I had a lot of fun playing John Tiller's Campaign Series by myself and with my buddies. We'd play the turn based, company/battalion level tactical game on a single computer using its unique single-machine play feature. I can still remember the hex tiles, and the catchy background music.
Thanks for all the memories. RIP John.
Tangential, but here goes.
I enjoy miniature wargaming. Sid Meier's 'Gettysburg' is one of my all-time favourite computer wargames. Thanks for creating it!
Nice find. Thanks.
Bookmarked, thank you.
Failure post mortems, Things which explain a startups decisions step by step
+1. I'd also add retrospectives/analysis of successful products to this list. Needn't necessarily be software even.
Typing messages is considered a PhD (?) level problem. Could you talk more about how you went about solving it? Thanks!
Thanks for commenting. Do you have any code somewhere that demonstrates type-safe messages?
The infrastructure for background checks and criminal records in India is more or less nonexistent, so I doubt that Lyft would've been able to catch this driver before he committed a crime any more than Uber would've been able to.
Yes, blame it on the system. Never mind that Uber performed NO checks; never mind that the guy's record was revealed shortly after his arrest, indicating that had Uber performed a check they stood a good chance of finding the same out.
While India's police system is not perfect, Uber's attitude is downright arrogant: "it is you natives and your cops who are to blame". The law mandates a background check, you didn't follow the mandate. The least you can do is to own up to that.
A language spec is roughly analogous to the definitions of scientific units of measurement[1]. They among other things, allow us to verify something independently of a specific kind of measuring device.
Don't forget the robotic mules.
FWIW Twitter and Coursera make heavy use of Scala (Twitter also uses Clojure, if you consider Storm etc.)
I'll probably get down voted for this but I'll say it nonetheless.
Roger Ebert and now Margaret Thatcher. I respect them both but IMHO HN is hardly the place to mourn them. Just my 2c.
(FWIW I can't flag this article; I would have if I could)
The Washington Post article[1] on the launch comments on the the apparent cultural differences between NASA and SpaceX:
Many of the SpaceX controllers wore untucked T-shirts and jeans or even shorts, a stark contrast to NASA’s old suit-and-tie shuttle team.
[1] http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/privat...
Nice description. I'd suggest explaining how decorators that accept arguments (i.e. @memcached('some-arg')) work lest it befuddle some beginner. It is not straightforward (the first argument of a decorator is the function being decorated).
I've found that pairing with interviewees on real(ish) problems usually helps to detect useful traits (I am not advocating pair-programing here FYI; rather working with them in front of a machine during the interview). Your mileage may vary.
Some of the things I look for are (in no particular order):
1. Knowing where to look for help when stuck
2. Systematically looking up the man pages/docs/API when stuck as opposed to making multiple wild guesses
3. Indenting code and saving files with proper names (you would be surprised how many people don't intend code even when it spills over 15-20 lines)
4. Instinctive eye for usability - for e.g. parsing command line arguments when appropriate rather than doing it blindly (`if sys.argv[n]: foo elif sys.argv[n-1]: bar`)
5. Inclination to iterate, even during an interview. Many people are happy to produce a working answer and leave it at that. Some iterate and tidy up without being asked to.
On a lighter note, this is what Dilbert/Dogbert have to say on new "green" breakthroughs.
My "problems" look minuscule in comparison. I am inspired to look past them and try harder. Thanks for sharing.
by Apple to create a viscous circle where developers bind themselves to iPhone
I think you mean a vicious cycle. Or a virtuous one depending on how you perceive Apple.
Interestingly the top rated answer was given by the gentleman who got turned down by Google
it is /fast, whatever that means
AFAIK /fast is an URL to read just the comics "fast" without spending bandwidth loading all the additional information presented in the landing page of the website.
But most of their recent projects seem like they're trying to innovate and the coming out thoroughly mediocre, which isn't really a good combination.
Innovation and milking monopolies generally require different skills and attitudes. MS has tons of people good at the latter (starting with Balmer) and that very fact acts against them when it comes to innovation. Any innovation that happens (C# and LINQ come to mind) is limited in scope and is the work of individuals below senior management. These innovators have very little to do with steering the company.
If MS wishes to innovate they should start by firing or sidelining a lot of the entrenched senior hierarchy. Easier said than done.
I think that once the Django team announces their intention to port most of the auxiliary applications will take notice and follow suit. I base this on how the (better) auxiliaries have been pretty good at keeping in sync with Django's releases.
I think it is an usage specific to the UK.
Use of a plural verb after a singular noun denoting a group of persons (known as a noun of multitude) is commoner in the U.K. than in the U.S. Fowler wrote: "The Cabinet is divided is better, because in the order of thought a whole must precede division; and The Cabinet are agreed is better, because it takes two or more to agree."
Taken from: http://alt-usage-english.org/groupnames.html
I find candid postmortems indicative of a dependable service. Good work Github.
[off topic, but related to the broader Python world]
I know some of the Django core developers hang out here. I wish one of them would undertake a similar exercise for Django. I tried to help out Django in some teeny tiny ways but soon gave up due to a mixture of the reasons cited, including silence.
"On top of that, it’s actually not that hard to understand, and once you do, a whole new world will open up."
While I agree with the author I must point out that it will take some effort for average users to understand what goes on behind the scenes. Especially if they have been using CVS/SVN for long.
I came to git from SVN. It took me a good hour of working through the key diagrams/explanations using a pencil and paper to figure out the git model. And once I did git became a pleasure to work with.
I find that some of my fellow developers are averse to making this initial investment of time and brain cycles to understand the theory of git. Some of them feel that a version control system isn't worth spending time on. Some of this reluctance has to do with how one is introduced to source control. Many learn about version control from "senior developers". More often than not CVS/SVN is explained away as "tracking diffs". Naturally when faced with something like git they ignore it or balk at the idea.
"While it clearly isn't considered offensive in the US, it's still a pretty rude gesture"
There are a bunch of other gestures that meet the same criterion. I am Indian, so I'll list some I'm familiar with:
1. Not addressing your teacher/professor as "Sir/Madam". Addressing a teacher as Mr. X/Professor Y is verboten.
2. Displaying photos of your family at work (mild, but yes)
3. "Disrespecting" your elders/teachers/bosses with counterarguments. ...
On the social front, you'd be expected to
1. Not address your elders solely by their first name.
2. Not cohabit with the opposite sex before marriage.
3. Not smoke/drink.
4. Not eat pork/beef.
5. Not change your gender.
Which of these did you object to/are you going to object to? Will you refuse to work with someone trans-gendered, as would happen "instantly" in India?
The fact is, you were in the US not India. I would argue that the onus is on you to adjust yourself to the customs of your hosts rather than the other way around. Just as an Indian would expect any US (or otherwise foreign) visitors to keep in mind the Indian customs.
PS: you used two epithets to describe your teacher in the same paragraph. I find it amusing that your "Indian" sensibility (Guru! Respect!) is not offended by it.
Why would a great interpreter translate something pedestrian to something prosaic? (factual; dull; unimaginative http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/prosaic)
This article (linked to from good.is) is better: http://www.ladowntownnews.com/articles/2002/05/06/inn_enter/...
Is there an equivalent of the Firefox 'Permit Cookies' plugin for Chrome?