Hacker News Reader

gerggergon How to teach yourself to code in one month

Reading another learn to code in 1 month blog post, or just switching to 8 minute abs.

gerggergon Stop reading this blog and learn something

Here's my manifesto for learning:

    1)Be inspired to build something.
    2)Pick a tool you think might work.
    3)Build it.
    4a) Success? Go to 1.
    4b) Failure? Go to 1.

gerggergon ActiveRecord (and Rails) Considered Harmful

That's a poster child of convention over configuration. One huge benefit of which is maintainability.

gerggergon ActiveRecord (and Rails) Considered Harmful

It's a bummer this article starts out with a quote about Rails providing a bad OOP learning environment and then talks about the framework itself never touching on the learning of OOP again.

    "it's lead Rails developers to build huge, 
    monolithic models that are hard to test, 
    and violate SRP."

...Sounds like you need to structure your code better.

    "Have you ever seen a 200 line long 
    controller method? I have."

... What on earth are you talking about? This has nothing to do with rails. Structure your code better.

    "The whole idea of logic in templates 
    leads to all kinds of problems."

...Then don't put logic in your templates. Use helpers or logic-less templates.

    "MVC has served the web well... 
    ...But I think we're reaching its 
    limits"

...If the type of web app you want to make isn't best constructed with an mvc framework, don't use mvc. But honestly, I can't think of anyway to more blissfully implement a RESTfull webapp than with respond_to and resourceful routes.

    "This post is light on examples. 
    I want this to be the starting point 
    of a discussion"

...This exact discussion has been raging for years. Your only chance at gaining ground is through examples.

This brings me to: When is this post from? I feel like it's 5 years old and I've slightly been had.

gerggergon Dear MG Siegler, Are you seriously upset about your photo?

I think you guys are all thinking about this the wrong way. Siegler's post is about finding the lines that define acceptable content not caring about his exact photo.

Knowing what a company like google defines as inappropriate is important for being able to make informed choices about what products you should use and who you should be giving all your personal data to for free.

gerggergon India Sues Monsanto for . . . Biopiracy?

"Compared to old-school, trial-and-error cross pollination, GMO is like using a word processor instead of a manual typewriter."

I think that one shitty analogy holds everything the author is trying to convey. And it's the same lack of reason and actual argument with a blind approval of technology that any biochem company would love to fill your ears with.

gerggergon What future space combat would really look like

I meant something like a combo of AI with orders beamed every now and then.

gerggergon Should Wikipedia run ads that ask for money, or ads that make money?

Do we really need an explanation about why a public reference resource should be free from potential conflict of interest?

Capitalism isn't even involved. It's not about making money, it's about keeping the resource available and valuable. There are all kinds of "just do this and you'll make tons of money and no one will get hurt" ideas. But they truly don't matter. They all devalue the service. And frankly, it's kind of embarrassing for humanity that we can't modestly fund our most valuable information resource and that there are many complaints of wikipedia nagging its users.

Servers ain't free, developers ain't free, freedom ain't free. You use wikipedia? Buck up and spend $10. Think about how the free market isn't about companies finding money faucets. It's about voting with your dollars. So go out and fucking vote.

gerggergon Should Wikipedia run ads that ask for money, or ads that make money?

Wow, so Wikipedia is being greedy by not putting ads on their pages?

gerggergon What future space combat would really look like

I don't know if as smart as would be valuable against as low powered as. A computer would make decisions instantly, take much less resources, would die less easily, wouldn't get bored, wouldn't forget it's mission, would feel no sympathy, could travel farther, could stay in operation longer, could tactically self destruct without hesitation, would take no salary.

But that being said, I honestly can't think of a reason to ever have a space battle. You either want to blow up a planet or not. If so, you do it from an large distance with a humongous rock. If not, you land on the planet, or fly around their atmosphere and kill them the old fashioned way.

Maybe defensively you chase down an attacker to prevent future attacks? But then all you have is guided missiles and the speed of their ships. Not really a battle.

What I guess I'm saying is I can't ever see there being an attack position other than lets wait until there are no rocks in-between us and them.

gerggergon What future space combat would really look like

Why would space war ships be manned when we're already flying unmanned vehicles on earth? I think we've touched on a reality of intelligent species coexisting in the universe. Space war would consist of staying hidden and probably nothing else.

Plus, certainly people would be fighting over the planets or the technology (or maybe the amulet of Endor) so simply throwing comets and obliterating things wouldn't make much sense except maybe defensively or to help with a gennocide.

Terrestrial battles to take over usable land would probably continue to be the name of the game. Followed with setting up tonnes of drones and sensors for defense.

gerggergon GoDaddy no longer on SOPA supporter list.

Interesting that they've chosen to publish the list of current supporters directly in their news release. It's almost as if they're saying directly to the internet, "Leave us alone. Here are the people you should be angry at now."

Also some of those companies have already withdrawn support like the Graphic Artists Guild https://www.graphicartistsguild.org/sopa/

gerggergon 'TSA Arrests Me for Using the Fourth Amendment as a Weapon'

Lots of people commenting here seem to think that just because something appears to have no effect that it was a failure of an exercise and should have never happened. God forbid it cause a minor inconvenience to other humans.

PEOPLE HAVE TO STAND UP FOR WHAT THEY THINK IS RIGHT. Even if the effect it has seems insignificant. It doesn't matter if your an ass for doing it. It doesn't matter if some people think you were trying to cause trouble. If you don't stand up for what you personally think is right what do you stand up for?

Was she right? Were the officers wrong? That's for you to decide but it doesn't really matter. She had a conviction to do what she thought was right, and hopefully inspired others to do the same. And I can't imagine not respecting her for doing so.

If the only time you could complain about SOPA was in airport security only the brave and scared would complain about SOPA. And you can bet others would find them annoying.

gerggergon Kidsruby - Learn Ruby for kids

As an absolute first programming language it probably wouldn't be that bad with good instruction.

Trying to teach them KidsHaskell after they've become comfortable with KidsRuby on the other hand would probably be a bit more difficult.

gerggergon Time to end the war on drugs

"called a war on drug lords in Latin America"

This is exactly what I'm talking about. Humans fighting humans. That is a war. The War on Drugs also includes locking up 16 year olds for smoking pot in their own houses. Calling the general concept of drug control and prohibition a war generates this very confusion.

"claiming that it's a war on an abstract principle trivializes the very real combat"

Claiming those 16 year olds are part of the war is what trivializes it. Theres bloodshed in Latin America? Oh well that's just part of the war on drugs. Got caught with an ounce on you at a party? Oh thats just part of the war on drugs.

gerggergon Bitcoin's comeback: should Western Union be afraid?

'Cept it being replaced by something more useful.

gerggergon Time to end the war on drugs

This is always a fun page to look at when pondering The Land of the Free™

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_incarceration_ra...

And keep in mind, much of the prison system is privatized, many of those inmates work hard labor for far less than minimum wage, they have access to almost no real rehabilitation programs, and can't vote once they serve their time.

gerggergon Time to end the war on drugs

What he is saying is in support of your point. Those gangs are actually at war. They're fighting over money and control, directly enlisting soldiers and killing each other. Calling a prohibition "The War on Drugs" is a new speak tactic that not only takes the public eye off of real problems, but also waters down the impact the word WAR has.

This produces 2 less that awesome situations:

It is because of the prohibition called "The War on Drugs" that a real war fueled by drug money is out of control.

Because of the over use of the word, it's now harder to distinguish between what is a war and what is not a war.

TLDR: You can't have a war on a concept. It logically and literally makes no sense.

gerggergon Hacker News Restyled

looks like christmas colors to me.

gerggergon 2 Days Loss From Transfers Out Of Godaddy.com: 37,000

I seriously doubt that GoDaddy gives a shit about this.

If by this you mean literal outflow of domains, then I agree. But if you mean public relations impact their support of and then half ass retraction of support for SOPA then I disagree. I think the long term effects of all this calamity are something they very much care about.

gerggergon Ending the Infographic Plague

While it is certainly a problem that many info-graphics misrepresent information to skew public opinion or attract viewers, picking one aspect of a rather dense packet of information and calling it wrong is hardly a public service.

There's a real information problem being represented here but non constructive commentary isn't going to make it better.

Perhaps a more adequate title for the article would have been: "Be cautious of Infographics."

But then again I guess that doesn't misrepresent the content of the article enough to garner the viewer-ship they were looking for.

gerggergon GoDaddy supports SOPA, redditor proposes "Move your Domain Day"

Along those lines. It seems pretty important to do what you think is right, even if it's effect on convincing others of your correctness seems negligible.

gerggergon GoDaddy supports SOPA, redditor proposes "Move your Domain Day"

These are horrible reasons to not stand up for what you think is right.

gerggergon Bitcoin's comeback: should Western Union be afraid?

'cept for the clever marketing.

gerggergon Why We Haven’t Met Any Aliens

Kind of a bummer. I was expecting the article to be about the density of the universe and the speed of light and whatnot. Instead we've got alien porn to blame. Which, if I know anything about aliens, should be reaching us in the next decade or so.

...edit...

oooo, and I just thought of somethng. Or, they got so advanced that they realized they probably shouldn't alert the rest of the damn galaxy to their presence. Given how the human mind seems to be so accepting of things it doesn't understand.

gerggergon Bitcoin's comeback: should Western Union be afraid?

What's kind of crazy to me is that people don't think that if bitcoin really gets successful companies like paypal, visa, google etc. won't just come out with their own 'coins' backed by more user friendly software and possibly other incentives while maintaining anonymity.

gerggergon Smoke Screening: Journalist tests TSA

The 3 oz liquid rule was always a bit laughable to me too. Print 6 fake boarding passes, bring 6 friends, give them 3 ounces of whatever, take 21 ounces on the plane. Makes no sense to me.

And still I have to buy a special tiny tube of toothpaste for the safety of the nation.

gerggergon The Problem with Implicit Scoping in CoffeeScript

Considering we won't see this changed since the author has already closed the issue and expressed his satisfaction with the current rules this article should at least serve as a reminder for errors not to repeat with the next language someone designs.

It's open source. Why not fork it and get some like minded coders to change it with you?

gerggergon Dear Congress: It’s Not OK Not To Know How Search Engines Work, Either

Dear citizens. It's no longer OK to not participate in democracy. And I don't just mean vote. I mean spread information and encourage others to vote. In essence; Lobby.

Everyone who fancies themselves someone who cares about legislation should be lobbying their friends and followers to participate with them.

If you don't, corporations will continue to do it for you.

gerggergon Startup or Pokémon

Hmmm, makes sense. Pokemon names are roughly representative of some of their characteristics and are designed so that even children can remember all of them.

Now if only we could name historical events and pieces of legislation like we name pokemon and give them cool animal logos...