> For what it's worth, ASP.NET MVC is much, much less heavy than the original ASP.NET
And thats if you even use that... I use 2 open source libraries to build web apps - Nancy & Simple.Data - and they are both f'in amazing. This is about as "light" as you can be. I have a prezi presentation on my blog about using these libraries to build web apps for a few talks I gave at code conf's. (thinkdevcode.com)
I've been fascinated by all of the articles posted on here about tDCS, so I definitely signed up. I'm willing to pay $99 for a device that's probably worth $10 in parts, so long as its easy to use, easy to assemble, and works. Besides, if it works, I wouldn't mind starting my own business selling pre-built tDCS machines.
I did this as well a couple months ago. The keyword "dropbox" got 99% of the clicks at around the same cost as you $0.13 cpc. I wound up spending $65 on ads (with no voucher sadly) and now have 16GB of free space.
This project may exceed the previous highest donation record on kickstarter, which that record was awarded yesterday to that iPhone dock. Kickstarter is really starting to make some money I see.
> Now just think how awesome you would be if you had learned how to code when you were seven years old.
I started learning at 8 so another year wouldnt've done much.
In regards to the program this is really cool. I've been trying to teach my younger brother how to code to help him in his math classes at school. If you can break a math problem down far enough to be able to build a calculator for it, you must understand it, which is in fact why I started to learn to code so young.
Do you really want to be subjected to coding on a whiteboard?
Edit: Instead of down-voting, why don't you explain to me why you would want to code on a whiteboard when it's completely pointless. Might as well throw in some of those pointless questions like why are manholes round?
Whiteboard coding is good because interview questions are not about specific 100% solutions to complex real-world problems like programming usually is. Interview questions are about general problems whose solutions will fit nicely onto a whiteboard. You lose the ability to get realtime syntax highlighting, but you gain the ability to have multiple trains of thought, the ability to draw diagrams and arbitrary symbols, and the ability to point at things as you explain your thoughts to the interviewer. Do you really enjoy it when someone comes over to your laptop to ask you a question about code? Now imagine that for four hours in a row. That's what a laptop interview would be like.
When I was interviewing at Google, someone asked me a question that required me to remember some math. I did not remember it, but I knew how to derive the answer I needed. So I went to another whiteboard, talked my way through the sub-problem while drawing some math symbols, and then transferred the answer back to the original problem, halfway completed on a different whiteboard. Try doing that while hunched over your laptop.
I agree that this process is nothing like the job you're interviewing for. That's because it's an interview, not the job. We try to get a picture of who you are and what you know in a few hours, and that's just not enough time to let you loose with a laptop to see how you approach real-world problems. Not to mention, real world problems don't often involve much "computer science" knowledge. But you still need to know that so you can confidently attack problems that venture into that area.
And largely, the process works. There are very few programmers at Google that can't program. If I have an idea, I can explain it to pretty much anyone, and get good feedback. At other jobs I've had, I've had to explain thing like arrays to coworkers. That means I'm not going to get any feedback on my complex idea, and that sucks. Google is not like that, because we filter those people out at the interview.
Not too long ago I would have agreed with you, but I've recently changed my mind. Coding on a whiteboard is not completely useless:
1. It's a good indicator of how much you know for simple problems.
A few weeks ago I started helping a friend with a particular language and framework. He claimed to know it, having read several books on it. So I said great, go to the board and write a function that adds two numbers together. And he couldn't do it. Who knows, maybe he could have done it on a computer? Maybe he would have Google'd it quickly, or relied on code autocompletion, or the muscle memory from his fingers typing it, etc. But that's not what I wanted to know. Anyone who's written thousands of functions in a particular language could write a simple one like this on a wall, using paint, while hanging upside down. His inability to do so told me: he is not well-versed in this language. PERIOD.
2. You can practice.
"So what", you protest. "Google isn't going to ask simple problems. They'll ask hard ones." And maybe they will. And maybe having to solve it in a foreign way really will fuck you up. But my question to you is: If you know you're interviewing at Google soon, why the hell would you allow whiteboard coding to remain foreign to you? If you suck with whiteboards and you care at all about getting the job, then buy one and practice solving problems on it. Why would Google want someone who doesn't care enough to prepare for their interview? It's not that hard of a skill to pick up. And I daresay it will make you a better, easier-to-communicate-with programmer.
If there was one thing I could tell all applicants at Google, it's to read up on the process, and practice. There is a huge amount of information out there[1]. I feel sad interviewing really smart, capable people who could have breezed through with just a few hours of review and practice.
I imagine it must feel horrible interviewing smart people who would do great at work but whom you are unable to hire due to arbitrary hoops set up by your own company.
> 1. It's a good indicator of how much you know for simple problems.
Google doesn't solve simple problems.
> 2. You can practice.
Maybe if the interviewee was still in college they could "practice" coding on a whiteboard, but considering they may have other obligations like family and work they probably won't have time to practice such a pointless skill.
Personally, I wouldn't need to practice in the first place as I interview extremely well and could easily code on a whiteboard, I just find it antiquated and pointless to do so which was the reason for my comment - not because I am bad at it.
Yes, but that doesn't mean you don't need to know how to solve them. If you can't solve simple stuff, you won't be able to solve hard stuff that depends on knowing the simple stuff cold.
they may have other obligations like family
and work they probably won't have time to
practice such a pointless skill.
Yes, that's a possibility. But once again, if you're Google, you're getting 10s of thousands of applications a week. You can afford to set the bar as high as possible. Every Google employee I know regularly works 10+ hour days there, and sometimes does work at home, too. If you have two applicants of similar skill, but one has more free time to devote to your company, it's obvious who you'll prefer.
I work at Google. We write (diagrams and code) on whiteboards on a regular basis. We don't ask you to do it during an interview because we're sadists, we ask you to do it during an interview because working here, you will be doing it in the course of your ordinary work.
Beyond that, someone who's able to code on a whiteboard will a fortiori be able to code with a keyboard and editor, and will typically code better with a keyboard and editor than someone who relies on the keyboard and editor to be able to code.
I worked at google for four months. That wasn't my experience at all. I ended up on a team that despite working in the same office, barely spoke with each other, rarely ate lunch together, lost 1 member for each month I was there, and I didn't even have a 1 on 1 with my manager until 3 months in when I asked him why he was having 1 on 1s with everyone else, but not me. It was the singularly most soul-killing work environment I've ever encountered. What is this strange concept of whiteboard coding and collaboration of which you speak?
The relevant job skill here would have been the willingness to do anything for the great pay and food. I wasn't and I had other employment options I chose after it became clear I would not be allowed to jump to another project anytime soon.
I love working at the whiteboard -- my best ideas come while working at the whiteboard. But writing code on a whiteboard during an interview bears little resemblance to the code/diagrams written on a board during day-to-day work.
Day-to-day work is necessarily collaborative and productive... Whereas when at the board in an interview one person knows the "answer" and is across the table testing the other. It's a completely different set of pressures and requires different skill.
Further, I must have one of those faces people pity because its often that when I end up at the whiteboard the interviewer wants to "help" me if I don't spout off the answer immediately (I've learned to at least start talking so they will give me a second to think). This sometimes entails them trying to lead me down a path which is not the way I would have approached the problem. I'm confused, they think I'm an idiot, now I'm flustered, could this interview go any worse?
I've learned to politely ask for a second to consider and usually that completely solves the problem. I've been successful in technical interviews -- but the idea that it's the same thing as when working out hard problems with team members seems a little silly?
... will typically code better with a keyboard and
editor than someone who relies on the keyboard
and editor to be able to code
The whiteboard sucks for problems for which you either don't know the solution, or for which you know the solution intuitively, but can't reproduce it line by line in successive order. In such cases people go back and forth, adding new functionality or correcting the existing lines to fit a new condition ... and this happens a lot for recursive algorithms. For instance I cannot reproduce the in-place QuickSort line by line, but I can work it out by evolving it from the basic idea, a process that takes a couple of minutes and a lot of corrections.
So you're basically encouraging people that rote-learn solutions and that line above is bullshit.
Leave room between the lines so you can add stuff. Mark it up as you evolve it. If you need to, you can rewrite the clean version on another part of the board. Better yet is if you can figure it out in your head before you start writing, becaus that will definitely make you a better coder.
> Beyond that, someone who's able to code on a whiteboard will a fortiori be able to code with a keyboard and editor, and will typically code better with a keyboard and editor than someone who relies on the keyboard and editor to be able to code.
That is very subjective and I'd love to see some evidence of this.
Once upon a time I was working with a psychologist who wanted me to do a take-home exercise. Knowing that I was a software developer and an excellent typist, she insisted that I perform the exercise while writing by hand. She said that it was because I would be using a different part of my brain when handwriting than if I were typing.
Which brings us back to the whiteboard interview. I ask: If I am correctly interpreting what the psychologist said, why force interview candidates to use their brains differently than they normally would while coding?
I can't downvote, but I fail to see what's the problem with "coding" on a whiteboard and why people are stressing out over it. When I interview people I ask them to write code on the piece of paper. All I'm looking for is a presence of a half-decent idea and them not using things like strlen() when iterating through a C-string in their doodles. The rest we will talk over. I never expect polished code on the whiteboard, it's always a starting point for a conversation that follows.
Yeah, it's just to see if a person understands that some basic pointer operations and that regular strings in C are "special" because of their \0 at the end.
do employers really expect candidates to right syntax accurate code on a whiteboard? I just always assumed that pseudo-code was appropriate. There are a lot of key strokes that my fingers know but my brain doesn't. It's very easy to get confused and thrown off your game.
do employers really expect candidates to right syntax accurate code on a whiteboard?
Yes they do. I've still got my Google 'Hire Squad' t-shirt somewhere (when you get trained on how to do interviews at Google you used to get a t-shirt) And they expect the interviewer to transcribe what you write on the white board into your feedback so that the hiring committee can read your notes and know what you're talking about.
You see the part you've missed here is that at Google, the person doing the interviewing has nothing at all with the person deciding if you should be hired. They interview you, using the techniques they were trained to use, they transcribe the whole thing like a court reporter, adding what color they can and a float between 0 and 4 (0 is 'run way', 4 is 'walks on water') And the then that goes into a 'packet' which gets sent to a hiring commitee where a different bunch of people read it (and the notes of everyone else) and they they decide if you are going to move forward in the process.
Writing syntax accurate code on the white board is always a plus. Although one candidate on seeing the dozen different color markers, wrote both syntax accurate and colorized code. That was good for a chuckle (and strangely I think it got them points in the committee).
And the then that goes into a 'packet' which gets sent to a hiring commitee where a different bunch of people read it (and the notes of everyone else) and they they decide if you are going to move forward in the process.
Doesn't most of the personality of the person get lost in this setup? I mean, hiring people purely on technical merits may sound fine, but I'm not sure if that makes for a very pleasant working environment.
Compatibility with Google culture is something that the interviewers are trained to look for. You can't do an interview until you've worked at Google for more than 6 months, for this reason.
I think the whole hiring committee removes a lot of biases that people may have and the end result, in my opinion, is a workplace that's a lot more diverse than any other I've been at.
I don't necessarily expect candidates to have perfect syntax for a given language. (there's a presumption that they would be able to look up correct syntax in practice) At the same time, if you're unable to express your ideas in something close to real code, it is a signal that you're not sufficiently familiar with the language you chose.
Excepting declaring funky things like arrays of pointers to functions in C, what competent developer doesn't know the syntax to his or her own best 2 or 3 languages?
There is a difference between forgetting to put a semicolon at the end of a line (totally harmless on a whiteboard interview), and not knowing that semicolons end statements in C.
Of course, not knowing say, part of the standard library, say the semantics of rand(), without a man page or Google search is much more excusable.
OR you can hand the applicants a laptop and allow them to write code, which is what they are going to be doing on the job presumably. or does Google develop their applications on whiteboards now? I'm thinking a Minority Report-esque digital screen that programmers drag/drop with voice activation to "code".
In all seriousness, I really don't get whiteboarding in interviews.
For whiteboard coding, I've always given interviewees their choice of programming language and have said, "Don't worry about syntax." For me it's more about how you approach the problem than whether you can spell correctly.
I code in a variety of languages and every time I use .indexOf(), I can't remember if it's (needle, haystack) or (haystack, needle). Of course, my IDE shows me the correct way and I go with it in 0.3 seconds.
On a whiteboard, if I were marked down for getting that the "wrong", I don't think I'd like to work for those kind of people anyway. I have no interest in memorizing the exact syntax of every standard library call in every language. When I can look it up almost instantaneously, my mental efforts are best spent elsewhere.
I think there is a difference between if you know the API the language provides and if you know the syntax of the language.
I don't care if they can't remember order of parameters, or really even the name of the methods. But if you can't write syntactically correct code without an IDE, it seems like a problem.
Probably depends on the employer. I've always asked people to write actual code, rather than pseudo-code, because I've found that a lot of pseudo-code I've gotten doesn't make sense or majorly glosses over things. (Think "and then a miracle occurs".)
But I personally wouldn't dock a person if they screwed up the syntax on a whiteboard coding interview - I really use it more as a way to extend the conversation. I do have the bad habit of correcting syntax, though, because I find it too distracting once I see it.
Coding syntactically correct code on a whiteboard is a waste of time. Drawing pictures, diagrams, and pseudocode while trying to solve a problem with others is a great way to get collaborative work done.
Im sure as hackers we could figure out how to make a device such as this, but the idea I was alluding to would be to make a device that is very cheap and very easy to use (like a hat you put on for 30 minutes and turn on by pushing a button, with an auto off after the time is up)
Sure, I was just pointing out that the actual technology is something that already isn't terribly expensive or hard to build. That doesn't mean there isn't an opportunity for somebody though.
If anything, the bigger problem than the price to build the device would probably be the regulatory stuff. I mean, you just know that the government will immediately declare something like this to be a "medical device" and insist on an elaborate, byzantine, corrupt, kafkaesque, bureaucratic nightmare of a regulatory process to get something like this approved.
I'm guessing that the HN community would think supporting a lot of safety and regulatory hoops for this is meddling statism?
I can't help but imagine all the cranks who'd sell smartness treatments and do permanent damage to the brain... homeopathy but with a chance of actual damage.
> I started the year with almost nothing and ended with a used van, a new utility trailer, less debt, fully paid bills and money left to take the family to Hawaii.
More context. Paid cash for the van and the utility trailer. Paid off a good chunk of debt on top of those big purchases and didn't use credit at all this past year.
Hawaii: We used to live here, and have spent the past few years saving for this trip. We came to see friends that we haven't seen in 4 years. They are meeting two of our children for the first time. Airfare: $400/ticket round trip purchased months ago at the lowest price of the year. Van: Our friends are letting us use their van for free for all 16 days. We are staying at three friends houses while we are here, also free. Our expenses while here are food and gas. Everything else we are doing here is free, surfing, swimming, snorkeling, hiking, going to the lava etc. The entire trip is costing us less than $2,500 for our family of 6 to fly to Hawaii and spend 16 days with our friends. I've saved money money on just about everything. I'm not sure it's possible for this trip to have cost any less than it has. We valued this trip over paying off a chunk of our debt for many reasons. Having money and being debt free is important to us, but recognizing that being debt free is a few more years out, we saved and paid cash for the trip. The rest, sunshine, body boarding and time with friends is worth a lot more to us than the money.
Why should it be your highest priority? As long as you're not in over your head and are paying it off on schedule, all you lose is a little future money to interest payments. If what you get by not paying it off faster is sufficiently valuable to you, it might very well be a good bargain.
I mean, do you really think that as soon as you buy a house (which pretty much anyone not absurdly rich — and many who are — will take on debt to do), you must immediately neglect your family and pursue money at all costs? That hardly seems like a tenable position. People who have grave problems with debt have those problems not because debt is inherently a grave problem, but because they took on debt they couldn't handle.
Your absolutely correct that we all have different perceptions of "extravagance"
I think a vacation to hawaii from portland for a family of four while still in debt is clearly extravagant, and unaffordable. But's thats just my opinion, and I dont expect you, or anyone else, to share it.
Debt shouldn't be seen as ok to have but I think that is sadly how most Americans view it now.
Depends on whether the Portland in question is in Maine or Oregon, and whether the trip was an extravagant package or little more than a cheap-deal flight and minimal accommodations. At a glance http://www.cheapflights.com/flights-to-hawaii/portland-OR/ shows a flight package of $1548 for 4. Camping, hostels, or - here's a thought - Craigslist might open some cheap options.
The problem isn't debt but debts that aren't paid back. Debt itself serves a useful purpose. As long as he's able to service his debts under the terms agreed upon, the rest of his money is his to use as he pleases. I don't think we know enough about his finances, like the cost of the trip, to be able to say that the trip was clearly unaffordable.
If someone pays their debts according to the pre-agreed schedule (e.g. meets the mortgage payment every month), there's absolutely no reason to make moral judgments on how they spend the rest of their cash.
I think you're being a bit harsh and missing something here. Creating a wonderful vacation and memories for your family is priceless. And as seems to be the case, he is paying off his debt on a schedule and is not over his head. I'm pretty happy for him.
It might not be the most logical thing to do, but it's not like it's necessarily an immoral thing to do (as "Let's rephrase your statement: 'Paying back on things you've already purchased...'" implies).
It's one thing if the money is borrowed from a friend or family member (as a charity or with extremely below market interest rates). But the 2.43 trillion dollars of debt that you cite is almost entirely with institutions which make a profit off of debt. [not bashing creditors]
It probably isn't even illogical. He makes money in a way that heavily depends on him--his morale and how much work he is willing to put in. I would not be surprised if going on a vacation actually motivated him enough to be a good deal from even a purely fiscal perspective.
Oh yeah, I can totally see that being the case as well. I almost shared a story in my last comment about a guy I knew who, though constantly struggling to stay afloat (most likely below poverty with a wife and three kids), would do his best to buy something nice for his wife (something small, but thoughtful) and sometimes rent a movie that they could all watch when he got home from work.
My dad pointed out "Your family's wellbeing includes their morale."
Either way, only Ryan (and possibly his accountant [probably his wife]) can make that call.
I have a mortgage, yet go on vacation and buy nice stuff. Debt is OK if used wisely, paid wisely, and does not impose economic jeopardy (i.e.: net assets vs. net debt).
Maybe he was given the trip to Hawaii for free or got it at an amazing deal, plus he said he's doing deals in Hawaii on vacation so he'll probably have a good portion of the trip paid of from his working vacation. Plus you can't measure the boost in happiness and a new perspective of the world that this trip to Hawaii will have on his business.
He might see ideas and get new perspectives on things while on vacation in a new land that he otherwise would not get while at home in work only mentality.
Another philosopher discussing, with all of his empirical wisdom, what we can and cannot do in life... Who are they to say what is possible? Does this person understand and is up to the latest on every different branch of science? Something very few, if any, can do.
Philosophers are good at one thing, and one thing only: Exclaiming grandiose statements to make themselves appear intelligent so people take them seriously.
It's a wasted mind - what could he have done had he went into pharmacology, biology, technology, physics, something concrete that is pushing our species into the future, not hold it back with thoughts.
And thats if you even use that... I use 2 open source libraries to build web apps - Nancy & Simple.Data - and they are both f'in amazing. This is about as "light" as you can be. I have a prezi presentation on my blog about using these libraries to build web apps for a few talks I gave at code conf's. (thinkdevcode.com)