instruction stringlengths 4 105 | output stringlengths 8 56.7k |
|---|---|
How did you get started in hacking/programming? | ivenkys: You are lucky - you stumbled on the right thing by accident , HTDP and/or Little Schemer are the right places to start followed by the more advanced SICP.If you can really grok SICP you probably won't need anyone to tell you what to read next - depending on your interest you will pick up the right book.What i wish i knew before i got into programming is essentially the above. It took me a solid 10 years of C,C++,Python,Java and reading the right blogs/journals to realise that my knowledge/understanding was ass-backwards. |
How did you get started in hacking/programming? | nrr: The demoscene made me do it. I think the thing that got me hooked was seeing Future Crew's "Second Reality" and having the desire to do that kind of stuff.As far as the second question goes, I think I'd prefer to be blissfully oblivious. :) That said, I've blackboxed pretty much everything I know outside of Lisp, so I think one of those truths that should be shared with others can be summed up by saying, "Exploration is key. Don't be afraid to take a sledgehammer to the code you're working on. Your future self may end up thanking you for it." |
How did you get started in hacking/programming? | YuriNiyazov: Something should probably be added here: don't get discouraged by seeing that a lot of people here answer "grade school" or "middle school", whereas you are (inferring by "majored in social sciences" statement) in your early 20's. For most people on this site, programming permeates our very core, and you can be a very good and prolific programmer without having been hooked on it at the tender age of 8. |
How did you get started in hacking/programming? | shareme: Google search for CircuitGirl..You should email her ask for a retelling of her story.. |
Which Lisp book should we publish first? | almost: For those that don't know (probably smaller on here then elsewhere but still):HtDP: How to Design Programs
SICP: Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs
PCL: Practical Common Lisp
ACL: ASCII Common Lisp
PAIP: Principles off Artificial Intelligence Programming
OL: On LispPersonally I'd probably go for PCL because it's... practical.OL is pretty awesome though, I wish someone would reprint it in English, I have a self printed copy but I'd very much like to own a proper one! |
How did you get started in hacking/programming? | _bryan_: I started programming in high school, with simple programs on the TI 81/82 calculator. I majored in computer science in college, where the focus was C and C++.I didn't really develop a passion for programming until I was out of college and learned Python (and later Ruby). I really wish I had started with one of those languages. |
Which Lisp book should we publish first? | plinkplonk: I would highly reccomend PAIP and OL (in that sequence). PAIP is fantastic in that it provides a 1000 pages of elegant code which conveys the "lisp way" by a master of the langauge. OL is of course the macro book par excellence.I wonder if there are any other books that show exemplary code in various languages which are not so much "Introduction to X" as "Here is how the masters of the language write code in language X and "think in" X . I know of "Lua Gems", "C interfaces and implementation" and "The Art Of Prolog" which fall into this category. Any others? |
Which Lisp book should we publish first? | J_McQuade: I'd say Practical Common Lisp. While I actually favour all of the other books myself, I think that PCL is the better bet for a publisher, concentrating as it does on themes more relevant to the average non-lisp programmer.(I'd probably pick PAIP as the best of the lot, though) |
Which Lisp book should we publish first? | gommm: Hi, I'd go with PCL it's a good practical introduction...Off topic, but where in China are you based? If you're in Shanghai maybe we can meet up sometime, I always like meeting fellow HNers! |
Which Lisp book should we publish first? | steveeq1: The Little Schemer:
http://www.amazon.com/Little-Schemer-Daniel-P-Friedman/dp/02... |
How did you get started in hacking/programming? | tlrobinson: TI graphing calculators got a bunch of people in my "generation" interested (I'm 25). My first non-trivial program was snake in TI BASIC.I think this generation's equivalent is probably iPhone. |
How did you get started in hacking/programming? | gigl: TI graphing calculator in 7th grade, followed by seeing one of my teacher's web pages he made for the course. I decided I could do a better job so I learned the basics of the web and bloomed out from there. |
How did you get started in hacking/programming? | ashishk: I started coding during my Senior year in college. Roughly 1.5 years ago.The reason? I outsourced dev for my first startup (which I started my Junior year) and it failed miserably. Small fixes took days. Terrible freaking way to start a startup.Anyways I started with HTML/CSS then moved up to LAMP (yes I know rails is awesome, but hey, I just started coding =)). Since my Senior year, I've personall started and coded two startups, one of which raised angel money and the other which may not need to. |
How did you get started in hacking/programming? | macco: What I learned:
If you self teaching, start with Python. Period.
Then later read htdp. |
How did you get started in hacking/programming? | meunierc: When he bought a computer, I asked my grandpa to show me how it worked. He said it wouldn't be interesting to me: it was all in English (which I didn't speak or read), and there was nothing more than letters and numbers to see, on a green and black screen. I told him that didn't matter. He took a book and we spent an afternoon typing Rabbit.BAS into the machine, then we played some.That was 30 years ago this year, today I design aircraft simulators and automated test systems for aircraft computers. The methodology has never changed: aim high, with a goal you will enjoy a lot.edit: to your second question, I have this to offer: there's nothing more I wish I had known when I started. I'm actually very glad I didn't consider theoretical questions too early. "Programming" is no different a language than Spanish, Japanese or Russian (maybe a tad more formal). To program you need to learn to give directives to a machine. Designing a system is something else, which uses a completely different skill set, and the entry point to that is being able to talk to the machine.So my only advice could be: if you really want to be a hard-core computer nerd, stay with "programming" for 7-10 years, then learn (at least at overview level) all the important design principles. You'll then be able to choose according to your personality. |
How did you get started in hacking/programming? | dejv: I was 8 at the time and find some C64 Basic manual writen in German (I don't understand this language then and now) and I found some code so I retype it into the computer and just instantly like it. |
How did you get started in hacking/programming? | RevRal: I'm not sure if this counts; the birth of my hacking started on my dad's lap, doing amateur radio. We made our own radios with kits and parts from other things, and setup our own antennae outside.We even setup some crazy starmap printer, and I think it worked through our antennae. We didn't get a dish until much later.At the very least I learned to master the fear of big manuals.My programming, and my general interest in computers, was the natural progression from that. I don't even remember the first programming language I learned, but everything after that was easy. Learn one language and you learn them all, I guess.Taking things apart, reassembling, and creating is in my blood. Thanks dad. |
How did you get started in hacking/programming? | zaidf: 5th grade. I'd just landed in the U.S. No friends. No life. Just a Mac and an HTML book. I did what I could:) |
How did you get started in hacking/programming? | lg: I don't know about HTDP, it was keen to impose 'good practices' on me and I got bored. Your first book on science didn't talk about lab safety, it talked about fun stuff to get you excited. A first book on programming should be the same, every chapter should present some tiny fun program and explain it. Is there such a book? If not I might write it. |
How did you get started in hacking/programming? | d0m: The real thing that opened my mind was "Effective C++". Before that, I didn't know how to code. This book showed me what a good code is and why it is important. Then, from that time, I read alot of books and my personnal favorite is SICP. |
How did you get started in hacking/programming? | tomh: Freshman year in high school, I was programming in BASIC on my very own IBM PCjr. After a few programs, I set it aside (or so it seems now) until my senior year, when I started programming in Pascal for an honors course which they called Computer Math at the time.What did I wish I knew at the time? That there were more fun languages to play with other that BASIC and Pascal. Perl came about in 1987, for example, and I wonder what might be if I started in on that language way back in the day. Since you're already tuned into HN, I think you have that base covered.Side note: the thing that made me think I was any good at programming was a computer programming contest held by Dell Computers during my senior year. I entered, and, while I didn't make #1, I did get in the top 10, which meant I got to have lunch with Michael Dell in 1989. |
How did you get started in hacking/programming? | pgbovine: unlike lots of people on HN, who are far more experienced hackers than i am, i didn't start programming for fun until my senior year of college (i did a fair amount of programming for classes and internships before then, but never on my own personal projects). i was always into digital photography, so i took a crack at making some online photo galleries using python and javascript.they look pretty lame now that everything is ajax-ified and web 2.0 shiny, but 5 years ago they actually looked decent for the time period ;)my advice for newbies is to not worry so much about what book or language you want to learn, but rather to figure out one project you're truly interested in creating, and then learn the technologies that are needed to create it. i had some false starts back in middle/high school when i bought some programming books with the intention of teaching myself programming ... sure, i learned what a 'for' loop and 'if' statements were, but i never got any real traction since there was no project that i was deeply interested in hacking on. if you have a hobby project to drive you, then you'd be amazed at how fast you can learn what's needed to hack on it. best of luck! |
How did you get started in hacking/programming? | a-priori: Age 6. My dad brought home a 386 IBM-PC so he could learn AutoCAD. My brother and I somehow discovered QBASIC, played gorilla for a while, poked through it's source code not understanding a thing but feeling like "this can't be too hard".My first attempt at writing a program? DRAW A DOOR |
How did you get started in hacking/programming? | chasingsparks: I asked my father to teach me basic in 5th grade after seeing the movie WarGames. My efforts were soon doubled after Angelina Jolie stared in Hackers. Since then, everything I have done has been out of sheer curiosity, but I'd be lying if I said these two pop culture movies had nothing to do with my initial motivations.(P.S. Jurassic Park I was on yesterday. "It's a Unix system." I couldn't help but smile. I was 9 or so when that movie came out, and I remember thinking I should get a Unix system.) |
How did you get started in hacking/programming? | matt1: I had a good friend in middle school who introduced me to an AOL Prog called Icy Hot. I was so intrigued that I did some research and learned about Visual Basic. I found code for some other progs, printed it out, and went line by line through it until I understood roughly what was going on. I made my own, then made a second better one and haven't stopped. Biggest piece of advice: code then read, not the other way around.FYI the AOL work culminated in AOL-Files.com, which was the premier AOL hacking site circa 2000/2001. Check it out:http://www.mattmazur.com/archive/aol-files.html |
How did you get started in hacking/programming? | caryme: First my Geometry teacher taught how to write simple programs for our TI-83s.Then in IB HL Math in 12th grade, my teacher decided to have "C++ Fridays". After that, I entered college as a CS major (and vocal performance, but that is another story). |
How did you get started in hacking/programming? | DanielBMarkham: As a gifted student, I asked our school for a computer when I was in 7th grade.They gave us a bunch of wires, a soldering iron, and instructions for making a homemade radio or some such.As a Freshman, the local Radio Shack had the TRS-80 and I spent all of my time bugging the salesmen as I played games and tried to tweak it. A friend wrote an app and made $800. Eight-hundred bucks! Then our High School got one of the first computers, a Commodore Pet. There was a guy named Roland who always signed up for it, was an arrogant jerk, and generally ticked everybody off, so I wrote a game called "Kill Roland" that became quite the local hit.Then I wrote my first contract program, a bookkeeping app on an Apple IIe. Then a program for a comic-book store, etc.After that I went into the Marines, wanting to do "real work". Several times in my young life I tried to swear off computers for other stuff I loved more. Each time, no matter what I was doing, I ended up hacking together solutions. So, for instance, after I got out of the Marines I started into management at Domino's (while taking a full load at the local college). Within a couple of months I had created a series of linked spreadsheets that handled all of the store's paperwork. I clerked at a truck-shop -- ended up writing a dBase III program that handled inventory, maintenance, driver payments, and taxes. (I also found them 100K in overpaid taxes from previous years)I tried freelance writing. I love writing. Ended up writing a bunch of articles for newspapers and magazines. Wrote some sci-fi even. Got to meet and interview famous people like Clive Barker. But within a couple of months, yet again, I was installing Macs at the local weekly newspaper, filling in for the CIO at a local company, and teaching graphics programs to guys who wrote print ads.So I finally just gave up and went into consulting. Didn't seem any point trying to fight it any more.I didn't pick hacking. It picked me. |
How did you get started in hacking/programming? | genderfree: Summary of below: Since I was not aggressive/assertive and since I was coming up as a female in the 80's, a lot of my life track on the way to becoming a programmer was spent trying to deal with the stigma associated with my desire to do so.1982-83 (grammar to high school age):
My parents bought a word processor in the 80's that you could also program. It had orange letters on a black screen. I picked up the manual and I tinkered with it, typed in a few BASIC programs.My parents didn't want me in the house playing with it and I wasn't motivated because what I got done was so limited and my imagination could only take me so far at that point.In spite of that, I went to the neighborhood library to learn more, but there was nothing really there except for books on electronics. I tried to get friends and family to help me but no one could or would. For some reason going to the library I felt the need to hide my interest. I vividly remember hiding in the library stack with a few books on electronics one summer.I am pretty sure they thought I was weird for having this interest. I was supposed to be doing more "female" things. My mother actively prevented me from doing other geeky things like bike maintenance (too greasy! and not feminine!).1985 (17 years old):
When I got to college, they didn't teach programming in a sane way. We had this book, "Oh! Pascal" and it sucked so hard I dropped the class. But the only work-study job I could get in college was administrative assistant work. They hired me then fired me (I'm not a secretary type), and strongly suggested I work for the computer geeks. To this day I have no idea why they pushed me there. But they had me doing tape back-up and whatnot. I enjoyed it.1992-1994:
When I was about 22 or 23, I got into programming while I was stuck in the Navy. I hated the Navy and they treated me like an idiot so I used my free time to self-study C language programming. Once I got through the course I realized I would have to pass a real university program and I just couldn't take the classes where I was stationed (not available).1995:
I got a career in software sales (6 years of that). I was entered sales info into a Unix box with an Informix database and I got to the command line by accident and started using gopher and usenet and Pine. I figured out how to install Slackware Linux.I eventually became a sales engineer (1 year of that), then started work in network administration (2 years) which led to web development (Javascript/ASP) and eventually I taught myself Java (about 2001), then C# and now I do C++.While I was working in network support/administration (hoping to eventually work my way into something better) for a public relations firm in Chicago, one of the PR seniors asked me where I went to school while I was fixing his computer. I told him and he realized I went to the same school as he did (prestigious, expensive midwestern university). He then said, sorrowfully, "It really is a shame then." He meant to imply that I was doing work beneath my capabilities and shouldn't be happy about it.My battle may be dissimilar from others here. As a black woman I was supposed to be aiming at being a lawyer or business owner, not a software geek. My father worked as a tech in various roles for the phone company and I went home for a holiday a few years ago and I was so proud I got my first real programming job and he responded with "why would you want to do THAT for a living?"It was at that moment I realized I had been living for approval of others and I felt released to do exactly what my talents and desires drove me to :) |
How did you get started in hacking/programming? | runjake: 1.) BRIEFLY study a language. Then start hacking on and tweaking other people's code. The best and quickest way to learn is by doing, not reading this and that.2.) I don't really remember the "before programming" phase of my life as I started very young. But I guess I wish I knew #1. |
How did you get started in hacking/programming? | kajecounterhack: Open source development of a turn-based strategy game. I wish I knew how addicting computers could be, and how much they demanded my entire devotion to ever-changing technologies. |
Which vertical search engines do you frequently use? | breck: stackoverflow, twitter search, searchyc, facebook. |
How did you get started in hacking/programming? | Osmose: 1. I started with a little game by the name of ZZT by Tim Sweeney and Epic Megagames (who would go on to become Epic and create the Unreal Engine). ZZT used ASCII characters as graphics and was an engine on which to run games. It came with the map editor and used a language called ZZT-OOP to control objects.2. It's a lesson I still haven't learned how to follow well, but I've always been more successful just doing things rather than trying to start a large long-term project. I would/still keep getting caught up trying to make a full game or a complete library, and I end up getting caught in planning or setup and never get to the coding part, which is what I actually want to be doing. |
Which Lisp book should we publish first? | herdrick: On Lisp is unique. I wouldn't go with PAIP because AIMA has replaced it. But what's covered in On Lisp isn't found anywhere else. |
How did you get started in hacking/programming? | keefe: My dad left his old Atari (2600 Junior, I think) in my room and I found basic on there towards the end of grade school.
This was really frustrating to use, so into middle school I would coerce my dad into getting up an hour early so I could get to the 8086s in my school's computer lab and work in QBasic. After that, he got me a copy of VisualBasic which was much too visual for my tastes but kept me tinkering a while. I also got a copy of Borland C++ Builder at a relatively early age but made precious little good use of it. Around that time, WWW was coming out so I started following web technologies sand playing with JavaScript. My HS chem professor had us do an informational interview with someone in our field, which I did and was offered a job where I started doing HTML/JS/CC work from photoshop templates. I also did networking and picked up on Java there. That's really all she wrote, in the last 12 years I don't think I've gone more than 2 weeks without writing some Java. I still prefer dynamic languages and I can't help but want to dump functions into variables, but it's comfortable and does what I want... plus I can do fun things in JS or AS3 on the front end. |
How did you get started in hacking/programming? | Mz: I'm female and have a social sciences background. I ended up with a Certificate in GIS due to an interest in Urban Planning. Somewhere along the way, I learned to write a little (X)HTML and CSS as a means to more effectively share information by running my own websites. This grew out of participating in email lists where my ideas on certain topics were popular for a time. I would get tired of repeating myself and then make a webpage so I could link to it and make a few custom remarks via email instead of feeling like I was reinventing the wheel all the time.More recently, I have decided I would like to learn a programming language to write a simulation, again for the purpose of more effectively sharing information. For a variety of reasons, I have yet to get started on learning a programming language. But I keep getting interested in more technical stuff to serve my other interests that are still more social sciences based. I joined Hacker News in part because having people to talk to about a topic of interest works well for me as an intro to a topic. Taking classes on it would not currently fit into my life.Good luck with this. |
How did you get started in hacking/programming? | araneae: No real advice, but I can tell you exactly what I did with very little background (not that I'm any good at it.)1. Took a biology class that involved using matlab. Found the matlab part more fun than the biology.2. Went through this course on my own one week: http://www.cs.cornell.edu/courses/cs1130/2009fa/index.html
At the time, almost of the materials I needed to do the homework was online. I'm not sure if that's still the case.3. Took a class in data structures and programming in java. I've never worked so hard in my life.4. Profit! (Yeah... no :P) My current step 4 is downloading open source projects I want to do something to (mostly in python) and futzing with them. |
How did you get started in hacking/programming? | pasbesoin: There are a few texts that are an order of magnitude more enlightening than the remainder. Not (just) in terms of content, but in terms of explanation as well as engagement.It is well worth your time identifying and working with these. Not to be snobbish; they are just so much more efficient, and enjoyable. |
So HNers, whatd'ya get for Christmas? | nailer: The Guggenheim Museum & Fallingwater by Frank Lloyd Wright in Lego.http://architecture.lego.com/en-us/default.aspxOrdered by Mrs Nailer and shipped to the UK.I've loved Lego and modernist architecture since I was a child. |
How did you get started in hacking/programming? | btilly: My wife and I were both grad students and got dissatisfied. She went to medical school, I looked for a job suitable to someone in his late 20s dropping out of a math PhD with a Masters.The first job I found was a programming job at a churn and burn consultancy. A couple of months in I was asked to learn Perl. I took that skill to be better job. There I encountered a good programmer who got me started on reading (and incorporating) classics like Code Complete.Everything else flowed from that. |
Have you given up your dream for your dream job? | Mz: I think the answer to a conundrum like this is very personal and tells you a lot about what you value more. |
Which vertical search engines do you frequently use? | gpmedia: For people that don't know what a vertical search engine is:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertical_searchUsually Google using the "site:" command for stackoverflow etc, since I'm satisfied with the way Google orders the results. |
Which vertical search engines do you frequently use? | rokhayakebe: crunchbase, glassdoor, imdb, (clerkdogs), twitter, backtype. |
Which vertical search engines do you frequently use? | noonespecial: Octopart |
Which vertical search engines do you frequently use? | mey: If once every month or so counts.Google to search wikipedia, stackoverflow, imdb |
How did you get started in hacking/programming? | Tichy: I suppose get excited about something you can do with computers. As a kid, it excited me that I could influence what appears on the TV screen with my ZX Spectrum. I programmed lots of stupid drawings and animations (animation as in a character moving across the screen).While it might seem as if my generation was privileged to grow up at the same time that computers grew up, actually there have been several similar situations since then.A couple of years ago, there was a chance to influence what happens on your mobile phone (with J2ME programming, or earlier more hardcore methods). Recently, there is the mobile internet, or Twitter apps and social networking. |
How did you get started in hacking/programming? | tpyo: My father taught me when I was young. Learned a few languages by myself. Tried making websites. Too easy. Tried making games. Too hard.I stopped programming. Because I tried making games, programming is not for me. Maybe if I was not so ambitious, it would've been.I'll never know: I'm trying things other than programming. |
So HNers, whatd'ya get for Christmas? | brutimus: The foodstuffs I received this year. Didn't get much outside of foodstuffs.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/brutimus/4216683268/ |
How did you get started in hacking/programming? | colbyolson: I hope there's someone out there who remembers this, but I started out on mIRC, first on a few IRC servers, but then got into the MSNChat rave.Writing scripts, prots, take-overes, and connections were just so fun. I loved the competitive nature, having races to see who had the better protection scripts. It was interesting to see how the community really grew, as it turned really sour in the next few years and then MSN finally shut it down.But thats what got me going. The feeling of writing code for something you understand, being able to think it out in your head and then just write it without having to check the docs. What a rush. I miss it, so now I learn python. :-) |
What are incentives for scientists to perform replication studies? | hga: A key insight here is that in many fields you can implicitly confirm results from a study by basing your own research on them. If the foundation is rotten, you should be able to figure that out sooner or later, which will lead you to trying to replicate the original results---initially, to see what you're missing---and from there you are in a position to falsify them. |
What are incentives for scientists to perform replication studies? | russell: Replication is important because initial results are often wrong because of misinterpretation of the results, experimental error, or experimenter bias. Others in the field want to make sure their work is on strong ground. |
Which vertical search engines do you frequently use? | gtani: I've put up some google custom search engines by collecting the 20-40 most active delicious taggers for a topic, e.g. clojure, and counting their tagged domains.Works ok, a little better precision, lose some recall vs. generic google searches, but need to renew the list of domains pretty frequently |
How did you get started in hacking/programming? | gtani: i was working at a smallish financial institution, they asked anybody who doesn't want to do databases and unix shell scripting, step back!So my first languages were APL, C, awk and a few 4GL databases, oracle, nomad.Now, i would start with ruby and python, then look at erlang, clojure, scala, haskell, ocaml, F#. i.e. lots of FP |
Which vertical search engines do you frequently use? | johnm: markmail, krugle, imdb |
How did you get started in hacking/programming? | Zarathu: When I was 11 I grabbed a small book on Visual Basic so I could write a keylogger to steal my sister's AIM password. It was fun, learning about how to use the WinAPI and various other components, even though I didn't really understand the abstract concepts behind it.I did VB, ASP, and dabbled with the .NET framework until I was about 14, which is when I started to get into languages like Java and C.After studying Java for a couple years, I started learning about buffer overflows and shellcode, so I did x86 for about two years. At that time (I was 16), I had a job for a VoIP security company in Texas, and I published various exploits for VoIP phones. I think I was 17 when I gave a talk on overflowing SIP at Toorcon and Blackhat.I did PHP and Perl for about a year after that, but I dropped that pretty quickly when I found out about Ruby and Python. I'm running several web-based startups now, and I love it.I'm currently 19. |
Which Lisp book should we publish first? | rosejn: Practical Common Lisp, or even better, Programming Clojure. |
What did Santa bring you? | RiderOfGiraffes: Already asked: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1015120 |
What magazines do you subscribe to? | rmason: Forbes, Inc, Wired and WHIR |
How did you get started in hacking/programming? | onassar: Frontpage > JavaScript scriptlets > PHP > MySQL > Apache > OO Coding > MVC Based Coding > Digg FE Developer :) |
How did you get started in hacking/programming? | lallysingh: (1) For me, a Trash-80 and lots of spare time. But for you, find something programmable that can help with your normal day-to-day life. Scheme, python, or lisp are pretty good places to start.(2) You don't really know a technology unless you have a project you want (want) to finish. Before then, there's no motivation to go deeper. |
How did you get started in hacking/programming? | NathanKP: I got started with BASICA on a Tandy 1000. My dad had a newer computer at the time but he certainly wouldn't let me use it. He was afraid that I would get stuck in an endless loop while writing to the hard drive and wipe it (which he had apparently done before in his own early programming experiments).After a few years of playing around with BASIC as a ten year old I got my own computer and from there it was BASIC -> Euphoria -> C++ -> HTML and JavaScript -> PHP and MySQL -> and now my latest undertaking, nearly ten years later: JSP.Now I am more interested in web development, though I still have strong skills in application development. It is a learning process, and a fun one at that. |
How did you get started in hacking/programming? | charlesdm: I started off messing around in HTML when I was 10. A few months later I decided that I wanted to have a dynamic websites so I moved to PHP & did a whole lot of DB-related stuff - 'because it was cool'. Kept working on my PHP skills and general tech skills until I was comfortable enough to do Desktop coding and made some cool applications with VB6. Then later I moved into Java and C/C++, LUA, Python, etc..Low level programming being my main interest, but I love reading and working in pretty much every language. Except for ActionScript!)If you're interested in doing programming, I think the key element to having the learning drive is to work on stuff that you like.As for, what are some things that I wish I knew before I started. Well - primarily being the fact that you can't learn everything there is to programming. |
Review Bitme.me - rank urls with Bitly | MicahWedemeyer: It took me a bit to get "bit meme" instead of "bite me -dot- me"In all brutal honestly, I won't use it (as HN already provides me the list of links I want to see), and I can't imagine that other people are really clamoring for yet another way to find cool links, what with digg, reddit, facebook, twitter, and all the others.Still, as a fun project or a way to play with the bitly API, then I'd say it is a job well done :) |
Review Bitme.me - rank urls with Bitly | adam-_-: So much mashable! |
Which Lisp book should we publish first? | lispython: Since a lot of people think PCL is a good choice, what do you think the new book Lisp Outside the Box form Nick Levine, It's a practical introduction too. |
Is this an idea worth pursuing further? | cmelbye: Pretty cool idea. It would be a more open competitor to Apple's GarageBand music teaching features. I think your idea of adding more value to the site would be a good one. Apple has quality and integration with a nice music creation software. Perhaps you could include more information from lyric sites and guitar tabs and sheet music as you noted. |
Is this an idea worth pursuing further? | PieSquared: If you included guitar tabs and perhaps allowed users to upload custom tabs (so that people can improve on publicly available ones), it'd be absolutely great. I'd use it on a weekly basis at least, if not daily. |
Is this an idea worth pursuing further? | yters: I, for one, like the idea and can see myself using it in the future. |
Is this an idea worth pursuing further? | sant0sk1: clickable link: http://www.learntoplayanything.com |
Is this an idea worth pursuing further? | vaksel: it's a good idea, and has some decent traffic #s(i.e. "sweet home alabama guitar lesson" 14,800 searches/month) but it seems to be a little bit competitive. Go exact searching for "sweet home alabama guitar lesson" and you get 185,000 sites.I think "sweet home alabama guitar tutorial" is a much better fit. Only 53,700 hits, and none are really an exact match for the search on page 1(which is probably true for all other searches). And that still gets you 6,600 searches a month.So update your titles to be [SONG TITLE] guitar tutorial.And you should be able to hit some decent traffic numbers with that. |
Is this an idea worth pursuing further? | greatreorx: I like the idea. Not sure about making money from it, but definitely see it as useful.typo on home page... "Also contact us if you want to contribute by helping uns organizing the links."Can you add more specific information to your search results lists? For me right now, this page...
http://www.learntoplayanything.com/component/tag/green%20day
returns 20 results that all are "Boulevard of Broken Dreams " - would be more useful if there was some additional info to differentiate.On this page:
http://www.learntoplayanything.com/component/tag/green%20day...
Which is the third page, the paginated link to page 1 actually goes back to the third page. The link to page 1 on all paginated results pages seems to link to the current page instead of page 1. |
Is this an idea worth pursuing further? | ggrot: The way I see it is that you are taking advantage of bad search results in a specific area. You are simply creating a web page that tries to match a specific video with a specific search query and monetize by putting your ads around the content (the youtube video).If you simply built a single page with a collection of links with that text to the video of interest, you'd largely serve the same purpose for users - search engines would rank the actual video higher for that query, but unfortunately you wouldn't be inserting yourself into the middle in order to extract revenue.Your model is negatively effected by search engines improving their ranking algorithms with respect to video content. That seems like a bad place to be. |
How did you get started in hacking/programming? | nathanmarz: 1. Started hacking the TI-82 in 7th grade while bored in math class. Moved on to TI-89 in 9th grade, and then "graduated" to assembly language so I could make better games. I then moved on to "real" computers with C++, which seemed like an incredibly easy language after doing assembly!2. I personally found those years hacking around with the TI calcs not knowing what the hell I was doing to be incredibly valuable. I think a lot of people try to learn the "right way" of doing things by reading about "design patterns", etc., but they never deeply understand the value of those ideas of structuring programs. By just hacking a lot and making tons of mistakes, I really learned the power of abstraction and how abstraction can be used or mis-used. |
Is this an idea worth pursuing further? | Tichy: I like it.Clicking on the logo should bring you back to the homepage. |
How did you get started in hacking/programming? | ashley: Thanks to everyone for sharing their stories! This is really great to read, and it's even better that there's no cookie-cutter way into programming. I guess I had too much of an attitude that this is like grad school in a basic science or a career as a classical violinist, where you pretty much have to have followed a certain track to get in and where it's better to have started as a young prodigy. The media reports heavily on the crackshot kids who develop their start-up at age 16, and I guess it skewed my perception. And even if you are one of those lucky kids who stumbled on something so fun at such a young age, it was really interesting to read all the different uses and sectors to which programming skills can be applied. |
Is this an idea worth pursuing further? | mattyfo: As a guitarist this is a very painful spot for me and good instruction is worth a lot. If you can figure out a model that connects people like me with quality content efficiently then you win. |
How did you get started in hacking/programming? | deadsy: I wanted to program computers before I had access to one. I would take books out of the library and write programs in the pseudo language they presented. In 1982 my Dad brought home a Sirius microcomputer for his work. That had BASIC, so I started writing programs in that. Also in 1982 I took my life savings ($300 @ age 13) and purchased a VIC20. That was a fun machine to learn with and also provided an introduction to the possibilities of assembly language. A few years later I built the TEC1 (http://holden.customer.netspace.net.au/tec1.html) computer. That was Z80 based and had to be programmed in hexadecimal. That was very educational because it was learning at the hardware/software boundary. Since then there has been a steady progression through HLLs (Pascal, C, C++, Forth, Perl, Python, etc.) and assembly language for whatever CPU I have needed it for. Probably 90% of what I know about computers has been as a result of self-study based on personal interest. Even though I work in SW I've had very little formal training in CS (I'm an EE). |
How did you get started in hacking/programming? | primodemus: 1 - At school i tried to write a symbolic differentiation/integration program in C. I failed miserably. A year later chapter 2 of SICP blown my head to a thousand pieces... Nowadays I program in F#, Haskell and C# (mostly C#) for a living, but Lisp is still my favorite language.2 - Programming is mostly about understanding stuff, so don't be afraid to tear thing aparts since it's ok to reinvent the wheel just to see how it's done. |
Would you work for a company just out of Chapter 11? | tdoggette: If they want to pay you good money to do work you want to do, take it: we're in a recession. If it tanks, it's a resume line item, if not, so much the better.Of course, if you have an offer from a company you're sure won't go under, then that might be a better move. |
Is this an idea worth pursuing further? | mkramlich: ask Adrian Holovaty what he thinks. maybe even get him to contribute. he's clearly a good hacker, plus, a good guitarist. rare mix. may be smart to leverage it. |
Is this an idea worth pursuing further? | NickNYC242: This is a good aggregation idea for learning - why not find a few content providers/creators that could serialize a process for learning - so pieces of a song, or basic chords for guitar. Get some content made by people looking to raise their recognition, and customize it for the site. I'll bet you could get free contributions, or even mechanical turk it for different languages. Ad-supported is definitely the model right now, but what about taking requests and getting people to "donate" for specific content providers to produce requests - you may have a runaway hit for people that can tab/teach/play. Best of luck. |
Review Bitme.me - rank urls with Bitly | Barnabas: Nice and snappy. I like that in a web app, so kudos there. Still, YSlow gives you a C for not gzipping or using a CDN. Personally, I see no real reason not to use something like Google's AJAX library hosting (http://code.google.com/apis/ajaxlibs/) for your JQuery stuff, unless it's super custom.Not clear on the significance of the numbers next to each link. Is this clicks in a certain time frame or ever? It will take repeated visits to see how often items get off the front page, so too soon to tell how fresh everything will be.I think this is a useful idea because with all the RSS noise, it's nice to know what's getting attention. I doubt that a one-size all list of sites will continue to serve a wider audience though, like some kind of Techmeme. What about letting me give you my OPML and you weed out what is most interesting according to bit.ly? What about weighting clicks for domains based on their overall traffic to avoid the Mashable effect?So, keep it up. Nice work! |
Should I support OAuth or OpenID? | chris24: I would look into OpenID and Twitter integration (http://apiwiki.twitter.com/Sign-in-with-Twitter). But instead of providing just a text field when accepting OpenID, provide quick links to login with the major, more-general web app providers (Yahoo, Google). You don't even need to tell your users that you're using OpenID for authentication... just that they could login using their existing account with another major web service.You may want to look into RPX (http://rpxnow.com) - it's a commercial provider that does something similar to what I described above. I'm not a huge fan of them being a hosted service, but they do make it really straight-forward to login. |
How to jump into "real world" programming? | cmelbye: Pick an idea and make it. I've been doing that and it's really helping me with Ruby and it's led to me learning about a lot of other things like SSL, server administration, message queues, etc. |
How to jump into "real world" programming? | elbenshira: I keep a list of possible projects on Google Docs. Most of the projects are small web-based apps.A great place to start is to use an existing API with a lot of data (Twitter, Facebook, Google Maps, etc) available to you and do something fun with it.Another idea is to contribute to a young programming language. Clojure and ooc comes to mind. |
Should I support OAuth or OpenID? | chaosprophet: Both. Between OAuth and OpenID you are bound to catch most of your users (as they would be having either a Twitter account or a Google account). |
Would you work for a company just out of Chapter 11? | loganfrederick: How confident are you in the company moving forward? What were the circumstances for it going bankrupt?If you feel confident about the company's future, then analyze it like a normal job offer.I'd imagine the only concern in joining a company that was bankrupt is whether it will happen again. If you believe this is NOT the case, then why not? |
Should I support OAuth or OpenID? | richardw: They do different things (federated login vs. access authorization) so focus on which you need most. Note that they are being combined, so hopefully the choice won't be necessary for too long:http://step2.googlecode.com/svn/spec/openid_oauth_extension/... |
Why can't we prove the Blub Hypothesis? | cubicle67: I'd interpreted Blub not as any specific language, but rather any language has the capability to become Blub when a developer falls into a particular mindset.To me, a language becomes Blub when the developer using it loses all inclination to look beyond it; to them there's no other language that could offer anything more. They can see language A that is obviously inferior as it doesn't offer feature X, yet at the same time there's no point in learning language B because they see no use in feature Y. After all, they've managed fine for years without it. |
Why can't we prove the Blub Hypothesis? | ezy: My guess here is that "programmer productivity" is probably the wrong measure. And that by trying to be reductive about that, you will probably miss somethng valuable...My idea: what if we came up with an app idea and set two teams to it, with the only restriction being the language they could use (one Lisp, one "x"). The "winner" is the one who makes the most compelling app. Which one is most compelling can be decided in some arbitrary fashion -- My opinion is that it'll be fairly obvious (although I have no idea who would win out! Just to make that clear :-))This doesn't sound so terribly scientific, does it? But I think that's about the best you're going to get if you want to measure the effectiveness of a programming language for a chosen task. |
How to jump into "real world" programming? | tomlogic: Pick an open source project that you like and use. Look for open bug reports (easy to do on SourceForge projects) and then dive into the code to fix the underlying problem.Or, take an existing project and read through the code looking for bugs. In C code, using sprintf() instead of snprintf() is generally a bad idea (due to potential buffer overflows). You could go through an entire code base and replace sprintf calls with snprintf with the appropriate buffer size parameter.If there's a project that provides a library of routines, you can write unit tests to verify that they work as documented.Find a project that's poorly documented, and write up documentation for it. If you document an undocumented API, you'll have to read through code to figure out what it will do. You may find that certain conditions are undefined (e.g., what happens if I pass NULL or a negative value here?). You'll be reading other people's code, learning how it works, and contributing to the overall project. |
Should I support OAuth or OpenID? | xpaulbettsx: If you run a site geared towards novice computer users, my advice is DON'T. OpenID is still far too janky of a user experience, you're totally beholden to the providers, which are all different, and the "IE6" crowd just does not get it. |
How to jump into "real world" programming? | aaronbrethorst: I've always had my greatest success when I scratched a personal itch.My first released app, iRooster, helped me wake up in time for class, and ended up paying my rent after Apple featured it in a weekly email blast.My first iPhone app helped me track the daily fluctuations in electoral vote counts between Obama and McCain last year. In the first two weeks, I catapulted into the top 10 paid apps list on the AppStore, spent hours on conference calls with a fair number of bigwigs at Washington Post, and received a very nice writeup from Walt Mossberg.YMMV, of course, but scratching an itch means you're going to be able to solve a (relatively) real-world problem, probably help other people out, and will definitely increase your long term happiness.Good luck! |
Should I support OAuth or OpenID? | lyime: Start with Facebook Connect if you haven't already. In terms of UX its the best single sign-on experience. |
Why can't we prove the Blub Hypothesis? | shalmanese: The ICFP Programming Competition: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICFP_Programming_Contest |
Should I support OAuth or OpenID? | trusko: I would say that it depends on the audience. I have to agree with xpaulbettsx, for some users it might be a problem to get the concept. However, I like OpenID idea a lot and plan to use it in my project.I just hate having 73 different user accounts on 57 different sites (I forget passwords and not all sites have nice tools to reset it). |
Why can't we prove the Blub Hypothesis? | mnemonik: Peter Norvig, Lisp As An Alternative To Java: http://norvig.com/java-lisp.htmlPeter Norvig compares Java, C/C++, and Lisp between 38 programmers and himself. All were asked to write the same program, record how many hours it took, how many SLOC, and then Norvig analyzes the results.EDIT:Norvig also links to a couple other "studies" and anecdotes done by others:+ Tcl, Python, Perl, and Rexx: http://wwwipd.ira.uka.de/~prechelt/Biblio/jccpprtTR.pdf+ More Lisp/Java: http://www.flownet.com/gat/papers/lisp-java.pdf |
How to jump into "real world" programming? | chipsy: Take a big idea and bite off the smallest piece of it. Preferably a boring(or boring to most people!) problem with one or more obvious solutions. Why boring? Because programmers have a nasty habit of wanting to jump to interesting, challenging problems at an early stage, before they have properly evaluated real requirements of the particular domain. Hence there are lots of dead projects with a fancy internal design and nothing working or useful about them. But, on the other hand, many programs can eventually reach a stage where the programming problems become simultaneously interesting and useful; it's just that you can't do this instantly because you don't know the real requirements yet.Instead, you can build prototypes to find those requirements. When you're solving "real world" tasks, a proof-of-concept solution can often be done as a weekend to two-week project. It'll look trivial and do trivial things. It's the progression and accumulation of little features and fixes that move the program from the proof-of-concept or prototype stage into a real, useful app. Eventually the accumulations overwhelm your original design, and at that point you'll have the information necessary to do things "the right way" - how much performance is necessary, what features are relevant, if the language and platform are appropriate matches, etc. |
How to jump into "real world" programming? | silentbicycle: I suspect part of your dilemma comes from too many CS students having the same problems. There are already a zillion webcomic downloaders, blogging engines, etc. You have other interests, yes? Perhaps you're geeked about baseball card statistics, blackjack, typography? Scratch an itch. Run with it.What tools would help solve (or even explore) your problems? Make them.That's one side of "real programming experience". Another side (which you won't learn from small - but ever so useful - projects) is how to work with other people on a common codebase under pressure, both writing clean code and interpreting other peoples' frantic twilight hacks. Kernighan and Pike's _The Practice of Programming_ is as good a style guide as any, and just practice reading code from open source codebases. Good code (Lua and the BSD userland utilites are good for bite-sized pondering) and bad code will teach you different things. |
Why can't we prove the Blub Hypothesis? | scythe: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1894453/development-time-... should be helpful.SPOILER: Ada and Haskell get high marks. |
Why can't we prove the Blub Hypothesis? | asciilifeform: This is why:http://www.loper-os.org/?p=85Racing computer languages the way one might race horses is a fundamentally misguided thing to do. The race is to the Blubulous simply by virtue of being a race. |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.