screwperman

Eh, what?

A few months ago, there was a discussion on this right here on HN: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=482257

Asians rarely value individuality. Doesn't the American system do better in teaching kids to be different from the norm?

As an aside, if you don't mind telling me, do you think your participation in the IOI helped get you into grad school at MIT? If so, to what extent?

Joel does 0.1% of the work on StackOverflow and ServerFault. Give Jeff some credit.

The exam is more rigorous and broader in scope than the APs. It also has a far more punishing "grading curve" (a 1.8% admit rate). The general notion among Indians seems to be that preparation -- and only preparation -- matters.

While I agree that not every American should aspire to be the next president, one should put things in a global perspective: it's only fair that water-deprived kids from Third World countries who spent their childhood cramming end up taking the jobs of the more fortunate who did not take a single simple AP exam. In an earlier post on HN, a highly upvoted comment went like "take every AP exam". That is a good idea, but it hardly ambitious at all, given that you are in the land of opportunity. Participating in olympiads and science fairs is far more worthwhile in every way.

The guy who wrote that comment is Slava Pestov, author of the Factor programming language.

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1. Challenge yourself

So, you've got to choose from these kinds of activities:

  A: Activities that you enjoy doing
  B: Activities that *might* impress (say) the college admissions staff

You're in America: you don't hunt for opportunities, you are flooded with them. Someone on this thread recommended "taking every AP exam available". Sure, do that: it's really important. But that's not ambitious at all: AP exams cover only about 10% of what Indian entrance examinations do, and you get to use "calculators" and "appendices" (more like textbooks). Do something real, like aspire to be an IMO/IOI/IPhO/IChO/ISEF medalist (if you don't know what those are, shame on you).

2. Manage your time

I was absolutely dismal at this. But I've started doing it for a month and it really does wonders: I have stopped procrastinating and started to feel less stressed out. I'd recommend you watch the late Randy Pausch's other lecture (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTugjssqOT0) or read Getting Things Done. Most of HN can give better advice.

3. Skip school (a lot)

It took me a lot of effort to get my parents to allow me to do this. Alas, it was too late then. Usually, teachers do more harm than good. Read the right books instead of attending their classes.

Most of his speeches (and Nandan Nilekani's for that matter) are ghost written, by a small team of smart MBA s from local elite schools like IIMs(Indian Institute Of Management). One of my school buddies is on that team that's how I know.

He also ported Ruby on Rails to Javascript: http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2007/06/rhino-on-rails.html

This is an odd little book. It's frequently mistaken for an introductory programming book, which inevitably leads to frustration. It's not a good way to learn how to program; it expects that you're already familiar with machine architecture, assembly language, compilers, and at least one other high-level language.

It's not even a very good way to learn C. The idioms and best-practices for C programming have evolved substantially, even since the second edition was published, and some of the code samples look a bit dated.

As the parent said, you'll appreciate C only if you learn about machine architecture and Unix. Diving into a large codebase will get you acquainted with "modern" C.

I've found the book C Traps and Pitfalls to be the book to get you to think like a C programmer. The C Puzzle Book is pretty good for exercises, and Expert C Programming does a good job exposing the ugly side of C.

Here: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001216.html

surely Stackoverflow is not making that much money.

But StackOverflow delivers, more so than most YC startups.