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How do you fight procrastination? | dtran: I think its all about the right environment which puts you in the mindset to get things done. I've noticed that being in my dorm room is usu. not super productive, so my co-founder and I most work in group study rooms in our student union or coffee shop hop. Part of it is fewer distractions, but part of it is also just a nice change in scenery/environment. I think every company should have lots of rooms/other spaces for people to work besides their desk, including nearby coffee shops =) |
How do you fight procrastination? | robinsmidsrod: I had the same problem myself. Yet again I would suggest to read the book Eat That Frog by Brian Tracy. This book teaches you a set of methods to improve your ability to get the right things done. It's available on O'Reilly Safari (where I read it) and from Amazon.http://my.safaribooksonline.com/9781576754221/ch00
http://www.amazon.com/That-Frog-Great-Ways-Procrastinating/d... |
Is this idea worth pursuing ? | streblo: I'd do it |
Good, lightweight bug tracking system for small team? | nostrademons: Post-its on a whiteboard. |
Good, lightweight bug tracking system for small team? | fpotter: Try Pivotal Tracker. It's more geared for todos / feature stuff (and does it really well), but you can use it for bugs, too. If you're tracking more than 50 or so bugs, I could see wanting to use something else, though. |
How do you fight procrastination? | stretchwithme: In my experience, when I am working with others or for a customer, I have no problem taking the actions needed to deliver on my commitments to them.But when I am working on my own thing, setting my own goals, with little interaction, I tend to get easily distracted and start my things I don't finish.So from now on, unless I'm working on something I'm passionate about, I'll find the right team first, before even deciding what to work on. |
Good, lightweight bug tracking system for small team? | blogimus: How lightweight are you talking? Are you looking for a hosted tool (like fogbugz) or are you definitely going to manage/host it yourself?I've been using Jira, and there's a $10 version for small groups.Whatever you chose, make sure of one thing: every tracked bug or task has a unique URL. |
Good, lightweight bug tracking system for small team? | thomaspaine: Trac is great and plugs in really easily to SVN. It's at least worth playing around with since so many open source projects use it.I wrote a Django middleware that uses Trac's xmlrpc plugin to automatically create Trac tickets for errors. I'm sure it's just as simple to do for whatever you're using. |
How do you fight procrastination? | zackattack: Do things that you are actually interested in. Seriously. It makes life MUCH easier and it's easier to be productive.That being said, willpower is a muscle. The more you use it, the stronger it gets. Practice willpower whenever you can.. for example, try not zipping up your jacket when it's cold. (I'm talking about mental-discomfort cold, not hypothermia-cold.)My friends are all amazed at my willpower at things like dieting, and the truth is I just build willpower by practicing on the little things.In conclusion, as Eckhart Tolle says, when used correctly, the mind is a powerful tool. Otherwise, your mind uses you. |
How do you fight procrastination? | djm: I wrote about my efforts to avoid procrastination previously: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=809638Since then I've changed a few things. Here is what I am doing now:1) Make a list of what I want to do tomorrow before going to bed.2) Write down what I am doing during the day on a time sheet of one hour blocks. I was using 30 minute blocks initially but got sick of it.3) Try and do hard stuff first (coding) and easier stuff after (everything else). I try and start work as soon as I get up as well.4) Disconnect the internet. I physically unplug the cable. My current work allows me to mostly get away with this and I only go online about twice a week.Since my previous comment I'm now working for myself on my startup too. I've found a few additiuonal tricks to cope with being on my own:5) Go outside every day. I have to make a conscious effort to do this or I end up staying inside sitting at my computer for a week at a time. I normally just go for a walk around the park, or sometimes arrange to meet a friend for a coffee etc.6) Pretend I am only going to do four hours coding per day. If I sit down at the computer at 8.00AM thinking "I'll stop at noon and go for a bike ride" then I have much less difficulty in getting started. I almost always end up spending more time coding than this once I get started though, because I hate leaving something unfinished. |
Good, lightweight bug tracking system for small team? | hlidotbe: We use Redmine here (~4 people) and it's great. Rails backed, lots of plugin if you need more and easily extendable.It integrate cleanly with CVS, Git, Mercurial, SVN, ... and we'll even do invoicing with it in a few weeks.There are paid hosting options if you don't want to maintain it yourself. |
Good, lightweight bug tracking system for small team? | raytheon: I recently started using redmine (http://www.redmine.org) and only had good experiences with it. It's an open-source ruby on rails project management "framework". It supports everything you are looking for, and then some more, namely:- roadmap for upcoming versions/features
- dedicated site for documentation
- wiki
- forum
- tickets
- repository supportThe repository support let's you do things like refer to a ticket in a commit message which then gets associated with said ticket (or even changes the status of the ticket as soon as you commit the bugfix).I could go on and on... but you get the point.Here's a demo where you can give some of the things a try:http://demo.redmine.org/ |
How do you fight procrastination? | bootload: "... I often find myself with piles of work to do and many projects to complete but yet distracted ..."Focus, discipline & strategy. You have to focus on getting your tasks done. Be disciplined in not being unintentionally distracted and plan a strategy to avoid or discourage distractions.- Focus by planing exactly what you need to achieve in a given time.- discipline your self by sticking at the required task- I plan thinking tasks in the morning, with short breaks. then in the afternoon more unstructured tasks.I also keep 2 browsers open for instance if I'm working. One for work, the other for distraction. Then avoid looking at the distraction browser. Keep posting, reading and non work activities to a minimum by scheduling time wasters for short periods. |
How do you fight procrastination? | Luff: I try to identify and break hedonistic loops. Changing environment helps, even if it's such a simple act as shuffle the furniture at home around.Another way is to optimize away loops. The first example that pops ups is that I was at one point manually visiting >20 news-sites, webcomics and blogs, and when I'd reached the last one, I started checking if the other ones had updated while I was reading. RSS saved me from most of that. Now if I could only drop reddit and hackernews ;)Oh, and this is the home page firefox shows when I open it:
http://phylab.mtu.edu/~nckelley/Focus/ |
How do you fight procrastination? | tome: This is my favourite productivity blog.http://www.doitfuckingnow.com/I'm serious. Of course, it's partly a joke, but there is an extent to which we just have to get on with stuff we don't like. Asking for a method to fight procrastination is a symptom of the problem itself. |
How do you fight procrastination? | scotty79: Pomodoro technique. You pick task that can be done in 25 minutes, you set up timer for 25 minutes and start working. You do your best to finish the task. When timer rings you set it up to 5 minutest and make a 5 minute break from computer. Take a walk to the bathroom, get coffee, do some push ups or sit ups, talk to your colleague who also uses same timer to regulate his work. 5 minute is long enough to rest and short enough to not forget what you were doing. 25 minutes is enough to get something done, and short enough to wait for 5 minute break. Just two rules, don't do anything except the task at hand during 25 minutes (you have no time for that!) and stop doing what you are doing when timer rings.I also use the break to plan what I'll be doing next 25 minutes. If I have task longer then 25 minutes then I break it into smaller parts.Trouble with that technique is that it becomes very hard to start first 25 minutes. |
How do you fight procrastination? | Dylanfm: Please do read "How to Get Things Done" by Robert Benchley, written in 1949. It's such a gem: http://www.hackvan.com/pub/stig/etext/how-to-get-things-done...There was a simliar thread to this quite a while ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=187132 . A comment by nickb (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=187277) introduced me to structured procrastination: http://www.structuredprocrastination.com . There's some good content there. |
How do you fight procrastination? | xcombinator: It is a complex issue. I read and watched videos and went to a lot of seminars on psicology of productivity. "Read The Power of full engagement"(This is the best book you can read ever!!) and create rituals.I like investigating new technologies too, so I do it, with limits. I read HN each day but no comments(it drains too much).Emails and social media at the end of the day.I do manage my emotional states, and schedule resting time.I wrote down each day what I want to do(look at how many people here do the same, it works).Help other people without interest in mind.Don't "fight" procrastination. Improve productivity(don't focus on your bad, improve your strengths) |
Good, lightweight bug tracking system for small team? | jacktang: Redmine and Trac |
Good, lightweight bug tracking system for small team? | 1331: Flyspray is as advertised: "uncomplicated." If you want a simple system, it is worth a try.
http://flyspray.org/ |
How do you fight procrastination? | daniel-cussen: I once looked high and low for habits to get me to stop procrastinating.Now I take Ritalin (I have a classic case of ADD, which you might also suffer) and it is willpower in pill form. I also drink a half-gallon of coke a day (dissolved glucose for the win) which is the mental fuel ritalin is not. |
How do you fight procrastination? | Hates_: Ask yourself constantly "What is the most important thing I could be doing right now?" and act on it.Forget GTD and read "How to Get Control of Your Time and Your Life", by Alan Lakein. |
Good, lightweight bug tracking system for small team? | Jim_Neath: I'm currently working on a bug tracker (http://purifyapp.com). I can send you a beta invite if you're interested? Also open to anyone else who fancies trying it out.Email me at jim@purifyapp.com |
Good, lightweight bug tracking system for small team? | petervandijck: I like unfuddle.com |
How do you fight procrastination? | froo: Oh, quick plug for rescuetime.Go sign up for www.rescuetime.comThat should definitely help you when you can really see where you're wasting your time with procrastination. It's definitely an eye opener. |
How do you fight procrastination? | Murkin: Choose one thing each week that you know wastes your time.. and quit cold turkey.Delete your relevant accounts, remove from bookmarks, clear browser history and just stop using it.I find it gives me immediate results, got rid of lots of needless web-games, news-sites, blogs, TV-series and such.And yes, HN is in this category. If you logically think it's contribution of information and motivation is not worth the time. Cold turkey. |
Good, lightweight bug tracking system for small team? | jacquesm: We use trac. And it works really well, has a built in wiki for other bits and pieces that need remembering. |
How do you fight procrastination? | scorpioxy: I don't try to fight it. I accept it.During the day job, I open up the all the tabs that I'd like to read(usually links from HN) and then start working. Whenever i want to take a 5 min break between coding tasks, i read 1 article and then close it. This also helps when a task is proving annoying to go through.That's the thing with the computing field, there are way more things to do and learn than you can finish in a lifetime. I still try to keep up as much as possible, but I stress over it less and less with age and wisdom. |
How do you fight procrastination? | ggruschow: Solving your problem (procrastination) may require figuring out the root problem(s). People have already mentioned a lot of good solutions for a lot of problems, but trying to solve the wrong problem can make your's worse.. or at least frustrate you more.It may be you're too distracted, so eliminate the distractions. Not me - I get overly focused.It may be your task is so large and unclear that it seems pointless to even try, so first break the problem down into manageable chunks. Not me - I think I can do practically anything (but start :).It may be your work is too annoying to you, so you wear out your self-control "muscles". If so, find different work. This isn't usually my problem either -- I'm pretty much free to do whatever I want at work.It may be you subconsciously avoid heavy concentration. This is one of the symptoms of ADHD, so you may get lucky and be able to treat it with chemicals (see a doctor). This is my biggest problem.I don't have trouble doing "labor," but I amaze myself with the things I do to avoid thinking. I don't have a good, healthy solution yet, but I know a couple things that work for me:1. Creating emergencies.. e.g. putting off a term paper until 6 hours before its due, or imagining you'll die of shame if you don't squash your bugs. My brain kicks right into gear when I have to do something.2. Working closely with others keeps me engaged for other reasons. Pair programming is a good example of this, but not my preference.I'd love to hear others problems and solutions. |
Good, lightweight bug tracking system for small team? | epi0Bauqu: I just started using http://speckleapp.com/It's relatively new, very lightweight, and made by HN member elliottkember, who is very open to feedback/suggestions. |
Good, lightweight bug tracking system for small team? | elliottkember: I've been building Speckle (http://speckleapp.com) for a little while: a to-do list with multiple checkboxes per item. it's reasonably light-weight -
I don't know whether it suits what you're looking for, but Id be interested to know what you think :)Edit: epi0Bauqu beat me to it! |
Good, lightweight bug tracking system for small team? | AnneTheAgile: Based on posts here I found the "Task-focused API" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Task-Focused_Interface . There are lots of extensions available based on it: http://wiki.eclipse.org/index.php/Mylyn_Extensions . For example, from gmail, you can add a task by tagging a message! This Extensions page also seems to be a good reference list of todo aka project management trackers. |
Good, lightweight bug tracking system for small team? | scorpioxy: There's a difference between a bug tacker and an issue tracker.Bugzilla works great as a bug tracker but is not a great issue tracker. Trac, the opposite.From what you described, seems you're looking more for an issue tracker or a project planning sort of thing.I've liked Redmine, though I haven't used it professionally yet. |
Good, lightweight bug tracking system for small team? | charliepark: You might check out Garret Dimon's http://sifterapp.com. I think it's what 37signals would make if they made bug-tracking software. |
What application do you use to take/store notes? | scorpioxy: I tried to write my own because i wasn't satisfied with all the different ones i tried. But as free time kept getting shorter and shorter, I abandoned the project and reverted to using Tomboy on my Ubuntu desktop.Not exactly cutting edge, but I yet to overcome the information overflow that i suffer from. |
Good, lightweight bug tracking system for small team? | middayc: For bugs http://curecode.org/ is ery lightweight and fast. You can see it in use here http://curecode.org/rebol3/view-tickets.rsp .For sharable todo's I can "recommend" (my) http://www.qwikitodo.com , you can even make "actionable" Plan/Todo meshes with it that have titles, subtitles, free form mixing of text todo items, regular lists, etc... |
Good, lightweight bug tracking system for small team? | andrewcooke: I haven't used it, but this is "interesting" - http://www.fossil-scm.org/index.html/doc/tip/www/index.wiki(I use Trac myself, and it's OK, but not wonderful - haven't found anything better, but will be trying Redmine after reading comments here).[edit: also, you can do bug tracking with Google code, which I am surprised no-one else has mentioned] |
How to interview programmers | scorpioxy: Personally, i found that typical programmer interviews are a waste of time. I played both sides of the table and now I just ask for a small project as a sample to be written and brought to the interview and then discussed.The discussion reveals a lot about the candidate from coding style to design decisions and shortcuts made. I am especially interested in the shortcuts and that the candidate understands what's wrong with them and have them explain why he/she took that route.The sample can be as easy as a command line todo application or any utility that should take just a couple of hours to make.Granted i don't do a lot of interviews, but when i did that's what i asked for. My boss on the other hand does typical interviews and the quality of the candidates shortlisted shows. |
Good, lightweight bug tracking system for small team? | megamark16: I'm currently working on a web app builder called AppRabbit (http://apprabbit.com) and used it to create my bug/issue tracking system for tracking my progress with...it. I'm still working on finishing up a few fairly fundamental features, but you're welcome to try it out if you'd like a beta invite. Shoot me an email if you (or anyone else) is interested in seeing what it can do. admin@apprabbit.com. |
How do you fight procrastination? | jodrellblank: Re: procrastination/akrasia: I've never been fond of the idea that "different things work for different people". As a predictive hypothesis, after all, this is only slightly more useful than saying "a wizard did it". It says nothing about how (or why) different things work, and therefore gives you no basis to select which different things might work for which different people.http://lesswrong.com/lw/1tu/improving_the_akrasia_hypothesis... |
Good, lightweight bug tracking system for small team? | grk: http://www.codebasehq.com/features/tickets-milestonesCodebase has a nice feature - you can modify tickets from your commit messages. |
How do you fight procrastination? | antirez: Trying to do what I really like, sleeping more, exercise. Procrastination is often a symptom not a disease: you are doing something you don't care enough, you are tired, or don't exercise enough. Also a fix can be stay away a few days form the PC having fun with friends or girlfriend and so forth.Also remember, to be productive 8x5 in our industry is a myth: not possible at all. If you are able to code even 30% of the time in a focused way it's already great. |
Good, lightweight bug tracking system for small team? | chappi42: +1 for redmineWe (~7 people) migrated away from trac and use redmine for several projects with subversion and now git. Working very well since 3 years.A friend of mine uses indefero and was happy with it. Link: http://www.indefero.net/open-source/ |
How do you fight procrastination? | wisty: SelfControl for Mac. It puts up a temporary firewall, so I can't read the news for a few hours.Other techniques - tell somebody else what you are doing. Tell them when you expect to get it done. Bragging is easy to do at the time, and puts pressure on you to get it done. Procrastination is all about future commitments vs present behavior. It's easy to make a commitment to yourself, but easy to break it. Make commitments that you can't break as easily. But make sure that they are "doable". |
How do you fight procrastination? | gyardley: In my experience, simple technical solutions (like hosts file site blocking) force changes in behavior which end up strengthening your mental resolve - you'll create a habit which you'll then stick to, even with a clear hosts file.You are what you do, not what you think. |
Good, lightweight bug tracking system for small team? | tophercyll: Our three man team recently took advantage of the FogBugz YC offer and gave it a try. There were some things we liked about it, but in the end it felt too heavy for us. It was more of a support ticketing system than an easy way for a small team to track their bugs (although it would probably be good if you had a lot of external users reporting bugs).The other problem was that even a lot of custom tweaking, we never quite got the email subsystem working the way we wanted. We finally started using a plugin to make sure we all got emailed on every change, but then we got swamped because we couldn't figure out how to make it send only one email if you changed multiple fields on a ticket. It always wanted to send one for each piece of data that changed.Before that, we'd been using a Google Docs spreadsheet, doing pseudo-joel-spreadsheet for project tracking and keeping a simple list of bugs.Now we're using Wave and treating it as a digital whiteboard. It's got its share of bugs still, but I've been really happy.We've got one wave where we do project tracking (including moving little name markers around, so we can all see real time what everyone is working on. And we've got another wave for bugs with same rules.We don't put nearly as much info in our wave as we used to put in the spreadsheet (we did a lot of effort estimation and completion time tracking), but the simplicity may actually be helping us keep on top of it better.And it's awesome to collaboratively rework our goals for each release and at any time we can just scroll through our bug list. |
Just bought Drople.com what should I do with it? | JohnMy: 6. Sell it to me for 99USD
Contact under eingradcelsius.comGreetings |
Rate my site (DebateZone) | chegra84: I like the concept.You should categorize because someone people wouldn't care about certain issues but will fight tooth and nail for others.Like us being entrepreneurs, we would have an opinion on "fast fail", so we would want to get to these topics more quicker than something related to politics or sport.Categorising allows you to focus resources on which categories drive the most traffic to the site.Also, try to be more specific in seed content. Having broad topics thesis doesn't make for good arguments. For instance "which team is better Lakers or Celtics", may become "which team would win 2010 champion-Lakers or Celtics". It's narrower and more focus which makes for an easier argument. Broad categories require much wider and deeper knowledge to begin to address the debate. |
Rate my site (DebateZone) | chegra84: Oh yea have anonymous posting.People would like to post stuff quickly without having to signup.
Eventually, they will realize that "hey I want to track what i posted", so they sign up. |
Good, lightweight bug tracking system for small team? | keefe: mylyn makes bugzilla a lot easier to use if you use eclipse. |
How do you fight procrastination? | aufreak3: Hmmm.. I'll see if I can answer this tomorrow :PHeheh .. more seriously sometimes I find my tendency to procrastinate is telling me exactly what I should be putting off. So instead of going "I have this stuff to do and I don't know where to start", I generally pick the easiest and most fun of that list and do it first, even if the "top priority" has to wait. Soon enough, my energy builds up and the pile is gone in a wink.I'm not saying I never procrastinate (that'd be a lie), but when I do, I try to pull myself into the above strategy. Usually works for me. |
How do you fight procrastination? | cadalac: You have to see and fully understand the consequences of your procrastination, and the benefit of doing your work, in order to fight procrastination. |
How do you fight procrastination? | rubinelli: The most helpful book I've read about procrastination (and I've read many) is The Now Habit. It explains why people procrastinate, what they think when they procrastinate, why even simple tasks stress them out, how they can reduce this stress, why they feel they don't have a life, and specific chapters on how to deal with procrastinators.
Just to cite one of its dozens of ideas, advice like "just buckle down" and "tough it out" is part of the problem, because it creates resistance. Your natural response is thinking "that's true, I just have to finish it", which is wrong for two reasons.
First, if you "have to" do something, then it means you don't want to, so you fight yourself. You become your most severe taskmaster, you deny yourself guilt-free play time, you resent "having to" do that task even more, and procrastinate even more.
Second, when you think about finishing a project, you make it look overwhelming. As others here said, the right approach is choosing a point, starting from it for a few minutes, and see where it takes you. |
Rate my site (DebateZone) | charlesju: My friends started a debate site a while ago, and I'll tell you what I told them.For an part-time and fun project this is a very cool web app. I like the simplicity and it seems like a fun way to talk about various issues.As a startup idea, you would do better finding an idea that doesn't revolve strictly on creating a web community from scratch. |
Rate my site (DebateZone) | durana: With the up vote and down vote arrows, have one or the other light up when you mouse over a specific one, instead of having both light up. It will make it clearer which arrow you are about to click.I like the layout of the two sided debates over the debates with more than two sides. The two sided debates have the sides and results right in the middle at the top of the page. On debates with more than two sides, having the sides and results off to the right makes them easy to miss at first. The first debate I looked at was a more than two sided debate and because of the layout, I was a bit confused on what the sides of the debate were. It seemed like the comments were the sides because of their placement and the up/down vote arrows. |
Rate my site (DebateZone) | chegra84: Allow pictures to be uploaded with your debate thesis.
Sometimes a picture or video can say more than words can. |
How do you fight procrastination? | phugoid: I find that I procrastinate the most in the early stages of a project.First, it takes time to decide what to do first.There's also the spoon effect. I just made that up. The first steps you take still leave you so far away from your goal. But as you progress, say to the half-way point, every action has a proportionately higher effect on your progress. That's because I'm always focused on what's left. That last spoonful takes care of 100% of what's left. |
Good, lightweight bug tracking system for small team? | briancary: Mantis is great. Easy to install and use. Definitely go with that if you're on PHP/MySQL. No need to fuddle with the rest. |
Good, lightweight bug tracking system for small team? | shadow: Try Lighthouse, http://lighthouseapp.com/
Been using it and it's great |
How to get into car engineering/making | mechanical_fish: I will give you two answers.The first one is this book: Build your Own Sports Car for as Little as 250 Pounds... And Race It!http://www.amazon.com/Build-Your-Sports-Little-£250/dp/18596...a book which, oops, appears to have become priceless since I bought it years ago. I guess it's out of print. This is a suspiciously similar version:http://www.amazon.com/Build-Your-Own-Sports-Car/dp/184425391...... which the Amazon reviewers critique for being "Eurocentric". Oh, what a terrible problem that must be. Unless you live in Zurich! Wink, wink. ;)I'm being serious here: As an American, I am constitutionally required to insist that the correct way to learn how cars work is from the ground up. Get a car. Take it apart. Then put it together again. Do they have autocross in Zurich? Amateur rally racing? Sports car clubs? Trade schools that will teach you a course in basic auto repair? Try 'em all. In the USA, at any rate, it is very easy to find people who spend more time thinking about cars and driving than is healthy.You don't need to work for Tesla to build an electric car. Take a small car and convert it to electric:http://www.diyelectriccar.com/---The other answer is: If you dream of working at a company like Tesla, find someone who works at Tesla and ask them what the job is like. That's the only way. You might hear back from someone here on HN itself, so asking here was a fine plan.What you should not do -- at first -- is find some school that claims to teach you everything you need to know to be an automotive engineer. It turns out that schools are very happy to sell you education whether or not you actually need or want it. But I've lost count of the number of people I know who decided they might like career X, spent years in school studying X, then turned up for work and discovered that they really don't like X. Try to sample your chosen career as much as you can before you actually spend years learning to do it properly. |
Good, lightweight bug tracking system for small team? | dtran: Overview of Small teams bug tracking software:Unfuddle - Hosted solution, SVN/Git hosting + really clean bug tracking. Free for 2 people, $9/mo for small teams. Has Mylyn support and a OS X dashboard widgetBugzilla - everyone seems to agree it's too heavy and I don't want to deal with installing and configuring itTrac - Pretty lightweight, good integration with SVN, and useful built-in wiki, quick, simple installationSpeckle - To-do list with multiple checkboxes, made by HN's very own elliotkemberPivotal Tracker - hosted solution with drag n drop interface, allows you to import a list of existing bugs in CSV format. I found the interface a little clunky for my taste.Others mentioned that I haven't checked out:
Fogzbugz, Redmine, Lighthouse, Flyspray, Purifyapp, Codebase |
Good, lightweight bug tracking system for small team? | sdutoit: Try roundup: http://roundup.sourceforge.net/ |
Good, lightweight bug tracking system for small team? | bloonlabs: If your using git, try http://wiki.github.com/schacon/ticgit/ |
Good, lightweight bug tracking system for small team? | abovesun: Unfuddle is very good, very light and easy, it specially helpfull if you are using Eclipse IDE, unfuddle has Mylyn connector to synchronize bugs with ide. |
How do you fight procrastination? | jmonegro: Do one small part of something, and you'll soon start doing the others. |
How do you fight procrastination? | tbrownaw: Just put off the procrastination until tomorrow, it's really not that fun anyhow. :)Seriously. Why are distractions enticing? Why is the stuff that needs doing scary/boring? Find a way to cast your work as an interesting problem to solve (like the WoW example upthread) and the distractions as just more of the same old boring stuff you always do. Also if you're really stuck try to procrastinate with an eye towards integrating whatever you learn with what you already know, particularly in areas that are tangentially related to the problem you're stuck on.It's like that study with the children not eating the marshmallows, willpower is really about convincing yourself "but why would I even want to do that" rather than purely mental resolve. |
Good, lightweight bug tracking system for small team? | gouki: I'm also a Mantis user, and I'm quite happy with it.Mantis supports Git and SVN integration, if you use the Source plugin. You can find detailed information on how to add these functionalities to Mantis at the following URL: http://leetcode.net/blog/2009/01/integrating-git-svn-with-ma...Note: Importing repositories with a couple hundred commits will take a while!I also like FlySpray, but unfortunately, the last commit seems to be 1 year old. |
How do you fight procrastination? | tsally: My opinion is that procrastination is a symptom not a disease. The average life span in the US is 78 years, and you're really only at your peak for about 50 of them. Ever have a year just fly by? Well that was 1/50th of the total time you have.To fight procrastination you have to ruthlessly eliminate the things you don't want to do from your life. |
How do you fight procrastination? | leif: This is sort of a technical solution, but as long as I'm working on something that doesn't need a browser for reference (so, C programming, where I can look up manpages), I just kill X and do my work on ttys. It helps you focus on only one thing at a time. |
Is functional programming really worth it? | tsally: I can't speak with authority on OCaml or Haskell, but Common Lisp isn't lacking in terms of libraries. You just have to know where to look (http://www.cliki.net) and how to manage them.And one last thing. Is functional programming really better than imperative programming? All that brain-racking to implement a multi-level loop using recursion in ML? IMO, imperative programming cleanly maps out to the real world. The world is imperative!"LISP embodied a much greater leap of imagination. Conceptually FORTRAN remained on familiar grounds in the sense that its purpose was to aid the mechanization of computational processes we used to do with pen and paper (and mechanical desk calculators if you could afford them). This was in strong contrast to LISP whose purpose was to enable the execution of processes that no one would dream of performing with pen and paper." - EWD 1284 |
Is functional programming really worth it? | DanielBMarkham: F# --- functional language with thousands of the most easily available languages anywhere.It's worth it, but it's not a magic bullet. Language wars are for people who like tools better than they like workshops. |
Is functional programming really worth it? | andrewcooke: i use python for anything that's not speed-critical. see http://norvig.com/python-lisp.html (norvig being a very famous lisp programmer).my own experience is that learning functional programming gave me more options - that can be useful when solving problems. when writing code for myself i try to combine the best of function, oo and procedural styles, while staying within "good taste" for the language i am using (sometimes i cannot choose the language).so yes it's worth it, but your question leans too much to extremes: it's not a silver bullet any more than oo was; it's a mental tool that does help in every-day programming. |
Is functional programming really worth it? | kalid: I think Clojure may be your answer; functional programming with access to Java's enormous libraries.Regarding "betterness", it's a philosophical shift -- some problems are better suited to one domain or another. My favorite metaphor for functional programming is Unix pipes:cat file | grep XYZ | sort -r -n | ...There's no explicit state but you can track the flow... output a file, search for something, sort that result, pipe it somewhere else, etc.Imperative/state-based programming forces you to give names to all those intermediate results, just so you can pass them along. Sometimes variables are just a place to hold data until you can pass them to the next function; functional programming makes that so easy you don't need the variable. And think about how much easier it is to debug; once you get a part of the pipeline working, you can move to the next part (without worrying about global variables and other hidden interactions that can happen with imperative programming). |
Is functional programming really worth it? | fragmede: The right tool for the job. Just like object oriented code isn't the be-all-end-all, function programming isn't either. Computers are functional! Everything is data! All actions are operations upon that data! Computers are a real world of mathematical elegance & correctness, it's all zeros and ones. It's so much easier to think functionally...Seriously though, if you want to try both perspectives, you have to submerge yourself in a functional viewpoint until you start thinking like that. Because if you grew up thinking functionally, you'd find it easier than imperatively. |
Is functional programming really worth it? | Uchikoma: Immutability, reusable and composable functions, side effect free methods are worth to use in every programming language, even in Java (I've been using functional ideas for a long time in my Java works) |
Is functional programming really worth it? | RiderOfGiraffes: One word: Blub.From PG's famous essay (even quoted on WikiPedia): > ... when our hypothetical Blub programmer looks in the other
> direction, up the power continuum, he doesn't realize he's
> looking up. What he sees are merely weird languages. He
> probably considers them about equivalent in power to Blub,
> but with all this other hairy stuff thrown in as well.
>
> Blub is good enough for him, because he thinks in Blub.
The other point is that there are pure OO languages, pure functional languages, pure logic languages, pure imperative languages, and rarely is a problem easily and comfortably expressed entirely in one pure paradigm.But learning, properly learning a functional language gives you more experience, more ways of thinking, more techniques, more options.But remember: "The dedicated real programmer can write
ForTran programs in ANY language."
I've seen ForTran programs written in Haskell, believe it or not. You need to learn not just the language syntax, but the underlying ideas and techniques.Then you can make the choice. |
Is functional programming really worth it? | SMrF: "The world is imperative! Things have state! We do not live in an imaginary fluffy world of mathematical elegance & correctness."I don't think that this means an imperative language is therefore better than a functional programming language. Many problems would be better solved with more 'mathy' models.I'm not accusing you of this, but it does drive me a bit bonkers when code becomes anthropomorphized, e.g. "this guy talks to that observer, who sends a message to the account manager." This type of code is frequently not very modular and hard to maintain. A functional programming language makes it hard to think like this, and IMHO that's a good thing. |
Is functional programming really worth it? | JoshTriplett: I do believe a better language helps as much as great libraries, if not more.Better libraries can't give you the compile-time error checking that a good compiler can. In Haskell, I half-seriously joke that "it compiles, it must be correct".Also, modern functional languages have great library support. For instance, Haskell has a variety of libraries available, and a great FFI to C that lets you talk to any available C library. (I consider an FFI a necessary part of any generally useful language.)And finally, "implement a multi-level loop using recursion in ML" sounds like a learning exercise, not a useful programming technique. If your code tries to recreate constructs like multi-level loops, you've done something wrong; most of your code shouldn't even need explicit recursion. Don't try to write one language's code in another language, and especially don't try to emulate an imperative language in a functional language. Learn how to do things the right way in the new language. If you try to write Java in Haskell, you'll find that it feels a lot harder than writing Java in Java, shockingly. :)You've learned to think imperatively. Functional programming requires a different approach. It took me a long time to learn to think in Haskell, but now I feel quite comfortable with it. Having watched and helped non-programmers learn to work with imperative programming, I know that doing so requires some hard leaps as well. ("Wait, x = 5? But x = 4 earlier, so how can x = 5 now?") |
Is functional programming really worth it? | wynand: I'm a functional convert but my colleagues will tell you just how convoluted some of my code has been due my trying to shoehorn everything into a functional mold.Many in the functional world realize that some things are akward (see Peyton-Jones's talk "Wearing the hair shirt" about Haskell).To answer the question about loops with recursion: you seldom write recursive functions when programming functionally but instead cast things into maps, filters and reduces. Thus it's not such a big problem (and the cool thing about using map & family is that you can replace them with parallel versions quite easily). With that said, some practical functional languages provide sugar to write seemingly imperative loops.In terms of libraries, at least Scala, Clojure, F#, CAL, Nemerle (amongst others) ingrate well with either the JVM and/or the .Net platform. You can implement Erlang nodes in any JVM language (which I grant is not as good as calling directly into the JVM from an Erlang function).There are definitely advantages to writing as much of your code as possible to avoid side effects (obviously ignoring the odd print statement to help with debugging), since your code becomes easy to test and easy to reason about. But in real world apps you will need state management - Clojure and Scala both allow this (in different ways) and I'm sure that F# does too (though I've never worked with F#).I think that these three languages address many (all?) of your concerns. They all have cool user communities, so give one of them a shot. |
Is functional programming really worth it? | xenoterracide: You can write functional code in perl 5 from 15 years ago... and you can do an even better job of it in perl today. CPAN has no shortage of libraries. See Higher Order Perl book (it's free too). |
Is functional programming really worth it? | Shamiq: Expand your mind. It'll pay dividends later. |
Is functional programming really worth it? | lisper: Yes. But not as worth it as hard-core advocates of FP like to think.There is really only one difference between FP and traditional imperative programming (which I'll call IP). In IP you have direct control over where the results of computations are stored and in FP you don't. This is, of course, a two-edged sword. Control gives you both power and the ability to screw things up. Lack of control makes it easier for your compiler to perform certain kinds of optimizations.The reason learning FP is worthwhile is not so much because FP is some kind of magic bullet, but because understanding the tradeoffs between having this kind of control and not having it is worthwhile in and of itself. If you understand those tradeoffs you will write better code in whatever language you use, even if it's assembler. |
How do you fight procrastination? | Estragon: It really depends. You don't sound particularly excited by the "piles of work" and "many projects to complete." Why do you want to finish them? When you think about starting to work on them, what do you feel and think about? |
Is functional programming really worth it? | keefe: It's certainly worth learning, but I make no secret of my fondness for having local state when programming. It's critically important to consider the breadth and quality of libraries available for your particular task as well as the tools available. With eclipse+maven+continuum+junit+jprofiler I can generate a hell of a lot of java very quickly, even if I didn't have access to my library of code segments. |
Dealing with abusive users | jacquesm: We have this on a daily basis.We deal with it like this:- first we write the email that we would like to write telling them exactly how we feel- we then delete this email- we then write an overly friendly email which takes care of the users complaint and adds sugar on top as well as a pony.Usually they get the message and they'll apologize for their behaviourOne exception is made for people that threaten legal action, these are without exception barred from the service and requested to follow through. I really can't stand it when people pull out their 'lawyer gun' at the first opportunity, and it raises an immediate red flag, these are real trouble makers, and will continue to be so in the future, so we see no reason to have them in our userbase.To date nobody has ever followed through on our invitation to press suit.I really wonder what is wrong with those types, by the time I threaten to sick a lawyer on to someone I'm 100% prepared to go through with it, and I reserve that for those times where such action is really warranted, such as outright fraud.Wackos are a fact of life, as the profile of your site increases you'll have to deal with some of that anyway, better be prepared and use your support queue as the selector determining which 'wackos' are only temporarily deranged and which are really firing on 3 or less pistons. Those you can do without, even if they try to make more trouble later.A nice example from HN is the user 'arrington', a complete douchebag that made it his mission to destroy HN after being kicked off. It was 'before my time', but I've seen some of the fallout from it and it wasn't pretty, but it did go away after some hacks that made the site more robust against that sort of thing. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger! |
Did you order an iPad? Why or why not? | morphir: I'm waiting for a similar (cheaper) device that runs android. I wont commit to apples tyranny. |
Is functional programming really worth it? | gtani: It's hard to generalize, but I would say there are at least 8 non-obscure FP's that either hook into java and .NET libs, or have some level of stdlib and community libs (I've only used 3, and I hear C# is getting some functional aspects, but I'm not following).- lisps: scheme, CL esp. SBCL, clojure- F#, scala- erlang, ocaml, haskellhere's some books, freely available content, including for ocaml and haskellhttp://www.freetechbooks.com/functional-programming-f34.htmlbut missing scala:
http://programmingscala.com/ |
Is functional programming really worth it? | jganetsk: The world is imperative! Things have state! We do not live in an imaginary fluffy world of mathematical elegance & correctness.Yes, all true. Also, the world is extremely concurrent, made up of billions of independent actors sending each other messages.That's why we need to use Erlang, an imperative, stateful, mathematically inelegant language. |
Dealing with abusive users | slig: If your main worry is that they will start trolling/flamming your community, you could try http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=hell%20ban |
Is functional programming really worth it? | jvdh: "1 line of LISP replaces 20 lines of C"Might be true. But in my experience that single line takes as much time to think up as the 20 lines in C. So it doesn't really work as an argument for either. |
Is functional programming really worth it? | harshavr: Before you arrive at a judgement of the paradigm itself be sure that you know some of the standard ways to solve problems in the field.Some basic things which i didn't knew in the begining :Fast persistent data structures - Coming from imperative langs, one might be hesitant to write functions which take a million elt vector, modify it and return a new vector. It is important to know that any good implementation of functional data structures will allow you to do this in constant time & speed. (independent of the size of the data structure).Editor combinators : If you arent aware of this & are modifying a data structure with several levels of nesting, imperative assignment will seem much more convenient, ie dont translate foo.bar[8]=3, into something of this pattern barNew = editVector(foo.bar, 8, 3), fooNew=editMap(foo, "bar", barNew). It gets worse with more levels. Instead, use an editor-combinator library which will allow to you specify the path within the data-structure and a new value just as in the imperative case.Things to know which are not strictly FP related, but nevertheless very useful - pattern matching simplifies definitions a lot, typeclasses are usually more convenient than class hierarchies.Someone has already pointed out advice on libraries, (Clojure or any using any popular language in a functional way).The main thing which motivates all of this - composability. It is hard to combine procedures with side effects into compound procedures because one needs to keep track of whether the component procedures are interfering with each other. FP eliminates this friction in composition. |
Is functional programming really worth it? | garply: "From experience I can tell you the lack of libraries in these languages kills off almost any code size advantage you get from using them. So I ask you all, be honest to yourself; is using such a language worth it?"As someone who has programmed extensively in Arc... you're right. The language is very pretty and very concise, but to get things done, I find myself going back to Python (and to get things done quickly in the execution sense, C++). If only Arc weren't so slow and had more libraries... |
Dealing with abusive users | michaelfairley: Not Always Right (http://notalwaysright.com/) has shown me that some customers cost you more than they'll make you, ans has convinced that keeping users who consistently waste time and resources is not the best strategy. |
Is functional programming really worth it? | pw0ncakes: Yes, it's worth it.Haskell: where the great ideas are coming from, although early implementation decisions have made those a bit painful to use (language extensions). It's probably the most "mind-bending" language out there so I recommend it for growth.Ocaml: excellent and very simple language, with a kick-ass garbage collector. The worst thing about it is the associated build system, OMake, which is almost as ugly as Make. Most people who are turned off by Ocaml are actually turned off by the build environment or by the Ocaml team's resistance to improvement. (The standard libraries are really terrible; if I recall correctly, List.map isn't even tail-recursive).Clojure: Great compromise between power of language and library support, because it runs on the Java Virtual Machine. It's a Lisp, so it's dynamically typed. It also has some warts related to its Java roots; for example, 43 and (biginteger 43) count as separate keys in a map. However, these are easy to work around. |
Dealing with abusive users | prawn: I have a forum that allows anonymous posts. I have a list of banned IPs, sets of IPs that must register to post, various banned words (spam, mostly), banned user agent strings, etc but there are still griefers that get a new IP and return. Any tips on how to block them more aggressively? |
Is functional programming really worth it? | dons: Libraries have been the focus of the Haskell community for the past 2 years, there's now:* 1918 libraries for Haskell (according to http://hackage.haskell.org)for comparison, there are 1420 Erlang libraries (according to http://projects.trapexit.org/web/)Was there something you were looking for that's not on Hackage? |
Is functional programming really worth it? | andrew1: The company I work at uses Java as its 'main' language. In the past year my team has been increasingly using Scala for new development. One of the most useful features of Scala is the functional treatment of collections. Most of the programming we do (that everyone does?) is really just manipulation of collections, so being able to map/filter/reduce/group collections in a couple of lines of code, rather than the verbose Java equivalent, is a big win.I don't want to weigh in on the general 'are functional languages' better debate (as I don't have enough experience of them), just wanted to share that as a data point. |
Is functional programming really worth it? | lallysingh: Short answer: yes. If your code is so imperative, then it can probably be abstracted up a bit. That's been my experience so far. |
Dealing with abusive users | ErrantX: All of our abusive ones are forwarded to me; I write sugar sweet emails and try to fix their problem like any other support email. But sign it like this:TomXXX Product Manager / Team LeadP.S. Please take a quick look at this friendly FAQ <link> on how we suggest users contact staff members. We try our best to answer queries and fix problems as fast as possible; however, I inform staff they have a right not to suffer verbal abuse, which is why I have personally dealt with your email"Usually you get a really bashful apology (and anyone that follows up the abuse gets a terse "you had a last chance, sorry" email and a perma ban :))i.e. I know people get pissed and write emails they later regret (everyone does it) - but twice uses up their credit :) |
Should I try Lead Generation? | maconic: From an ethical perspective, I think it just depends on how you will use the leads. If you make sure you're giving the leads to a scrupulous company who will offer the customer a valuable service that (s)he was looking for, then I don't see any ethical problem there.From a business perspective, I think you'd need to figure out who would buy the leads after you've generated them. Perhaps you should start by coming up with a niche with a dearth of lead generators, find a company targeting that niche, and ask them if they would be interested in buying leads. By ensuring there is "customer" for your leads you can save yourself wasted time. Customer development (a la Steve Blank) for lead generation, so to speak ;) |
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