pcmonk

I think, though, that there's enough common ground between the various domain-specific tree editors that some kind of useful intersection exists. Then the domain-specific tree editors would simply be plugins.

The other tools have promise as well.

It's an interesting project, though, I'll try to check it out and see what I can learn from it.

On the other hand, I'm a Lisp guy, and I use vim.

I think most people here realize that the content here is not simply whatever gets the most upvotes, there are fairly complicated rules and penalties that get applied (many of them automatically). If you want democracy, there are plenty of other venues for it. The value in HN is that the quality of content is high, and the moderation is a large reason for that.

I challenge you to show me another site that has as good a combination of quality articles and quality comments. I'm sure improvements can be made, and if you're paying any attention you'll note that improvements are being made (see the recent publication of the name of the main moderator so that we can ask him questions).

What HN is doing works. If you've got a better idea, show it to me.

It's like this all the time in math papers. It often seems in the end like the ideas themselves are fairly straightforward, and it shouldn't have taken that long to understand. I think, though, that if you actually sat down and tried to explain it in more intuitive terms, you'd find that you might not be able to. True, you could find a way to convey the general idea, but without the technical details, (1) while non-mathematicians may get a surface-level understanding faster, even mathematicians will not grasp the technical aspects, and (2) it will be very hard for anyone to extend your work or for anyone to apply it to another situation, so it will only be applied in the specific contexts that you explained it in.

Language isn't built to communicate math, so doing so effectively will be either difficult to understand or imprecise. Many people claim that it would be easy to explain deep math concepts with "a couple of block diagrams and a few short paragraphs"s, but I'd challenge them to write a textbook on abstract algebra, or topology, or something like that before they make that claim.

But seriously, I don't think I've ever heard of using M for meters.

Try constructing an experiment where one side answers a predetermined question, and you'll notice that you can't.

As a CS book, it teaches a lot of good CS concepts and techniques very thoroughly, and it analyzes the performance of algorithms very precisely. You'll not only use Big O notation, but you'll also figure out some of the constants. So, if your interest is in computer science proper, then this is a great introductory book.

On the other hand, if your goal is to be able to write programs, then definitely jump into using a language. Go find a book on a language and just start using the language to solve problems. After you get past the basics of programming, you'll start to see all the applications to math (especially discrete math). I've heard Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs is a good book, and I plan to read it next semester, so maybe that's a good one for you. It uses Scheme (a Lisp) as the programming language, so the parallels with math are very clear.

For the areas of math that I know well, the content is exactly what I would expect -- i.e. it's exactly what I would say to my non-math friends if they asked me what I was doing in, for example, my graph theory class.

Incidentally, the same applies to the meaning as well: In English, we use guerrilla as an adjective, and it can apply to either the war or the soldiers ("guerrillero", if you prefer). Adjectives can also be used substantively, so "guerrilla" on its own is usually used to mean a guerrila soldier. I recognize this is different from its usage in Spanish.

I know that utility outages can be a problem, but I don't think it'll usually be that much of an issue. Guatemala has beautiful weather all year round (particularly the City; even high end houses rarely have air conditioning unless they're down near one of the oceans).

I understand not being able to surround myself with like-minded people. Honestly, though, I haven't really done that even in the States. If I moved to SF, then I might be able to do that kind of thing, but I'm not sure how important that would be.

Okay, so I would be physically distant from the early adopters. Would this be a similar problem for me if I were to stay where I am (Phoenix)? We have a small startup community, but nothing like the Valley.

At any rate, I'll probably finish my degree before I do a startup.

However, Bret's stuff doesn't exist, and there's a reason for that: it's really hard. What these guys are doing is trying to make something that actually works, and it looks like they're doing a pretty decent job of it. The fact that it integrates with all the normal tools (in particular, LaTeX) makes me inclined to overlook it's imperfections.