Brewer

I was pretty impressed when we opened tonight. Folks started walking calmly into the store. They were walking fast, but I didn't see anyone doing an all out sprint.

I've never understood the desire to work remotely, unless you are nomadic and travel the world.

I'm not sure what you'd do with the data itself, but if you want to build some interactive charts to show off your project, Highcharts[1] is a good way to go.

1: http://www.highcharts.com/

Is that $1500 for your own place or $1500 with roommates?

San Jose is a bit farther away from San Francisco, but the prices are lower there aren't they?

Well I meant in addition to any non-school related projects I do. :P The tasks we are asked to perform here are a joke. I recall a problem set last year that went something like this: "You have a Door object that has a state which can be 'open' or 'closed'. Write a mutator method to change the state of the door." What the hell? That was about 2/3 of the way through the course too. I know its a first year course but come one ...

I haven't made anything yet. How would the source from my course assignments/projects look on GitHub?

I definitely get the point of MIT and Stanford having amazing entrepreneurial cultures, which is something that we don't have here in Newfoundland.

I'd love to be able to tell people about something that I've made -- but I haven't made anything. I have no idea what to make and no clue where to start.

This is an interesting answer because I wasn't expecting anyone to tell me that business is easier than MIT. Then again, you owned the majority of a business that had more than $1m in revenue. I have trouble finding money to spend on lunch.

I'm a CS major now and I'm strongly considering switching to an Applied Math/Computer Science double major. Are you a developer? If so, what about your math degree helped you most? Did you focus on pure or applied math?

I have considered Waterloo, but it's far too expensive for me to attend, unfortunately.

That's good, because although I have a StackOverflow account, my reputation is 1. It's a new account. :P

Sounds like brown nosing to me. :P

I got the idea recently to create a repo for all of the course work that I have done and will do. Do you think that this will work to my advantage?

I'll be starting my second year in September, so I'll have plenty of time to attend this conference. Thanks for the link, I'll make a note of the date for next year and bookmark the site.

EDIT: Do you have any tips on networking? I have no problem talking to people, but starting the conversation is not my strong point.

I'd like to get an internship with Mixpanel -- a web analytics company -- next summer so I've been reading up on data mining and I hope to get to work on a related project using Python in the next few weeks.

I've been working with a CS professor for about a month and a half now as part of a work-study program. Do I get street cred for this?

This is what I've heard. In fact, I actually have another Ask HN thread up write now on this same topic. It should be slightly higher up on the 'new' page if you want to check it out. The title is 'Ask HN: Showing personal projects to potential employers'.

No, I'm in Newfoundland, Canada -- about as far away from the Valley as you can get while staying in North America.

Do you have any tips for fellow attendees of awful schools?

No offence, but that doesn't answer his question. What does it depend on?

I don't think that most colleges instill a solid work ethic in their students because the work is just too easy (this is the case with my university). You have to get an 80 at my university to get an A .. the high school I went to required a 93 for an A.

Generally I wouldn't waste my time on naysayers, but I feel like this time I should.

I am fully aware of everything that has been said here. I know it's hard work. I've heard about the hours. I know that it would be easier to start with Python.

But you know what? I just don't care. None of that concerns me. This is something that I want to do, and I'm willing to put up with all of this stuff.

Now to be fair, there are a couple that at least make sense.

For example, 48. "I got it for free" is a pet hate. You got it "free" not "for free". You don't get something cheap and say you got it "for cheap" do you? Mark Jones, Plymouth.

I'm guilty of this and I'll admit it, but for the most part, the people whose names appear on that list are just fucking retarded.

EDIT: As a side note, I never heard "touch base" until I moved to Canada.

Clearly I would build a time machine to go back to 1996 and invent Google.

Assuming you want to save the data you need to look into databases. MySQL is tried and true, but NoSQL database (MongoDB, for example) are hot right now.

I agree, the "any changes that we felt were needed" part made me laugh.

Yes, if I wanted to know what my password is then I could paste it into Notepad and write it down on a piece of paper. I just choose not to.

Indeed you can.

Good argument.

I'm using Ubuntu, I'm just a total noob that thought since Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V didn't work that all hope was lost. Clearly I was wrong.

bet·ter -- adj. Comparative of good. -- Greater in excellence or higher in quality.

Please excuse the smart ass answer, but it's the best I had :P

I want to feel like I know what I'm doing, because half of the time I feel like I am just wandering around aimlessly like a chicken with its head cut off.

I want to be able to take an idea and turn it into a product that people would be willing to pay for.

I suppose I want to be a bit of a Jack of All Trades.