d_r

Thanks for posting this link! I've always wondered who designed the beautiful icons on their pages, and it's even more remarkable to see them in high-res.

I don't find this surprising. Enrollment is expected to be a lagging indicator. Effects of any "trends" may take a couple of years+ to propagate themselves between industries. If tech firms are incredibly hot today, CS50 enrollment isn't going to suddenly increase today.

This works for declines too. People continue to enroll to study finance or law in promise of riches[1] after each respective bubble has already popped.

More importantly, though, not every college freshman/high school student meticulously follows HackerNews or the latest fads. Not everyone even follows NASDAQ or can analyze the tech sector. People like "sure" things. Hate it or love it, the mainstream media and Hollywood have quite a lot to do with what people know and think.

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/09/business/09law.html?pagewa...

Is anyone else irked by Forbes' need to use a "revenge of the nerds" picture there? I feel like the SOPA argument is inherently skewed for most Americans, and it is bitterly unfair.

Pro side: "we're stopping evil foreign counterfeiters, we're helping save American jobs, we're looking out for your safety."

Con side: "complicated sounding tech mumbo jumbo, this will break the internet, and some references to Libya"

Which side would you support if you didn't know any better?

SOPA affects more than just the "nerds." How can the messaging be improved? How can it be made more compelling to resonate more with laypeople?

Why aren't the "influential" people focusing on the message?

I see. In that case, your heart is in the right place. But it doesn't have to be all or nothing. The sweet spot is really the "formal" university education, combined with independent/group projects.

Of course, it's absolutely instrumental to spend a lot of time coding on your own "for fun." Just learning the proofs and such does not prepare one for the real world at all.

This was somewhat harder maybe 10 years ago. Fortunately in modern days, there are many APIs to play with, open source technologies, and so on. Communities like GitHub used to be much harder to find in the past. HN rocks.

But you'd have to know the theory too, to understand the concepts on a deeper level. Yes, some people are entirely self-taught, but it requires the person to already have the "drive" and to already know what they want.

Finally, a good university (like UofT is) can bring life-long friends and experiences and expose one's mind to more ideas. It's great for opening doors, and generally establishing a foundation for learning. Can't miss that!

I'm not sure if you're trolling or not, but it sounds like terrible advice.

Yes, most of coding knowledge comes from real world experience. But a university is essential in building the foundation. Those theory and math topics do matter. CS isn't just about gluing PHP code together.

Also, most non-startup jobs out there do tend to require a bachelors' degree.

Perhaps off-topic, but after reading GoDaddy's letter, I am surprised that our discussions against SOPA don't focus on the root -- the fact that the legislation is presented in an incredibly misleading and vague manner.

At face value, its purpose is to stop the foreign counterfeit drug/goods sellers -- you know, the same guys who spam us with "enlarge your..." and such offers. The same guys who pollute Google search results with "buy handbags" trash. Now suppose someone had asked you: "do you want legislation against these foreign illegal drug sellers?" Surely you'd say yes. Heck, I'd say yes. What reasonable person would oppose this?

But the problem is that the legislation is presented as this, but is actually likely going to be used for other things (censoring online content, special interests of the movie industry, etc.)

So when we write to our congresspeople and explain our concerns with SOPA, I wonder: do they think "Hmm, I am just protecting the internet from so-and-so baddies selling drugs. Why are all these tech people suddenly up in arms about this? Do they somehow not want to stop those baddies?"

When we write, we say that we oppose SOPA. Would we be more effective if we asserted that we do hate those sellers and oppose SOPA because of its specific implications? Unless of course, the bad "side effects" are actually the main purpose and the "good" cause is just a very clever gimmick.

You should also mention which state you live in, as options can be different. For example, MA has a single-payer system and you're eligible for group coverage even without an employer. In some states like NY even alone you can join a "freelancers union" of sorts that may help with getting group coverage. In CA, you can apply for individual coverage with something like Kaiser.

Some of these exemplify "premature optimization" and will clutter code with no discernible benefit. I remember some days ago, in the days of PHP, there were heated debates about whether or not using single or double quotes for strings makes code faster.

As with most development, use good practices. But then at the end of the day, profile your application to find the actual bottlenecks.

That's fair, but who actually cares about how good your code is? Make it work. Hack things together. After you practically code for longer, patterns will emerge, you'll refactor and rewrite as necessary. At any point in time, if I look at code I have written earlier, I shudder at how awful it was.

Finally, "fear that I am going to fail" is silly. It's the other way. You're starting at the point of failure. You have nothing right now. Accept that, and then you won't have to hold yourself to such a high standard. Start somewhere (and remember that you "suck" at first), and keep at it. Seriously.

What you see on HN/TechCrunch/whatever has a strong "success bias." What this means is that you only get to see/read success stories. But there are also many people just like yourself who are just starting out. Many have failures under their belts. Even the people who are successful today have failed in the past!

It sounds like you're practicing too much "theory" and reading, instead of creating. This will make anyone feel bad. The people you admire did not get where they are by reading HN/books/etc. alone. They got there by doing things.

As others have said, pick a side project and hack at it -- release it, fail, and try again, and again. The beautiful thing about the tech community is that failure is encouraged and embraced. By doing things over and over is how we learn and establish ourselves. Your projects will suck at first, you will get no users at first, you will make no money at first (if you care about $). And then you'll iterate and improve. It's only normal.

Finally, as far as picking projects goes, don't pick a pie-in-the-sky-idea! Pick something you can finish in two or three weeks, or maybe even shorter. Anything longer and you'll get disappointed at your lack of progress. You don't have to create the next Facebook. Create a throwaway app for the app store (and don't be discouraged if you don't make much from it.) Learning how to ship small projects will be incredibly painful but that is how you will grow and become happier with yourself. HTH.

IMO, the current title unfairly sensationalizes the (what seems to be a very reasonable) response, and is a good example of why "editorialized" titles are ought to be discouraged.

I just bought your app out of curiosity. That is a very interesting concept -- would love to see how you keep innovating further! Good luck! It took a few tries/a darker room to get just the right effect. I don't actually know much about image processing -- I figured you would try to detect the face/cheeks/nose and "extrude" those when rotated, but it seems like it's doing something more sophisticated.

It's hit or miss. Once I made a free app that displayed a picture of a cartoon cow and made a "Moooo" sound when you turned the phone upside down. I had a toy like that as a kid. Okay, don't judge me -- but I thought I would be a fun quick idea and any kids (and even some adults) to whom I've shown the prototype loved it. I had an artist draw the cow, and bought rights to a sound I really liked.

The app was rejected twice for having "limited functionality." After I resubmitted it with various tweaks, someone actually called me personally to reject it. They were classy, communicated well, and were very polite, but ...

There are plenty of apps in the store, often in Top 100, that do less, or actually do nothing. My favorite is "traffic light changer" that claims to change traffic lights. Or a "fingerprint scanner." Also, there's "lockify your screen" that claims to give you Android-like screen unlock, and yet just displays a wallpaper with dots. Yes, they all have oodles of 1-star reviews from upset buyers, but they did get approved somehow. It seems like I just got unlucky with reviewers.

Cool, hope it is useful. Be sure to not skip the long "Introduction" chapter, too.

To me, absolutely, but it depends on your interest area and expertise/writing level. I would say that this book would be more valuable to an entrepreneur who actively communicates with customers or investors, or performs marketing activities. It is less relevant to, say, someone who is interested in politics. It has plenty of examples of crafty word twisting from politicians, but it is not a book about politics, which I think disappointed some of those Amazon reviewers.

I am a fairly beginning app developer and wanted to learn more about copywriting and communication. After reading this book I looked over my past e-mails to customers and realized that my sentences were either outright confusing or communicated that my software is buggy.

One take on the message: you must understand your audience well enough to adjust your words to the most common denominator. Otherwise, people will misunderstand your message and it will confuse or backfire.

FWIW, if you're interested in how misquotes happen, I highly recommend grabbing "Words that Work" by Frank Luntz [1]. Luntz analyzes extensively how companies and politicians we know regularly get misquoted/misinterpreted due to an unfortunate/awkward choice of words, negligence of the transcribers, etc, etc.

This book has also opened my eyes to the importance of copywriting and clear communication. Each sentence you form to an audience or a customer must be reframed from the point of view of the potential listener, and not from what you think you are saying.

(Not to say that the reporter(s) weren't being negligent here, of course.)

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Luntz

I'd say it's even less complex. My non-techie friends who have bought Android, did it for one of two reasons (I've actually asked many of them!):

* They wanted a smartphone, but they live on the east coast (NYC). For sometime, iPhone was only on AT&T, and AT&T had a reputation for bad reception there. I believe this has improved in the recent years, though, and well, Verizon and Sprint are also in the game now.

* They made an arbitrary choice based on a current promotion, TV ads, look of the phone, screen size, etc., without any deep knowledge of the app ecosystem or hackability. There were also a couple who have never owned an Apple product, but felt that Apple was too trendy, and wanted to get something "different."

IMO, Android and iOS are two very different beasts that look the same if you were to just compare the specs. Both have phones with touch screens. Both have apps. Both have cameras, etc, etc. This is how users compare. We know that these are not the useful criteria for comparison. But how would you reasonably explain this to a non-tech user?

This, and preinstalled "crapware" on newly bought computers/phones happens because vendors have no incentive not to do it, except perhaps out of goodness their heart. Yes, it disgusts me too, but moral issues aside:

(a) Vendors are looking to make money (simply speaking) and bundling crapware is a low-hanging fruit to do so. They have a choice between making $X per customer and $X+30 cents. Which choice should they pick?

(b) Users are not savvy or discerning enough to notice that they are getting the said crapware. We, techies, care. Do mainstream users care? They buy a new computer (or download an app), and they get the computer or the app, as far as they are concerned. How can grandma know that the "monthly anti-virus subscription" popup is "unwanted"?

People will buy/download from $VENDOR with or without crapware. Companies want to make more money and they have no reason to be "good." They gain more than they can lose. Until these variables change (say, if users revolt, or class action suits arise, or $CONGRESS_PERSON complains, or advertising revenue somehow diminishes, etc.), this will sadly keep on happening.

That is incredibly cool and "just getting out there" shows the true spirit of entrepreneurship. Thanks for the response + inspiration! You just got my 10 bucks. =)

This is going to be a stupid question (but I'd really like to know!)

How do these Kickstarter projects make such quality "model" photos showcasing their project (e.g. the guy dancing)? Are these just skillfully customized stock photos? If not, has anyone had success with outsourcing/hiring someone to make these (such as for an iPhone app)? I'd love to spruce up my screenshots...

I know that this is probably a recruiting-inspired post, but detailed posts like this genuinely benefit the community. Thanks for specifically mentioning the reasons for choosing particular technologies (i.e. why you switched to Gunicorn from mod_wsgi) -- this makes the already excellent post even more helpful for someone trying to build things.

"- Facebook represented that third-party apps that users' installed would have access only to user information that they needed to operate. In fact, the apps could access nearly all of users' personal data – data the apps didn't need."

Privacy/ethics issues aside, from a pure developer standpoint, isn't this just a feature? Where do we draw the line between functionality and privacy?

User A allows user B to see her data via "Friends only." User B runs app X, whose functionality includes interacting with friends. Let's say it shows on a map where each of your friends lives. App X can see the said data for the purposes of providing functionality.

Yes, I know that by strict definition this conflicts with "friends only." You now have "friends and the application executable code only." But how is this different from, say, Gmail auto-scanning my e-mail to show ads? Is it because I trust Google and don't trust $random_fb_app_developer?

Likely one concern is that this third-party developer can disrespect (or actually, not even know about) that "friends only" setting and inadvertently make the data visible to other parties.

(Disclaimer: Don't get me wrong, I loathe/distrust most FB apps as much as the next person. Just trying to think from an honest developer's shoes here.)

I'll throw out a random personal theory here. I think this is because buying apps is a solitary activity.

As humans we are more comfortable fitting in or following. When you go to a coffee shop or a crowded store, you're buying something because you actually see others buying it. The decision-making aspect is "taken away" from you, as it was already done by people at large. There is also the element of human interaction with the barista. It's much easier to spend $4 this way.

Yes, at the coffee shop you also might have an immediate purpose -- like chat with a friend. But even when I am alone, spending $4 doesn't seem like a big investment. It feels and seems normal. And note that this doesn't have to do with the quality of the product.

In the meantime, when you're at alone and are browsing an app store, the burden of decision making is on you. In essence, the thought process is "am I making a good decision? is it normal to buy something like this? do I really need this?" With that, $1 can seem like quite a bit when you have time and solitude to decide.

.NET actually made a pretty good effort in addressing this with strong names and assembly signing. Unfortunately, .NET is probably not all that common for mainstream consumer apps (I may be wrong here, please correct me if so.)

[1] http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/wd40t7ad.aspx

This does make much more sense compared to the assumption we immediately jump to ("eliminating liberal arts majors.")

Actual facts aside, what is fascinating is how we arrive to this assumption. The article only mentions "unemployable graduates." Nowhere does it mention humanities or specific majors. It is then we, the readers, who apply our Western worldview and assume this means "humanities majors."

Thanks for the reply. Definitely interesting to hear what it is like on the "other side" of the drawing board.

Android is actually an interesting case. Android applications are sandboxed. It's just that applications can request some very dubious permissions ("read all your SMS messages") and users don't know any better and don't read the fine print. The flexibility does allow for some excellent customizations (e.g. Swype keyboard replacement), but the risk of shenanigans is also there.

TechCrunch says:

    One of the most popular forms of trickery in Q3 was
    SMS-sending Trojans that collect personal information
    and steal money. Another new method of stealing user
    information is malware that records phone conversations
    and forwards them to the attacker.

How do you protect the user from the user? The other flip side is iOS where almost everything is heavily locked down, except perhaps for the AddressBook API. The user is not very trusted, and essentially has no way of opting-in to anything really dangerous. This does severely limit the interesting cross-app interaction cases. But I can sleep safely knowing that my iPhone-holding non-techie family members can't download anything that would cause harm.

Since educating users across the board is likely impossible, does this mean the tough Apple approach is the way of the future (loosely speaking)?

Am I wrong in wishing for Microsoft to take a step toward sandboxing/code signing instead of playing the cat-and-mouse (and sometimes snake oil) game of antiviruses and antimalware products?

Admittedly, this is probably not feasible by definition since the Windows ecosystem gives developers infinite freedom. And sandboxing is not trivial to get right. "Bad" applications will just go out of their way to entice the user to allow "read and write all my files." And sadly, users don't really read or understand warning dialogs. But one could wish, right?

Signed, someone who has seen too many friends' computers slowed down with said antiviruses, defenders, and always a plethora of toolbars.

To avoid this, vesting founders would presumably file an 83b election within 30 days of receiving the shares (mentioned in the PDF.) Then, they only have to pay tax when they sell the shares. And if they held on to those shares for over one year, this would be a smaller, capital gains tax.

Described in more detail here: http://www.grellas.com/faq_business_startup_004.html

While not mentioned in the article, one annoying phrase that has emerged recently is "X for Y". "An AirBnB for music." "A Yelp for wedding dresses."

To me this speaks: "We aren't able to clearly explain what we do, but here's this other well-known company that solves a similar problem in a different market. We'll piggy-back from the recognition of their name. Look at us, look at them, and try to make a connection."

How about this to start? "How To Design A Good API and Why it Matters" -- a great talk by Joshua Bloch (also the author of "Effective Java")

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAb7hSCtvGw