kenster07
kenster07 on Hacker News
This is not about evaluating what is objectively better for the consumer. There is much less tolerance for the "ask for forgiveness, not permission" mentality in Germany than America, and this ruling proves that. If a competitor like Lyft goes into Germany now, plays by the rules, and shows respect to the existing order, I would not be surprised to see them welcomed and take a huge lead in Europe.
I find the angry tone of this message to be misplaced and unnecessary.
Node would be useful for the chat feature that one can see in the screenshots.
The fundamental problem is actually the arbitrary separation of the practical and theoretical. They should be informing one another.
Consider this: many great "theoretical" discoveries in history, including those in CS, were not theoretical at their inception. They were the result of people trying to solve practical problems -- not the product of a bunch of debt-ridden students trying to maximize GPA in an ivory tower. This cannot be overstated.
At the end of the day, the distinction between academic and practical is largely self-imposed, at least partially ego-driven, and probably highly inefficient for society as a whole. If you want "practical" people to engage "theoretical" problems, then make it practical for them.
The fact is that past X hours most people just aren't very productiveI agree with the sentiment, but people need to remember that the number 'X' is different for different people.
The article's title is quite link-baity. That being said, it is obvious that technology will displace more and more traditional human labor. Of course, unlike in the past, human labor becomes increasingly unnecessary to sustain said humans on a biological level. It's a trade-off, and the cognitive dissonance is the "traditional" (20th century, Agent Smith) model of human worth being rendered invalid by the realities of technological progress.
The article seems to subtly suggest that if you do not have an advanced degree [1], you do not have "brains." As someone who has "brains" but has chosen not to pursue and advanced degree, if I were working for the author, my reaction would be to question this person's judgment on several levels:
1) Implicitly putting down those who work with him who don't have advanced degrees.
2) Susceptibility to autobiographically-based irrationality, aka too much Koolaid.
Why is this an irrational viewpoint? Sure, someone who has an advanced degree is unlikely to be dumb. But as any remotely educated person should know, it does not follow that someone who does not have an advanced degree is not smart.
I think the obsession with advanced degrees is fascinating though. Do people really believe that getting an advanced degree will make one a more productive web developer? Are the years spent getting that advanced degree remotely comparable to years of meaningful industry experience? Or comparable to using the countless online resources to educate oneself in topics that are directly applicable to web development?? Hint: no.
[1] "Brains don’t matter as much as resilience in your first couple of years as a startup. I borrowed a lot of money to put myself through one undergraduate and two masters programs so, yes, it hurts to write that."
That's a bit of an overstatement. Many purchases are time-sensitive to the extent that expected deflation would have to be very high.
This blog entry is not very generalizable. It implies a certain kind of programming for a certain kind of business.
This whole situation is more depressing than anything. Who would have thought that exemplars of our industry would cheat their own employees to this degree. One might have expected this in some other industries, but software?
"The idea that you will learn more in industry than in a CS degree only applies if A) you are in a shitty CS program or B) you aren't trying hard enough to learn anything."
Disagree. If you learn more in 3 years of college than you do 3 years on the job, you are a shitty employee.
So you should run away from Google?
Sorry, I couldn't help myself. I actually think you have a valid point.
I disagree. If this person is a good abstract and technical thinker, he should be able to make the leap if he is sufficiently motivated.
You absolutely do NOT need multiple years of CS undergrad to have a sense for scalability. If you open your mind, you will see that world history is chock full of systems that have scaled -- they just don't happen to be written in binary or backed by CS degrees. And I would say that these historical systems share more similarities than you would think with scalable computer systems.
In order to be good at this kind of thing, one just needs some sense for abstract thinking -- which countless non-programmers have, we are actually not unique in that regard -- and if you are adequately dedicated, a few weeks (or a few months at most) of study time to understand fundamental algos and data structures. After one has an understanding of it, it will certainly take more time to become practically comfortable using said concepts, but that's what entry level jobs are for.
I would argue that the wealthy are doing what they have an incentive to do, which is to hoard wealth. The problem is, rather than their wealth "trickling down" throughout the economy from their clouds, it is sitting in their bank accounts or estates, earning interest. Can you blame them? They are simply adapting to the incentives put in place by our economic system.
Rather than make any dead-end accusations about wealthy people being good vs. evil, the focus should be on altering the system such that people are given the right incentives to do what is best for the economy as a whole.
I think it is worth pointing out that for the vast majority of people, there still a level of 'belief' required for the modern science, not unlike the religions of old. There are very few laypeople equipped to think critically about, let alone verify, most scientific theories. As a result, they have to take it on faith that the "priests" (in today's world, scientists) are correct.
There is clearly no reason for software patents. To look at this issue from another angle, consider the following.
What was the reason for creating the patent system in the first place? To give people an incentive to invent new things: if someone invests the time in coming up with something novel, the legal system would give a temporary monopoly in return.
But in today's world, clearly one would imagine the vast majority, if not all software would have been invented as is, without the incentives that patent protection provides. When one contrasts this with the well-known downsides of software patents, the outcome should be clear: abolish them.
I think the desire to work as hard and long as possible is admirable -- but if the long-term result is lower real productivity, then it's ultimately futile and counterproductive. The flip side is, some people can pull this off occasionally, and a few can do it more than occasionally.
Oh, and the article does not support the title at all.
Well, there are separate issues at play:
1) In a market economy, monopolies should generally be distrusted and prevented whenever possible.
2) There are people who are unsatisfied with the claimed (lack of) health effects of GMO on human consumers.
3) There are people who are unsatisfied with the claimed (lack of) effects that GMO seeds could have on the broader ecosystem.
I'm glad that at least some of the commenters try to wait for both sides of the story before grabbing a pitchfork.
Actually, it is almost universally admired when a person pushes him or herself. One way to do that happens to be to work harder than other people. Now, it can get to the point where you become so inefficient that it's stupid. No, we don't typically admire stupidity. But let's not kid ourselves -- hard work is respectable.
As an extreme example, I'd wager that most people instinctively admire those who can make it all the way through Navy SEAL bootcamp, and one of the reasons is that participants are literally working NONSTOP during that period, at a level of physical exertion that most people nowadays could not sustain for a few hours, let alone days on end.
Why are people defending artificially depressed wages? What planet are you from?
So after reading through the comments, a lot of devs apparently do not make the distinction between static typing and Java.
I'm curious as to what you mean when you say Russia is a "known evil." Are you alluding to real life? Movies? The Cold War? It would seem that true rationality and evil have little to do with one another.
Consumerism dramatically amplifies all said effects. Many of these issues would be solved for a long time by simply mitigating that mindset.
Those titles are so ridiculous, it makes Gawker look worse than Path.
"On the micro side, seeing 20-something kids get 150k budgets to screw around for a year is maddening"
Nonsense. This is but an externality.
What is maddening is the current state of the financial system as a whole. Though its intellectual underpinnings should have been completely shaken by the events around 2008 and the subsequent rescue of its champions, vested interests would prefer to pretend the emperor still has clothing -- and thus the externalities of QA, of which startup money is actually among the most palatable.
It would almost be comical if it weren't so sick: rent-seeking through a government-granted monopoly, under the premise that the providers would serve the public good.
It would seem that browsers could implement the exact same algo using native code and achieve far better performance.
This raises the question: why aren't browsers already using this or something superior?
Here is the thing -- algorithms are NOT an order of a magnitude more difficult for everyone. That is simply an unjustified blanket statement.
Believe it or not, some people pick up merge sort or balanced binary trees faster than they can learn Rails (which has a BIG amount of content to master, by the way).