt socket programming so that I could download weather images from the NOAA.

It took me until I was 15 (I was totally self taught and it took me a while before I could learn all of the vector / matrix math myself) but I ended up building it! I made a program in C that downloaded the weather jpg, cleaned it up (removed noise, removed the NOAA logo, smoothed out the clouds) then generated a heightmap in OpenGL, and made a fly-over.

I wish I still had the code, it's sitting on my old computer at the Farm in New Zealand :<

<comment><USER4> > _The computers in Jurassic Park is what got me into programming when I was > young. I saw their 3D weather overlay when the storm was approaching and > thought "THAT IS IT!". I was 8 years old at the time._

I'm guessing you would be around 28-30 years old, so I'm a couple of years or more older ... but I started learning C when I was 31, currently I'm interested in stuff like parsers and data structures (I really should look at sockets soon). Perhaps I'm just too old to hack.

> _I wish I still had the code, it 's sitting on my old computer at the Farm > in New Zealand :<_

I bet a fair few people on HN would be interested in it as well, it sounds quite hardcore.

<comment><USER5> Warning: anecdotes and unsubstantiated speculation ahead

Did you do any programming at all before 31?

I don't think you're ever too old to do anything, personally. I was 26 (which isn't terribly old, admittedly, but definitely past the little kid age) when I talked to a friend who was a professional programmer and decided "huh, I like computers and solving problems. I'm going to do that." I hadn't programmed before then, though I was computer savvy, I guess. I also have a degree in sociology, heh.

Took me about four years, but now I have a corporate job doing full stack .net work in C#/MVC, I've done side projects in ruby, and I do some C, Haskell, and python on the side. I'm also working my way through The Algorithm Design manual and have Concrete Mathematics to work through later on.

I always got really discouraged because I constantly see and hear about people who started programming when they were five, or eight, or something like that, and I'd think "no way could I get into it that deeply, starting so late" but that's just totally untrue. I'm finally at a point where I think "given the desire and time, I can learn whatever comp sci topic I want," so I get discouraged less.

I think part of it has to do with notions of talent, and natural abilities. When I was a kid, I took for granted that something would be hard until I learned it. I don't remember learning most of the basic skills I have, so I forget that things can be difficult starting out. Every topic I've started learning and stuck with in programming has pretty fully integrated itself into the core of how I think about the topic. One for-example would be immutable data structures as they're implemented in Clojure, or functional programming in general.

Anyway, that's a rambling tl:dr for: stick with it. You're never too old. You just have to try that much harder to catch up initially, but if you can teach yourself to keep learning now, you've got an extra skill a lot of people don't have, which is learning how to learn as an adult. I think it's the most valuable skill I have right now.

(ps I'm making a lot of assumptions in this post; sorry if any of them are way off base)

<comment><USER6> This is exactly my situation as well. I was always into computers when I was young but didn't really have access to any until high school. I always envied people that started learning how to code when they were kids, I still do. Like you, I always thought my chance to code had come and gone because I'd only ever heard of people that started when they were young. Like you, I always felt discouraged.

A couple years ago I figured I would try anyways, so I started looking up good books to read through and do the exercises. Started with Python and I've read books on and written assembly and C. Now I'm an independent contractor doing webmaster/web developer.

Any books you'd recommend other than The Algorithm Design/Concrete Mathematics? Those look interesting and I'll probably go through them.

<comment><USER5> Code Complete 2 [1] was one of the first coding books I've read. As with anything else, it's good to look around (HN is a good place) for people who have problems with the book. I think I learn as much reading the commentary people make about books like that as I do from the book itself.

I think I've listened to every podcast on software engineering radio a few times [2]. The older ones are especially nice because they usually pick a specific topic and cover the high points. I liked that I could listen to it while I was driving, or otherwise not in front of a computer.

It's specific, but Javascript: The Good Parts is probably the most used book I have on my shelf. It has such a perfect amount of usable information in it. It's pretty great. Again, it's definitely worth looking up critiques and counterpoints.

I've also got Introduction to Algorithms, which I use as a reference, sometimes. I switched over to The Algorithm Design Manual [5] after I saw it referenced in an older Steve Yegge post [6]. I read through the intro and it seemed like a book that would be more appropriate from an autodidactic standpoint. I really have no idea if that's going to pan out, since I'm not that far into it, but we'll see, for sure. Doesn't kill me to have an extra algorithms book laying about, though, and I've always got intro to algorithms for cross reference. I've found that I really need to have as many sources available as possible when I'm learning alone. Usually I don't get something until the fifth person describes it from the tenth different angle.

That's most of what I can think of off hand. I really enjoyed The Joy of Clojure [7], though haven't checked out the newer version. Programming Collective Intelligence [8] is a fun book, and is what made me want to go back down the maths route to get more into machine learning.

And of course habitually reading hacker news for an hour or three every night :)

So that's my totally inexpert list of random stuff that I enjoy

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/Code-Complete-Practical-Handbook- Const...](http://www.amazon.com/Code-Complete-Practical-Handbook- Construction/dp/0735619670) [2] [http://www.se-radio.net/](http://www.se- radio.net/) [3] [http://www.amazon.com/JavaScript-Good-Parts-Douglas- Crockfor...](http://www.amazon.com/JavaScript-Good-Parts-Douglas- Crockford/dp/0596517742/) [4] [http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Algorithms- Thomas-H-Corme...](http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Algorithms-Thomas-H- Cormen/dp/0262033844) [5] [http://www.amazon.com/Algorithm-Design-Manual- Steven-Skiena/...](http://www.amazon.com/Algorithm-Design-Manual-Steven- Skiena/dp/1848000693/) [6] [http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/03/get-that- job-at-goog...](http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/03/get-that-job-at- google.html) [7] [http://www.amazon.com/Joy-Clojure-Michael- Fogus/dp/161729141...](http://www.amazon.com/Joy-Clojure-Michael- Fogus/dp/1617291412/) [8] [http://www.amazon.com/Programming-Collective- Intelligence-Bu...](http://www.amazon.com/Programming-Collective-Intelligence- Building-Applications/dp/0596529325/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The cool thing about Jurassic Park is that it showcases all this high-end tech (at the time) to set the mood. The setting of this movie made a huge impact on me as a kid.

In the computer room scene you can see a CM-5 [1] from Thinking Machines in the background (or at least, only the front panels with the futuristic blinking red leds). Those were very interesting computers when launched, with a fundamentally different architecture for parallel computing.

Also, fun story: the company hired Richard Feynman [2].

[1] [http://www.sgistuff.net/funstuff/hollywood/images/hwd_jpark9...](http://www.sgistuff.net/funstuff/hollywood/images/hwd_jpark9l.jpg)

[2] [http://longnow.org/essays/richard-feynman-connection- machine...](http://longnow.org/essays/richard-feynman-connection-machine/)

</comment><comment><USER8> SGI IRIX operating system: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRIX](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRIX)

I used that at my first programming internship at university. Even then (1999) it was a dated OS, but it was still fun it.

I wonder if they used IRIX in the movie because the VFX guys making the movie, ILM, were doing all the VFX work using Softimage on SGI machines running IRIX at the time.

<comment><USER9> Apparently the specific "It's a Unix system" scene used an experimental fsn (file system navigator) that SGI developed but which was never released as a product.

<comment><USER10> It was released on one of the Indie demo disks that SGI liked to hand out at conferences and subscribers and so on .. the source is still around, and of course there are a few clones by now: [http://fsv.sourceforge.net/](http://fsv.sourceforge.net/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Pour one out for IRIX, discontinued December 31, 2013. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRIX#Retirement](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRIX#Retirement)

</comment><comment><USER12> The Jurassic Park Computer System...created and maintained by Newman. Credit where credit is due: it takes a lot of skills to keep a bunch of velociraptors pent up using a Macintosh LC II.

What always amused me is that in order to trigger the locks, the "computer whiz" girl had to navigate some sort of 3d control environment, probably the most ineffective way possible to control something that should be random access.

<comment><USER13> She navigated the file system using fsn (which by the way existed. it just never catch on [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fsn](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fsn))

<comment><USER12> I thought it was so cheesy that it had to be fictional, because of all the misrepresentations of computer interfaces in other movies like "Hackers." This is apparently a common assumption.

It's admirable that SGI was experimenting with interfaces. However in this situation having to navigate such an interface created a very real safety hazard. I suppose she could have used the regular file browser instead - <USER2> perhaps the substantially less exciting XTerm.

<comment><USER14> Worst thing is when a movie did most things with real UI being thought as mocking things up. So latter movies increasingly use fake UIs instead.

<comment><USER15> I don't understand.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Haha! My mom was a Sun reseller who sold them a bunch of Sparc stations for the movies and I think even wrote some shell scripts to launch some spinning 3D dino-skull scripts on startup, etc. Around this time we were a pretty rare family home with one of those boxes and an ISDN line at home as the family computer.

</comment><comment><USER17> This brings me so much joy. This movie - the SGI and this scene in particular made me want to switch from being a business major to a computer science major in college. I did and it was the right decision.

I bought an SGI Indy and spent a lot of time in the shell just so it would look and feel like the scene from this movie. I don't know why it affected me so much but it did.

So much love for the author who create this simulator.

</comment><comment><USER18> It's a Unix system. I know this.

<comment><USER19> Except that the 'Ah Ah Ah You didn't say the magic word' sequence shows up on a Mac desktop.

<comment><USER20> That movie was ahead of its time and predicted a unix based Mac OS. Prophetic indeed Newman!

<comment><USER21> Apple already had a unix-based Mac OS for five years by the time Jurassic Park came out, A/UX. My first computer job was at a nascent ISP around this time and most of the servers (mail, www, accounting) were Quadras running A/UX. One IIfx with several massive (for the time) hard drives for Usenet. It was basically the System 7 (Mac) UI bolted on top of System V unix.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=A/UX](http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=A/UX)

<comment><USER22> "Everybody" had Unix systems back in the day. People forget that there was a time when it was seen as critical to have a Unix offering to be taken seriously in certain markets.

On the "low end", besides Apple's A/UX, Microsoft had Xenix and Commodore had Amiga Unix.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> k-mcgrady Really nice recreation. Why the annoying dialog repeatedly telling me not to use Safari though? It seemed to work fine for me in Safari.

<comment><USER23> Seems it shows up each time the site tries to play short audio clips. See starting line 32 in [http://www.jurassicsystems.com/js/jurassicSystems.js](http://www.jurassicsystems.com/js/jurassicSystems.js) Instead of feature detection it'll use HTML5 audio in Chrome, show an annoying dialog in Safari, and an SWF fallback for anything else.

edit: Here's the GitHub issue for it [https://github.com/tojrobinson/jurassicsystems.com/issues/1](https://github.com/tojrobinson/jurassicsystems.com/issues/1)

<comment><USER24> Hopefully this will be fixed with [https://github.com/tojrobinson/jurassicsystems.com/pull/4](https://github.com/tojrobinson/jurassicsystems.com/pull/4)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Some other commands...

> access main security system please

> display zebraGirl.jpg

<comment><USER26> > system Raptor

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I like the irony of the site telling me not to use Safari.

<comment><USER27> Another day on Hacker News, another interesting project where the author hasn't heard of Modernizr.

<comment><USER23> Ironically, it is using Modernizr.

        <script src="/js/lib/modernizr-2.6.2.min.js"></script>

Seems like whoever created it had trouble with HTML5 audio though...

<comment><USER27> Ugh. In that case, they're missing the point of Modernizr. If there's no polyfill or fallback available, the solution isn't to say "Don't use Safari". At the very least, they could display as useful message that says something like "Your browser doesn't appear to support feature X, try browser Y instead."

When I see "Don't use Safari", I interpret that as "I'm too lazy to make this work in Safari", rather than "this doesn't work in Safari".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> how do I launch fsn?

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

</comment><comment><USER29> Where's the 3D model to lock/unlock the doors?

<comment><USER18> [https://github.com/tojrobinson/jurassicsystems.com/issues/2](https://github.com/tojrobinson/jurassicsystems.com/issues/2)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Did anybody notice the picture of J. Robert Oppenheimer next to the screen? Details, my friends...

</comment><comment><USER31> You didn't say the magic word!

</comment><comment><USER32> I used fsn on the SGIs in 1994/5, but I think this initially free (as in beer) program was later bundled with some for-pay package and vanished from the downloads area.

The funny part is I probably still have a working copy of it on the SGI Onyx in my garage.

</comment><comment><USER33> Funny, I don't remember that "you must install flash player" from the movie.

</comment><comment><USER34> Play this song for the full experience [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQuH4woPDn0](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQuH4woPDn0)

</comment><comment><USER35> You should've seen the grin on my face when Newman's smug little face started speaking to me. You've fulfilled a childhood dream for me, thank you.

</comment><comment><USER36> I used to work with some Silicon Graphics in the 90's in a F-18 Simulator for Spanish DoD. We used C with GL (the graphic library that existed before OpenGL) and had Indigo² workstations for each developer. Origin and Onyx were used for calculation and visualization. When they offered me that job I couldn't refuse! I was like "Yes! I'm going to use the same computers that appeared in Jurassic Park!!!" :D

</comment><comment><USER37> We have a SGI machine (wights like ton) in our shop. Can't remember the exact model but I remember how someone mentioned it's the exact model used for animation in the movie....we use it mostly as a chair XD

</comment><comment><USER38> Weird I can't get into the security system..

</comment><comment><USER39> The zebra girl is a nice touch.

</comment><comment><USER40> What is the hidden feature ?

<comment><USER41> "access please" with double space between words

<comment><USER42> Well, it's meant to be "access (pretty much anything) please".

access main computer system please

access local security grid please

access yer mom please

That said, it's more fun to get it wrong...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Having loved this movie since childhood, this was really awesome.

</comment><comment><USER44> As a kid, this was my dream system. This is so great.

</comment><comment><USER45> 1993\. Jurassic Park is old enough to drink in a bar.

</comment><comment><USER46> legit</comment>


Free photos every week Use them any way you want – commercially or personally - <AUTHOR> http://crowthestone.com

<comment><USER2> You might consider being a little more specific about the provenance of these photographs, that you took them all and are actively deeding them to the public domain, so people don't assume you're just taking images from elsewhere and posting them to a Tumblr. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> That's definitely a good point! Thanks for the heads up. That is something I'll take care of.</comment></comment>


Walgreens Becomes 1st Retail Chain To Diagnose, Treat Chronic Conditions - <AUTHOR> http://www.kaiserhealthnews.org/Stories/2013/April/04/walgreens-primary-care-services.aspx

<comment><USER2> An uncle of mine in Edinburgh rang up the local practice to make an appointment to see the nurse practitioner. The earliest he could see her was a week away. He booked in, noting that this seemed a long wait. The receptionist said "oh, you can see the doctor today or to tomorrow". I don't know what the cost difference was, if any, but I liked the story.</comment>


Ask HN: 10 questions to test myself? - <AUTHOR>

I have been studying python for quite a while now.. After some weeks of initial studying, I felt confident enough and started to learn frameworks (Flask), and started to work on a project for practice..
Last week, suddenly it hit me that I am not even proficient in Python itself to begin for a project, so I got back to the learning and doing the practice exercises available in PySchools and coderbyte.
I have already completed 140 exercises out of 211 in pyschools without much hiccup, but I still feel that I am not proficient enough.., I am seriously not sure, how much knowledge do I actually have on the language..
If you could give me any 10 questions in python or in programming general that an programmer could answer and that if i could get the answer without much effort, i will get some confident..
HMO... <comment><USER2> Are you looking for questions about the language itself that you could answer without looking things up? If so, that is foolish. I have 5 years experience and still look up things in the os module that I've used 10 times before.

Are you looking for challenges & things you could build to prove to yourself that you are a good programmer?

Here's one: Given an expression of the form (+ 3 5), return the result of applying the mathematical operation to the two numbers.

execute("(- 9 4)") should return 5

execute("(* 3 9)") should return 18

execute("(% 4 0)") should raise an error

but I suspect what you really want is exercises which you know are really at your level. This is trickier and it might mean that a class is your best bet. Perhaps one that applies python to data science.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I could solve that expression you have given.. Most of the time I could see some challenge and able to figure how to work it out quickly... But, when I start to work on the project, there is this thing that keeps on iterating me that I am not READY...

In Short, I itself dont know how much proficient i am in python., that's hitting the learning curve so bad...

<comment><USER2> Hmmmm... you mean that in your mind, you can produce a sketch of how you would do it mathematically, but you can't translate that into python? Or do you mean that you can think of roughly how you would do it in python, but when you sit down to actually write, you feel you aren't ready?

In either case, I think the following technique would be useful for you. It is what I do whenever I'm picking up a new language/toolset or when I just don't feel fluent in what I'm doing. I grab some scrap paper and just use it to increase my own mental RAM. I jot down things that I'm thinking:

\- questions I have

\- ideas about how I'm going to approach a problem

\- notes from documentation or stackoverflow lookups

\- random talking-to-myself

In the past hour or so, I've been working through setting up a django-cms site for the first time and the contents of my scratchpad look like:

"""

why does render_block_js have so much javascript?

why is the DOM suddenly blank?

I can try

why can't I navigate to /en/polls/ ?

      apparently django caches url routing

its adding a fucking dollar sign to the end?! why? why?

Opaque. lets pull-request this documentation.

djangocms_polls

oh, I can just re-order

and I should prepend 'blog' to that

"""

This is incomprehensible to anyone. But the point is that I get these things out of my head and have that much more space to think. Plus, I'm _doing_ something, rather than just sitting in front of a bare text editor frustrated. I'm talking through why I am frustrated and grappling with the problem in some way. That makes me less inclined to get distracted (I'm a very distractible person)

Now, I might be wrong in assuming something that helps my brain will help yours. If I am, please let me know. Since I spend all day using a brain to design code, one of the most important skills I try to build is understanding how people's brains work with code.</comment></comment></comment>