ghiotion

Exactly. I saw that and was really surprised. Burying you comment like that was an aggressively unfriendly act; two adjectives I never thought I would use to describe this place.

Gun to head, yeah, I do care about karma. But I only care insofar as I respect the community who's voting.

The problem is that the indiscriminate downvote homogenizes discussion. The consensus opinion rises to the top. This is good when the group is good; bad when the group degrades.

I posted an Ask PG submission about the use of downvote.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=214398

Yes, I've noticed that. Seems as if people are feeling more free with the down arrow in general. I'm not sure I like it. I'm no karma whore, but I do like my karma points.

Personally, I reserve a down vote for comments that are particularly stupid of 4chan-y.

I too wanted to comment on the salmon is/are thing. I enjoy the vagaries of all languages, programming or otherwise.

Yes, but the idea seems to be to introduce them to programming concepts: variables, if/else, do/while, etc. The advantage of HTML and javascript is that it's very easy to see how a button click causes some logic to execute. It also shows them that programming can be done in a simple text editor using only tools you already have at your disposal, by virtue of having nothing but a computer.

What about HTML + javascript? Very visual with instant feedback. You get the programming stuff with javascript (an under appreciated language) and introduce the concept of a structured document with HTML. You can use firebug as an intro to debuggers too.

This article may be interesting and all, but I can't figure out why the link is to:

http://cs6c.clearspring.com/r/484dbc934177dc66

with a url argument pointing to the newsweek article.

I watched a friend of mine slowly die of AIDS over a number of years. I was in the room at the Hospice when he actually died.

I drank to deal with it.

My wife's 18 year old brother died of a stroke in his sleep. He was an adopted kid who's biological mother was a cocaine addict.

She wrote a book about him.

I ended up with alcohol problems and she is close to getting a book deal. I'd say her approach was the superior one.

178 vi

105 ls

66 cd

50 python

11 links

10 su

7 ps

7 cp

6 id

4 top

It's an interesting idea and one that has merit. One of the smartest programmers I know didn't go to college. He spent his formative years building pipe organs and having 5 kids.

However, this makes the mistaken assumption that college's only role is to prepare you for a career. I majored in Philosophy at a Jesuit college in Chicago. Currently, I'm a software developer. College was about getting introduced to new ideas and read books I would have never sought out on my own. Really... who reads Augustine or Kierkegaard anymore? I learned how to live on my own in college; how I wanted to spend my time and my money, how to survive in my first apartment and make rent money. I also met a great bunch of friends I still keep in contact with.

Bottom line: college should never be treated like a trade school. It's not designed for job training. If you consider it so, it never makes economic sense. College, and liberal arts degrees in particular, teach you how to think.

Interesting. Is this a DH1 response or a DH2 response? (http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html) Maroon seems to inspire lots of highly charged responses, both positive and negative. But it seems that most of these stem from his acerbic and slightly glib writing style. His biggest critics are critics of his tone, I think. Not critics of actual content.

God, I just love this guy's posts. He's so freaking enthusiastic. It's really infectious. Normally, I'm not a big fan of the exclamation point, but somehow he makes it work.

I've got to go along with pius on this one. This offends me. It's that smarmy, ingratiating racism that seems to be all over the internet. It's not funny, it's not clever.

James Cameron did a visually breathtaking, 3D take at the end of his "Aliens of the Deep" about a hypothetical alien civilization living in Titan's oceans. Presumably, they were getting their energy from the thermal vents on the ocean floor.

"The Brothers Karamazov" - Fyodor Dostoevsky.

Perhaps the very first existentialist novel ever written. Dostoevsky was an existentialist before anyone knew what existentialism was.

I gotta disagree with you. If anything, Pilgrim was too easy on him. Frankly, I think someone could make a wicked "Fake Joel Spolsky" blog. The tag line could be: "HEY! I wrote Excel! What have you done douche bag?"

> I believe Python programmers want to write Python - not Java, nor .Net. What attracts us to Python is a clean syntax. If I want concurrency in Python, I don't want to have to call into java.util.concurrent.

A-freakin-men. Remove the GIL! (I know, I know, easier said than done).

I used VC++ in my first job, using Microsoft's ATL to extend the functionality of an ActiveX based Web app from Mercury Interactive (TestDirector, for those that are interested). It was utterly horrible, but I wasn't aware of it at the time.

I basically agree with the author of the post. I've never understood the use of virtual and template classes. However, I like what Anonymous says in the comments:

>Here's the secret to good use of C++: Never use STL. Never use any template libraries. Furthermore, never use templates.

>Pretend that it's C, with some nifty object-oriented features and operator overloading. Nothing more.

In general, I don't like this idea, but I just checked the new page and I count no less than 4 submissions that seem strange to me:

1) Free Software Download

2) a dude soliciting help for red5

3 & 4) InkomHolic and 3rrOrists that violate the posting guidelines.

Yes please. This needs to go bye-bye.

Why make me enter my full name? I hate, hate, hate giving out my name on Web sites that don't need it. My internet identity is my username.

True. Perhaps I should have put quotes around proves. Still, I remember what a big impact Zeno had on me as a young philosophy student.

Zeno's paradox, which proves that motion is an illusion:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeno's_paradoxes

Those ancient Greeks knew their shit.

I'm not ready to pull a chicken little. I came over here from reddit after seeing pg's post on trolls on the reddit front page. Some of the earliest comments and/or posts I saw were of the "oh man, we're screwed now" type. Obviously I can't speak from experience, but I have a hard time believing the reddit crowd did HN a disservice. HN is just too darn... smart for the majority of people. On the rare occasion when some stupid POS makes it to the front page, the comment section more than makes up for it.

The community is too good to suffer fools gladly. And fools get bored easily.

If you like Clue, check out Mystery of the Abby from Days of Wonder. It's the deepest mystery board game I've ever seen.

> or if Microsoft tried to turn it in to a Windows program, I would switch to Reddit. I like Digg more, but either of those scenarios would kill Digg for me.

I find it hilarious that, even as bad as reddit's gotten, it could be anyone's second choice over Digg. At least reddit has the capacity to still be interesting. Digg, on the other hand, makes me want to kick a Golden Retriever.

He could use something like:

http://toolator.com/ban/

Says it works with blogspot.

Man, I feel for you on this. Find his IP and block it. If that doesn't work, block his entire ISP with a message that they have this guy to thank for it. Finally, ignore him. If he makes a comment, delete it. Don't respond. From what I've seen, you seem to be feeding into his pathology. This isn't a blame the victim thing, but an Internet thing. The guy's a troll and every time you answer him, you reinforce his behavior.

Thank you. That was exactly what I was trying to get across, but you did it much more eloquently.

This is a little embarrassing to admit, but after codepad and this post, I think I'm developing a man-crush on Steven Hazel.