magice

So, according to this, the assumptions are: 1. NO NEW TAXES!!!!! 2. No safety nets! If you are out of jobs, you are ed. 3. Thou shall work 40hr a week. 4. Governments can only act for/against immigration.

All of which are, obviously, interesting. I mean, even today, people are asking "the rich" to pay more taxes. Even today, people are looking for way to help their fellow human beings (in US, the current fights are cheaper education and protection for pre-existing conditions).

So, imagine a future with higher taxes and basic income. In that case, the whole shebang about "competition for jobs" looks really different. I mean, if you are guaranteed livable income, low-skill jobs will be the first to go (surprised! Raise your hand if you like to scrub toilets for $7/hr). If you are guaranteed livable income, skill acquisition becomes much less risky.

But of course, read their lips: no new taxes (and thus no new social safety nets whatsoever; don't you know that if you bail out the poor, society will disintegrate into chaos?)

Hmm. Yet another day, yet another bashing of performance review. Very sad.

I will readily agree that most common systems unnecessarily bundle multiple high stake issues. For example, most people (me included from time to time) stop listening past "you get a raise of x%" in an annual review.

However, 1 wrong thing (i.e. unnecessary bundling") doesn't invalidate whole whole process.

For example, most performance processes involve goal-setting (I don't know about you, but I find that very very appealing), performance evaluation against goals, soft skill review (i.e. how much do you stress out your teammates?), and plan of action for the next year. Have I received career changing advices through performance review? You bet I have. For example, I pick software engineering because of distribution of my grades (performance review at K12 level!). For another example, don't make stupid & potentially misunderstood jokes.

Sure, continuous & informal feedbacks are important. However, so are formal processes, including feedback and evaluation. Have I improved? How the hell would I know if I don't have things noted down? Should I be promoted? How the hell would another person know if there is no papertrail of evidence of excellence? What am I good at? What role should I play in this team? How should I grow? All of these questions require careful contemplation over behaviors and performance in a long period (a year or at least a few months). Maybe all of you Bill Gates are so smart that you don't need them. But I am mere mortal, and I love feedback.

So, for the love of craftmanship, dedicate time and resources to performance review. It will only matter WHEN YOU MAKE IT MATTER. That's the thing. You can drive the best car the in the world badly if you hate driving. Similarly, if you think that you are so smart that no system can properly evaluate you, well, the system will fail. To be more precise, you fail the system.

Man, I disagree with about everything from this opinion. And I hate that I have this urge to write out the point-to-point rebuking:

+ "Wealth is having assets that earn while you sleep." : Really? Are we playing the "let's redefine everything so that it works out like I say" game now?

+ "You’re not going to get rich renting out your time." : the top 1% of Americans are dominated with doctors and lawyers who, guess what, rent out their time.

+ "You will get rich by giving society what it wants but does not yet know how to get." : The concept of "first-mover disadvantage" should really solve this. Look, Palm produced a smartphone, and Apple also produces smartphone; Apple make trillions, Palm died. The society clearly want smartphone. Why did Apple succeed but Palm failed?

+ "Specific knowledge is knowledge that you cannot be trained for. If society can train you, it can train someone else, and replace you." : please see above for doctors and lawyers, whom are all trained by the society. Plus, if other humans (i.e. the society) can't train you, who does? God sends angels to you?

+ "Specific knowledge is found by pursuing your genuine curiosity and passion rather than whatever is hot right now." : And if you are interested in, says, building rafts (or horse-drawn carriage, or any of these things), you will get rich so fast that your stomach will starve.

+ "Building specific knowledge will feel like play to you but will look like work to others." : sigh. Right.

+ "The most accountable people have singular, public, and risky brands: Oprah, Trump, Kanye, Elon." : Ummm. One, Trump brand and accountability have adverse relationship. Two, some of the most rewarded people on earth don't do business in their names. Bill Gates used Microsoft, in case you forget. Corporations exist for a reason.

+ "Become the best in the world at what you do. Keep redefining what you do until this is true." : Yes, and the best vendors always win! And Windows is the greatest OS on earth! And Facebook is the best social network! You get my sarcasm.

So, conclusion?

My father taught me this, which I believe to be true: small wealth is by hardwork, great wealth is by Heaven. If you want to be affluent, be industrious at work, be acceptable to society, be prudent in finance; and you will eventually get there. If you want to get richie rich rich, well, pray (plus all of the things for little wealth). This kind of "I get lucky now I will give stupid advices" things really should go away.

Frankly, are we overthinking this?

IMHO, 99% of human emotions have reasons of existence. It just makes evolutionary sense (or, if you prefer, it helps us serve the intelligent maker(s) better). Maybe we SHOULD have impostor syndrome, as well as shyness and awkwardness and diffidence and stress and whatnot. Maybe we should EMBRACE them instead of treating them like unwanted baggage of lizards.

One of my memory on this: one night (2 yrs ago?), I woke up with cold sweat, with a terrible dream: I just got paged and I didn't even know where to start debugging. It's horrible time.

You know what happened next? Next few days, I compiled a list of "essential documentations" (plus all the juicy links for debugging). On-call rotation came. I did get page. Different from the dream, I did not forget all of the crappy code (that I had lovingly written). However, the list helped immensely. And whenever my teammates had on-call cold feet, I shared the list. Life rocked. (for a while....)

I was told that we humans freaked ourselves into actions. Deadlines press for action. Pressure elevates the flow and sharpens the focus. Challenges inhibit daydreams and sweeten successes.

So, again, here is my take: why can't we just embrace impostor syndrome? After all, we need some fire on our behind of get our acts together, no?

I see that you don't understand the problems raised.

About accountability: if YOU are compromised, your friends' data are compromised, and vice versa. Are you saying that the median security skill of your friends are higher than Facebook? Because any of them can leak your data unintentionally.

About encryption: it's freaking useless in this case. Remember, some people fall for Nigeria prince scam. And what happen when their keys are compromised? See above.

That's the crux of the argument: you can't guarantee that your precious friends and family can safeguard their keys (in fact, I doubt my personal security practice is remotely as good as FB or Google or Amazon or MS or Apple). In that case, by the virtual of distribution, your data is copied everywhere, waiting for any key to compromise.

I sometimes wonder why Apple would do this. I mean: i) the end-users frankly don't care. Seriously. ii) 90% (if not 99.99%) of dev would not (be able to) care

I mean, I doubt if more than perhaps 5% of Apple internal dev can take advantage of "tight integrat[ion] of new hardware and software." This integration probably takes form of either some specific app (think Pixel camera phone), some specific library, or compiler optimizations. The first one (specific app) can be accomplished much cheaper through add-on chips (guess what, that's what Pixel does). The 2nd and 3rd can be done much more effectively through a generally available chips (like, well, Intel's chip) since more people, from vendor's engineers to researchers to random open source ninjas, would be able to experiment and help out.

In other words, from a purely technical point of view, there is absolutely zero reason to do this. Whatever happens, Intel is among if not the best capable chip producers. And Apple is not "disrupting" (i.e. focuses on unaddressed aspect), but merely directly competing with Intel's core competencies. It's not Amazon entering details against WalMart's. It's Target's competing against WalMart's, except they don't have Target's existing competencies. Which, again, makes no technical sense.

On the other hand, if they want to completely lock in users......

How on earth is blockchain going help? Seriously! There is no conceptual situation, in theory or practice, that blockchain will improve upon Facebook situation.

Generally speaking, Facebook is bad for about 5 reasons: 1. Privacy: unexpected people see your data (legally). 2. Right-to-be-forgotten: your data sticks around longer than expected. 3. Data Security: your data is stolen from your data keeper. 4. Cyberbully: Unwanted data surfaces without your control 5. Fake news: wrong information is fed to you.

How do blockchains help with ANY of these? 2. is certainly getting WORSE, since blockchains never forget. 1. is probably getting WORSE, because most blockchains are public. 3. is getting SO MUCH WORSE, because so many other people will now store data, and compromises in any of them will expose everything (think African Prince scam). 4. will become impossible to solve, because the data is going to be public and cannot be deleted, and because all of those anonymous mechanism will ensure that the culprit is impossible to track. 5. won't be impacted.

So, tell me, how the hell do blockchains help? Seriously.

Look, I know blockchain is a cool idea (yay! no need for central database!). However, central database can help in many situation, especially in anything involves history, limit of access, and regulation.

"if you take one of the 6 month programs, you’ll get a similar amount of experience as in an undergrad curriculum."

I am sorry, what?

Look, I know that people are all about "disrupting" the world. But, for the love of hard-work and whatever goodness left in your heart, can you please stop insulting people?

I once worked as TA for an introductory class in Computer Science. It takes about a semester for students to wrap their heads about what is "programming." It takes at minimum another semester of honest to goodness to absorb the fundamentals of computer science (incl. formal languages, basic complexity theories, and basic algorithm). It takes at least another semester to work through how the computer (you know, the silicon?) works.

Of course, I have only talked about the theory side the programming world. A good CS program also needs to introduce at least 2 (if not 3: one introductory, one system, one industrial) programming languages, plus at least 3 paradigms (corresponding the languages above: functional, system/procedural, and OOP), plus some discussion over the industry. And they should ensure that the students get stock overflow at least once, infinite loops at least a few times, and (on the verge of?) kicking their classmates/teammates at least once on some stupid bugs.

More challenges: a brain isn't a hard drive. Cramming is about the worst way possible to induce understanding. All of these above need time and space to work themselves through various layers of consciousness.

(BTW, all of the above are just the basics; if you notice, I have not brought up any "sexy" topics like networking or cloud computing or AI or what-have-you)

Imagine for a minute: what happens if a person walks up to newly minted chemical or mechanical or even electrical engineers and tells them that their 4 years of education can be done in 6 months. What would the new engineers think? Well, here is the nice version: such "disrupter" is laughed out of the room. The less nice version involves some honor-defense beating. The pragmatic version probably involves some lawsuits over how such claim is a fraud and may endanger the consumers (not to mention co-workers).

And yet, here we are. Software engineers, who spent years to acquire immensely complicated skills, are forced to sit through and agree with such insults, then to give comments like "oh yeah, maybe you should learn more about big-O notation." You know what I think about big-O notation? It's about as useful as calculus. Remember, doing something twice does NOT cost as much as doing it once (and this is before factor in goodies like cache miss and waiting for OS and whatnots). It's like push-ups: good mental exercise, but not actually used. So, telling someone "you need to learn big-O notation after 6-month bootcamp" is like saying "learn football for 6 months, add some push-ups, and you are ready for NFL." Am I the only one finding this ridiculous?

I completely agree.

Microsoft and this article try very hard to fuzz the meaning of "cloud computing" to make their numbers look prettier. If we start counting Office 365, than Gmail should also be counted, as is Amazon Prime related products (Cloud Drive, for example). Why stop there? Isn't the whole Google search on "the cloud"? Isn't the whole Amazon retail shopping on "the cloud"?

Counting only AWS and GCP against "Microsoft cloud" and salesforce is more financial marketing than anything else.

Extra functions of the bones cannot explain fully his question.

If it is possible to for the body to synthesize whatever material, it can create a frame for the bones, then wrap that frame in bio-active layers. Basically, a skeleton for the skeleton. Given the intricacies of other body organs (think the sizes and complexity of the eyes, says), such is not too hard of the task.

In fact, this probably answers all other concerns raised here. Corrosion and electric-conductive? A bio-compatible wrap (similar to enameled steel) solves that. Grinding between different bones? The ends of the bone can be built out of different material than the fragile length.

Furthermore, none of these concerns matter for, says, horns, especially the tips. Evolutionary speaking, it makes complete sense for animal to evolve steel-tipped horns: these steel parts hurt no one but their enemies.

(also note, carbon fiber avoids a lot of these bio compatibility issues).

In other words, animal kingdom did not have metal parts because synthesis is impossible, rather than because of disadvantages of metals per se.

As much fun as it is to bash Microsoft and Windows (although, let's face it, Windows has been so much better in the last few releases), I personally think Microsoft, its engineers, as well as its PM deserve (some?) empathy rather than anger for this.

I mean, I can almost imagine how this thing happens. Someone somewhere sometime said, "hey, wouldn't it be cool if xyz?" Someone else replied with "oh yeah, and it's not THAT hard!" And the PM is probably like "well, low risk, too, so whatever you wish."

Then, the feature is thrown together, with or without explicit planning. It probably attracts way higher attention than expected, because either it is hooked into mechanism intended for real important stuff or it can be demoed so nicely (imagine: if you are the developer doing demoing, you probably have the damned tracking number ready for copy and paste). It does not support all operations, because no one looks at it twice after some brief "yo, so cool" moment.

The annoyance may or may not have a bug associated with it somewhere. But let's be realistic. If you are a PM, which one would you choose: "some nobody-care feature is not easy to use" or "if you stand on 1 leg, jump 3 times, press the code of Mordor, Windows seg faults itself". The 1st one is vague and, let's be frank, not that big of a deal. The 2nd one is a big deal: data loss and all manners of unspeakable conditions may break loose. So, any PM would do the 2nd bug first.

I mean, seriously, how would you ensure this tiny corner (which a comment below actually says, "I did not realize it exist") is "easy to use"? No automation tests can catch it. Demoing (again, the developers know how to use it and probably come prepared) won't catch it. A/B testing probably won't even get to it. Its bugs (except if that bugs involving Start menu crashing down) probably have priority between "when I have better work-life balance" and "when the machine is capable of fixing its own issues."

--

I will agree that all of these don't justify for a shitty experience. Shitty experiences, no matter how small, are shitty. But then, even LaTeX, perfected as it is, annoys me once in a while. Even Emacs, glorious as it is, has "I swear I will switch to Eclipse" moments. And Scheme has about 70 different ways of doing OO programming, none of which really works for my little case.

So, maybe a bit more love/understanding? It probably helps your (i.e. the users') blood pressure anyway.

This is a thought provoking read. I, too, have been meditating over this matter a lot.

Unfortunately, though, it seems to me that people generally adopt one of the 3 camps: * Don't care (that is, most users until their internet slows) * Business of humanity is business. Anyone disagrees with the previous sentence is socialist/communist/hippie/devil-spawn. * "GIVE ME LIBERTY OR GIVE ME DEATH." Ready to leave Google/Facebook/AWS at moment notice.

I mean, it's important to know what bad large firms have brought forth with the internet. But it's equally important to acknowledge what they (and commerce in general) have enabled, as well as what advantages they possess to users in everyday life.

To take a simple example: the article ends with a question: "Do we want the web to be open, accessible, empowering and collaborative? [...] Or do we want it to be just another means of endless consumption[...]?" Look, about 80% of the time, I do want mindless consumption. Maybe a stupid sitcom on one of the streaming service; maybe some cheesy pop over YouTube. I need that. And, you know what, the current arrangement is damned good at deliver that kind of consumption.

Thus, condemning the status quo wholesale is either useless or extremely risky. Look, the status quo is status quo for a reason. How did Amazon get so big? Not because they send out goons to smash windows of local bookstores! They get big because they provide genuine value (large selection, stellar customer service, fast shipping, etc.). Google got so big because they are very very good with organization of information and extremely good with matching customers and advertisement. Apple got so big because they produce(d) beautiful products. Facebook got so big because they connect people together. Uber got so big because they make taxi-ing so convenient (and cheap). These businesses got there for good reasons.

Except the case where you find way to provide the same (or at the minimum almost the same) value with free and open ecosystem, status quo remains. Sure, you can host your own fonts and pictures and videos, but then they will be served from your hosts. Have you invested billions of dollars in gateway to be near your customers? Have you invested many hundreds of engineering-years to test over as many browsers as you can find? And remember, you are probably a power user of the internet. How about everyone else? Does everyone need to learn how to administrate GNU/Linux to post views of the world?

Without providing the same value, revolutions tend to fall short of their promises. Take American Revolution. They proclaimed "All Men are created equal," killed a bunch of people (many innocent), then proceeded to keep slavery anyway. And that's one of the most successful revolutions. French Revolution produced an emperor to replace a king. English Revolutionary failed. Paris Commune failed. Russian and Chinese Revolutions were followed by famines. And so on.

Imagine the internet without Google, Facebook, and AWS. You know what will happen next? Somebody else will become Google, Facebook, and AWS. Look at China: sure, they are independent from Google and Facebook; and they have Baidu and Weibo. Google, Facebook, Amazon, AWS serve important needs. You can't not have someone like them.

In other words: all of these protests are useless and/or harmful without careful consideration of the underlining economics and usage. And I am not sure if anyone has gotten around to figure out an economic model for free web yet.

Independent news sources provide investigations critical to the state, which state run media do not. It's like GNU/Linux or Android to Windows or iOS. They provide excellent value as well as competitive advantages.

SnapChat vs Whatsapp? well.....

I think this article completely bypasses the root causes of the issue in order to paint Silicon Valley dominating businesses in the worst light possible.

Look, the real issue is simple: all of these "web startups" are not very innovative. All of them are roughly the same: ever so slightly more novel way to deliver roughly the same set of data to users in exchange for app or token of money. How is that "ground breaking"?

Thing is, when everyone is doing roughly the same thing, which costs perhaps a few engineering months to build, how can startups ever compete with the big guys who are hell bent on ensuring their success? It's like trying to open supermarkets to compete with Walmart, or building gasoline car to compete with Toyota, except it's cheaper for the Big Five to copy than for Toyota, because the media (information) is inherently more traceable.

I remember when Windows 98, XP, Google, Gmail, Prime (and Uber, eBay, and paypal) came out. They blew everyone's mind. They changed how we work and live. What's so hot about SnapChat? I mean, it's probably ever so slightly more entertaining than, says, Hangout or WhatsApp, but it's just minor tricks on top of roughly the same set of features. Of course these competitors will drive it out of the marketplace. It holds no long term competitive advantages.

There are businesses that don't deserve to die. For example, a local store provides not just goods, but a community center and an identity for a small town; it gives more value than mere commerce. The decline of these should alarm us. On the other hand, some businesses do deserve to die. And lack of long term advantage, lack of innovation, lack of additional value sounds exactly "should die".

Yes, but they increase delivery time problems and developer time problems.

That's purely guesswork. Seriously! My observation is that as the size of the project grows, type system switches from hindrances to actually speed up development and save developer time. Ever try to grep weakly typed system for name definition? Yeah, you don't have that problem in strongly typed system. Lots of other reasoning are easier to do with types than without.

The current state of software safety discussion resembles the state of medical safety discussion 2, 3 decades ago (yeah, software is really really behind time).

Back then, too, the thoughts on medical safety also were divided into 2 schools: the professionalism and the process oriented. The former school argues more or less what Uncle Bob argues: blame the damned and * who made the mistakes; be more careful, damn it.

But of course, that stupidity fell out of favor. After all, when mistakes kill, people are serious about it. After a while, serious people realize that blaming and clamoring for care backfires big time. That's when they applied, you know, science and statistic to safety.

So, tools are upgraded: better color coded medicine boxes, for example, or checklists in surgery. But it's more. They figured out what trainings and processes provide high impacts and do them rigorously. Nurses are taught (I am not kidding you) how to question doctors when weird things happen; identity verification (ever notice why nurses ask your birthday like a thousand times a day?) got extremely serious; etc.

My take: give it a few more years, and software, too, probably will follow the same path. We needs more data, though.

https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2635922

Just ONE study, so don't take too much heed. That said, apparently:

* Strongly type, statically compiled, functional, and managed memory is least buggy

* perl is REVERSELY correlated with bugs. Interestingly, Python is positively correlated with bug. There goes the theory about how Python code looks like running pseudo-code... Snake (python's, to be more precise) oil?

* Interestingly, unmanaged memory languages (C/C++) has high association with bugs across the board, rather than just memory bugs.

* Erlang and Go are more prone to concurrency bugs than Javascript ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. Lesson: if you ain't gonna do something well, just ban it.

All in all, interesting paper.

Hmm, this "article" (let's be charitable and call it that) should probably be named "For Shame: Example of Bad Writings that Make You Want to Hurt the Authors."

I still am at loss of what is the message (which someone insists to be too simple for such long writing). The article/random-musing/writing/thing starts with history of treatment of Shame, then crosses over to self-esteem, then switches back to warnings of something with Freud last name (who's Anna Freud?), then links the failures of heeding that advice with some political failures (apparently), then makes some weird assertions about democracy (somehow, magically, Democracy becomes single standard; since WHEN did Democracy mean single standard, three fifths a person notwithstanding?), then it jumps to comparison of psychology treatments and something about deep understanding, and finally ends with how good religions are.

Phew. I hope I collected all the main points of the writing piece. At some point, my eyes glazed while words and paragraphs floated around without really making any sense.

Can somebody help with how this pops on Hacker News' front page?

It's an incredible website! But it still does not work completely "right." For example, the back and forth buttons don't navigate to the correct scroll locations.

This actually illustrates his points. Which is this: the browser(s) ALREADY implement all of those features. It already knows forward and backward and new tabs and link and etc. etc. etc. SPA's completely ignore these and must re-implement everything. This means: * choppy differences between different SPA * when new browsers come out with new navigation features, guess what, you have to reimplement them! * Extra javascript code * Extra bug opportunities * What if a user keeps your page open so long that you change JSON? I have seen my wife keep a tab opened for weeks....

I guess this is just my DRY training kicks into overdrive, but reimplementation of well-tested, well-proven patterns really doesn't smell right. Which was his point.

I hate hate hate, bitterly, angrily, and even desperately, those fetishes about a better, nicer, more innocent past. We all heard it; we all partake in the orgy of present-bashing and past-glorying before. However, let's wake up and, seriously, get our attention back to the present.

Look, yoga and meditation have existed for a looooooong time. And guess what, for every time period, be it modern "over-loaded" time or ancient time, only a handful of people can master them. And what are they? Oh, yeah, attention controlling. I mean, if the past is so focused and attentive, shouldn't everyone be meditation master? Shouldn't people be super productive and focused and attain greatness? Guess what, they don't. What does that imply?

It implies this: please, for the love of progress, stop your whining and start appreciating how much luck and resources you have access to today. Please. Pretty please.

And what's with the fetish against "algorithm"? I despite those who take regular but uncommon concepts and make a demon/angel out of them. Algorithm, simply put, is how to calculate something or how to solve a problem. Sorry, algorithms do not have "tendrils". They neither scheme against you nor love you. Think about it: if you trip over a rock, does it "conspire" against you? If you burn time on some game, don't blame the game, please. Blame the publisher, maybe. Don't blame the poor tech. It does nothing but to please you.

Back to time and attention. Is it challenging to keep my attention in today fast pace world? Sure it is. How easier compared to starving world of the old? Or racist world? Or back-breaking labor (think agriculture before advent of machine and fertilizer)? Luckily, I have not been made to find out. Very luckily. And I think everyone can appreciate that luck.

I always appreciate advices on control of attention and focus. I might not find them valuable (I frankly feel like I can focus just fine with emails singing their songs, for example, so I don't need to completely cut cord). But I would not make a statement against those. I need all the ideas and advices: attention is very hard to control.

However, the whining and fetishizing and conspiracy theorizing must stop. Please. One nation have voted for economic regression while another elected a racist bigot as their First Citizen. Why? Because of all of those whining and fetishizing and conspiracy theories. So, please, stop. For the love of progress, stop.

I do appreciate the effort to protect everyone's constitutional right. I wish best of luck to the pursuit.

However, I feel like there is something very very wrong about method and intention of this type of actions/complains.

One thing always bugs me about Americans: despite the liberties that they enjoy, despite the very real capacity to impact change in their government and laws, they all hate "the Government." Who is "the Government"? Wait, ain't them the very candidates that you the people vote into offices?

Like this idea of "suing the US government." Who are you suing? The executive branch? Why are you suing them? This is over a law. It's a piece of legislation. The executive branch merely, you know, execute the laws. Why not sue Congress? Oh wait, why sue Congress when you can simply vote them out of office? Oh wait, why "stop enforcing" the laws when you can, you know, CHANGE the laws?

This kinda reminds me of the libertarians' ideas of obstruction of legislation so that "the government does not spend more." If not spending is the right thing to do, why not educate people that. Even if one believes that 47% of the population is "takers," 53% is still a majority. So teach, advocate, change minds. But no, they prefer to obstruct their country, risk the centuries of their national reputation, put t heir fellow citizens to starvation. You know, if this happens in schoolyards, we probably call it "bullying." But if a bunch of libertarians do it, it's "principles."

Obviously, I agree with the plaintiff here. However, the method is still wrong. And different from above, there are very few "takers" here. Mostly, it's faceless businesses that (let's be frank here) few people like. So why not take the high road? Why not educate your fellow citizens on the danger of the laws? Why not change minds? Why not raise money for candidates who will change the laws appropriately?

In short: why not be a citizen rather than a rebel? Why not change the system for the better rather than obstruct it? Why not make your society/country a better place rather than simply fight it?

Well, this article actually makes me glad to not read Ars Technica for a while, and may actively prevent me from ever reading that thing again.

Here is how every single article on this topic of this particular author goes: there is a (quite minor, in fact) challenge, therefore we should abandon ever trying to regulate guns.

Let's start with this particular piece. Sure sure, it's quite hard to differentiate between assault weapons and "defensive weapons" and "recreational weapons." But that is MISSING THE POINT! The point is NOT that all weapons can kill. The point is: how the hell do we allow self-defense and recreational fun without endangering the society at large? However, instead of this, his argument is: hey, all weapons are dangerous, so let's just allow him (decent guy, no?) to own nuclear weapons. It's, you know, defensive.

Return to the stupid argument. Yes, there is a large difference between offensive and defensive weapons. For example, caliber. Offensive seeks to destroy, so the more power, the better; defensive seeks to disable while (let's face it) retreating, so not so much power required. Or, perhaps smaller magazine size; in hunting and defending, you don't need to spray, so replacing magazine is not that bad; while you are terrorizing, the break is awesome for your victims, obviously.

As you see, there are ways to differentiate, to make hunting/recreation safe. But no. Our dear, dear author wants none of that. Because the mechanism is so reliable, he wants like the exact same power as the guns used in battle. Because it's hard to differentiate, his solution is to let innocent people die. Because it's like a fraction more convenient, well, again, who cares about those strangers, right?

Similarly, I tried (very hard) to be open minded and read his articles on smart guns. Same kind of arguments. Oh, it's not 100% reliable, so no, it should be banned, because, omg, what if I am forced to use it.

You know, in decision making books that I worked through, there is a term for all of t these "reasons." They are called "excuses." You don't want something because, I don't know, the sizes of your hands, so you make up excuses. Oh, it's not 100% reliable. Oh, the government is taking over the world. Oh, politicians are treating me like idiots. Therefore, those bastards can die so I can get that thing.

? Why is it redundant? For the love of God, why is HR redundant?

Let alone the other answer ("HR" == "other engineers"), which is brilliant, the HR department is the greatest weapon a large firm can deploy. Do you want insurance in case your kids get sick? Do you want days off to relax after a month of hard work? Do you want to ensure your boss ain't making inappropriate advances?

Why on earth would a smart people want to be burdened with all of those works? Why on earth would a smart people hitch non-core work onto main work hour? Why on earth would a smart person refuse to delegate?

"HR resources" is redundant. Such arrogance.

I weep to see people sharing my viewpoints. Too often, quasi-professional observers of industries would make stupid anecdote examples into attention grabbing but misleading and ultimately stupid stories.

To add to your examples (and to bring this closer to hearts of Hacker news audience): Google released Gmail, GMap, GWT, etc. after its initial success; Amazon unleashed AWS after domination of online marketplace; Microsoft jumped into Xbox after establishing itself as "the tech company." Most notably, Apple is only accepted as a mainstream "innovator" (with the slew of products like iPod, iPhone, iPad, etc) after its revival and domination; before that, they were merely a niche player and their products (the many colorful boxes) were never quite celebrated as later creation as market leader.

sigh Yet-another-worshipper-of-god-given-creativity.

I lost all respect for the article the moment the author drew difference between chess/music/sport and writing/drawing/teaching/"creativity". Frankly, the way I read it, this is just another hero-worshipping article by consultants whose main contribution to the economy involves destroying R&D and shipping jobs oversea. And it truly saddens me that Hacker News keeps this on my front page.

Why did the difference irk me?

First, find me, seriously, find me 2 basketball matches that are exactly the same. Or 2 golf days that are exactly the same. Or 2 music performances that are exactly the same. Or 2 chess matches that are exactly the same. It's ridiculous to claim that somehow chess and music playing and sports are not creative.

Second, if a person claims that somehow long period of deliberate practices do not matter on engineering, my personal opinion is that all engineers should spit at that person. Such insult! True, each engineering situation has different challenges. However, the principles of engineering (applied sciences, basically) are finite. Same things for writing or drawing. The materials & techniques (even styles!) are finite. Creativity refers to the adroitness of solving the infinite (problem space) with the finite (tools and principles). Without an intimate understanding of the finite (tools and principles), how can one bring it to bear on the infinite?

Third, most of new works are old. Let's take Shakespeare. His works are lovely and creative, no? But consider this: most of his plots are derivative (similar motifs, if not outright fully-formed plots, already existed and popular); most of his language already formed. Shakespeare created at most 10% of his language. He must gain expertise of the other 90% to show case these 10%. Similarly, think of any art or design or product or whatever creative result. Most of such art/design/whatever already follows some popular styles and employs existing and popular techniques. Creativity is only the little extra. Sure, the extra sets it apart. But without the expertise of the 90%, such "extra" can't exist.

Finally, creativity is very inefficient without deep expertise. Many people say things like "I am most creative when xyz" (popular xyz: in shower, on a walk, relaxed, reading, etc.). However, this actually means is that people come up with the 10% (see above) extra during this time. Since the person must create the other 90% to top off the little newness, without expertise, 10% will remain fantasy.

Now, I am not saying "expertise/practice is everything!" Expertise and practice are foundation of the creativity house. Even when you have solid foundation, you don't have a roof yet, and rain will still wet you. However, without foundation, you simply can't build a house. Expertise and practice are a requirement, but alone are probably not enough.

Parting words: people love stories of outsiders winning. However, why don't we talk about outsiders losing? There are vastly more of those. Let's take a simple field: web programming (1. it's appropriate here; 2. outsiders seem to look down on it). You know who built Google? Graduate students from prestige schools. You know who built Microsoft? Students with years of programming experience. You know what outsiders build? The millions of badly written websites, ready to be SQL injected or attacked by a already-patched bugs. That's outsiders' works.

Here is my serious question for Hacker News community: who the upvote this piece of ? I mean, seriously, guys, why, in the name of all that is (even if marginally) correct, did you up vote this piece of fantasy?

I frankly don't think this piece of deserve any more attention than the few minutes I spent insulting it, but I think my insults require defense. After all, they are probably less trashy than their target (in this case; note: I am generally against insult; but guys, I can't help myself). Here goes the defense (feel free to ignore it; again, just ignore this whole things to save yourself a few precious minutes): 1. Gold is among the most useful material on earth. It is impervious to any kind of oxidization, as well as soft and easy to work with, plus conducts heat and electricity superbly. This means that even the least developed societies can fashion high quality tools out of it (from bowls to utensils to weapon). The idea that somehow gold is useless (beside decoration) is beyond laughable. 2. Secondly, the idea of rich and poor within a lowly bartering-only society is also laughable (well, this one is slightly less obvious than the uselessness of gold). Wealth implies accumulation, which implies settlement, which implies (relatively) high food production capacity. By then, oops, you are talking about relatively advanced societies. There is one thing I have yet to find: a society with wealth that looks at gold with no more than amusement.

So, 1+2 means that a place where rich people only employ gold for decoration is a fantasy by idiots. Again, I am against name-calling, but this is just so.... Sorry, my bad. Anyhow, please save yourself and STOP UPVOTING IDIOCY.

Hmm, posts like this make me want to make Lisp mandatory for all programmers. Given that LISPers have argued for "lambda the ultimate kitchen utensil/sinks/cooks" for the last few decades, it's slightly annoying that people from other languages repeat the point now. That said, congratulation for learning value of syntactical sugar. I hope you like it.

That said, can somebody implement hygienic macros in JavaScript. They will probably help will people having to explain basics knowledge over and over.

You know, my feeling for rms is quite bipolar. On one hand, I respect the severity of his commitment. On the other hand, as time passes, he sounds more and more like those extremist whackjobs. Seriously.

For example, what is wrong with paying for digital services on the web? I mean, serious, what is wrong with it? Or, I found his opinion on Netflix quite funny. Netflix never intends to sell its users anything. The whole premise is to watch without buying. Like library (but you pay for the service). You can't exactly complain that you can't, says, tear apart a library book, can you? So, why DRM on Netfix a problem? The users don't own those video! Well o well.

You know, farming may be wonderful and all. But it's not silver bullet. Nor does it make programming any less rewarding, provided that one does it right.

In fact, it is YOUR OWN DAMNED fault if you fail to sing with your children while you worked as a programmer. Wait, it's your own damn fault for pretty much everything in your life. Programming is not the disease; you are. I know people who finished extra degrees while working as programmer; I know people who climbs mountains while working as programmer; I know people who play music professionally while working as programmer; I know people who take excellent care of their family while working as a programmer. Your job exchanges (some) of your time for (some) money. The responsibility of adjusting the job to the life lies in your hand. Stop blaming programming for your troubles.

You know, the whole "OMG! I got a new job! It's wonderful! It beats my previous job!" kind of silliness should really really stop. Most things have their rewards and challenges. Maybe farming suits you better. I don't know. However, judging from the kind of stupid judgment thrown around ("real world" and "no exception" and "I sing for my kids), doubt haunts my view. But oh well. Good luck. And stop bashing other people's job, please.

The root cause of all this is the fantasy of a certain group of people. Those believe, against the evidence and the suffering of their fellow citizens (let alone their fellow human beings), that enthroning money (aka capital, corporation, and all that) will boost the economy. The result? Money now owns the US, and drags all down into hell hole.

One moment of sadness passes. Let's go and make some money. Gotta pay the bills.