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DavidPPon 3 Simple Rules That Will Make You a 'Superstar' Developer

"Postscript for the naive: This post is a mild satire on programming in teams. These three rules, while undoubtedly effective, are evil. They harm overall project progress for your own benefit. They don’t make you a better programmer intrinsically, only compared to the rest of your team. You may, like I and countless others, have done something like this completely innocently in the past, when you didn’t know better. Now you know better." -- Quote at the end of the post

DavidPPon How A Great Product Can Be Bad News: Apple, iPad, and the Closed Mac

I see the iPad not as a "PC" but as an appliance, albeit a really sophisticated one.

DavidPPon HN: I just started my own company, any recommended task management software?

http://www.redmine.org/

Description taken from the website : Redmine is a flexible project management web application. Written using Ruby on Rails framework, it is cross-platform and cross-database.

DavidPPon Ask HN: How do you do time estimates?

Sorry, I don't have time to write a detailed answer but here are couple of interesting things to know about software estimation (from a book I have at home but forgot the name) :

* For a known task, developer are usually too optmistic by about 30%

* At the very beginning of a project, your estimation can be off by as much as 400%, by the time you have the UI done (at least in wireframe), your estimation can be off by around 25%.

Also, I suggest reading the "Three points estimation" part of this article : http://www.projects.ed.ac.uk/methodologies/Full_Software_Pro...

It's usually for "big" project, but the Three points estimation technique can be used even if you are by yourself. Also, it's more scientific than just "doubling" your number (check Standard Deviation on wikipedia if you want to understand how it work).

Finally, with this technique, it's easy to spot tasks which have alot of uncertainty.

DavidPPon Ask YC: Feedback on our new service: messagepub.com

And do you have plan for ppl who would like not only to push information but also receive information ?

* EDIT : I saw after posting that it was already possible. Maybe you should do a replace for send by send/receive and also, change the image to have two-way arrows. This way, it would be more obvious.

DavidPPon Touch Book: Tablet Netbook with ARM CPU, 10+ Hour Battery, Detachable Screen

I was looking at http://www.tabletpc2.com/Review-HPTC1100.htm which was made a few years ago by HP. I've been searching for something like this in the last few weeks, but no one made exactly what I'm looking for yet.

The Touch Book come really close but I want more cpu power out of it.

DavidPPon Ask HN: Please review our online collaboration chat tool - chatterbloc.com

Got a small bug with website that do not "like" to be boxed (ex : http://hardware.fr) Since they force a reload of the page, you can't access the room anymore because you get redirected each time you try to access it.

DavidPPon Want To Be A Startup CEO? Better Learn How To Code.

Thank you for your answer. I'm 25 and considering what I should next in my career. I've been reading about product management lately and it's seem to be a good fit to my personnality and aspirations.

DavidPPon Ask HN: Help with my CAPTCHA woes

A quick question, you said that the CAPTCHA is implemented across various login screens. Do that mean that you have to fill a CAPTCHA everytime you login ?

I don't know what your application do, but what is wrong with automatic login? I understand why automatic account creation IS a problem, but use automatic login is something I use everyday (via 1password).

But if you really need to do it, Tichy solutions seem goods

DavidPPon Want To Be A Startup CEO? Better Learn How To Code.

I'm curious, how did you become a product manager ? (what is your background).

DavidPPon The H-1B visa has got to go

I'm not saying he is wrong, and since I'm not from (or in) the USA, I can't really argue. But from my point of view, the author present alot of facts like : "In the last 10 years or so, the number of people forced to work as contractors has increased exponentially." without offering any "hard" data or links to his sources.

Is he using real data as a basis for his arguments?

DavidPPon Javascript that auto-fills captchas

Last week, I was going to register a new web service (forgot which one) and after the third captcha I couldn't get right, I just quit and decided to use a competitor instead.

What I'm trying to say is that ideally you shouldn't use a solution that is less user friendly and possibly infuriating for your future customers/users.

DavidPPon Genetic map of Europe; genes vary as a function of distance

Would be curious to see a geographic map of the US with the genetic country of origin of the population on top of it.

DavidPPon Ask YC: Immigration (wrt entrepreneurs) conditions in Canada?

'le' is akin to 'are' in this context, so yes, it's needed :)

DavidPPon News.YC faster (plus new traffic stats)

Thanks, it's easier to participate when you know that your interlocutors are able to understand that just because you don't master their language perfectly do not mean that your ideas are any less valuable.

DavidPPon News.YC faster (plus new traffic stats)

I've been reading News.YC for last few months and it's now my primary source of IT news/discussion. While I restrain myself from posting sometime because I'm not perfectly fluent in english, I have deep admiration for the community and it's insight on the "hacker" world.

Thanks alot!

DavidPPon Website of a NH Usability Association -- priceless

I hope it's a prototype that was released by mistake :)

DavidPPon Ask HN: What's your philosophy?

Well, it's hard to tell from just a few lines, but I would guess that your are an INTP personality.