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Does this idea exist and who wants it? | meep: You think to yourself in the third person? |
Does this idea exist and who wants it? | brandnewlow: It's a great idea.One reason why:Blogs and news services are pulling more and more photos from Flickr. If you can give the photogs on there an easy way to just let people come and get their pictures, without having to track down permission from them, you'd make life easier for the blog editors. |
Does this idea exist and who wants it? | NonEUCitizen: Better if default price is a quarter rather than a dollar. |
Does this idea exist and who wants it? | rokhayakebe: This is a good idea. Last month I was creating a simple website and I needed a stock photo. I went to Flickr and looked for a few minutes because I knew something would be available there. Had I found one I would definitely pay for it. |
Review our startup: Mugasha - A better way to listen to electronic dance music | technosmurf: I wish you could browse the available sets and DJs without signing up for an account. To force me to do that is a bit of a pain. I'd rather go back to doing some "real work" than to go through the trouble of signing up so I can explore your new site quickly. |
Does this idea exist and who wants it? | ryanmahoski: For prints, it would be especially nice if customers also got a frame. Without a frame wall art looks cheap. It's no fun buying a beautiful poster and not being able to display it. If someone knows how to economically ship a frame, selling it together with the customer's choice of flickr art would be interesting. |
Review our webapp (Sproost); team met on HN | fallacy: Great start!I've got a few comments:First, as someone pointed out, you should not switch your quiz interface between the first question and the latter questions. I don't see that you gain anything by switching and it is a little confusing. I would stick with the first question layout, because it is simple.Second, I'm not sure that you need the "Most recent results" feature. The investment your seeking from potential users is so small, I don't think I that you need to prove that you have traffic, and I don't really see this as morphing into a social app (if it does, I think you are straying too far away from what will make you money). Further, I think it detracts from the point, which I assume is to get people to take the quiz and click through to buy products. Removing it will make the interface cleaner.Third, as someone has stated, I would make it clear how many images have been rated and remain. A simple "1 of 10" would do the trick.Fourth, if you go with the second layout for the quiz interface, I would do away with or hide the "How to take the style quiz" text, like you do the "like or hate something."Fifth, after the quiz, I would take people right to the "room" of stuff that they can click and buy. As it is, you are going to have a lot of people navigate away at the end of the quiz and they will never even see your money page.Lastly, I noticed that you are using some magazine images. Although you will likely fly under the radar, that is copyright infringement. I see that you source it at least, and that may be enough to get them off your back.All in all, good start for sure. |
Review our startup: Mugasha - A better way to listen to electronic dance music | fizx: I want a play button on the home page. Doesn't really matter what, but I want to get something happening without figuring out navigation. |
Review our webapp (Sproost); team met on HN | tptacek: Every one of these rooms is so much more expensive than my living room that I'm finding it hard to judge. |
Review our startup: Mugasha - A better way to listen to electronic dance music | siong1987: I don't know whether this is a usability issue or not. But, I really don't like the extra long input text area:This issue is quite critical on acquiring new users. A good read on designing sign up form.http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/07/04/web-form-design-p...http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/07/08/web-form-design-p... |
Does this idea exist and who wants it? | webwright: http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/04/19/imagekind-scores-partne...Sold to Cafe Press recently ($20m I believe). |
Review our startup: Mugasha - A better way to listen to electronic dance music | dzohrob: i tried signing up a few times but couldn't make it work. username too short, then the invite code disappeared on the retry page. i tried going back to step 1 and it still wouldn't let me sign up. |
Review our webapp (Sproost); team met on HN | 0x44: I went to signup, but your application would not permit it. The '+' character is valid in an email address. |
Review our startup: Mugasha - A better way to listen to electronic dance music | swombat: Buy track by track?? Why?I listen to whole sets, not single tracks... why have a per-track buy button? |
Review our webapp (Sproost); team met on HN | webwright: Love it. I'm about to buy a fixer upper and this would be really valuable. Also, it's an excellent market for advertising (lucrative niche).Seems also very valuable for remodeling-- not just furniture. The most commonly remodeled rooms are kitchens and bathrooms.The site is agonizingly slow. You are serving up 200k+ images scaled down in HTML. Seriously? Make it as fast as hot or not and you have a winner.I'd also break it down by room. Kitchen, Living Room, Bedroom, etc.Of course, as with many sites-- there's no build in marketing. How are you going to get visitors? |
Review our webapp (Sproost); team met on HN | rokhayakebe: I recommend you use the Polyvore model. Let people pick items from different categories and create their own furnishing style. You are definitely in the right space. |
SEO for web apps | jdowdell: How do you think desirable audience will likely search for your application?(It's hard to get on that first page of result for some incidental bodytext that you may happen to have, particularly if it's loaded dynamically.)A sitemap still seems good, because it lets you explicitly include those terms on which you think you can be competitive during a search.But start with the user... what terms will they likely be using when they're seeking what you offer? and on which of those terms can you realistically compete?jd/adobe |
Does this idea exist and who wants it? | bigbang: Doesnt Flickr already have this?
http://www.flickr.com/do/more/ |
Review our webapp (Sproost); team met on HN | cmos: I really like it. But I have no interest in your topic of furniture.I also got tired of looking at pictures.. perhaps a little more reward after going through 5 or 10 images?Can you take your engine + make it work with different categories? |
Review my app Twitter Badge | geuis: I have this running on my blog as well, if you'd like to see it in action: http://trending.us |
How-to Implement Machine Learning? | critic: If you are looking for a quick hack, i.e. getting existing code to work on a free platform, then try Octave. Its source-level compatibility with Matlab is fairly good. |
Review our startup: Mugasha - A better way to listen to electronic dance music | trapper: I don't get what it does after reading your front page and about page. Why should I sign up? |
Review our webapp (Sproost); team met on HN | sgrove: Just wanted to post a quick message - very cool! I don't have time to go into details, but the site is very slick, and strangely enough, something I would use.Well done! I'll try to add some more details later. |
Does this idea exist and who wants it? | lux: Good idea. I'd like to see something like this become more integral on Flickr. I've been doing some searching for ideas for album artwork, and I found something on Flickr I'd strongly consider using, but I'll still have to contact and negotiate and it would be nice to have a bit of a framework for doing so, so that the photographer isn't potentially put off or things the email isn't legit. This sounds a lot like what youlicense.com does for music, btw. |
Review our startup: Mugasha - A better way to listen to electronic dance music | apsurd: I've always wanted a GUIDE to good electronica, techno, dance etc because I know I like it, I just don't know whats good... so it sounds like your site may help me! Right now I'm listening to some random tracks I've found... so far so good....The UI is nice, one thing that would help, though I'm spoiled, is how on the new playlist.com website you can browse music without interrupting your player stream. |
Review our startup: Mugasha - A better way to listen to electronic dance music | ggruschow: This is sad.I actually love electronic dance music.But.. I clicked twice, ended up on a page full of from to fill out, and just didn't have the energy to go through with it 'cuz I had no idea what the point was. So as my 4yo (who used all said energy up) would say.. I x'd it. |
Review our webapp (Sproost); team met on HN | hussong: I usually don't fancy those quizzes (e.g. for music and movie tastes), but yours was actually interesting. Very good pictures, fun to look at, but they took too long to load to keep me involved til the end.Scaling of fonts / liquid layout could be improved, looks a bit funny on FF/Ubuntu. Layout could use more white space for clarity.I still like the idea. Good start, keep it up! |
Does this idea exist and who wants it? | cschneid: I really like the idea, at least the stock rights part of it. The printing part feels over saturated, but the stock photography part feels like it could be done.Email me, I'd like to talk more about this. |
HELP Patent troll cruising my industry. What to do? | micks56: You need a lawyer.You have knowledge of an existing patent and knowledge that you appear to be infringing.Again, you need a lawyer. Get an IP attorney. |
Does this idea exist and who wants it? | bootload: "... Having tinkered with the Flickr API, I don't think this would be hard to engineer. And I think there is an easy revenue model (a cut of sales), a low barrier to entry for users, and a large long tail to make money off of. ..."Why just flickr? Why not all the available images sites? |
Review our webapp (Sproost); team met on HN | paul7986: Yes nice that you allow use of the site right away which then takes you further into the site.I kept answering like, hate and what not for like 20 rooms, but then got tired.I thought it would stop, analyze the rooms I liked and give me a personality or the app would design my perfect room with perfect furnishings.good job and good luck! |
HELP Patent troll cruising my industry. What to do? | shimon: First, get a patent lawyer and try to judge how likely you are to be sued. An experienced attorney might be able to see a pattern in their behavior that you don't, and give you a better idea of what your risk is. Note that this risk is not purely a matter of facts -- you might well not be infringing or their patent might seem obviously over-broad. The real risk is the cost of a lawsuit and litigation, which is a combination of distraction and expense that can easily kill a small company.Secondly, keep an eye on the patent troll's behavior and on the response from your competitors. If you are friendly with your competitors, see what info you can dig up about the patent trolls. See if you observe the trolls speeding up or slowing down. You might find that a "big" settlement wasn't as big as you might have guessed.Thirdly, don't panic. There are patent trolls in every industry. I was sued by one once -- for a zero-revenue side project -- and it fizzled, but I worried a lot along the way. If they haven't tried to contact you yet, your time is probably better spent developing your business. |
Does this idea exist and who wants it? | espadagroup: It's a great idea, though I think ImageKind covers most of this. |
How do you code a search box like on Ticketstumbler? | pedalpete: What is so special about the ticketstumbler search box?
It doesn't seem to have auto-fill. is that what you are looking for? |
Review our webapp (Sproost); team met on HN | wensing: Well done. I learned something about myself and I can't wait to share this with others. |
HELP Patent troll cruising my industry. What to do? | vaksel: You won't get trolled when you are small...and when you are a target, you'll be able to afford to pay them off.But if you want to take a proactive approach, you can try contacting them, and asking them to let you license the stuff. It'll probably cost you some money, but probably not as much as you think. |
Does this idea exist and who wants it? | gfodor: It's a bad idea. The reason it's a bad idea is because there is no sustainable competitive advantage and you're putting yourself in a position where Flickr could wake up one day and marginalize your entire business. (At which point it would be a race to the bottom margin-wise, until you go under and they have a monopoly on the service.)It's funny how the people here on HN seem to equate "thing that would be fun to build and use" with "good idea for a profitable business." |
Review our startup: Mugasha - A better way to listen to electronic dance music | daveambrose: Looks like great progress since TC50 Akshay! Going to take the app for a spin in more detail tomorrow. I'll send feedback. |
Review our webapp (Sproost); team met on HN | paraschopra: Actually, I liked all the rooms. Put in some of the messy ones as well. It is hard not to like a perfect room like the ones you have in the pictures. |
How do you code a search box like on Ticketstumbler? | fallentimes: Or you can email us :).founders [o.o] ticketstumbler (-.-)--O(+.-) com |
Review our startup: Mugasha - A better way to listen to electronic dance music | mattmcknight: I was only able to get two of the sets to play. Every other one sits at 0:00 with the play button clicked. Added it to my Flashblock whitelist, but the flash bar was way below the player, which was weird. The player should be able to pop out or iframe or something so that you can browse while listening. How do I gather and share? You should pre-check the buy links so they could go to Amazon, itunes, Juno, or wherever, based on who has it. Many tracks are hard to find mixes. |
Review our webapp (Sproost); team met on HN | sam_in_nyc: Don't pay too much attention to: * Windows, floors, wall material, and other architectural features
* Color — it's easy to change color combinations
* Layout and arrangement — also easy to change
That's a monumental challenge for me. I vote basically based on what my first impression is, and these items inevitably have a play into that.But I suppose if I were actually looking to redecorate, I would put more thought into my votes. |
Review our webapp (Sproost); team met on HN | rscott: I really liked it. Maybe at the end provide some links to stores specializing in certain styles? |
How do you code a search box like on Ticketstumbler? | vaksel: alright I got it working, thanks everyone for the help |
Review our startup: Mugasha - A better way to listen to electronic dance music | jawngee: - Let me queue up dj sets.
- Give me a desktop player so I can listen without keeping firefox open.
- Not clear why I have to create an account since I can't do anything with it other than leave commentsHave you checked out soundcloud? |
Review our startup: Mugasha - A better way to listen to electronic dance music | jyu: Why do you slap me in the face with a full page sign up form, without giving me any clear benefits to signing up? |
Review our webapp (Sproost); team met on HN | sachinag: I like the business - help people figure out what to buy, then make commissions on $1,000 furniture. Brilliant. And I like the approach a lot. So you're in the top quartile, for me, of Ask HN stuff here. Praise aside, let's get to the helpful specific crits:You really need to Photoshop the pictures in your quiz to make them as standard and innocuous as possible. Telling people to ignore the floors, walls, etc. is just impossible. Ideally, you'd be able to stage your own photos.Also, the interface needs to be 1) consistent and 2) less cluttered. I'd recommend really blowing it out with whitespace to figure out what you need and don't, then incrementally making it tighter. CrazyEgg might be super-helpful to you given that you have a very visual site.As for "going viral", having quick page loads is necessary but not sufficient. You can make the page load quicker. |
Review our webapp (Sproost); team met on HN | sh1mmer: My wife points out that it would be interesting to do something for couples because she likes radically different stuff to me. So something that could marry (boom boom) our styles would be helpful. |
Review our webapp (Sproost); team met on HN | joshsharp: I did the quiz but stopped short at entering my details. Then I came back and read all the comments here and decided I did want to create an account after all.Kudos for using cookies and keeping my quiz results; I would've been very irritated if I had to do it again just because I didn't sign up at the same time. :) |
Review our webapp (Sproost); team met on HN | rms: I like it. To me it seems more obvious to do this for clothes rather than interior decorating. Are you planning on applying this to fashion? |
HELP Patent troll cruising my industry. What to do? | opticksversi: http://www.gardenweasel.com/News/AUGUST2006Newsletter.pdf [PDF]In [Dean, of Segway fame] Kamen's opening statement he noted that some people might call him a "Patent Troll" since he now limits his activities to developing product ideas with the sole purpose of licensing them, but doesn't try to manufacture or market them. He believes that large companies are much better suited to manufacture and market products than to develop new products. He is better suited for developing these new products than manufacturing or marketing them.He made a very strong point that the larger companies had most of the resources in his business dealings and didn't really need patent protection. On the other hand, his patent for his intellectual property was the only thing that he had on his side of the table. He concluded his opening remarks by saying, “ . . .the patent system was intended to help everybody to be able to participate in innovation." |
Remedies for RSI? | aj: While not a cure, you should try using a RSI recovery help software which essentially forces you to take breaks and also tells you of exercises you should do.Check out Workrave ( www.workrave.com ) which I personally use and have found quite useful.Disclaimer: I am not affiliated to workrave in any form except as a user |
Remedies for RSI? | gruseom: Two things I don't see on your list:1. I do finger, wrist, and forearm stretches regularly. For me, they prevent RSI and even get rid of it when it's starting. I don't know if this would help for chronic pain.2. Chronic conditions can sometimes be alleviated by hypnosis. Here the challenge is finding a skilled practitioner. I know one. I can put you in touch if you like (email me).I suppose these are long shots. Good luck. |
How do you create a "limited fixed div"? | qhoxie: I did this in jQuery at one time. Hopefully this is helpful. $(window).scroll(function() {
var offsetTop = $(window).scrollTop();
$("#target").css({top: offsetTop});
});
To explain, whenever the viewport is scrolled, the offset of the viewport to the top of the page is set (offsetTop). Then the #target element is moved to follow the viewport. That will give a fixed effect, so what you need to do is set the max offsetTop to (max depth - #target height).Note: Dimension type calculations vary widely among browsers, so using a library like jQuery dimensions is quite helpful. |
How do you create a "limited fixed div"? | calvin: If you use Prototype, you'll want to look at the API docs for document.viewport and getHeight-- http://www.prototypejs.org/api/document/viewport-- http://www.prototypejs.org/api/element/getheight |
Remedies for RSI? | SwellJoe: When I started having problems about 7 year ago, I did a handful of things, but the two that made the most difference were:Better chair (Aeron). Sounds odd, I guess, but being the right height and having good posture makes a difference. I also dropped the arms way down, so I simply cannot lean on them no matter how lazy I'm feeling (among many other pains, my left elbow had a permanent twinge of pain, which still pops up now and then, but was always-on back then).Tiling window manager. This assumes UNIX/Linux, but it made a difference when I almost completely killed the mouse from my life. If typing is more painful than mousing for you, this might not be the right choice. It helped for me, though...I immediately was able to work full days again due to this change, though I don't know if it was therapeutic...it may have just avoided the most serious pains.Other things that may or may not have helped, but I did them while recovery was clearly happening:Changing positions frequently. Keyboard slanted/flat. Raising and lowering the chair. Occasionally sitting in a different chair or on a ball or standing. Getting up and walking about a lot.Exercises that encouraged blood flow to the affected areas. Cardiovascular exercise in general, but tennis and such were my focus. You've already tried swimming...so that's probably in the same league for circulation. I wouldn't quit doing those things, even though they haven't resolved your problem...I doubt they're hurting.I cut back dramatically on playing guitar and piano, since they incurred very similar sorts of repetitive stress. This one was not pleasant, but now I can play again without any problems. |
Remedies for RSI? | sutro: I used to have very bad RSI, and two things saved me: 1) this book: http://www.amazon.com/Repetitive-Strain-Injury-Computer-User..., and 2) this doctor: http://www.yelp.com/biz/mehaffy-rick-dc-redwood-city (only helpful if you live in the Bay Area). Good luck. |
How do you code a search box like on Ticketstumbler? | aaronbrethorst: Firebug much? (http://getfirebug.com) |
Review our startup: Mugasha - A better way to listen to electronic dance music | tlrobinson: I love it! I like listening to live sets, but I'm always annoyed when I want to know what a certain track in the middle of a set is. If you're lucky you can find a breakdown of the set list, but this is way better than even that.[me goes to unsubscribe from electronic music podcasts in iTunes]Now, just make it so you can continue browsing the site without interrupting the currently playing track/set. You could do that with frames, or by loading content using AJAX (that's what http://www.thesixtyone.com/ does) |
Review our startup: Mugasha - A better way to listen to electronic dance music | cmos: I wish you the best of luck. My momentum ran out with the signup form. And I like electronic music.But regardless, congratulations! You got something up and running, and the custom link greeting page was a very nice touch. Please give us updates + progress reports. |
Remedies for RSI? | trapper: Off the top of my head things you could try:1. Go to a paul chek, nasm or shirley sharman practitioner. They will check out your posture. Ignore anything they say about the one true way [edit - I mean the research is inconclusive - either may work, but all will claim their way is correct].2. If you already have bad posture you need to correct it. Some good [alternative] ways:- overhead lifting and overhead shrugs- heavy front squat holds (just the hold, not the squat)- go look at at mike robertson or gray cook for corrective exercises3. If you haven't already tried, go to an ART practitioner. It's very sore but effective for a lot of people. |
HELP Patent troll cruising my industry. What to do? | codesink: Moving your technology to a brand-new european company (no software patents yet) and licensing to your US company could avoid being sued by patent trolls? I don't know anything about such topics, just asking. |
Does this idea exist and who wants it? | SingAlong: So if you are going to make profit out of a site built on top of the Flickr API, then you'll have to use the commercial API. So the factors to consider would include the cost of the commercial API too. Besides, you'll also have to use some merchant account/Paypl to process payments which again eats off a bit of the money you get out of your commission you get out of letting people sell the pics.This idea would automatically turn a amateur photographer's or artist's flickr account into something the person can make a profit by selling his best stuff. That would atleast fund upgrading his cameras or buy new colors. You could start by targeting amateur photographers and artists. But make sure you find an extra stream of revenue apart from sales commission.But idea is sweet. |
Review our webapp (Sproost); team met on HN | fauigerzigerk: I like it a lot. Will show it to my gf as well. The style of the website is very nice and clean. I love the sproost logo! I have a few criticisms though.The quiz is very long and it seemed to my european eyes that there's an overhang of traditional styles and little differentiation among contemporary options. Modern seems to imply asian.I didn't like most of the rooms, but after making my choices the system summerised my style pretty well. Very well actually.The "design your room" page suffers from some layout quirks (Firefox 3). One of the items in my room got stuck when I switched to selecting more items from the sofas category. That rug just kept hovering on top of the sofas and only went away once I used the budget slider. I wasn't able to repeat it later though.I love the budget slider but sometimes it didn't stick. It kept snapping back to the greatest price range.My room looks a little jumbled because the pics aren't aligned at all. I understand that I'm supposed to arrange the items as I see fit, but that doesn't make much sense to me since I can't possibly make the whole thing look anything like a real room. The sizes and perspectives are just too different. I suggest you pre-align the items next to each other. People can still move the items around if they want to.I appreciate that it's very difficult to actually let people design a room that looks like a room. It would work a little better if I could zoom individual items so I could at least put that lamp next to the sofa and make them look proportionally sized. To take this further you could figure out the sizes of the pieces from the vendors' sites and automatically zoom them accordingly. I know, I know that's a massive amount of work and maybe it wouldn't help enough to make a real difference.I'm not sure why the "saved rooms" and the "design your room" pages are separate pages. I would prefer a drop-down to select other saved rooms right on the "design your room" page. The cost rundown could be placed on the "buy your furniture" tab or dynamically displayed by clicking somewhere next to the total. In my opinion, there are too many pages and menu/tab levels.The "to be added" section isn't very useful I think, but if it's there it should at least let me remove stuff from it.The signup process is OK. No confirmation emails, no nothing, just an email address. But I would still let people see the room designer before making them sign up. |
HELP Patent troll cruising my industry. What to do? | ig1: Get IP Insurance. |
Review our webapp (Sproost); team met on HN | gsmaverick: I definitely bookmarked this site. This is the best webapp I have seen on HN in months! |
Remedies for RSI? | chris_l: Alexander Technique worked for me. But it is not miracle cure, you have to work on yourself to make it work. A one line takeaway is that you're probably doing something too hard as a matter of habit when typing. |
How-to Implement Machine Learning? | rm999: Scipy - it can be used like matlab, but it's python.At the very least, make sure your solution can easily and efficiently work with linear algebra, a plotting tool, and some basic statistics functions. |
How do you create a "limited fixed div"? | jreposa: Here's a smooth scrolling div within boundaries based on a timeout. var attrs = {};
$(document).ready(function(){
attrs.startY = $("#target").offset().top;
// pad the bottom by 20 pixels including the 20 pixels from top added in fixed()
attrs.endY = $('#bottom').offset().top - $("#target").height() - 40;
var t = null;
$(window).scroll(function(){
clearTimeout(t);
t = setTimeout('fixed()', 500);
});
});
function fixed() {
var offsetTop = $(window).scrollTop();
if (offsetTop < attrs.startY) {
offsetTop = attrs.startY-20; // get rid of 20 pixel padding when at the top
} else if (offsetTop > attrs.endY) {
offsetTop = attrs.endY;
}
$("#target").animate({top: offsetTop+20}, 500); // add 20 pixel padding from the top
} |
How do you create a "limited fixed div"? | zacharydanger: I'd recommend posting this question over at stackoverflow.com, too. |
Review our startup: Mugasha - A better way to listen to electronic dance music | Dilpil: Every single set listed is eurotrance. Many even play the same tracks. Furthermore, they are all from established DJs. When does the 'upload set' feature make it in, and truly democratize techno music? |
What Criteria Should a Young Hacker Apply to College Choice? | stcredzero: Don't choose a college. Choosing a college means you are choosing a particular brand of credentials.http://www.paulgraham.com/credentials.htmlInstead, the best thing to base your choice on is people. The next best thing is environment. Are there particular professors who you look up to who would want to mentor you? Is there a high potential for meeting the kind of people who will inspire you? Do you have good evidence that being in that environment will inculcate something valuable? (And starry-eyed reminisces of an alum are not good evidence. Lots of things can happen at an institution in a decade or so. Get current information.)(Another way to put it -- the reputation of a school is marketing. Doesn't it seem wise to corroborate that with more direct measures of value?) |
What Criteria Should a Young Hacker Apply to College Choice? | utnick: its probably really hard for any of us to give good advice because there are so many personal factors and each of us has only attended one or maybe 2 colleges so we are all biased.you should just make a list of pros/cons and trust your instincts |
What programming language should I teach my little brother? | dimm: Python is easy to learn.
Some advice by ESR : http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html#skills1 |
What Criteria Should a Young Hacker Apply to College Choice? | walterk: Here's a list, but don't take the order too seriously:- Courses: Do they have courses that you're interested in taking, and is the department strong in those areas? What's the balance between theoretical and more immediately practical classes, and which do you care more about?- Professors: How are the professors regarded as instructors by their own students? During undergrad, your professor's quality of instruction matters more than their quality of research.- Rigor. Top colleges are pretty comparable, afaik.- Class size.- Affordability.- Quality of environment.No one criteria ever really "trumps" other criteria. You have to determine your personal weightings for each and decide which place offers the best balance. Also, you may find that your priorities change once you've been at college for a year or two, so unless you have a super good idea of what you want to do, you might prefer well roundedness to strength in only a few key areas. |
What tools do you use for testing your web apps. | utnick: Someone at our last ruby meetup demo'd a project he was working on called watirloo http://github.com/marekj/watirloo/tree/masterIt looks really coolAlso just plain watir is a good tool for setting up some unit tests |
Review our webapp (Sproost); team met on HN | mhashim: great job guys. I like the minimalist and clean design approach. I took the quiz and got my wife to do it too as we have just redecorated, and the answers were quite accurate about our style inclinations. Good to see a quality start. I think the tough part now is to integrate this with multiple channels that could create the revenue. I would suggest to start by approaching fashion/interior designers as they would find immediate value to provide their clients with the use of this tool. Good luck. |
What programming language should I teach my little brother? | lv_: ruby! he will be a rockstar by 16 and we will all thank you |
What Criteria Should a Young Hacker Apply to College Choice? | cmos: None of it really matters. Visit each college until it's just obvious. "I could spend 4 years here and be happy" Stay overnight with a freshman. Get a feel for how things are run. Talk to as many freshman and seniors as possible, candidly, in private. Go to some sample classes.Don't just take a tour or investigate it online. I chose my college because the people going there were all pretty hard core geeks. And undergrads could get paid to work for Masters and PHD students on their thesis. (I wanted hands on experience) This, naturally, made having a killer social life a little more challenging, unless your definition of a "killer social life" is playing net trek at 3:00am on a friday night in your dorm's computer room. |
What Criteria Should a Young Hacker Apply to College Choice? | alex_c: I think there are two main benefits that you get from a college education.The first is your personal growth: what you learn from your courses, what you learn about yourself, what you learn from your classmates. The personal relationships you make with faculty and with other students that last past your graduation. Like stdcredzero said, this is all about the people and the environment.The second benefit is the few seconds of recognition you get when a new acquaintance or a potential employer finds out that you studied X at college Y, and they think "ah yes, that's a good college" (or alternatively, "I've never heard of it").If you play your cards right, the first benefit should vastly trump the second one. Unfortunately, the second benefit is much easier to quantify when you're choosing colleges.Ideally, I guess, you would get both, but that's not always possible.Within reason, list price should be the least important criterion. At most, it should be a tie breaker. |
What programming language should I teach my little brother? | cmos: Call me old school, but I would start off with Basic. If he was younger I would recommend Logo. Once he's hooked I would get him into C or pascal.I can't recommend enough getting him a "Basic Stamp" kit. Seeing how software can control hardware is magical. Then work him up into "Arduino" world in C. |
What Criteria Should a Young Hacker Apply to College Choice? | maximilian: I would say you should go to the hardest college you get in to (that you generally like). The more smart people there, the better because the classes will be more challenging and likely more stimulating. I went to a hard school, and going from being the smartest to suddenly being average was a stimulating transition. It makes you learn to work hard to get good grades, which are that much more rewarding.I would also say you should go to a bigger school. For technical fields, the more students, the more choice you will have for courses. Diversity in a technical field is a great thing because you get to see what you are really passionate about. I ended up really loving applied math after going through an engineering track. |
What programming language should I teach my little brother? | charlesju: Ruby.It's the most human-readable language out there. I personally think that it's a lot easier to get started with the basic concepts of programming like while loops, if statements, etc. It is a lot easier to do those things when you don't have to think about including random libraries and putting everything in specifically named functions (ie. main() or static-something-or-another in JAVA) and what-not.It's the fastest way to get started. |
What programming language should I teach my little brother? | anotherjesse: I would recommend Python or if the Unix/Linux component isn't as important, JavaScript.JavaScript would allow your brother to share his creations with friends and learning the amazing (and at times frustrating world) world of the web. |
What programming language should I teach my little brother? | time_management: Don't teach him one programming language, because if he wants to be a hacker, he'll need exposure to many.Ruby or Python is good for a start, because it's easy to debug and you can do simple, cool things with them pretty quickly. Then introduce him to Lisp or Scheme, and finally OCaml or Haskell so he's exposed to good static typing. Save C for later (by the time he's ready for it, he'll be picking languages rather than asking you for advice). |
Review our startup: Mugasha - A better way to listen to electronic dance music | truebosko: I can't seem to type anything on this page: http://mugasha.com/browse/setsThe input box has a highlight but when I click on it, I can't type anything at all. |
What programming language should I teach my little brother? | maxwell: AppJet now, C later. |
What programming language should I teach my little brother? | fuzzmeister: As a teenager, I tried various "real" coding languages - C++, Java, VB (ugh) - but I was never able to get engaged in them. All I wanted to do was build something cool quickly, and none of these languages allowed that without a significant time investment. Then, I tried out PHP. Within a few days, I was building random tools left and right, and having a great time doing it. So, to get him interested, I recommend you choose a language that lets him get results fast. |
What programming language should I teach my little brother? | noblethrasher: Since you know OCaml how about teaching him Haskell followed by C? The former should be pretty accessible to a 13 year old and he’ll have a lot of time to wrestle with some of the more difficult concepts like Monads (although I think exposure to them at an early age will make them easier to grok since he doesn’t have to unlearn a bunch of other stuff). I highly recommend Real World Haskell (http://book.realworldhaskell.org/read/) if you do decide to go that route.Apologies for a (related) tangent but I'm in a very similar situation (except that my little brother is 31). He has more artistic inclinations but in the past he's demonstrated an aptitude for mathematics and is generally good at problem solving. I've been teaching him some basic set theory and number theory in preparation for some actually programming.My first thought is to teach him one high level language
like Lisp followed by a low level language like C. On the other hand, JavaScript (+ HTML) has some of the best of both of those worlds with the added benefit of affording immediate gratification. Any thoughts?*Admittedly, my bro is a bit more motivated by financial considerations but I do think he will come to appreciate the beauty of programming if it is presented the right way. |
What programming language should I teach my little brother? | Eliezer: I realize I'm sounding here like I've been seduced, but I truly don't understand why you would want to teach any first language other than Python. |
What programming language should I teach my little brother? | pavelludiq: python or ruby are good choices. They can be used to do UNIX scripting, and each one has some really cool modules to do graphic stuff. I'm learning ruby just now, so that i can do GUI programming with shoes, and im using _why's guide: http://poignantguide.net/ruby/index.htmlI don't know which one is better for a 13 year old, just pick the one you know better. |
What programming language should I teach my little brother? | chriseidhof: Whatever language you choose: write a lot of (small?) shell scripts. This is very unix-y and also easy. The composing of those scripts using unix-pipes also will give him a little bit experience with things like modularity.Also, I'd choose a language I like and that I'm familiar with. I think OCaml would definitely be a good start. Strongly typed and strict, lots of possibilities for abstraction, it's all pretty cool. Or teach him (and yourself) Haskell using RWH or something.If you go for an imperative language then Ruby or Python would probably be a good idea. Those languages are really a lot like English and have a lot of momentum. If you go for Ruby, take a look at http://hackety.org/, I think it's awesome for young programmers. |
What Criteria Should a Young Hacker Apply to College Choice? | bokonist: 1) Go to the best school where you can get a full ride. Convince your parents to use the money they saved to fund your startup some day. It's a far better use of money than college tuition.2) Either major in a hard, useful, technical subject, like mechanical engineering or computer science, or find a super easy major where attendance in classes is mostly optional. If you do the second, you can work full time on your startup during college, and get it to the point where you can live off of it by the time you graduate. |
What programming language should I teach my little brother? | bprater: I've given this question lots of thought over the years. I really started loving programming when I found Garry Kitchen's GameMaker. It wasn't very elegant, but it was damn fun.I'd push him toward PHP.The goal isn't to make him a great programmer with an amazing language. The goal is to get him doing fun stuff fast, so that he sticks around.When things are fun, kids stick around.I'm guessing that many readers here got hooked on a language, not because it was a functional language, but because you could accomplish things quickly.Introduce him to PHP and work with him on coming up with a very specific project he wants to hammer out. Then you can sit down and walk him through the various phases of putting it together. |
What programming language should I teach my little brother? | vorador: I would suggest a language like newlisp (http://newlisp.org), that has enough libraries to do unix scripting.
Also, you should consider teaching him awk because it has simple semantics and it will be simpler for him to switch to C later.Btw, why do you hate C ? |
What programming language should I teach my little brother? | swapspace: Python and probably a lot of shell scripting. I like zsh a lot. |
What programming language should I teach my little brother? | iamdave: Ruby.Give the Why's Poignant Guide and you can't go wrong. Plus he'll love the cartoons, even if he doesn't get the strangely subtle adult humor. |
What programming language should I teach my little brother? | DavidSJ: Scratch (http://scratch.mit.edu/) is a good way to learn the basics of putting programs together. It's done visually and it may feel like just a toy, but you can do some pretty cool things, it has a very shallow learning curve, and it can intuitively guide you to learning some important concepts which then have applicability to traditional programming. |
What programming language should I teach my little brother? | smanek: Logo isn't too bad. It's open source, scheme derived, and very easy to make games (beginners like immediate feedback). http://education.mit.edu/starlogo/At 13, he may be too old for it, but Logo was one of my first languages back in elementary school, and I remember being very excited that I could write my own galaxian clone in just a day or so.Otherwise, I would stay away from JavaScript and Ruby (I like them, but they are hard for beginners) and stick with Python. |
What programming language should I teach my little brother? | rw: I recommend NetLogo. It is simple to learn, LISP-inspired, and makes it trivially easy to do all sorts of graphical work. It runs on the JVM.(I took a class in which we used NetLogo to run agent-based economics simulations. Lots of fun, although the LISPer in you will start to hate it after a while.) |
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