HN user
I got bitten by this yesterday when I updated. I didn't expect it at all and only realized I had installed something a fraction of a second after I clicked what looked like a Next button... Went to Control Panel and uninstalled as soon as I noticed an icon in the taskbar notification area.
This is one of the things that most baffles me about alcohol culture in general, but specially in the American tech industry which is supposed to have smart people. Although my primary reason for abstaining from alcohol is a religious one, I also certainly agree with your point from a secular point of view as well.
Islam forbids alcoholic drinks which is why most Muslims, including myself, do not consume them. I mentioned that I am Muslim by way of explanation as to why I don't drink, so it actually has everything to do with this.
Umm, because that's the reason for me abstaining from alcohol. I made that quite clear when I started my sentence with "As a Muslim".
Religion and alcohol are not the same. Are trying to say that religion is like a rapist? But even if I continue with your horribly broken and anti-religionist analogy, I could say: I don't bring religion into my work/meetings so why bring alcohol into it?
As an aside, why is alcohol such a big part of things like tech meetups, etc? I've been to a few and there is always alcohol being served and people drinking it. As a Muslim, I've never touched alcohol and never will, and I don't understand the need to "alcoholize" everything. Why can't there be a culture of having just good clean fun, no alcohol, no drugs, no sexualizing? And what place does alcohol even have at tech events?
Let me tell you my own personal story. Take from it what you will.
My first passion in computers was programming. Before any games (other than Microsoft Flight Simulator), it was programming. I started when I was 8, in QBASIC. By the time I was 14, I was hacking away at 3d graphics, physics sims, my own OS kernel, etc. That was also the age at which I completed my highschool, as I was homeschooled after 5th grade.
It was at this point that my parents wanted me to go to college, but I didn't want to. We fought over the issue a lot. I ended up going and dropping out of 3 or 4 different universities. My longest stay was around 3 years' living away from home on campus. That was my first time really being out in the world by myself. I learned a lot, made friends, played video games seriously for the first time. I failed or barely passed most of my courses (even the computer science ones), withdrew from a lot of quarters (they didn't have a semester system). But when I participated in coding competitions I felt the most alive I had ever been and I usually won them. During all this time I had the dream of starting my own company, something which I had known since before I had graduated highschool.
That's how my teens years passed. I was a very ambitious, headstrong, rebellious, and emotional teenager and early-20s guy. I dealt with depression and some probably bipolar-like symptoms. All this combined into a cycle where my parents kept pushing me to go to college and complete it, and I would relent and accept, but I wasn't able to go through with it. Around the time I was 18 I started to look for work online, and I found an online project from a small company. I ended up entering into a long-time remote working relationship with them, doing projects here and there. I was getting some income (but not much).
When I was around 22 I was back at community college as otherwise my parents would have kicked me out. I was a bit more emotionally stable now, so I was able stick my classes, but overall, I very, very much disliked the college experience. It was here, at community college, that I met a guy who told me about the hot iPhone app market. I started hanging out with him and I started coding on his laptop (he didn't know any technical stuff). Eventually I ended up building my first app in Xcode. I decided to partner up with him and form a company. My own company! I thought. This is the dream coming true! But I had no experience in setting up a business, and the only reason I partnered up with this person was because I was very excited. No rational thought went into it. We started off slow, then it just took off. At one point we had more than one app in the top 25 of our category, and even one in the top 5! We were so excited and the money was just rolling in. But that's when the internal problems came to a head. The more money we made the more problems. He wasn't pulling his weight, I was doing all the work, he was acting the "boss" etc etc. Eventually we broke up, I left. The app plummeted in ranking as our quality of work suffered and the updates stopped coming. At one point, I had spent 2 months sleeping nights at the office and coding in the day because of the pressure from my business partner on me to "work". It took a huge toll on me mentally. I finally realized he was just using me and decided to break away. But I wasn't up to the task of fighting him for the company, I just wanted to make a clean break ASAP because of my mental state. Well, I did it. It was such a relief. I put it behind me and continued on. I went back to working remotely with that small company I used to do projects for before. For about a year that kept me going.
Which brings this story to the present. Now I'm 26 years old. That small company wasn't able to keep paying me, so I searched for 2 months for a job. I got one recently. The pay is decent, flexible hours, have to work at the office though, nothing too exciting, but I'm satisfied. I have some stability in my life. I was going to a university again. I had decided not to pursue computer science as a major again, instead going for physics or mathematics. But I quit that once again so I can do this job. Now, on the side, I have a startup project going again, with another person I worked with at my previous startup. We're taking things slow (a little slow right now), but it's nothing I can't manage working the weekends. I still have that dream and that passion. In fact, I have many dreams, the smallest of which is to have a successful tech company. But my now 26 year old brain is a bit more emotionally mature. I have some practical real world experience behind me. No matter what anyone says, that real world experience is invaluable. I have decided not get my degree after all. What would have happened had I stuck to the "normal" path, and not fought my parents over going to college? I would probably have had a degree at 18, and with my skills a really good job at a big tech firm lined up when I graduated. In eight years I would have been making at least 4x what my current (first real) job is giving me. I might even have been married with kids. But that wouldn't have been ME. This is me. This is the path I have made for myself, and I honestly regret nothing. I will keep trying. At 26 years old I feel kind of old. How old will I be when my company is successful? 28? 30? 40? I don't know... that's kind of disappointing, but I'm gonna keep at it.
I think many here will tell me - I should still go back and get a degree. But I've made my decision and I'll live with it. And my life also doesn't revolve entirely around me being a hacker or having my own startup or wanting to be the next Instagram or what have you. I have many passions around which I base my identity. If my next startup fails, I won't lose myself in the process. And I'll still be financially stable with a regular job. Keep that mind as you forge your own path in life. Don't focus everything you have on one little thing. Give yourself something to fall back on financially. And have your sense of self rooted deeply AND widely - so that a failure in any one part doesn't make you personally feel like a complete failure. I came close to that in my first startup. And I can't imagine what I would have been like mentally had I not had other passions in which I could still feel successful. Well, I guess now I'm lecturing you and I kind of promised not to do that in my first sentence... But I'm not telling what to do. Take whatever path you want, but I think you should keep these things in mind.
I'm a religious American Muslim who fasts every day of Ramadan every year. So, what you're saying is that if I am Muslim, it's Ramadan, I'm fasting, and I'm traveling for religious purposes - that's suspicious? What your religion or ethnicity is, or how religious you are, or what your specific religious practices are - none of these should even be a factor to consider in security to the TSA/police/FBI/etc. I find this view to be utterly disgusting.
I'm England -> Saudi Arabia -> Pakistan -> Saudi Arabia -> US
Yes, I'm very surprised that Hindi/Urdu are not in the list.
I am aware of the variations in ancient manuscripts of parts of the Quran. These variations are due to different scripts, different recitations, and sometimes scribe error. There is no reason why I would be flogged if some ancient manuscripts do not conform to the Quran. The accepted dogma is that the Quran has been preserved because of its oral nature, not despite it. No manuscript is as authentic as the oral word, and of course, no translation, whether oral or written, is the Quran itself.
I think it's well known among Muslims that there are multiple readings of the Quran. Another point of note is that unlike the Christian or Hebrew writings, the main method of preservation of the Quran has been through mass oral memorization, and so Muslims tend not to place much emphasis on manuscripts. All the printed editions of the Quran (known as Mushafs) are, in fact, authenticated by well-known memorizers of the Quran (Hafizs). It's also notable that while Bible literally means book, Quran literally means Recital, indicative of the fact that is in rhyming prose and meant to be recited orally from memory rather than read like a book.
Good ol' cross-product and angular momentum!
Interesting. Islamic tradition also has a "night prayer": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tahajjud
My company got a couple of emails from a "credit advisor" Stacy at D&B with no subject. Then in the third email, from the same person... the email was typed out in the subject and there was no body. facepalm
I just wanted to say thanks for writing this.
It feels like it was just a few months ago... well, it was, but a year?!
The flight map over South Asia, China, and most of South America looks to be very incomplete.
I started when I was 8 using QBASIC. When I was around 11 I discovered Java, and from there C.
My first programs were text-based games written in QBASIC. I also wrote a program to help me with my math homework. Later on, one of the Java books had a 3D game engine so I dabbled in that.
After I discovered C from a Windows programming book (age 11-12) I quickly started experimenting with various lower-level things. I wrote a DOS-based 3d engine. I studied printouts of the Allegro source code. I used DJGPP (remember that?!). And I played around with BIOS interrupts, and real mode extenders, etc.
It was around this time (when I was 12, in 2000) that I was introduced to Linux (Red Hat), and I also got a printout of a shell/OS written by some guy in Obj-C, which had assembly code and stuff to do with context switching and registers. That lead me down the path of making my own OS. My first attempt was via a ASCII-HEX to binary conversion program. I wrote a HEX file that switched to mode 13h and filled the screen with blue, copied it to the boot sector of a floppy, and booted from it, and it worked. I was hooked.
My teen years were spent working on different versions of that OS, and also doing 3d graphics stuff.
So that's why I've stopped receiving spam to my GMail account.
I just wasted 3 hours on this (in a good way).
Thank you!
Although I live in Dallas, TX, USA... still good to see my fellow Pakistanis here! As I write this I am actually visiting in Pakistan for a few days.
This is the most mind-tickling thing I have seen/read/watched in a long while! I am going through all the slides and now I know how to interview other coders. Thanks for sharing this!
I made some posts in Unicode and the tags got converted to numbers and the posts are blank :(
Every worthwhile project you will do, you will learn something new. That's true for even those of us who have over 10 years of experience. Adapt or die - always true in the IT industry :)
I know they are Indian. I am from South Asia. However, the modern system was first created in Arabic. Also, I am talking about the placement of the digits, and this came to Europe from Arabic, not Brahmi.
Arabic has a large variety of sounds - but I think no more than other languages do. For example, Arabic does not have a p sound or a g sound. My native language, though, has 4 types of t and 4 types of d, 2 types of k, 2 types of g, etc.
Have you ever wondered why numbers are written backwards in English? Why do we write the highest-order digits first and proceed to the lower-order digits?
Well these numbers originated in Arabic, and since Arabic is written right-to-left, writing numbers in Arabic actually follows a more logical order: start with the lowest-order digit, and move on to the higher-order ones.
Apparently when the concept was brought into Europe, they failed to account for the different writing directions.