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brianto2010on Ask HN: About Computer Science Testing

I'm also a college student, but not sure how much authority I have on this matter.

Grades (I think) are only an approximation of your knowledge. Take them with a grain of salt, unless things like financial aid or enrollment hang in the balance. I've gotten F's on a few exams before, but I've also gotten two fantastic internships. Grades won't reflect that.

What kind of things did your professor dock points for? Simple mistakes? Or are they conceptual mistakes? Do you feel that the exam material is relatively important? And did you learn?

I (personally) wouldn't worry about what to feel, but instead took towards a goal (like working at Google!).

brianto2010on Study material for tech interviews

> Just making sure I won't be working with idiots.

I think the the interviewer (or company) would probably take this as an insult.

But I do agree with you in that these types of interview questions are pointless. Spitting back an answer verbatim demonstrates nothing.

A neat approach that I've seen people use is to take a you-should-know-this concept such as the merging part of merge sort and put a twist in it, so it isn't a simple spit-the-answer-back, but different enough to require some thought.

brianto2010on In Love with LÖVE

For what it's worth, you can use the local keyword to limit the scope of variables.

http://www.lua.org/pil/4.2.html

brianto2010on SSH client in Google Chrome

"It is unfair to label this poor quality, the author clearly describes a problem with moving a security tool like SSH into the browser."

Yes, I agree. The grandparent does point out a valid problem. However I believe the parent was referring to the sarcastic tone and negativity, which I also believe should be out of place here on Hacker News.

brianto2010on Dear Hacker Community – We Need To Talk

I do not believe that was the point of the article. Extrapolations and technicalities aside, she is showing her perspective of why she is pissed at the cryptoparty community. Personally, I find that somewhat interesting.

brianto2010on Try R — A new online course, for free

> R is currently the lingua franca for academic statisticians. New methods papers, textbooks, and toolkits are much more likely to ship with R libraries and implementations then Matlab or anything else.

Is this the same in industry? I've heard a professor say that SAS is more widely used.

brianto2010on Google Promises To Bring December Back To Android 4.2 “Soon”

Maybe it'll be a Christmas present. :-)

brianto2010on Data Scientist: The Sexiest Job of the 21st Century

At RIT at least, R and NumPy aren't in the core curriculum. Instead, there is a "Statistical Computing" class which covers SAS. Most students either use Minitab or Excel. Surprisingly (or not), a lot of in-class work is done using a graphing calculator. Of course, that also carries into a lot of the homework.

I wonder, do statisticians actually use graphing calculators to do stats?

brianto2010on Why I now, unfortunately, hate Hacker News..

Good point about the karma limit. I was writing under a different assumption.

What I was proposing in my earlier post was exactly as you say: explain the downvote.

Maybe let everyone downvote, but have tiny radio buttons with reasons next to them. :-)

brianto2010on Why I now, unfortunately, hate Hacker News..

"New" members shouldn't downvote because they might not downvote the right things, or for the right reasons. I do not consider lurkers "new members."

I also disagree with the idea of karma-driven downvote system. However, I wrote the above with the assumption that those who can downvote know HN values and enforce them. As you pointed out, yes the karma-downvote thing doesn't quite accomplish it's goal (assuming the goal is to allow senior members to act as enforcers). It should change. However that wasn't quite the point of my post.

My original point is: if you gonna say smack, gimme a damn good reason why.

brianto2010on Why I now, unfortunately, hate Hacker News..

That's a neat idea. -1 doesn't mean much without a comment explaining why.

I do have a concern, though. If this system is implemented, doesn't that mean that the "new kids" will also have access to this system and may use it to exasperate HN's "new kids" problem?

What about modifying the existing HN guidelines to include comments and promote the guidelines more? For example, cite a downvote with an appropriate quote from the guidelines.

brianto2010on Write LaTeX - browser-based collaborative editor

This is a huge stretch, but will there be any support for noweb?

Whenever I use LaTeX, it's usually for math/physics/stat homework where either computation or graphs are involved. It would be lovely if I could somehow inject (for example)

    <<echo=FALSE,fig=TRUE>>=
    x <- -5:5
    y <- (x - 2)^2 - 5

    plot(x, y)
    @

into the page and have a graph show up.

brianto2010on "Computer Science" is Not Science and "Software Engineering" is Not Engineering

> You wouldn't call a software architect simply 'an architect' (would you?).

Yes, yes I would.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Architect_(disambiguation)

- third bullet down

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Architecture_(disambiguation)

- look under 'Process Architecture'

brianto2010on "Computer Science" is Not Science and "Software Engineering" is Not Engineering

So, are you saying that a discipline that does not involve the physical world cannot necessarily be an engineering discipline?

Personally, I don't usually see people favoring the word "engineer" over programmer or software developer. As for myself, I see them as synonyms.

brianto2010on The College-Cost Calamity

> way too much money for what you're going to get.

YMMV.

brianto2010on The College-Cost Calamity

Co-op program. And networking.

A lot of companies see RIT as a huge talent pool, and dedicate quite a bit of recruiting resources to look for potential interns and full-timers. Plus, you'll find peers that you can use to develop your professional network.

brianto2010on Vim: Buffers, Windows, and Tabs

Same here, but mine is

    nnoremap <Tab> gt
    nnoremap <S-Tab> gT

Normal mode tab switches through tabs. One (and two) key goodness.

brianto2010on [dead]

Do restaurant owners recieve complaints about Asians? Gays? Muslims? Do restaurant owners recieve those complaints at the level that they do about young children? Are those complaints justified as they are in this case?

brianto2010on Ask HN: Time tracking tools?

If you're on Linux, there is worklog. There's a bit of initial setup with config files, but after you've done that switching tasks is as simple as (switching to your terminal and) hitting a key.

brianto2010on No, shut up. What statistical programming languages can learn from Dropbox.

Here's a site I always go to for reference: http://statmethods.net/

brianto2010on Which programming book you just couldn’t stop reading from start to end?

Programming books are usually a chore for me to read through. I usually lose focus within 10 or so minutes. That said, there are a few exceptions:

  * _Why's Poignant Guide to Ruby[1]
  * The Tao of Programming[2]

[1]: http://mislav.uniqpath.com/poignant-guide/book/

[2]: http://www.canonical.org/~kragen/tao-of-programming.html

Why's guide has enough non-text/geeky humor to keep me reading. And, it's mostly pictures! You're learning, but it doesn't 'feel' like you're learning.

The Tao of Programming flows differently than other books, which blast you with information. Instead of telling you stuff directly, it is anecdotal. Rather than didactic, it's like a parable.

brianto2010on Use Vim Like A Pro

Awesome! I learned about zt, zb, zz, ^x ^f, and ^x ^i today. They'll definitely come in handy.

brianto2010on Researchers Map The Sexual Network Of An Entire High School

That was not the point of the study. The point of the study was to examine the relational map within the high school. It was not to examine sexual hygiene of students in the school.

> "It would be of far more educational value to the group that was studied and all their peers."

How is that so?

brianto2010on Making the URL bar useful again: Where the Breadcrumb should have been all along

> "This idea fails even on its own, since it presumes that URLs have structure, even within a particular site."

Don't sites usually have regular URL structures. Or, at least, could be organized into regular structures? In Rails, we have routes that map to URLs, like

  <website>/clothing/shirts/
  <website>/electronics/cellphones/verison
  <website>/<department>/<item_type>/<brand>

which looks like the idea the author was aiming towards. It doesn't seem that unreasonable.

brianto2010on Ask HN: Summer Reading Recommendations?

I guess it's a bit late, but I was joking. If it were truly light, I wouldn't have mentioned (noticed) it.

I'll put smileys next to jokes next time, OK?

brianto2010on Ask HN: Summer Reading Recommendations?

A People's History of the United States (Zinn) [http://www.amazon.com/Peoples-History-United-States-Present/...]

There's so much history that isn't taught in school (politically covered up) and Zinn presents many of these little-known history gems. Be warned, there is a light liberal swing.

brianto2010on Driving From Italy To China ... With No Driver

Heh... reminds me of éX-Driver (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ex-Driver#Overview). I think the idea has potential, but I don't think it will be safely feasible.

> "A test drive off campus on Thursday illustrates the many hazards. A tractor trailer blocked visibility entering a busy traffic circle, forcing the lead vehicle to inch tentatively into oncoming cars. When it did find a break, there wasn't enough time for the second vehicle to follow before another car inserted itself between them, cutting off communication"

brianto2010on Ask HN: Music while coding

Hardstyle: http://listen.di.fm/public3/hardstyle.pls

Eurodance: http://listen.di.fm/public3/eurodance.pls

Eurobeat: http://go2id.net:8000/listen.pls

JPop: http://kawaii-radio.net/listen.m3u

brianto2010on Why I Like Ruby

  backtrack = true unless consequence.signifies? :block_end

It doesn't seem that much harder to read.

brianto2010on Hacker News Daily (announcement)

> "the top voted articles are not the ones that I would want to read."

Then, how about using the top 10 from the classic view? http://news.ycombinator.com/classic Would that help?