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bdotdubon Aquamacs on OSX for Ruby on Rails Development? Yep, we’re going Emacs status.

Agreed. It also seems like he's switching editors for similarly misled reasons. Sure, trying it out because everyone seems to be switching is fine, and if you like it better sure, stick with it. But to switch editors "just because everyone else is doing it" seems uninformed and very "me too me too!"

bdotdubon Ask YC: Review my Website, Being Served from My Laptop Right Now - dev.trailbehind.com

I agree. There should be something indicating what this thing is, if nothing else a tag line that hints at what it is. I'm still not entirely sure what this is supposed to do.

bdotdubon Hacking your food supply

I mean, I agree this idea is great and very helpful. its definitely practical and useful but personally I just don't think its a 'hack'.

bdotdubon Hacking your food supply

You think so? I feel like most non-techie people use hacker to mean someone who breaks into your computer and puts viruses on it...

bdotdubon Hiring is hard

This is probably a nitpicky thing, but things you can't rate, you shouldn't rate.

Customer Service 9? (Never had to use it)

Why a 9?

bdotdubon Hacking your food supply

i feel like use of the word 'hack' has become a little bit too liberal

bdotdubon Announcing my free book on Vim

Any links or resources for this? I would much rather do that than using vimscript!

bdotdubon Wow What could cause a person to stoop so low

I'm not sure, but this title seems a little distasteful

bdotdubon Ask YC: Does music help programmer concentrate better?

Agreed. Recognizable lyrics is usually not good, unless its music that'll pump me up when I need it.

I've been trying out listening to some sort of white noise, ie. running water, static, etc., borrowing from the idea on this post: http://cameronmoll.com/archives/2008/11/showering_and_thinki...

It can get pretty noisy where I work, so something that distracts me so constantly and blocks the noise out helps me focus.

bdotdubon The Top Nine "Top 10" Lists on How Startups Should Handle the Downturn

Good lord... stop .... with the lists!

bdotdubon "Sequential programming is dead. So stop teaching it"

* do not teach languages that have concurrency models that really support it*

I don't know that I agree with that at all. My first college CS class taught Java, definitely supports concurrency. It's not Erlang-like concurrency, but concurrency nonetheless.

Theres a trend to start teaching Python as a first language, that supports it as well.

bdotdubon Why Google or Yahoo should buy Twitter.

yeah and it doesn't help they closed down invites for n months after they got acquired and wasted time porting their codebase over onto app engine

bdotdubon 4 Languages you should learn in 2009

Haha I thought Google has only one profitable product, AdSense :)

That said, a number of their high profile apps are in Python, most notably YouTube and App Engine.

bdotdubon Ask YC: To save GM or not?

I hear ya. Let them go bankrupt. I believe that there is no reason why we should be saving them because of their inability and refusal to adapt and change.

The fact that these US automakers have blocked legislation to make cars more fuel efficient because the profit margins are gigantic is ridiculous. They are wholly responsible for their failure while other car makers around the world are creating better cars and not, you know, going bankrupt.

Isn't Chapter 11 bankruptcy made exactly for this?

The trouble now is the loss of jobs and the effect it will have on our economy. I have some trouble with this, but I also feel like these people could be better used creating and working at companies that progress their products, and not produce the same SUV across all of their lackluster brands.

bdotdubon "Sequential programming is dead. So stop teaching it"

I don't see how share nothing concurrency solves the "problem" of learning about locks. While locks in a share nothing concurrency architecture is not a problem, it is in other concurrency setups (you know, like threads?)

bdotdubon "Sequential programming is dead. So stop teaching it"

I'm not sure how you can talk about concurrency without talking about locks ... which I think is very ambitious for new programmers.

I agree. I don't think it should start from CS1, but you can start with the Dining Philosophers problem in CS1 to introduce the ideas of locks and starvation.

bdotdubon 3 Flat-Screen Makers Plead Guilty to Trying to Keep Prices High

Now if only this could happen for the US cell phone SMS charges. Theres absolutely no reason why it costs 20 cents each way to send 140 7-byte characters.

bdotdubon Hot water freezes faster than cold water (Mpemba Effect)

Man, everything I did for my third grade science experiment was a lie. Sorry Ms. Mariano

bdotdubon ICombinator - Hacker News for the iPhone

Just added both. The icon nothing special, but its better nothing. If anyone has anything better, let me know :)

bdotdubon ICombinator - Hacker News for the iPhone

UPDATE: Hey everyone, I've updated iCombinator with a couple of things:

1. http://icombinator.net/ now forwards to http://www.icombinator.net/ GAE doesn't allow naked domains anymore

2. Added an icon for the web clip

3. Enabled standalone status (thanks doctyper!)

Anyone have better artistic skills for the icon? I'm open to suggestions :)

bdotdubon ICombinator - Hacker News for the iPhone

Awesome. Thanks for the suggestions. Will look into it when I get back home :)

bdotdubon ICombinator - Hacker News for the iPhone

Not a problem. Glad you enjoy it :)

bdotdubon ICombinator - Hacker News for the iPhone

I used iUI (http://code.google.com/p/iui/). There's a patch for smoother transitions somewhere in there that I've planning to put in.

bdotdubon ICombinator - Hacker News for the iPhone

Glad you like it! Does the screen transition a little choppy on yours?

bdotdubon ICombinator - Hacker News for the iPhone

Yup, working on the DNS stuff. Yeah, I just thought it'd be better on the eyes :)

bdotdubon ICombinator - Hacker News for the iPhone

Yup, I'm trying. It's on Google App engine and its a little tricky with the DNS stuff. Will try to figure that out tonight.

bdotdubon ICombinator - Hacker News for the iPhone

Hey cool, I created this :) How did you find it? It's still buggy. I was going to release it in a couple of weeks.

Thoughts? Suggestions?

bdotdubon Ask YC: How do you learn a new skill/framework/technology?

In my experience, especially with a project with a lot of code written for it already, its good to work through the code and learn it. You'll kinda kill two birds in one stone, learning the language/framework/technology, while catching up on the actual codebase.

Bite off a small piece of whats on the TODO list and try to implement it.

bdotdubon How to recruit developers from financial industry?

I think a cool idea is very compelling. Interesting problems will intruige and whet a good developers appetite. It also doesn't hurt to have a fun, laid back environment. Business casual gets old pretty fast.

Ultimately, I think it comes to down money. Unfortunately, finance pays a great deal, and its hard to turn it down when its in front of you. The more interesting the problem is, and the cooler the environment/people, the less money you'll need to offer to tear them away.

bdotdubon Ask YC: Feedback on my Mac Leopard App

Looks really cool :) I'm not in front of my mac right now, but looks promising, will definitely try out.

One thing about the website though, please please resize your screenshots into thumbnails!