courtewing

As a programmer that suffers from RSI-related wrist issues at only 26, all I can think of when I see all of these workspaces is "how on earth are all of these people still able to move their hands?" Most, if not all of them look like they're trying to stick it to ergonomics.

I'm secretly just jealous, of course.

There is a response from a marketing guy from GoToMeeting in the comments of this article. I couldn't readily find a way to link to the comment, so I'll post it here for anyone that doesn't want to go hunting:

"Hi, this is Andrew from the GoToMeeting search marketing team. I just posted over on the MeetingBurner blog as well. We do not use competitive names in search ads, but we do follow the common industry practice of bidding on competitive terms. In the instance of this ad, we were using a Google method called dynamic keyword insertion which delivers the searcher's query in the ad title. For example, if you were searching on the term "web conferencing," that query would appear in the ad title. In this case, the user entered "meeting burner" in the search field and it appeared in the ad title. This is why the Meeting Burner name showed up in the ad. Our search marketing efforts are never intended to deceive the searcher."

Edit: I couldn't find anything in the FAQ about this, but if a post like this is not really accurately representing a situation, is that something I should flag? I feel that is beyond simply "disagreeing with the post", but I don't want to start abusing the feature.

I believe I saw a link in the comment of another light table submission that had Chris Granger saying they'd "probably" be implementing python one way or another.

I could have also imagined the whole thing, so while that may serve to answer your question, you shouldn't take only my word on it.

This comment isn't really hacker related, but it is related to this bundle:

For anyone that likes playing games but doesn't really follow them, I highly recommend taking a look at both Amnesia: The Dark Descent and LIMBO. Both are available in this pack, and they are both unique, high-quality, and inspired games. The former is a terrifying journey into a nightmarish realm that was created to emerse the player in the environment moreso than any other game in existence, and the latter is a spectacularly creepy 2D puzzle game that looks like it was created by Tim Burton.

Being the 48th most commonly used word in US English is a little misleading in this case, though. Verbs such as "get", common as they are, are rarely used to begin a thought.

I think this is a mighty clever app; I'm not really sure why there are so many negative comments.

It would be nice if the url changed with the sample combinations though. It looks like you can record a chunk of the sound and share that, but I'm far more interested in sharing the exact combination that I come up with than I am the sound itself. I'd love to just send a link to a friend so that they could not only see the combination in action but also dive in and make it their own.

I'd say this in the original article's comments, but apparently it does not allow anonymous comments:

I found this article to be really inspiring. I guess I can see how some people may think Chris is just stroking his own ego, but I did not read it that way at all. First and foremost, I took from this article that a key to feeling great about yourself and your accomplishments is to actually do stuff, all the time. It's a simple concept that I'm sure we're all aware of, but this article really hit it home for me.

As a direct result of this article, I am inspired to do stuff, even if that stuff is considerably less awesome than what Chris accomplished last year.

I start with a personal response via blog post: http://epixa.com/2012/04/on-inspiration-chains-and-being-awe...

FYI: The default resolution a 27" thunderbolt display is 2560x1440. If you're interested in supporting a lot of different resolutions, you may consider starting there and scaling down.

This might be true for some, but there are plenty of reasons why someone may be completely satisfied with their work while also wanting to program extensively in their free time.

Anecdotally, I find that I program the most in my freetime when I am feeling the most fulfilled at work, which would seem to be the opposite of what you describe. That said, rather than just use myself as an example, I can think of other scenarios where individuals may like to program a lot outside of work:

Some pople enjoy entrepreneurship but also desire and/or require the stability and benefits of working for someone else. In that case, they may use their free time to build products of their own.

Some people enjoy much different levels of "hacking" than what you could find at a single work place. They may be someone who is primarily interested in the work they do, so they are eager to put in 40 hours doing it. But then when they get home, they might like to do something entirely different. Maybe they make mobile productivity apps in Objective-C, but in their free time they like to hack up algorithms for AI opponents for board games in Lisp.

Still others may be in a position at work that while they do program, they also thoroughly enjoy the responsibilities for and time they must dedicate to managing teams or training individuals. Those things, rewarding as they may be, mean that there are just not enough hours in a single work day for the individual to get their fill of programming, so they do it in their free time as well.

And some may just like the social aspect of being active open source contributors. They may program really innovative and cool stuff at work, but the choose to do some more mundane open source stuff in their free time because they like collaborating and contributing back to projects that have helped them get to the point where they are today.

Interesting point, and I do hope that no one ever takes one of my opinions as an objective truth. That said, I do feel strongly that if the only benefit you can name about writing code in one particular manner is that it is aesthetically pleasing to you, then that is hardly a benefit at all.

When it comes to this particular case, I've heard a few different arguments for why the syntax they use is poor, including the following:

1. The syntax relies on parsing behavior that is expected to change in the future.

2. The syntax they use does not work in one of the major minifiers used throughout the community (the crux of the whole issue to begin with, but certainly a drawback in and of itself)

I have yet to hear any benefit to NOT including a semi-colon to resolve this issue beyond aesthetics, and aesthetics alone is just not a rationalization that I can get behind.

I agree with you to a certain extent, but I do think it is important to distinguish between those that think that they should just use a semi-colon and those that seek to disrespect a standard.

In my case, and I've seen this sentiment expressed repeatedly by others on HN, I think it is odd that a minification script would actively choose not to support a syntax that is standards compliant. On the other hand, I think it is crazy for a major project to use a valid syntax that not only breaks said [popular] minifier but also offers no noticeable benefit.

I do not feel as if I'm disrespecting any standard just because I think simply adhering to that standard is not a sufficient justification for doing something.

I am not sure, but that would make sense.

After re-reading your comment and the one to which it replied, I see that you are correct. My reply was not in the wrong tree but rather based on an incorrect assumption.

Pardon my ignorance, but what "exploitation" is being discussed here?

This is a sentiment that I see frequently on HN, and I'm not exactly sure why. I was a "questionably" contracted employee for awhile, and I never once felt exploited by the company, and I'm confident that they never felt that they were exploiting me.

Sure, being contractors might not be ideal for them at the moment, but they are the first 8 employees at the company. There are additional benefits to being in that situation.

In addition, we have no idea how much they do or do not understand their employment status. It is convenient for us to jump to the conclusion that the employees are ignorant about tax law, but that very well may not be the case. Just like in any other service industry, there are plenty of educated and informed workers in the mix, especially when you start looking at those that tend to excel in that particular field (he did say he now only hires top notch folk, after all).

I guess what I'm saying is, the discussion about W2 vs 1099 in this case is both valid and valuable, but let's not jump to any conclusions about who is exploiting whom.

This is interesting and surprising to me. I wonder how, for example, Comcast manages this.

Comcast has a huge independent contractor network that they use to subsidize their full-time on-site tech support. All of those contractors wear Comcast shirts, have Comcast written on their trucks, must meet customers at the times that Comcast schedules, and do receive at least a portion of their supplies from Comcast.

It was refreshing to see how receptive he was to that feedback, though. Based on his responses, it seems like he is going to take an active look at how he handles employment status.

It by no means signifies a guaranteed success, but it is definitely a good sign when an entrepreneur recognizes legitimate criticism about issues that could make or break his business and actively seeks to address them.

I am ecstatic to see that some node.js frameworks are trying to move toward being aggregations of standalone modules rather than growing into monolithic coupled frameworks.

Monolithic frameworks are plentiful in the PHP community, but recently some of the larger frameworks have started moving toward this aggregate component model. Unfortunately, the PHP frameworks are much older than node.js, so many of the corresponding micro-communities are entrenched in the idea that their framework is "best". This means that while it is awesome that frameworks are allowing you to consume individual components, you still do not see it happening very frequently. You almost never see the frameworks themselves sharing components, for example.

Obviously the module system baked into node.js helps steer the community toward the concept of consuming modules, but I'm optimistic that the community is also young enough to completely embrace the idea of frameworks being little more than aggregates of the most common modules for building apps and also that "sharing" between frameworks is not something to frown upon.

I think that is a valid concern, but it doesn't really apply to all apps.

As one example, for a lot of businesses, the value is not so much in the app itself but in the data the app interacts with. In those cases, giving your competitors the source code to your app does mean they could copy anything they want from your app, but that doesn't do them much good if the real value is in the data.

I think the technical infrastructure they've built to support Youtube, Google Search, and the rest of their products is a modern technological marvel, and that was designed 100% in-house as far as I know.

I don't think they've developed a physical consumer product that is revolutionary, but I believe they have the talent to do so.

I don't think that is a fair assessment of the situation. While some people may be in a position where getting laid off from their job is a welcomed incentive to pursue bigger and better things, there are also those people that rely on that steady income to pay their bills and keep their families clothed, fed, educated, and healthy.

I also want to say, although I don't mean to imply that this was your personal assumption, that not every person working for a technical company in the valley is a risk taking entrepreneur. Some people just like to program.

If you're not intimidated by a little C, I highly recommend "Computer Systems: A Programmer's Perspective"[1] by Bryant and O'Hallaron from Carnegie Mellon. It was personally recommended to me by a PhD student from CM when I inquired about CS resources that would be directly pertinent to programmers, and it completely exceeded my expectations.

[1] http://csapp.cs.cmu.edu/

As the author of this blog post, let me just say that that is a sad (but not untrue) statement, my friend.

I could certainly be wrong, but I took it as different departments doing their own thing rather than some organized effort by the company as a whole.

Not that I have control over who upvotes this, but did I miss a memo or something?

Perhaps the fact that such links trend well on aggregators like hacker news and reddit as well as micro-blogs like twitter is evidence to the contrary. You may not, but a lot of people still find it fun (myself included).

You are correct. PHP arrays are actually just ordered maps, so "map-oriented programming" would be appropriate in PHP. However, there is no traditional array implementation in PHP, so calling it "map-oriented programming" within the context of PHP would be ambiguous.

That all said, this "technique" could be used with a traditional array, in theory. The array in the example is fixed-length, and the keys themselves aren't really used at all.

Out of curiosity, why not link directly to the source rather than taking a screen shot?

I don't necessarily think Gatekeeper is a bad thing, but I worry about the impact if Apple were to make the default setting for Gatekeeper be Mac-store-only. Having the option to install other software would be great, but such a move would further marginalize non-Apple-approved software in a huge way. Assuming a large portion of Mac users are not the type to lower default security settings, then that could have a severe impact on the way people think about software in the "wild".

This was actually pretty fascinating to me. On one hand, I am astonished at how long it takes to perform seemingly trivial git operations on repositories at this scale. On the other hand, I'm utterly mystified that a company like Facebook has such monolithic repositories. Even back when I was using SVN a lot, I relied on externals and such to break up large projects into their smaller service-level components.

I'd be very interested to see some benchmarks on their current VCS solution for repositories of this scale.

I would definitely try it if for no other reason than the novelty. But I don't enjoy logging into facebook to check facebook... much less logging into facebook to check some other social networking site.

Cool idea, though.