canweriotnow

I was a philosophy dropout software engineer who worked on the other side of the country and was aggressively recruited by Palantir a few years back (I passed, mostly not wanting to relocate)... I think they like to keep that top-tier CS count high but still go after engineering talent when they spot it, like any half-sane software shop. The degree thing probably (theoretically?) helps the sales pitch but it's not like an East Coast "white-shoe" firm where anything other than a Harvard MBA is automatic disqualification.

I thought we resolved this with hackernews.el - why would you read hackernews with anything but Emacs?

IT MAKES NO SENSE>

Is AltaVista going to do an IoT pivot next? Maybe Pets.com?

I covered evil-mode in my previous post[1], mostly advising new converts not to rely on it, but just to take the Emacs plunge completely.

[1] http://decomplecting.org/blog/2014/10/23/welcome-to-the-dark...

Definitely! Angel List has a really simple REST API, it shouldn't be hard to do.

I used it with my (fake) EdTEch Startup Generator[1], to check if my fake startup is actually a real startup. I was surprised how often it happens.

[1] http://eduwampus.herokuapp.com *

* May load a little slow, it's on Heroku free tier.

I love that Solaris is such an essential target... Oh, how I miss you, Sun...

Even in C, always remember the rules of Macro Club[1]:

1) You do not write macros.

2) You do not write macros that violate expectations of normal code behavior.

3) If this is your first time, you must write a macro.

4) Don't think object-oriented.

5) No shirt, No shoes, No dynamic scope.

6) Don't create new scoping rules.

[1] http://stuartsierra.com/download/2010-10-23-clojure-conj-mac...

I agree on the point of frameworks. I don't like any that exist so I made my own Rails-inspired one.

With blackjack and hookers? Please say with blackjack and hookers.

I'd actually be okay with this if they also stopped using LaserShip. They're part of the reason packages take "significantly longer than the advertised two days" to arrive.

"Thou shalt not take the name of root in vain."

I use a Mac for work. Mainly (sadly) because XCode. But other than XCode crap, I could do everything else on Linux, BSD, Solaris, etc.

I'm not completely against OS X... until they finally disable non-App Store software sources, the thought of which is, I expect, giving someone at Apple a massive hard-on at this very moment.

Without jailbreaking?

You can develop for Chromebooks, on Chromebooks, for free, and it's one-time $5 to distribute. That's what.

The point is about access to the tools, the skills, and the ability to share; if the vendor controls any of those, FAIL.

OP here, current iOS and Android developer with active accounts on both. Difference being: I'm happy to be an Android developer (will be happier when the Clojure/Android project reaches fruition); every time I have to dip my toes in Apple's filthy ichor of an app ecosystem I want to vomit.

Not about money for me, but if I was a little kid hacker again, money would have been a big deal.

^ I hope to Eris you're trolling.

Apple developer documentation? comp.os.linux was better documentation, in 1996.

You don't. It's $25 to publish on Google Play; you can share a *.apk with whomever you wish.

On iOS, on the other hand, it's $99/yr if you even want to run your own code on your own device. And you have to 'provision' your friends' devices if you want to share with them. It's extortion, it's stupid, it's immoral.

This. This right here. This is why I detest Apple as a professional developer.

The "hacker kids" issue is almost orthogonal, but I can't stand the idea of someone telling me what I can run on a device I purchased.

Yeah, but if you want to run that code on a device you own, why should you have to pay Apple a $99 ransom?

Problem solved, if kids have access to Android. Apple is aggressively pursuing the edu market, and seems to be winning there. This is antithetical to the "kids learning to code" ideal.

I don't care what kids code on, I care about access. And forcing people to pay $99 to run their own code on their own devices is beyond unconscionable.

When you're talking about K-12 edtech education, in many cases the kids have the patforms their schools/districts endorse. And in many, if not most cases, that's iOS.

plus, we're not talking about $99 to publish, we're talking about $99 just to run your own code on your own device. I don't know about you, but when I was a 10yr hacker, that would have been a deal breaker.

OP here... I think my tongue-in-cheek intent might have been lost in dry prose.

That being said... I meant what I said about apple's mindshare. Take, for instance, LA County's iPad boondoggle[1]. EdTech is a particularly gnarly sector, and the fact that districts are going after iOS to this degree is a damn shame.

[1] http://pando.com/2013/11/29/ihave-a-dream-the-unanswered-que...

I annoyed my teachers in elementary school demonstrating binary finger counting to 1024 when they were insisting that students stop finger counting because "you could only count to 10"

I was a precocious little shit.

You mean to be crime on tough?

Let's hope there is a rebuttal... his last major blog post[1] was censored by his university. In a flash of reason, the decision was reversed (woohoo academic freedom!)

In this case, since Zerocoin is actually a university-sponsored project (from the Johns Hopkins Information Securuty Institute), we can hope for a response... hopefully it will be a rebuttal from the researchers and not a kneejerk response from administrators.

Even beyond its obvious utility (for good or ill), zerocoin is a fascinating problem in cryptographic research, and we should be grateful it's occuring in the light of day and not as some super-secret project.

[1] http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/10/nsa-mat...

Submitter here - I hate, hate, hate this post. It is the worst FUD I have seen in some time, and I'm only posting b/c I think it needs the full HN lens. Please don't think I agree with a single word.

Not me. I've worked in "enterprisey" environments where people were just there to collect a paycheck. Sure, they could commit code that didn't break shit, but it was inelegant and made life worse in the long run.

Now that I'm doing the hiring (not something I ever wanted for myself, but we all have to grow up sometime)... I like the people I've hired so far, I would never subject them (or myself) to working with someone who didn't see coding as "more than just a job."

No, no. In fact, last time I checked, the lein docs warn about using brew because the versions may be out of date.

"That said, we're getting positive reactions from people close to our target audience, such as high school teachers, people teaching others how to make their first app, etc."

I bet. But this is part of the problem with many of Mozilla's products targeting the education space (Open Badges, I'm looking at you). Teachers, administrators, bureaucrats think they're the cat's meow. But (of course) they want nothing to do with the implementation details. But they do expect them to be usable.

"At the highest level, we're exploring whether it's possible to make a tool that lets non-devs (_not_ you folks!) who currently see their phones as a pure engine of consumption, as a place where they can create something fun or useful."

That's a fantastic idea. So are open badges. But "us folks" are the ones that (whether we work in edu IT, at an edtech company, or are fellow travellers) are expected to make these half-baked great ideas work, reliably, in the real world, for educators and students.

I'm not trying to rant. Mozilla has great ideas for education. But the poor (maybe I should be more generous and say incomplete) implementation of so many of these great ideas (Persona, Open Badges, and now Appmaker) is maddening when they're presented in a way that "not us folks" expect them to be available for production implementation.

You're telling me. I actually took a break from Guild Wars 2 to comment on this thread.

I think you're also forgetting: post Marbury v. Madison, the meaning of the Origination Clause is at the discretion of the Supreme Court.

Match point.