paupino_masano

Excellent - thank you for that.

I'm not sure I completely agree with their reasoning: the example only really got complicated when dealing with function pointers, however that could be simplified with a macro (or a delegate in other languages).

I do agree that C can get complex to read, however I'm not sure switching the type/parameter option is the answer. But then again, I've probably become accustomed to this format. The real test will be using the language for a few weeks... I better start some small hobby projects in Go just to see if I end up liking it!

I found this article really interesting, though I would like to see more information on the design decisions for the syntax (i.e. types/return types come after). They did say it was easier to parse from a human and computer perspective, however personally (being used to C based languages I guess) I find it a little more difficult to parse. I guess I'd just like to see some references to this rather than insinuation. Anyone have any?

I was kind of hoping they'd put some more effort into Sparrow after acquiring it. Even without push support: I still personally prefer that UI. I have noticed a few minor bug fixes it being released so it doesn't seem like it is completely forgotten.

Still, I'll give Gmail 2.0 a go for a week to see how I like it. Who knows? I may change my mind.

It doesn't really sound like an auction - more like a raffle. i.e. If 10 people pay $20 but only one wins it...

I actually looked at making a site like this for selling my house a couple of years ago. Fortunately I did some analysis before building it as in NZ it came under the gambling commission rules. This meant that I could only build a site like this if I donated all the proceeds to charity - unfortunately that was against what I was trying to achieve so never went through with it.

I didn't realize it was meant to be used for payments. I admittedly have used it for flight boarding passes, coupons and show tickets so far - I thought it was great for that (particular boarding passes as it updates the gate if it changes).

Perhaps it is their long term strategy to use it for payments, however it doesn't seem that way given their current branding? If it is targeted for that, I completely missed it!

I didn't know about this extension so thank you! If it does Solarized Dark then I'm sold: I'm not a fan when it is too dark, but it's definitely better than the white backgrounds I often see.

Next step: move away from the big paragraphs in small writing... or maybe it's just that I need glasses :)

Surprisingly, I have the opposite trouble: how do I stop recruiters trying to recruit me? I have about 15-20 recruiters contacting me per week however what I put it down to is:

1. Location. Since I moved to SF the job offers have increased substantially.

2. Skill set. Fortunately I'm skilled in some "popular" languages.

3. Years of experience. I'm in the "hot spot" - not too old, and not too young (sorry - it does seem to be a factor...)

What I find however that recruiters don't necessarily look for anything BUT the above things. I've been approached for the weirdest jobs (considering my experience) from what I believe as a simple keyword search. When it comes to interviewing, the recruiters typically have no idea what they're talking about. This means that they're more interested in forwarding the resume from a brief "do you know this, have you had experience in this" as opposed to really understanding the position. Fortunately, I have had enough experience to interview the recruiters as opposed to them interviewing me.

My advice for developers struggling to get jobs (from how I hire...):

1. Have experience - whether professional or hobby. If it is a hobby: open source it.

2. Show initiative. You need to show you have the ability to actually think.

3. You don't need to know the answers. It's all about the approach to the problem.

4. Try to stand out amongst the resumes. I feel bad to say this: but unfortunately it's true. Given 100 resumes, you're probably only going to really look at 10.

5. Show charisma

I'd recommend other's to add to this: it's just a list I made from what is off the top of my head. But in regards to the article I disagree with:

1. Startup experience. It depends on what type of job you're going for - some will admire the drive, some will fear it (will you leave after a year)

2. School. I don't give a flying f* if they're from MIT or the University of Waikato. However I would give SOME preference to them studying at a school which includes algorithms and memory management (but that is me). Believe me: that (unfortunately) isn't a given...

I'm sure I'll probably get down votes for this; but please comment if you do disagree :) I'm only speaking from my experience as both a student (always) and as an employer.

Yeah, you're right: it appears it is just a skin: https://developers.google.com/chrome/mobile/docs/faq

Perhaps the idea was to get something out there for presence and then create a full rendering engine later? But then again, both Chrome and Safari are WebKit and Firefox is Gecko so I'm not sure how that changes things.

I think this misses the point. I'm not sure about Windows phone, but iOS has Chrome and Opera already. While they are not default browsers, they still have an offering available for download.

I think when he says they can't, I think it is more about their code base/engine requirements than anything else.

Quite disappointing if they manage to enforce the fines; in my opinion it's these services which make transport options around San Francisco bearable! I'm not sure how many times I've called a taxi to come get me and never showing up...

No! I'd rather people don't vote than vote no on something they don't understand... Unless you understand what you're voting for: don't vote.

No vote is better than a misinformed one...

I'm old school - when improvising on the guitar I like to be able to read the drum/guitar/bass player etc based on looks, nods and general "intuition" (being person to person that is). Don't think an internet connection is going to be able to do that quite as well!

But, perhaps I'm being nostalgic :)

Having been in a startup before: I'm not sure how I feel about this...

In regards to getting features out quickly: that's a great programmer. Though inevitably there comes a time when the code needs to be maintained - and if it is unmaintainable then I'd put you in the bad programmer category.

Now-a-days: I prefer clean code to a specific coding standard over the quick, dirty features being implemented. But, only because it usually causes more pain in the long run. I understand the "getting a feature out quickly to test it even works" mentality, and to some degree I agree with it. However, if it DOES work then a clean code base is always better. Inevitably it will need to be maintained...

After writing this (sorry: could rewrite my comment but decided not to) I've now realized that I'm now AGAINST the feature push mentality. I'd much prefer well written code and eat up the cost then rather than later on. Worst case scenario, it can then be reused...

I love articles like this. I always learn something new. I must admit that I did think that malloc would use VM if necessary hence giving a potentially "unlimited" address space, but I guess it is nice to have that cemented rather than theorized. Can we ever really count on memory being allocated to RAM? I think not (it's against the kernel/user buffer right?), but it's good to know these things.

Of course: I attempt to always be in a learning phase so if anyone can expand (or elaborate) then I'd appreciate it :)

I actually do most of my debugging in IE now - and I've actually come to like the devkit they've got going. Ok, I am developing for internal intranets which of which my primary is IE, but they've actually come a long way. In terms of PC browsers (Mac is a different story) I'd probably put Chrome first, IE second and Firefox third.

I still prefer Chrome, but partly because it is my preferred browser on Mac too - I like consistency. I also think that their devkit is ever so slightly better... but in saying that I'm not unhappy with IE - it does what I tell it to do, it's fairly consistent and feels quite light (compared to Firefox which still feels heavy to me even after their improvements...). Admittedly there are some tricks you need to learn in the IE devkit (e.g. add an attribute of style to create new CSS definitions) but all in all I think they've done a pretty good job at cleaning up their act!

PS: I used to do ALL my development in Firefox with Firebug and the Webdev kit. I find now that Chrome/IE handles things very well: though Chrome still allows me to install the Webdev kit if I need it (e.g. rulers, security checks etc). I guess I switch browser camps often based on my needs :)

Perhaps I'm one of the minority? If a VA flight is available, I'll definitely pay the difference (usually negligible). Every other time that I've HAD to fly some of the others (i.e. a VA flight is not available) I end up swearing I'll never fly that airline never again. I've never had that feeling with VA which is why I'll always choose it over any other...

But then again, I may be one of the minority...

I love this idea - especially for those that are unfamiliar with BASH yet still want to customize their command line experience. Unfortunately due to a previous HN article I now use zsh - would love to see a zsh prompt generator too!

Warning: I'm not usually overly critical on articles: but this one I can only think is a little bit of flame bait - a little bit of truth from various languages turned into fact?

* String concatenation: blatant misinformation. The only reason the default implementation of Strings is slow is because they're made immutable for a reason. This if for speed and predicability - if you're wanting to build a String then funnily enough: use a String Builder.

* Garbage collection: rubbish. It can run on it's own thread (which can ultimately run on it's own processor). In languages such as Java and .NET the garbage collector has been written so that it collects only what is disposed. Of course you need to be careful about the number of objects your "disposing" (too many can cause the processor to be collecting more than running) but the same is with any language: Erlang included.

* Refactoring... seriously? What happened to compilation errors? Isn't it worse if the structure sends less at runtime?

* Data Structures - I'm not sure what he's worked with before, but modern languages allow the transparency he mentions. He mentions "easy to manipulate undocumented data structures" - of course he is asking for trouble there. There are ways around this in OO languages, and worst come worst: roll your own. Don't mess with the internals where you need to "worry about the original author renaming variables ".

I seriously doubt the authors experience in the languages he mentions. Even so, I doubt his understanding...

I'd tend to disagree: I think fundamental language design is very important. Optimizations after the language tree has been built are an entirely different concept. Important nonetheless, but different to perhaps what the author is trying to achieve.

Personally, I think he is going about teaching it in a non-trivial manner making such things as you mentioned above more complex than they perhaps need to be. But, perhaps that's just how I've been taught how to write compilers... fundamentals often are the hardest to "un-learn".

Interesting concept, though I'm not sure quite what they're trying to achieve. Are they trying to teach lexical analysis? Their `typename` method seems awfully verbose for my liking - in my opinion, definitely harder than the LALR(1) syntax that CUP promotes.

Personally, I learnt how to write compilers using a mix of FLEX (the Fast Lexical Analyzer - not by Adobe!) and CUP. From that you create a LALR(1) grammar which then compiles down to a tree (if you choose) which you traverse depth first generating code/assembly/whatever. I would say that this is actually EASIER to write and to understand than trying to do it from scratch - you concentrate purely on the grammar and the tree generation (which leads to code generation or interpretation - e.g. BASIC, code analysis etc).

This MAY seem complex as there is a bit of "black box" going on behind the scenes (how does it lexically turn characters into symbols? How does it turn those symbols into a grammar which eventually builds a working product?) however once you understand the grammar language (lexical analysis is easy) you find that compilers aren't that difficult. It's a matter of turning code into symbols which you then apply a grammar to. From there (tree/code generation/interpretation) is easy. I would in fact put lexical analysis and grammar generation into a separate toolkit which a compiler developer _uses_ - though it may be from my experience: I welcome other compiler developers to interject.

Learning how to write a compiler definitely made me a better programmer - especially in terms of OO languages and also understanding how languages are built (i.e. learning new languages aren't an issue when you know how the internals are likely to work). I highly recommend it for anyone looking to improve their skill set. Unfortunately the course I took at university (which WAS available free on the internet) teaching this concept has now died. It's quite sad that it has disappeared as that paper was hands down my most useful paper I ever took. I've now written compilers for companies converting legacy code to modern code (and native etc) from these skills - it's much more versatile than just generating assembly/machine code!

Anyway, I digress: I admire what they are trying to do, however I would recommend others to rather learn FLEX (or JFLEX, CSFLEX etc) and CUP (CSCUP etc) instead of trying to do all the heavy lifting themselves. If they want to write a lexical analyzer or a grammar parser then that is a different journey...

I don't think "betting against it" is accurate terminology - the general consensus is more that the mobile device infrastructure isn't ready for HTML5 yet (in terms of performance etc). I think it will catch up... probably within the next couple of years, but until then we need to think about our current users and the experience they receive.

On a side note I see the article mentioned using a hybrid app - I think that is an acceptable "in-between" at the moment. Personally though I have found maintaining hybrid applications cost a lot in extra development time - I really hope it pays off in the long term.

Not trying to be a skite or a killjoy but we designed a tool very similar to this as part of a research project (for a usability project mind you) as part of a thesis back in 2003. We primarily targeted Microsoft Windows XP Tablet edition at the time, which is now arguably a dying breed. We found quilting wasn't a large area of interest but still, I'd be interested to see how it goes...

I also like the new maps - I can see it turning into a great product. My main issue is the missing public transport information... I still use the mobile web Google Maps for that which is unfortunately slower than the old native app.

I tend to agree: each has it's own positive and negative points....

I own an iPhone 4S, Galaxy S3, and a Blackberry Bold 9900 - all for testing. In terms of usability, I also put them in this order. Don't get me wrong: all three have good UI points (ahem harder to find in the Blackberry sorry), and all three have bad UI points (a blog waiting to happen for iOS too? e.g. you can't see the message above if you've typed a long message in Messages in iOS). But regardless: the 4S has much better usability guidelines than Android AT THE MOMENT. Namely, regrading the things the article brought up (e.g. icon sizes - come on...)

Personally I'd love to see Android up it's game, and since Matias Duarte has taken the reigns I think that we'll start to see it's usability become much more consistent - hence evening the UX playing field. I also really REALLY hope iOS fixes some of the annoying things in it's UI interface. Personally, I look forward to a greater UX experience all round - thankfully, arguably, that is already happening.

Admittedly I was a bit shocked to see my passwords start pumping out: all I needed to do was click "Allow" and away it went. Why would keychain remain unlocked? Why doesn't that command need sudo? This seems like a pretty decent security flaw to me...

I perhaps use it in a different way - I more likely use it as a method of suggesting movies I might have never have discovered. I've seen so many foreign and independent movies of late that are REALLY good (and some which are admittedly really average to dreadful) - but the point is, I'd never have looked for them if not for the suggestion service.

I don't believe Netflix has porn - and I may be an odd one out here, but I think that is a GOOD thing. If you want to get that sort of fix, there are plenty of other services to cater for that on the internet. It's not exactly something that needs a recommendation service either.

My only qualm with the Netflix service is for a "tabular" view for browsing titles. Sometimes, scrolling to the right or left can be incredibly annoying. Also, ideally they'd move away from Silverlight, but in saying that it does seem to work for me (I'm using a Mac rather than Linux however).

They didn't destroy the data [1] but regardless a migration path should have been provided. It wouldn't have been to much effort to check to see if they used the RSS feature and then basically tell them "this feature is not supported, but we see you use it - how about we make an export so you can use one of the other great readers out there". The upgrade from Snow Leopard to Lion did something similar when it decided to change the trackpad direction, so the functionality to notify the user is definitely there!

[1] Sorry: I do see that you mention that later on. Though, in general I'm not sure why so many HN comments think it did when the article said that it was still available?

The article goes on to say that the data wasn't removed - only the feature. Regardless, Apple should've provided a simple migration path for those that DID use the RSS feature rather than just assume they had the knowledge to find and export the data manually.

It has also been found that diets high in cholesterol and/or saturated fat also lowers testosterone [1,2,3]. I think the best course of action is to reduce rather than eliminate. i.e. "control" your intake of cholesterol and saturated fats. Blindly increasing your intake of either (above acceptable levels) goes against many scientific studies.

[1] http://www.drmirkin.com/men/1008.html [2] http://www.ergo-log.com/toomuchcholesterol.html [3] http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/03/study-of-t...

It only works with iMessages. You're right though: SMS functionality (somehow) would be pretty awesome.