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It's worth noting that the Stack Overflow platform was built with ASP.NET. http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2008/09/what-was-stack-overflo...

Alas, email address has become the online analog to the venerable SSN.

Of course; Dropbox uses the same mechanism.

It's a British usage

I once left a comment to the effect of

// This code is pretty dense so I recommend you read the documentation first

Some months later I found a follow-up comment left by a fellow dev:

// Or you could just give up now

Interestingly, INFP came out on top in a similar poll on StackOverflow. I wonder why? http://stackoverflow.com/questions/102702/are-people-with-ce...

If I'm not mistaken, that equals 10,000 times the volume spilled by the Exxon Valdez (250k barrels).

If I were BP, I would post online detailed specs of the physics and equipment in play, in tandem with a massive cash prize for an original idea leading to the successful plugging of the leak.

I dare say Microsoft has the best IDE out there.

By the same token, has anyone noticed how difficult it has become to remove friends? Removing them requires opening each profile one-by-one and looking for a small link at the bottom of the left-most column. Even producing a master list of friends in FB is nearly impossible.

I think my chuckling might be disturbing my office mate.

I am a wannabe luddite, but... if we all read HN offline, who will contribute? It's a living breathing thing, y'all!

A great and somewhat related article by David Brooks: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/30/opinion/30brooks.html

From the article:

"... economic and professional success exists on the surface of life, and that they emerge out of interpersonal relationships, which are much deeper and more important."

> My biggest gripe with modern programming is the sheer volume of arbitrary stuff I need to know. My current project has so far required me to know about Python, Django, Google App Engine and it's datastore, XHTML, CSS, JQuery, Javascript, JSON, and a clutch of XML schema, APIs and the like.

The situation seems ripe for a disruptive technology to emerge.

This much seems clear: the iPad will change how mobile workers work. Cops, postal workers, meter readers, field technicians & scientists, doctors, you name it.

Furthermore, it will disrupt numerous markets: portable DVD players, GPS units, PDAs, laptops, industry-specific bespoke mobile platforms (what is that thingy the UPS guy uses?), control systems, newspapers, magazines, you get the idea. Anything less would not be worth Apple's time.

There is rarely, if ever, one and only one reason for anything Apple does. Their holistic approach to product design is integral to the success of their products.

It also merits noting that hyperlinks did not exist at the time. Repetition and duplication accomplished this function instead.

I began using Dvorak because I heard it could be helpful in reducing RSI symptoms. It took several weeks to become proficient, so I don't recommend learning Dvorak with a big deadline looming. As a programmer, the most frustrating aspect of Dvorak is cut/copy/paste because the X/C/V keys are all over the place. I imagine this would be a problem for hardcore vi users too. The benefit is that my fingers travel less, so typing hurts less.

Lose the anonymity and get some advice from a good friend who knows you well. One good conversation like that is worth 1000 insightful but generic comments on HN. Bonus: a good friend will follow up.

I believe the problem stems from a misconception on both sides of the table. What passes for design in the software world is little more than what an architect might sketch on a napkin over dinner.

The code is the design. What other deliverable of the software development process contains the precision and specificity of a blueprint, which can then be followed to actually build (the double entendre is no coincidence) the thing?

A contractor equates to a compiler, albeit an expensive, time-consuming, and buggy one.

I don't think clients are so much to blame... it's just that software is so abstract and a house so, shall we say, concrete. We need to do a better job of helping clients understand and visualize what we are doing.

The best social networks are the ones you build yourself.

By the way, I'm proud to have originated the wikiHow guide cited in the article, nearly 3 years ago ;)

I agree. Would anyone care to share how they DO benefit from LinkedIn?

There's more to communication than being clear in your own head, which was the point. I've often failed to communicate by applying cold, rational logic where a little empathy and patience were really needed.

I once had a boss who was brilliant at learning other people's idiolect and then speaking it back to them. He never failed to get his point across.

I strongly agree that email should be taxed. However... 3c per email is a bit steep! The price should be just enough to upset the spammers' ROI calculation. If, on average, 1 in 100,000 spam messages results in an average $50 sale, the email tax needn't exceed $50 per 100,000 messages sent. That comes out to 0.0005c per message, which leaves plenty of change for that large caramel macchiato.

Labor has become so specialized that individual workers are too often disconnected from the final product or outcome. It's hard to remain motivated and engaged under such conditions.

I'm not an entrepreneurial hacker like so many on this site (wish I was). My job offers great opportunities to craft creative solutions to interesting technical problems, but I am far too disconnected from those who will ultimately benefit from my efforts. This disconnectedness really takes the interestingness out of solving interesting problems.

By the way, if anyone knows of a list of manual trades well suited to hackers, please post it here.

Recommended reading: Wendell Berry: _What Are People For?_

We can certainly look at the natural world for clues, but how would one use math or empiricism to get at God? Can you describe God mathematically in order to plug him into a formula? Of course this is absurd.

'Science' is just a fancy word for knowledge. We don't come to know our best friends, our mothers, our bosses, through the so-called scientific method. Nor do criminal investigators solve tough cases through exclusively empirical means. Would you ask a hung jury to just be scientific about things, and the answer will become clear?

Generally the Dutch like their system, and I think it works pretty well for them. But as the article suggests, it works because they have such a communal spirit and sense of shared values. Americans have that individualist spirit and we are a very heterogeneous group with little in common beyond our love of freedom to roam and make a buck.

Perhaps a small New England state could pull it off (and they do try) but to engineer a Dutch system from Washington is asking a bit much. The author perceptively observed that Dutch don't trust government any more than we do, but have a strong sense of communal responsibility to each other. That is only possible on a small scale, I think. After all, they only have 16m people on a tiny piece of land.

When I lived in Holland some years ago, one of locals pointed out this irony: "You Americans have only two political parties but can't agree on anything, while we Dutch have dozens but pretty much see eye-to-eye on everything."

Conceptually, styles and positioning are two different animals. We need a tripartite model of 1) content, 2) styles, and 3) layout/positioning. Unfortunately neither tables nor CSS handle positioning well in all cases, hence the perpetual argument.

Maybe I'm just ignorant, but I've found it necessary to use CSS, tables, & JavaScript (yes, all three) to produce acceptable dynamic layouts for web-based apps. This is unfortunate.