Aftershock21

Whether you are working or wasting time is decided by the pre frontal cortex, which is responsible for the decision making process in the brain. However the creativity is a whole-brain process, it takes many brain regions to come up with insights and inspirations. So it makes sense not to depend on your pre-frontal cortex to decide activities of the whole brain. It almost like uninformed non-technical manager deciding the technology stack for the programmers.

Thanks. Meditation would be great in the morning.

More time doing work does not translate to more creative output. Wasting time is the most effective way to come up with ideas. Its been proven and written many times over. But I guess when you are in a startup and taken funding from external sources, its hard to explain why you waste time!

The post also needs a TLDR;

Great roundup. Its nice to see all this points. One big difference between scripting and non-scripting languages is that, in scripting languages you can modify the structure of the program at runtime, while in compiled languages you are stuck once you compile it. C++ does have metaprogramming through the use of templates and those programs look immensely complicated, but it can't introduce new data types and logic at runtime. I kinda dislike C++ from beyond templates as the code looks super ugly.

The ability to modify the program at runtime (and elegantly) is a huge advantage over compiled ones and allows you to express new category of solutions. Programs that change itself is in my opinion pretty advanced.

So it seems, Python and Ruby allows the programmer to free the mind from the low-level housekeeping and focus 100% on logical thinking and give incredible expressiveness. I would buy that. I wonder how often an above average python/ruby programmer use its metaprogramming / reflection capabitlies?

I totally agree. I would not write web services in C++ unless I have only one computer and million users.

"5/5 (or whatever the scale is) means that you can accomplish the most advanced task possible in the language"

I appreciate your sympathy. I have no problem with people who are born into scripting languages. Personally I started with C, C++ and worked on few scripting languages. My question came from more of curiosity. There is more learning curve in low-level languages because the very structure of your code can affect the memory foot-print of your programs and that requires careful crafting of data-structures and algorithms. At a scripting language level you are in a virtual "world". It does allows you to SOLVE pretty advanced problems but it does not necessarily translate into your expertise in the scripting language itself. For example, I might use Ruby to create true AI system but in the end its the algorithm that mattered not my knowledge of the language.

I mean how advanced can you be in a scripting language ? There is no memory management, no low level systems knowledge required. Can you give me an example of writing really really advanced code in Ruby or Python ?

If no programming experience required, What are the other prerequisites for this course? Can anyone without a collage degree join ? Do you think person with zero programming experience with just 9 weeks of study get $80k salary ?

It would be interesting to know how many Christian Hackers believe in Evolution.

Wow my comment got deleted! Didn't know HN has censorship board.

they are bettering society..they have a huge NSFW content.

In social networks, companies are not trying to fix email or group communication because its broken. They are trying to produce users for their specific applications. If they use Email as a substrate for communication, they have no user. They end up being just a software vendor.

So I guess we don't have to take pills anymore, just inject it!

If you are into research you can become a professor and get a tenure. No need to live on $20k. However if you want to be/stay as an entrepreneur you better spend some cache on things you don't want to do yourself.

If the goal of retirement is beach-sitting I don't want it. Money is energy of your experiments in life and if you spend bare minimum you are missing a lot in life. I would rather work on what I love for the entire life and create more possibilities to get rich. Spending $20,000/year sounds like going on hibernation mode for the rest of your life. Its a plan for people who are chronically lazy.

All this non productive discussion aside, Can Hackers solve this problem ? Entrepreneurs take risk and should be rewarded accordingly. However not all Rich people are Entrepreneurs. Some just keep their money in the bank and stagnate the economy.

How about creating Soft-Tax system, where Rich people are taxed Soft-Tax in addition to regular Tax. Soft-Tax would be a separate bank account where Rich must transfer their capital for Entrepreneurial work. If they don't use that money for funding new businesses Soft-Tax would turn into regular Tax after some deadline.

I am doing similar thing, I quit my job in Oct 2011 and making iPhone apps. Made 4 apps so far but just earning $10/day from it. But its a lot of fun and exciting than a job.

I wrote a blog few weeks ago on social impact of self driving cars. Please check it out and suggest other significant changes that are not listed.

http://neurographs.wordpress.com/2012/03/20/social-impact-of...

there is no such thing

um..where do you live ? (country)

Not impressive at all. Its ridiculously simple automation at Berkeley! I am sure some 14 year old kid in india can do this. - No machine learning, - No face recognition - No Gesture sensing - Only lights and curtains..please

This shouldn't be here.

Hacker Hacker Hacker.I am sick of this word. Whats wrong with simple words like techie. There are far more people considering themselves as Hackers nowadays even though they are simply an average engineer. Please stop abusing this word. Was Einstein a Hacker ? How about Leonardo Da Vinci ?

By the way, startups are for people who are interested in business. If you are interested in business, YOU ARE NOT A HACKER. Hackers are interested in technology for the technology's sake. They don't do UI, they don't do A/B testing. Please stop.

I interviewed at Google 5 years ago, and they asked me tons of puzzles and math questions (game theory and theorem proving!!). I was being interviewed for a programming job. Looks like the process has changed.

May be he meant as a sarcasm given the success of Evernote!

I went through the library and I see most of the videos are pretty short. There is hardly 40 minutes of video on html5, same is true for iOS programming. At this point, I would prefer free Stanford courses over treehouse. What am I missing here?