Hacker News Reader

metaforthon Django powered flickr photo voting site

Great job. It would be a lot more addictive if it was in a hot-or-not format -- random sequence of pictures and you get to vote on each one. Each vote shows you the next one.

metaforthon Ask HN: Help For Clojure Addiction

Is there any public Clojure code for this?

metaforthon What's the easiest way to make a living?

The obvious answer to this might be to create a startup around your passion. You still have the problem of finding a way to fund the initial phase before you start making money. But that seems like a smaller problem than the original one. Maybe recursively reduce the problem in this way until it has been solved.

metaforthon Labrepl: Follow along with the Clojure Studio from Hickey and Halloway

What is labrepl? The project page talks about when it will be released but does not mention what it is.

metaforthon It’s Time For Microsoft To Turn Itself Upside-Down

The ideas are not very good. I can't see what "problem" they are trying to solve. The innovation that we see here is very superficial.

Microsoft's real problem is its top-down hierarchy and performance-ranking driven DNA, which fouls up whatever they step into. Superficial solutions like a garage or an officelabs are irrelevant to their bottom line. These are mostly costmetic and PR efforts.

metaforthon Why I love everything you hate about Java

I use the Jython (or Scala) REPL to explore Java.

metaforthon Querulous, Twitter's Scala library for SQL databases

Here is some documentation with examples,

http://github.com/nkallen/querulous/blob/master/README.markd...

metaforthon Productivity Showdown: Python/Django vs C#/ASP.NET

Neat.

One of the arguments I hear against Python is that while initially things happen fast, the effect does not scale for large applications. Or that Java/C#'s static type checking makes it more scalable.

I'm curious if you have seen any scalability effects. For example, did the Python teams productivity stay consistent or did it taper off the further into the project you got? Did the C# team's productivity go up over time? Stay constant? Drop?

I'd be really curious to see the time series on the productivity.

metaforthon Getting It: What Makes a Great Software Engineer

Sounds like the No true Scotsman fallacy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman

metaforthon Emulating Empathy

"Customer metrics are not the same as customer interaction."

This is a good insight. Sometimes startups assume customer development means gathering a lot of metrics. There is something about a face-to-face interaction which trumps metrics.

metaforthon Ask HN: What to do when friends of friends seek "hookups" for jobs at my org?

I was in the same situation recently. I asked the person to send me his resume. I forwarded it to the HR recruiter so I could honestly tell this person I had forwarded his resume. At the same time I added a caveat to the recruiter that I was not familiar with this person or his work and that based on the resume he did not look particularly impressive.

metaforthon Did Iran Just Rocket Creatures Into Space? Sure Seems So

Although I don't know Farsi one of the instructors at my college said it was one of the easiest languages to learn. She said many of her students were writing Farsi poetry by the end of the semester.

metaforthon [dead]

This looks like spam. Where's my "flag" link?

metaforthon Steve Jobs calls Google's "Don't be evil" mantra "Bullshit" and Adobe "Lazy"

The thing I like about Steve is he calls it like he sees it.

metaforthon Freenode sucks

If you read the comments one reason FreeNode is in disarray is because Rob Levin who ran the site died in a bicycling accident a few years ago.

In fact the chaos and drama at FreeNode might be the real story here.

http://bramcohen.livejournal.com/72298.html?thread=1000554#t...

Fragglet writes (in the comments):

"This shouldn't be surprising to anyone with any experience of Freenode. Freenode is a perfect example of how open source projects tend to acquire the personality of their founder. In the case of Freenode, that founder was Rob Levin, famous for his online begging over wallops and for being completely incompetent in general. Levin's incompetence, begging and dictatorial style where he branded everyone who disagreed with him a "troll" gradually alienated all the sensible and technically skilled people from the network staff until the only people left were his equally incompetent sycophantic underlings.

"When Levin died several years ago as a result of his own stupidity (riding a bike without a helmet), they took over. I haven't heard of mquin before but it looks like the cycle continues.

"Your best option is to close the Freenode channel and move to OFTC, the staff of which consist mostly of the sensible and technically skilled people who left Freenode."

Here are some links with more details,

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/01/29/buy_a_piece_of_net/

http://antisec.wordpress.com/2006/06/27/eyeballing-rob-levin...

metaforthon What to do when your startup grows up?

It sounds like you are asking for permission to quit. Money is a promise of future enjoyment. Are you willing to get chewed out for a future payoff? I am in a similar situation except without much equity in the company and I am about to give notice as soon as I get a contract lined up.

metaforthon The Stupidest bike lane in america

Seems completely unrelated to HN.