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mhartlon Ask HN: How do I learn math/physics in my thirties?

Giancoli's book doesn't use calculus. Halliday & Resnick (or one of its later updates from Crane) is a better bet in this regard.

mhartlon Learn Enough JavaScript to Be Dangerous by Michael Hartl

This is a 296-page JavaScript tutorial I recently finished. The full text is available for free online; for more about the book, and for a 20% launch discount on the ebook formats, see the launch post here:

https://news.learnenough.com/learn-enough-javascript-to-be-d...

mhartlon Bitcoin just passed $5,000

ISWYDT.

mhartlon Bitcoin just passed $5,000

The supply of Ether isn't algorithmically capped, while the supply of Bitcoin is. This makes Bitcoin more resistant to the greatest long-term threat to a store of value, namely, currency dilution via the creation of new money.

mhartlon It’s time to give Firefox another chance

OT, but (in case you didn't know) you can use asterisks to italicize text, so instead of _this_ you'll have this.

mhartlon Joe Hruska, founder and CEO of RescueTime (YC W08), has died

I'm so sorry to hear this. I was in the same YC batch as Joe and the other RescueTime founders back in 2008. Joe will be sorely missed by all who knew him.

mhartlon Learn Enough CSS & Layout to Be Dangerous

Learn Enough CSS & Layout to Be Dangerous is a new 500+ page tutorial on front-end development by me (Michael Hartl) and Learn Enough cofounder Lee Donahoe. Link is to the free online version; launch announcement is here:

http://news.learnenough.com/learn-enough-css-and-layout

Ebook launch discount expires in a week.

Enjoy!

mhartlon Raymond Smullyan has died

One of my favorite Smullyan works is the lesser-known 5000 B.C. and Other Philosophical Fantasies. Here's one of the more amusing anecdotes from that book:

In item #249 of my book of logic puzzles titled What Is the Name of This Book?, I describe an infallible method of proving anything whatsoever. Only a magician is capable of employing the method, however. I once used it on [noted philosopher] Rudolph Carnap to prove the existence of God.

"Here you see a red card," I said to Professor Carnap as I removed a card from the deck. "I place it face down in your palm. Now you know that a false proposition implies any proposition. Therefore, if this card were black, then God would exist. Do you agree?"

"Oh, certainly," replied Carnap, "if the card were black, then God would exist."

"Very good," I said as I turned over the card. "As you see, the card is black. Therefore, God exists!"

"Ah yes!" replied Carnap in a philosophical tone. "Proof by legerdemain! Same as the theologians use!"

mhartlon Life Lessons After 10 Years of BetterExplained.com

Thanks for the great post, Kalid! Both useful and inspiring.

mhartlon Calling bullshit

For better or for worse, the term bullshit has no exact synonym in the English language; we use the term because it precisely describes the phenomena we are studying.

Interestingly enough, the claim about bullshit lacking an exact synonym is false. Not only does bull by itself mean precisely the same thing, but in fact its use predates the compound formation by three centuries. The use of shit in bullshit is an intensifier, as in shitstorm or shitfit, though presumably the rather evocative image of bovine excrement was also a factor.

From the Google dictionary:

    bull (3)
    bo͝ol/
    noun informal
    noun: bull

        stupid or untrue talk or writing; nonsense.
        "much of what he says is sheer bull"

    Origin
    early 17th century: of unknown origin.


    bull·shit
    ˈbo͝olˌSHit/
    vulgar slang
    noun
    noun: bullshit

        1. stupid or untrue talk or writing; nonsense.

    Origin
    early 20th century: from bull (3) + shit.

mhartlon Learn Enough HTML to Be Dangerous

The link is to the free online HTML tutorial, which deploys a live website in the first section and ties everything together in a way you haven't seen before.

The ebook version is around 130 pages and is available for purchase. For more information (and a 20% launch discount on the ebook), see the launch post here:

https://news.learnenough.com/learn-enough-html

Enjoy!

mhartlon Learn Enough Action Cable to Be Dangerous

Link is to the free online version. Announcement post is here:

http://news.learnenough.com/learn-enough-action-cable

Enjoy!

mhartlon Launch of the new Rails Tutorial screencats

I'm planning to be around today in case anyone has any questions. Thanks for the support!

mhartlon Pokémon Go Is Teaching Americans the Metric System

Next thing you know we'll be buying soda in two-liter bottles and measuring our pills in milligrams.

mhartlon Cloud9 Acquired by Amazon

Argh. Too late to edit, but: that downloading -> than downloading

mhartlon Musical preferences mainly shaped by a person’s cultural upbringing

I'm sorry you are being downvoted for merely quoting PG.

I know, right? And I'm not even endorsing PG's view! Just putting it out there for discussion.

mhartlon Musical preferences mainly shaped by a person’s cultural upbringing

Given there is no such thing as "poor taste"

You might be interested in the contrary view, expressed by Paul Graham in "Taste for Makers" [1]:

Saying that taste is just personal preference is a good way to prevent disputes. The trouble is, it's not true. You feel this when you start to design things.

Whatever job people do, they naturally want to do better. Football players like to win games. CEOs like to increase earnings. It's a matter of pride, and a real pleasure, to get better at your job. But if your job is to design things, and there is no such thing as beauty, then there is no way to get better at your job. If taste is just personal preference, then everyone's is already perfect: you like whatever you like, and that's it.

[1]: http://www.paulgraham.com/taste.html

mhartlon Cloud9 Acquired by Amazon

Cloud9 has been a great partner to the Rails Tutorial, with their custom Rails Tutorial workspace allowing readers to spin up quickly at the beginning, while also maintaining state if they need to take a break. It's also enormously less overhead that downloading and installing a virtual machine.

There's no telling what this acquisition will bring, of course, but it's a good fit for AWS, so I'm optimistic that the service will continue uninterrupted. (Both the 3rd and 4th edition Rails Tutorial screencasts use Cloud9, so I sure hope so!)

Congratulations to Ruben and the rest of the Cloud9 team!

mhartlon Rails 5 edition of the Ruby on Rails Tutorial book

The book itself is here:

http://railstutorial.org/book

The links in the announcement include a 20% launch discount, expiring tonight at midnight PDT.

mhartlon Rails 5.0: Action Cable, API mode, and more

Looks like now's a good time to mention that the Ruby on Rails Tutorial book has already been updated for Rails 5:

http://railstutorial.org/book

Sales actually just launched on Tuesday (announcement here: https://news.learnenough.com/rails-5-edition-of-rails-tutori...), and you can pick up your copy of the new 4th edition here:

http://railstutorial.org/code/launch

That link includes a 20% launch discount, which expires tonight at midnight PDT.

As with previous versions, the new edition focuses on the core principles of web development, so there isn't much Rails 5–specific material in the update, but I am planning standalone Learn Enough tutorials on things like Action Cable and Rails API (http://learnenough.com/).

mhartlon The Ruby on Rails Tutorial book, updated for Rails 5

I submitted a link directly to the free online version of the Ruby on Rails Tutorial, but to find out more about the new edition (and to get a 20% launch discount) see the news post here:

https://news.learnenough.com/rails-5-edition-of-rails-tutori...

mhartlon Handcuffed to Uber

What happens if someone is fired? Surely they wouldn't have to exercise their options then, but it also seems ridiculous that they would lose them.

mhartlon I installed Windows 95 on my Apple Watch

This story is a good hacker litmus test. If you can appreciate why installing Windows 95 on an Apple Watch is awesome, you're probably a hacker; if not, definitely not.

mhartlon Learn Enough Git to Be Dangerous

Thanks for the heads-up. We'll look into ways to speed things up in future releases.

mhartlon Learn Enough Git to Be Dangerous

Randall is pretty chill about people using xkcd strips as long as you aren't selling them commercially:

https://xkcd.com/license.html

I do offer ebook sales, but of course I'm not selling the individual strips themselves, and the online version is free. Still, your comment has made me realize it's probably a good idea to double-check, so I'll probably drop Randall a line just to make sure.

mhartlon Learn Enough Git to Be Dangerous

What made you switch from Python to Ruby?

Rails. In Python-land, Django hadn't won yet. (My first startup used a half-baked framework I wrote myself on top of Zope. I shudder at the memory.)

Also your book set me on my way with Ruby and Rails. I recommend it at least once a week. Thanks for everything.

You're very welcome! Glad to hear it. :-)

mhartlon Learn Enough Git to Be Dangerous

Thanks for the note. Softcover is absolutely amazing for my purposes, but at this point we think the educational market is more promising than the market for self-publishing tools, so that's what we're focusing on now. This was always part of our plan; I personally needed Softcover for the reasons you mention, but it was an open question whether it would take off as a standalone platform or whether we would end up focusing on making our own products.

A happy but unintended side-effect of making a platform is that it dramatically lowers the barrier to collaborating with other authors, and I'm currently working with several other people on more advanced and varied Learn Enough tutorials. This sort of collaborative publishing (with full control over the publication pipeline) would be effectively impossible without Softcover.

mhartlon Learn Enough Git to Be Dangerous

I'm better known nowadays as a Rubyist, but in fact Python was the first language I really loved, and I have over 100K lines of Python under my belt from my Ph.D. research and my first startup. Our planned intro sequence includes Learn Enough™ Ruby to Be Dangerous, but I'm hoping to design it so that I can quickly make a Python version as well.

mhartlon Learn Enough Git to Be Dangerous

Thanks! Glad to hear it. :-)

mhartlon Learn Enough Git to Be Dangerous

What you're seeing is the difference between trademarks™ and registered trademarks®. The USPTO lists the latter but not the former. You don't actually have to register a trademark in order to use it, but it's usually a good idea. Which reminds me: now's probably a good time to drop a line to my lawyer…