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But I'm speaking from personal experience.

Yeah, you've really got to watch out for "progressive blacks" like me, we're trouble.

The statements made to this person seem innocuous to you?

What are the barriers exactly?

The heavy use of logic is a masculine trait ...

OK, this is Poe's Law territory. You're trolling us, right? Because otherwise you just wondered aloud what possible barriers there could be to women joining our field and then exposed yourself as one of them.

_piuson Ask HN: Are there any resources to learn how to think about programming?

Great, I'm glad I could help!

You raise a good point about discrete math, let me add the following to my list above:

* MIT's 6.042 ("Mathematics for Computer Science") Lecture Notes start at first principles and go on to cover relevant discrete math topics motivated by common types of computer science problems.

http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-comput...

_piuson Ask: Should a startup take $50k worth of uncapped convertible note

Should a startup take $50k worth of uncapped convertible note?

Yes, assuming the terms are standard.

_piuson Ask HN: what is a good spot to work in New York?

As GMFlash said, Science, Industry and Business Library (SIBL) on 34th and Madison (http://www.nypl.org/locations/sibl). It's very consistent with comfortable chairs for working.

_piuson Ask HN: Are there any resources to learn how to think about programming?

"Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs" (SICP) by Abelson and Sussman is a must read.

Some other foundational texts I'd recommend:

* "How to Solve It" is a (the?) classic introduction to mathematical problem solving. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Solve_It

* CLRS ("Introduction to Algorithms") is the classic introduction to solving problems through computation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Introduction_to_Algorithms

Those texts are useful for "programming in the small." [1] As you get closer to "programming in the large" (basically putting together non-trivial software systems), some good things to look at are:

* The "Gang of Four" book ("Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software") introduced the idea of design patterns to software engineering and provides a useful toolbox and vocabulary for thinking and talking about putting programs together.

* Joshua Bloch's "Effective Java" is an insightful set of heuristics on writing good code. Like with Gang of Four, you can get a lot out of this book by looking past the implementation language and thinking critically about the rationale behind the prescriptions in the book. I'd also recommend Bloch's talk, "How to Design a Good API and Why it Matters" (http://www.infoq.com/presentations/effective-api-design).

* A recent talk I found insightful is Rich Hickey's talk, "Simple Made Easy" (http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Simple-Made-Easy). In this talk, Hickey makes a strong argument for simplicity in software and the ramifications for the working programmer. I'd also recommend his talk, "Hammock Driven Development."

*I would highly recommend the "Destroy All Software" screencast series by Gary Bernhardt (https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/screencasts). These screencasts show an experienced developer working through small programming problems in a test driven style and explaining the reasoning behind his decisions as he goes along.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programming_in_the_large_and_pr...

_piuson Founder Failure Insurance: Pooling equity

Somewhat relevant: http://paulgraham.com/prcmc.html

_piuson Facebook Gifts

This is probably a good time to think about buying FB stock.

_piuson App.net developer incentive programme

It's the latter.

_piuson Facebook Users Report Seeing Old Private Messages Showing Up On Timelines

Nice troll.

_piuson Facebook Users Report Seeing Old Private Messages Showing Up On Timelines

I know that even though there was no bug here, this can be an alarming experience to see old posts surfaced like this. We're working on ways to make this interaction clearer so people aren't so surprised in the future.

You ought to be doing more than that, actually. Having been an early user of Facebook, I can assure you that people viewed wall-to-wall and other types of posts differently from how they view wall posts now. No one expected their data to be exposed this way, so for practical purposes, this is tantamount to a bug or data breach from the user perspective.

Disabling this immediately for old posts or allowing users to opt out would be the right thing to do.

_piuson Google for Entrepreneurs

You should talk with Mary Himinkool.

http://www.googleventures.com/team/mary-himinkool

_piuson Say Hello to Transit

This app is gorgeous, but I found the UX to be confusing for my common use case of routing a trip (from the IOS6 Maps app).

_piuson Ask HN: Life as optimization problem

You might enjoy Charlie Munger's writing and speeches. Here's an example: http://ycombinator.com/munger.html

_piuson Google rejects White House request to pull Mohammad film clip

I'm not sure why the parent is being downvoted, but it's consistent with the intelligence that's been released.

_piuson If You Want To Be The Donald Trump Of Startups, Learn To Code

Naive, me? You have got to be kidding.

I don't know you ... I didn't mean to insult you personally. Just engaging in vigorous debate, is all.

That said, I do think it's absurd to imply that having a NYC real estate mogul worth hundreds of millions of dollars for a father wasn't helpful to Donald in becoming, well, a NYC real estate mogul worth hundreds of millions of dollars. If that isn't naïve, it's ... something.

Trump's father did not bankroll him and certainly in no significant way.

For what it's worth, the NY Daily News obit of Fred Trump literally begins with:

Fred Trump, who amassed a fortune building middle-class houses and apartments in Brooklyn and Queens, then helped bankroll son Donald's glamorous foray into Manhattan real estate ....

_piuson If You Want To Be The Donald Trump Of Startups, Learn To Code

It's pretty naïve to think that Fred Trump and his money/influence were not a huge competitive advantage for Donald Trump, even if Fred didn't literally bankroll his projects.

_piuson Integrity and bullies with blogs

It's almost like I went out of my way to judicially use the word "some" to ensure that I avoided doing just that.

No. You said "some Apple users" not "some Christians." Definitely came off as gratuitously slamming a random religious group.

_piuson Five Best Office Chairs

Be sure to take a look at the Embody.

_piuson I did the scariest thing I can imagine: I resigned

Why the gratuitous, partisan threadcrapping? And with a debunked "quote" to boot?

_piuson I did the scariest thing I can imagine: I resigned

Except that the President didn't actually say that.

Moreover, that characterization has been widely debunked even by the likes of ABC, CBS, and NBC who rarely call bullshit on anything. Aren't you embarrassed to repeat that false talking point here, especially when it has zero to do with the OP?

_piuson BranchOut Falsifies Wall Street Journal Quote

Since looking it up then I suddenly come across the term a lot now which is weird because I had never heard that term before.

Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon. :)

_piuson BranchOut Falsifies Wall Street Journal Quote

Though I didn't find this confusing in context, it actually means both.

(cf. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability)

_piuson Introducing human.io

Why not both?

_piuson Keep a programming journal

As long as we're on this subject, I'd like to strongly encourage programmers to adopt a "pen-and-paper" approach to problem solving. Just like mentionned in the article, there are great benefits coming from actually writing down the problem.

Agreed. Also relevant to this topic is Rich Hickey's talk on "Hammock Driven Development": http://blip.tv/clojure/hammock-driven-development-4475586

_piuson Keep a programming journal

Here ya go: http://blog.evernote.com/2012/08/24/the-new-evernote-smart-n...

_piuson Strategies for finding an internship at a SF startup?

Six basic things to attend to right now:

1. Be confident. You don't need a college degree here.

2. Do you have a Github account? If not, get one and post some of your work there.

3. Set up a profile on AngelList's talent page: https://angel.co/talent

4. Enable serendipity: put your e-mail and website in your Hacker News profile. :)

5. Cruise Meetup.com and join some local groups that are for enthusiasts who do what you do (or want to do).

6. Try to find some hackathons you can attend for fun, networking, free food, and quick access to recruiters for local startups.

This guy sends out a weekly e-mail about Bay Area hackathons: http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/12767983-latest-up...

_piuson Twitter cuts off “find friends” access to Tumblr

You're both incorrect and needlessly condescending, so I'll correct you with your own uncivil tone.

I'm not sure if you're being willfully obtuse or you actually have been living under a rock all your life and thus never heard the ubiquitous use of "urban" as code for "minority," but suffice it to say, the person you're responding to probably did not single-handedly plant all of the references to the phenomenon that exist in the world. Look it up: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=urban

The fact that you can neither grasp the concept of a connotation nor fathom the idea of a word being used euphemistically does not make its real-world usage go away.

_piuson Ask HN: Accepting credit cards as freelancer?

I didn't realize that, good information to know.