Hacker News Reader

sumukh1on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (January 2024)

AngelList | ONSITE (San Francisco) | Full Time | Product Engineering (Full Stack, Rails, React)

AngelList is hiring full stack software engineers who want to make technical _and_ business decisions. This role will work on software products used by companies to raise capital and manage their investors (https://www.angellist.com/startups/equity)

AngelList is the nexus of venture capital and the startup community. We support over $16B in assets under administration. We’ve driven capital to over 22,000 startups. 57% of top-tier U.S. VC deals involve investors on AngelList

Learn more: https://www.angellist.com/engineering Apply here: https://jobs.lever.co/angellist/e9b37501-7132-4461-b287-8937... Questions: my username with no numbers [at] angellist.com

sumukh1on What really happened at the Millennium Tower?

I lived in the building for a while and there is a bit of subtle ramp into the building but it's not quite a 1.5 foot drop because the direction (Try looking at Google Street View from before 2020 at 350 Mission St and 399 Mission St)

sumukh1on Don't Make Students Use Eclipse

I used to spend a lot of time thinking about this while helping build software & TA'ing for Berkeley's introductory course (which uses Python & Scheme) and I largely agree with the author. If you're wondering why the author ignores large schools, it's because they have the resources to invest in this. Here's a sample of the things the efforts that Berkeley did for their introductory course [1]

* Online tools to run & visualize code execution directly from the online textbook (ex: https://composingprograms.com/pages/16-higher-order-function...) * Easy submission for students (no git in CS1, no scp, no printing) * Instructor autograding for all assignments so the course staff could focus on reviewing code for style/other components. * Automatically backing up student code * In some assignments, there were automated hints for syntax, styling, and even correctness [2, 3] * Online collaborative editing for partner assignments [4] * Full time staff allocated to building teaching infrastructure to "reduce accidental complexities when using code to solve problems" * Completely hosted environments (via Jupyter Notebooks or Scratch) for courses with a lot of non-majors.

[1] https://cs61a.org [2] https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3059009.3059058 [3] https://okpy.org/about/publications/ [4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=polTBnMXGQI&rel=0

sumukh1on Stripe CLI

I still prefer to setup ngrok because it allows me to view and replay requests. If the stripe cli supported that, then I'd move to use the cli entirely

sumukh1on Composing Programs in Python, SICP Style

This is the textbook used for the introductory CS course (CS61A) at UC Berkeley. The course material is available at http://cs61a.org/fa18 (The course uses Python 3, Scheme, and SQL).

There are some neat projects (students build a Scheme interpreter and implement game logic as part of the projects)

Previous Hacker News Discussions (from which I’ve copied my comment)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11465234 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3491142 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3141996

sumukh1on Composing Programs – Python 3 in the tradition of SICP

> as far as I understood you can use the grader with "--local" flag to check the correctness of your program, is that the case?

Yes. The autograder is provided with each assignment.

sumukh1on Composing Programs – Python 3 in the tradition of SICP

This is the textbook used for the introductory CS course (CS61A) at Berkeley. The course material is available at http://cs61a.org (The course uses Python 3, Scheme, and SQL). There are some neat projects (students are working on building a Scheme interpreter now)

Previous Hacker News Discussions:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3491142

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3141996

Full disclosure: I'm a TA for the course right now.

sumukh1on Visualize Python, Java, JavaScript, TypeScript, Ruby, C, and C++ Code Execution

Here are some related links:

Demo of Python Tutor being used in a computer science textbook: http://www.composingprograms.com/pages/17-recursive-function...

The textbook above is from the introductory computer science course at UC Berkeley (http://cs61a.org)

Previous Discussion (~3 years ago): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4601478

If you are interested in the technical details of CPython, the author posted a mini course on technical details about CPython here: http://pgbovine.net/cpython-internals.htm

1 hour podcast that describes the course: https://talkpython.fm/episodes/show/22/cpython-internals-and...

sumukh1on ZipPy – a Python 3 implementation on the JVM

This uses the Truffle framework and GraalVM. (http://openjdk.java.net/projects/graal/)

Related discussion about JRuby with Truffle: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10817110

If anyone wants to get started with Truffle - I found these links helpful:

> 3 hour Intro + Tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_sOxGkZfTg

> Blog Post Series: http://cesquivias.github.io/tags/truffle.html https://github.com/cesquivias/mumbler

sumukh1on IBM Watson API

I actually built my own version of Watson based on this idea - jeopardy questions are often google-able/searchable on wikipedia. It was pretty easy to build out - but it only gets 80% of the way there.

The last 20% is the hardest - and it's why Watson is so impressive (even though even Watson is probably only at 90%)

sumukh1on Works With Nest

The demo video may have revealed a little bit about Nest's strategy here. The video showed Whirlpool relying on the Nest thermostat to be the smart hub and help control the energy usage.

Nest seems to be selling the user experience right now (Thermostat, API etc) - but they are also positioning themselves to be at the center of the "smart home"

sumukh1on Show HN: Automatically convert a website to Android and iOS

I tried it out and for those who are asking for the difference between PhoneGap and other tools is that this takes your website, adds native components like navigation for menus that it detects and login capabilities. For example in about 10 minutes I "built" a Twitter app using the twitter mobile interface. It has native login/signup, a sidebar for accessing elements, and native search. I don't know how well non-mobile interfaces will translate over - but the native components make it useful.

This is pretty good and it's really what building a hybrid app should look like. There's probably a lot of areas it can be improved.

sumukh1on How my school rejected an app made for students

As a former student who created an iOS app for my school district - I really feel for you.

Creating the application & working with the district was a great learning experience for me - perhaps the most useful thing I did in high school. I'm sure you learned a good bit by creating the app - those skills will certainly help you in the future.

Luckily for me the staff/administrators we talked to really embraced the idea and brought me on and made it into the official iOS application for the school district and then open-sourced it. We pitched the ability to check grades, get push notifications, and check documents. It's important to note, however, that I went to school in Silicon Valley - so that's probably a factor.

You've already demonstrated a lot of skill by creating the app. (It looks a whole lot better than my v1)! - Chalk this up as a good learning experience - Keep it up!

sumukh1on Pythonium: Python 3 to JavaScript translator

The challenge is to do that is that there is no "Pythonic" way of manipulating the DOM. When we were building a similar translator we included a way to interact with JQuery through a js object (i.e. js.document.addEventListener) -- but it still required the user to think about and understand javascript.

sumukh1on Storage Space Doubled For All Linode VPS plans

I've had the same issues and it's preventing me from using it for anything serious. A lot of the other things with DO (provisioning, backup, snapshots) are great but the network seems to the biggest issue at the SF datacenter.

sumukh1on Why haven't cash-strapped American schools embraced open source?

When I was in high school, I created an iOS app [1] for my school district and we made it open source (on the school district's GitHub [2] ) so other districts could benefit. Quotes from established ed-tech companies for a similar product were very expensive (especially compared to the cost of self-publishing). There certainly was interest from other districts to adopt it because they heard of the project and saw that it was open-source. The problem was getting someone to get them through the last 25% (customization, graphics, publishing, maintenance).

There's now a team of student developers at the school district who help keep the project going. I believe this makes it first the school district to create open source software in California.

[1] App (now also on Google Play): https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/ifusd/id454673943?mt=8

[2] GitHub: https://github.com/FremontUnified/

sumukh1on My last Android app sales figures and why it's still great to start a mobile app

This is a hidden secret of the "App Store economy". To see how strongly the "Hot & New" dynamics are embedded into App Stores, check out the sections of the iOS App Store (Featured -> New & Noteworthy) or Google Play (Top Grossing New Apps)

If you are able to catch onto a foothold, you can reap a lot quickly - but the fall will be just as fast as the author saw here. The apps that are able to stay on top have a very strong hook with increasing value (ie the popular social gaming apps with in-app purchases or the social/messaging apps). Anything else will result in the inevitable fall in rankings and therefore sales. This is why "app development companies" often have many many apps in the app store to continually reap from this cycle. There's another aspect to the publishing cycle and it's in-app purchases. The #1 paid app on the iOS app store is #31 top-grossing. 28 of the 30 before it are all free apps (which aren't ranked all that high in the free charts)

sumukh1on Nobody Knows That I Use These Apps

Regardless, the application has to be opened to get information about click through/context.

The push notification can have a payload that your app uses when the app is opened via the notification.

sumukh1on How To Make An iPhone App That Actually Sells

Being successful on the app store involves a bit more than making a great app. It's how you play the search ranking/rating game. There are quite a few things that need to be done right.

The way you get ranked in Search plays a huge part in your sales (Unless it's a top 50 app). Another huge factor is your screenshot. Your leading screenshot should not be a shot of the launch image. Here's more info on screenshots: http://mobile.tutsplus.com/tutorials/mobile-design-tutorials...

[1]: (App Store Optimization Cheat Sheet [PDF]): http://www.apptamin.com/ASO_Cheat_Sheet-v2.2.pdf

sumukh1on School district builds own software to handle student data, defies doubters

It is totally possible for school districts to develop their own software. I helped launch a similar project to create a mobile app for my school district when I was in high school. Quotes from ed-tech companies were much more expensive than our costs. We also made it open source so that other school districts could use it.

Edit: Links

[1] App (now also on Google Play): https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/ifusd/id454673943?mt=8

[2] GitHub: https://github.com/FremontUnified/

sumukh1on Brython - Python to Javascript translator

We made a similar compiler with the same goal of supporting text/python but it only compiled python it down into javascript. We could manipulate images from the webcam and make calls to jQuery and through python.

In the end, it was hard to replicate 100% of the usefulness of JS through python and convert python's cool features into JS.

sumukh1on Show HN: An app for middle school students, made by a middle school student.

Good job on your previous work and on this project. I made an app for my school district when I was in high school and it was great to create something that I felt was useful.

If there are other students trying to learn iOS reading this, there are a lot of resources on the internet. Specifically for games: www.makegameswith.us

sumukh1on Half of all app store revenue goes to just 25 developers

There's a strong power law with app revenue on iOS . The new updates in the iOS App Store continues to favor the top producers.

Among iOS games the bottom 80% of apps make around 3% of the revenue. [1]

This blog post has more information from game developers: http://www.streamingcolour.com/blog/2011/09/28/results-ios-g...

Here's a graph of self-reported revenue among iOS Game Devs: http://www.streamingcolour.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/...

[1] : http://www.streamingcolour.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/...

sumukh1on Why We’re Pivoting from Mobile-first to Web-first

It would make sense, but for now Apple is restricting monthly subscriptions through IAP to only Newsstand magazines/publications

sumukh1on Apple's no internal client syndrome

As the post mentioned, game developers aren't really interested in the platform. As a result, they file less Radar reports and Gamekit continues to be buggy. I'd really like to see Apple up the ease-of-use of Radar (or something new).

It's becoming a trend that iOS devs are forced to struggle with the ecosystem, but like I've been saying, from my experience the revenues are strongly tilted in favor of iOS. While we complain about certain aspects of iOS, on a whole, (at least from anecdotal evidence) it's still better than the problems that other platforms face.

sumukh1on Github ClassicMap, Google Map tile rendering for iOS6

It doesn't credit Google as far as I can tell (the legal section just seems to be for the new iOS maps). The link to "Legal" is really small and there's no Google Logo (as Google had required previously)

Still it works if you all you need is map tiles (which I highly doubt what most people use Maps for)