20 ms·

Ask HN: Share a gem. Teach me and you.

• jason_tko 16y ago
  Great thread. Heres mine : Look after your mentors. Anyone who takes time to give you guidance, help or advice, go far out of your way to display your appreciation. If they have children, buy them presents. If they like wine, ask a wine expert for help, and buy them a great bottle of wine. People so rarely do this that you will absolutely make their day.
  • cmos 16y ago
    I second this. Strongly. I had 2 amazing mentors in high school who supported me in rather extreme ways. After college I had started a company making high end stereo equipment, using a lot of what I had learned from them. 10 years after I graduated high school I had dinner with them and gave them each one of my products, telling them how much they had influenced my life and how thankful I was. A week later one of them died suddenly. So don't waste time in doing this.
• paulgb 16y ago
  "Do the hard thing." I think it was in one of pg's essays that I read this a few years ago and it's stuck with me. I've made a few life decisions based on it and have had no regrets so far.
  • mr_twj 16y ago
    "Where there's muck there's brass."
• ambulatorybird 16y ago
  Fluency with box and pointer diagrams and the environment model of computation (from chapters 2 & 3 of SICP) will allow you to understand the workings of any applicative order programming language.
• bld 16y ago
  I find that my idea of things is usually my biggest impediment to exploring their potential. When I let go of my idea of myself, others, or anything else, a path (forwards, backwards, or sideways) emerges naturally.
• Rickasaurus 16y ago
  Writing books and giving talks is really easy. It's just that most don't have the guts to put themselves out there. Or more generally: you can stand out by doing what others are afraid to do.
• zyfo 16y ago
  “Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan "press on" has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race” - Calvin Coolidge
• lionhearted 16y ago
  Mine: Occasionally buy a can of compressed air and a soft cloth to clean up your computer. The few dollars will keep your expensive kit running in better condition and lasting longer.
• Swizec 16y ago
  Whiteboards are always a good investment.
  • pcarmichael 16y ago
    To add to this, use shower board from a hardware store. The cost is usually <$20 for a 4'x8' sheet. The quality varies but the price is hard to beat.
    • jacquesm 16y ago
      Or, alternatively, place 4 mm thick window pane glass over your walls, or the much cheaper cellophane.
• br41n 16y ago
  Back everything up. Now.
  • arethuza 16y ago
    Occasionally try restoring your backups and check that the really important stuff is still in a usable form.
    • trafficlight 16y ago
      Also, every few months take a few minutes and make sure that you really are backing up what you need. I had a client a few weeks ago that had a drive failure. We went to restore from his offsite backup copy and found that some of the files he needed weren't being backed up. A quick review of the backup job would have caught this.
      • entreprenewb 16y ago
        And conversely, make sure you aren't backing up what you don't need.
  • lionhearted 16y ago
    Amen! You only know how painful this is if you've something very important. Not-backing-up cost me, shoot I don't know, at least $4,000 once, and probably more than that. Also, answer this question: If your home burns down, will your backup still work? I like to have one or two hard copies, and one cloud copy of the most important things.
• SandB0x 16y ago
  If the coefficients of a polynomial add to zero, then (x-1) is a factor. For example, let's try and factorise f(x) = 2x^3 + 9x^2 + 4x - 15 What happens if we set x = 1? Then f(1) = 2 + 9 + 4 - 15 = 0, so (x-1) must be a factor. It's much easier to get f(x) = (x - 1)(2x^2 + 11x + 15) = (x - 1)(x + 3)(2x + 5) if you know one of the factors in advance. This was useful at school, at least. Not so much now. * See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polynomial_remainder_theorem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polynomial_remainder_theorem
  • deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
  • scorpion032 16y ago
    As a corollary, on the same lines of thinking, If the co-efficients of the odd powers and the even powers are equal, then (x+1) is a factor.
  • runjake 16y ago
    Either somebody picked up the telephone while you were online typing this out, or I need to take more math classes.
  • jtheory 16y ago
    Surely one of you hackers can offer us a practical application for any nifty math tricks on display in these comments. I'm, ah, coming up blank on this one for now.
• Dilpil 16y ago
  Mentally accept that bugs with your code are your fault. You'll end up fixing them faster.
  • mian2zi3 16y ago
    Excellent advice. I'd go one step further: accept the problems in your life are your fault (responsibility). You'll end up fixing them faster.
    • jacquesm 16y ago
      The opposite of that is the root of a lot of trouble in this world.
    • kristofferR 16y ago
      If you could kick the person in the pants responsible for most of your trouble, you wouldn't sit for a month. - Theodore Roosevelt
  • InclinedPlane 16y ago
    Better yet: start calling "bugs" defects. Also, accept that humans are imperfect and no code (whether yours or another's) will be defect-free. Fixing is more important than blaming.
• rokamic 16y ago
  Sometimes we get stuck, writer's block kicks in. Do yourself a favor, get up and go do something else. The magic elves will come and fix whatever you were stuck on, I promise.
• Towle_ 16y ago
  A productivity gem from Jerry Seinfeld, heavily paraphrased. For anything you wish you were doing every day, like working out or practicing violin or working on your startup: Get a big, yearlong calendar and put it on a wall in your bedroom. Every day you complete your task, mark a big, red "X". Eventually, you'll build up a big string of X's and won't want to break it. That incentive will push you more than you think.
  • prawn 16y ago
    And before everyone gets too excited, it's been created as a web-app already a few times!
    • snitko 16y ago
      Could you share a link?
      • djm 16y ago
        here it is: http://dontbreakthechain.com/ http://dontbreakthechain.com/
      • harscoat 16y ago
        https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/hlkkjgfbfgdcdjnddamlmgbipgbhgppk https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/hlkkjgfbfgdcdjnd...
      • telemachos 16y ago
        If you store code on Github, you can also enroll in a Seinfeld tracker there: http://calendaraboutnothing.com/ http://calendaraboutnothing.com/ I'm having a decent month: http://calendaraboutnothing.com/~telemachus http://calendaraboutnothing.com/~telemachus
      • slig 16y ago
        Also, joesgoals.com
      • irondavycole 16y ago
• tome 16y ago
  Use zsh. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zsh http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zsh
• taz 16y ago
  there's at least one show-stopping bug lurking somewhere in your code.
• Sirupsen 16y ago
  Get into testing.
• taz 16y ago
  jfdi. or its cousin: maybe, but do it anyway.
• MindTwister 16y ago
  Some people, when confronted with a problem, think “I know, I'll use regular expressions.” Now they have two problems, fortunately, one solves the other.
  • alinajaf 16y ago
    My favourite variation: Some people, when confronted with a problem, think “I know, I'll use regular expressions.” Now they have three problems, the original problem, the regular expression, and dealing with the annoying developer who isn't that good at simple regular expressions who will repeat this phrase everytime he comes across a regex in any codebase rather than actually figure out how they work.
• shadchnev 16y ago
  Never forget that success if always a collective effort, so invest your time and energy in relationships with others.
• isnoteasy 16y ago
  To be a kind, you only need one crown. That is in in real life the magic moments are created from routine days and they shine because they are the exception, never the rule. So don't coin many gems or you will end up seeing them as simple rocks.
• arethuza 16y ago
  A deal, particularly an investment, isn't done until the money is in your bank account.
  • acangiano 16y ago
    And if you use PayPal, it's even worse than that.
  • vessenes 16y ago
    This is excellent advice. I usually mentally add on (and cleared transferring to another account.)
  • apower 16y ago
    And after tax paid.
  • staunch 16y ago
    "Birds fly; fish swim; deals fall through." http://www.paulgraham.com/startupfunding.html http://www.paulgraham.com/startupfunding.html
• bajsejohannes 16y ago
  Read the spec before programming. (This might seem obvious, but I find that it is tempting to "just see if I can get it to work" before I read the documentation. I always end up with worse code than when I take the time to read up on the technology. A similar advice is The Pragmatic Programmer's "Don't program by coincidence")
• chegra 16y ago
  You only need one. You only need one business venture to work right to be considered successful.
  • tiffani 16y ago
    I first heard this from Mark Cuban wayy back in '05. http://blogmaverick.com/2005/05/30/success-and-motivation-you-only-have-to-be-right-once/ http://blogmaverick.com/2005/05/30/success-and-motivation-yo...
    • chegra 16y ago
      Nice read, I have written a post about it: http://chegra.posterous.com/you-only-need-one http://chegra.posterous.com/you-only-need-one
  • huhtenberg 16y ago
    Once - you are lucky, twice - you are good.
    • kristofferR 16y ago
      Success is simply a matter of luck. Ask any failure. - Earl Wilson
• ivenkys 16y ago
  Mine : Remember a pay cheque goes a long way in alleviating the horrors of a corporate job. Not everyone can afford to be a struggling hacker waiting for the big pay-off.
  • Tichy 16y ago
    Goes a long way where?
    • ivenkys 16y ago
      Sitting in your day-job having to use (a very flaky) ClearCase instance working on a monster code base that has no tests and has a non-deterministic build process. Think of the pay-cheque at the end of the month. Get paid, save/invest properly and use your evenings and weekends to work on "that" project. Course, this is my personal motivational technique.
• BruceJillis 16y ago
  For a constant growth rate of r%, the formula for the doubling time Td is given by log(2)/log(1 + r/100) which can be simplified to approximatly 70/r. * See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_72 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_72 for more info and background/variations that improve on accuracy in certain situations.
• jacquesm 16y ago
  Not sure if it is a 'gem' but it certainly is useful: tail -10000 somelogfile | cut -d ' ' -f 1 | sort | uniq -c | sort -n | tail Quick one liner to get a fix on who is currently messing with your server in ways that are 'counter-productive', also a nice way to show newcomers to unix how you can string together existing unix commands to create new ones on the fly. As for start-up advice that would fit in one line: A practical, bug ridden, bad implementation of something trumps a theoretical, perfect implementation of the same thing.
  • Confusion 16y ago
    To generalize that a bit: learn the unix cmdline utilities and how to use them together. Something as simple as grep "some pattern" * -R | cut -d' ' -f1 | xargs sed -i -e 's/some_other_pattern/replacement/g' will save you 15 minutes of painful searching and replacing through numerous files.
    • dhimes 16y ago
      And keep a cheat sheet of the ones you've found really useful.
      • Confusion 16y ago
        And always, always, always! test commands (or queries, for that matter) before executing them. For instance, my example would run 'sed' multiple times on files containing multiple matches of the string grep searches for. And it should have been cut -d':' -f1. Running it without the 'sed' command would have made both those things clear immediately. If you think you know for sure it does what you intend it to do, but you didn't test it, then it doesn't do what you think it does.
        • jacquesm 16y ago
          A good trick for that is to type in the whole command with 'echo' as the final one in the place of the command that actually makes changes. Then you replace the echo with the 'real' thing on the next run if the results where what you expected them to be. In the case of 'rm -rf $1. *' that would save you a lot of hunting around for backups ;)
• DavidMcLaughlin 16y ago
  I picked this one up on Hacker News. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1398805 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1398805 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ego_depletion http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ego_depletion The title says it all. Self-control is exhaustible. So when you're trying to make changes in your life, keep it to one simple thing at a time. Over time the one thing you decided to change stops being self-control and starts becoming a habit. Once it becomes a habit? Start training something else. You'll rack up positive changes in no time.
  • pmcginn 16y ago
    I wish this had been the first advice I'd received when I started dieting. After flailing around for years, I started calorie counting, and then made lifestyle changes once every few weeks. Smaller portions, whole wheat instead of white, simple things like that. Doing them one at a time made all the difference, and I finally got back down to my college weight.
    • jtheory 16y ago
      Ah, and the whole dieting process has a nasty trap built right in, because your willpower diminishes as your blood sugar drops. I don't have the study in front of me, but I recall the effect was pretty clear.
• jonp 16y ago
  People regret things they didn't do more than things they did.
  • matthew-wegner 16y ago
    Suffer the pain of discipline or suffer the pain of regret...
  • mvalle 16y ago
    Oh, that reminds me...
  • Confusion 16y ago
    On the other hand: there's an infinite amount of things you can't/won't do in your life, vs. a finite amount of things you will do. Don't spend your time worrying about all the things you haven't done: that gets in the way of actually doing things.
    • mvalle 16y ago
      On the third hand: of the infinite amount of things you can't/won't do in you life, there is only a finite amounts of things you want to do, and you won't regret not doing things you don't want to do.
      • apower 16y ago
        On the fourth hand: of all the things you have done you would for regard some of them.
        • deleted 16y ago
          [deleted]
  • tomjen3 16y ago
    And even if what you end up doing was horrible, you will be able to laugh about it later.
• noverloop 16y ago
  Read up on the science of persuasion. It's the elephant in the room concerning decision-making. I suggest 'Yes! 50 secrets from the science of persuasion', it's a fascinating read.
• cammil 16y ago
  Don't know your limits.
  • Ardit20 16y ago
    Why not?
    • FreeRadical 16y ago
      Dunno.
      • Ardit20 16y ago
        If you do not know your limits, or actively try and not acknowledge them, then you would engage in self deception and lead yourself onto a wrong path. I think it is more preferable to know your limits, but not necessarily accept them and then actively work towards overcoming them.
        • noverloop 16y ago
          you can't know your limits until you've hit them, and even when you hit them you have to make sure you diagnosed your limit correctly.
• binarymax 16y ago
  Buy that very technical book of something you wish you knew. Spend some of your lunchtime each day reading 5 to 10 pages.
  • arethuza 16y ago
    I have a copy here at work of "The Road to Reality: A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe" by Roger Penrose for this very purpose!
  • mechanician 16y ago
    Great advice. Books these days, especially technical books, are expensive. However I've rarely ever regretted buying a book, even the (very) few I bought but never read. Probably due to the fact that buying technical books has a minimal and bounded downside, but a huge upside.
  • StavrosK 16y ago
    Or put it in the bathroom.
• lovskogen 16y ago
  Follow design patterns, customize to fit your own look.
• kashif 16y ago
  The world is meaningless, there is no God or gods, there are no morals, the universe is not moving towards any higher purpose. All meaning is man-made, so make your own, and make it well. Do not treat life as a way to pass the time until you die. Do not try to "find yourself", you must make yourself. Choose what you want to find meaningful and then live, create, love, hate, cry, destroy, fight and die for it. Do not let your life and your values and you actions slip easily into any mold, other than that which you create for yourself, and say with conviction, "This is who I make myself". Do not give in to hope. Remember that nothing you do has any significance beyond that with which you imbue it. Whatever you do, do it for its own sake. When the universe looks on with indifference, laugh, and shout back, "Fuck You!". Remember, that to fight meaninglessness is futile but fight anyway, despite its futility. The world may be empty of meaning, but it is a blank canvas on which to paint meanings of your own. Live deliberately. You are free. - Anon (Edited)
  • Confusion 16y ago
    I would have written something similar, but recently came across: http://www.salon.com/life/since_you_asked/2010/07/27/back_from_the_dead/index.html http://www.salon.com/life/since_you_asked/2010/07/27/back_fr..., which, including the comments, put the same message in so many different ways that I don't feel I have anything to add to it.
  • randallsquared 16y ago
    All meaning is man-made, so make your own, and make it well. ...and by what standard should we judge "well"?
    • jacquesm 16y ago
      The standards that you yourself make.
      • randallsquared 16y ago
        So it's circular, you're saying? I don't disagree, but this is not ultimately very satisfying to someone who'd like meaning in their life. It amounts to saying "Don't want that, then", does it not? :)
• michaelaiello 16y ago
  Be willing to spend money on things that are valuable. Don't kill you business by being a cheap bastard.
• brownegg 16y ago
  It is more than ok to reinvent the wheel. What if the guy who invented the wheel hadn't reinvented the block?
• edanm 16y ago
  A few gems for easier computer use: 1. Buy a 50gb Dropbox account, put all the folders you care about in there (all your projects, documents, music, etc.). Makes life so much funner when you know you don't have to worry about losing your important documents ever again. 2. Start using a password management tool like Keepass. Makes you rely less on memory, which makes life on a computer less stressful. I wrote an article about this recently with some tips and tricks (http://www.loopycode.com/solving-sign-up-anxiety/ http://www.loopycode.com/solving-sign-up-anxiety/).
  • zyfo 16y ago
    How do you deal with either working from your Dropbox folder ( convoluted) or having duplicate folders (local syncing)?
    • mitchellhislop 16y ago
      When I did the same thing, I just moved my filesystem into it, set everything to download into it, and away I went. It also helped me actually do something with info, rather than leave it there and not touch it. However, I bet on a mac you could rsync or cron it to keep local and DB together.
    • edanm 16y ago
      Great question, I spent a lot of time thinking about that. Eventually, I realized that it wasn't convoluted to work from my Dropbox folder. At least the problem wasn't keeping project files there. After all, most projects are just lots of source code, and it doesn't matter where it sits. The big problem with keeping projects in there is that each project might have computer-specific configurations. I try to keep those to a minimum, by e.g. using relative directories whenever possible. For the few things that I can't keep completely relative, I rely on environment variables that I set on each computer I work on. Other than that, I haven't run into any problems working right out of my Dropbox directory. At one point I considered running all my software from Dropbox (using portable versions), but that really did cause a lot of headache (most programs have session-specific configuration which would cause problems on different computers). Have you run into any other problems with keeping projects inside Dropbox?
• zyfo 16y ago
  Lenses to adopt for gaining a better perspective in frustrating situations: Reverse lens: How does the other part view this situation? Long lens: Will I care about problem in a year from now? Wide lens: What can I learn from this?
• harscoat 16y ago
  focus, focus, focus
  • apower 16y ago
    sleep, sleep, sleep.
    • InclinedPlane 16y ago
      Why was this downvoted? If every dev got a full night's sleep regularly the productivity gains would be enormous.
• harscoat 16y ago
  10 000 hour rule & Deliberate practice written about in "outliers" by Malcom Gladwell and "Talent is overrated" by Geoff Colvin.
  • akkartik 16y ago
    Also http://thetalentcode.com/book http://thetalentcode.com/book
• nhebb 16y ago
  Autocorrect in Outlook can be used as a canned response tool (and it's more convenient than Quick Parts).
• paraschopra 16y ago
  For every gem, there is equally effective anti-gem that works for at least one person.
• jakevoytko 16y ago
  Solve the problem before you code the solution. That may be obvious to this crowd, but I learned it the hard way! I competed in the ACM programming competitions in college, so I did lots of practice problems. When I coded up-front, I would first represent the problem description as data structures and solve it from there. This is obviously flawed, since I had no idea whether any of it was useful! Sometimes they weren't, and sometimes I missed obvious tricks and wasted a lot of time. When I first worked out a solution on pencil and paper, I always knew what code needed to be written.
  • clueless123 16y ago
    Coders do two things: Thinking and Typing.. the more you do of one, the less you do of the other
    • ttorn1 16y ago
      But the more typing you do, the more time u'll have to spend on thinking later.
    • jakevoytko 16y ago
      Ah, well said!
    • endlessvoid94 16y ago
      Unless you're writing Java.
  • ssp 16y ago
    Solve the problem before you code the solution. That may be obvious to this crowd, but I learned it the hard way! That's likely far from obvious to this crowd (if it has been paying attention). Paul Graham advocates the exact opposite: "exploratory programming", where you start writing the program without even knowing what the problem is, let alone the solution. I personally agree more with you than with Graham, though.
    • gruseom 16y ago
• angstrom 16y ago
  Approach difficult problems with a curious attitude. Many problems that at first glance seem beyond your skill set or nigh impossible turn out to be easily decomposed if you play with them a little.
• tjr 16y ago
  Sleep is good.
• Ardit20 16y ago
  You need to know what is before you can know what it should be and how to make it as it should be. Particularly in regards to knowledge. You need to know what is known first, before you can invent new theories, hypothesis, make suggestions.
• edw519 16y ago
  "Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -- I took the one less travelled by, and that has made all the difference." - Robert Frost
  • Retric 16y ago
    That quote was apparently making fun a friend of his that obsessed about such things where important. Sadly, the original sarcasm seems lost on most people. Edit: Minor choices may have major impact on your life though random chance. But, most of them don't, and there is no way to know ahead of time (or after the fact) which choice is the right one.
  • jmatt 16y ago
    The literal or ironic interpretation? Or maybe a little of both? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_Not_Taken_(poem) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_Not_Taken_(poem) Personally I've always appreciated it in it's literal interpretation. Maybe this is why I could never truly appreciate poetry.
    • Scriptor 16y ago
      It's the simplest and least convoluted interpretation. On that note: "Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler." --Albert Einstein
      • chc 16y ago
        The "literal" interpretation is only the simplest and least convoluted if you ignore the entire rest of the poem. If you go by that interpretation, you have to explain what every other line in the poem is talking about. It's all about how the two roads were completely indistinguishable, and Frost is very explicit that neither was perceptibly more traveled than the other ("the passing there / Had worn them really about the same"). That's why "I took the road less traveled by" is something he'll say "ages and ages" in the future: At the moment, he can't tell any difference between the roads, but in the future he will have built up a mythology to support his arbitrary choice. I've never heard a good explanation for what the rest of the poem is talking about if his fuzzy memory at the end is meant to be a true recollection.
• patio11 16y ago
  The secret to customer service is "I'm sorry" and putting a period after it ASAP to avoid undoing all the good you just accomplished. ("I'm sorry you couldn't figure out how to..." <-- failed.) Relatedly, buy yourself a puppet and route all email through the puppet.
  • danvoell 16y ago
    And, how can I fix the situation. Yesterday, had a coffee shop say, sorry we make mistakes and that was it. Some companies work to resolve the situation very well. A simple, we can throw that out and make you a new one would have been nice, to which I would have passed but felt better about the service.
    • weaksauce 16y ago
      They didn't offer a new coffee? That is standard operating procedure for every coffee place I have been too. A lot of my friends were baristas when I was younger and as such I have spent a lot of time in coffee shops. Did you order a blended drink a few minutes before closing? (that really pisses them off) Also, don't take this the wrong way, but did you tell them about it rudely? I have no way of telling from your post so I am just putting that out there.
    • TheSOB88 16y ago
      They didn't stop after the "sorry".
  • klous 16y ago
    A puppet (account, domain) to route email through?
    • patio11 16y ago
      A little bit of cloth and stuffing with no ego, no cares in the world aside from customer satisfaction, and the patience of Job. He handles the CS because if I had to I'd have been driving stark-raving mad years ago.
• Eliezer 16y ago
  If you are selective about which arguments you inspect for flaws, or how hard you inspect for flaws, then every flaw you learn how to detect makes you that much stupider. It gives you one more chance to fail each time someone presents you with a new argument, and you face the challenge of changing your mind. Intelligence, to be useful, must be used for something other than defeating itself.
  • oz 16y ago
    Could you go into more depth on this?
    • nevinera 16y ago
      It boils down to 'cynicism is not science'. It seldom occurs to us to pick apart the things we already know are true, so our logical and rational strengths become torches with which to defend our held beliefs rather than lights to shine upon them.
    • MikeCapone 16y ago
      Most of Eliezer's writings about rationality can be found here: http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Sequences http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Sequences
    • adamta 16y ago
      He elaborates on that argument in Knowing About Biases Can Hurt People: http://lesswrong.com/lw/he/knowing_about_biases_can_hurt_people/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/he/knowing_about_biases_can_hurt_peo...
    • pjscott 16y ago
      Here's an article in which he does so: http://lesswrong.com/lw/he/knowing_about_biases_can_hurt_people/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/he/knowing_about_biases_can_hurt_peo... This is also relevant: http://lesswrong.com/lw/km/motivated_stopping_and_motivated_continuation/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/km/motivated_stopping_and_motivated_... Both articles are an interesting read, and it's sobering when you catch yourself doing the things they describe.
• tokenadult 16y ago
  As Confucius said, 三人行，必有我師焉 ("wherever three persons are walking, my teacher is surely among them"). I can learn from anyone in my environment, and other people always have a lot to teach me if only I will listen. (Adapted from http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1295342 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1295342 where the first person to reply to this quotation that time reminded me that not everyone on HN takes advantage of this, but where other HN participants got Confucius's point.)
  • aaronblohowiak 16y ago
    Another of his, "To know what you do not know is the best."
• tom_ilsinszki 16y ago
  The only reason why another person will do what you want, is because they want to do it. Look at their viewpoint as well as your own, when you ask them to do something. If there is nothing in it for the other person, you're just wasting time, both his and yours. 'Because I want it done!' will only get you a half-hearted effort or worse.
• seis6 16y ago
  To be a king you only need one crown. Magic moments are magic because they are the exception to routine days, not the rule. Coin too many gems and their will be transformed into simple rocks.
• chegra 16y ago
  Persistent trumps all.
  • apower 16y ago
    You meant perseverance.
• smiler 16y ago
  If you're male, check for possible signs of testicular cancer regularly. If you're female, check for possible signs of breast cancer regularly
• obsaysditto 16y ago
  "Most of the luxuries and many of the so-called comforts of life are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind." - Henry David Thoreau
  • jodrellblank 16y ago
    Should that say 'indispensable', or is it a word like 'inflammable'?
    • fragmede 16y ago
      dispensable= easily replaceable indispensable = not easily replaced not indispensable = not not easily replaced = easily replaced. Luxuries are easily replaced and also hurt the progress of mankind.
  • jtheory 16y ago
    Should read "dispensable." Probably true. Physical discomfort when you're trying to think deeply about anything is a huge detractor -- hence the importance of taking care of your body even if your interests are mostly "mind". But that said, throw out your TV, don't thoughtlessly collect expensive shit that you then have to worry about fixing/protecting from theft/maintaining, etc..
• Revisor 16y ago
  If you're a man, consider switching to the traditional wet shaving. http://www.youtube.com/user/mantic59 http://www.youtube.com/user/mantic59 It will make your mornings so much more enjoyable and give you a precious moment of self-care and contemplation every (other) day.
• hboon 16y ago
  No matter what you do, and how well you do things, there will always be people that is negative about you and what you did. Learn to selectively ignore such unconstructive critics.
• zyfo 16y ago
  Remember all your passwords by using a good "skeleton password" and substitute a character or two for the site name. Example: rW4ga#l0x! where # is substituted with 'h' for hackernews.
  • nailer 16y ago
    Awesome! I'm going to try rW4gappl0x! on your Paypal and rW4gagml0x! on your Gmail.
    • zyfo 16y ago
      Go ahead. I find it secure enough for everyday passwords. Also, the actual pattern and placement need not be as proposed. The principle still holds.
      • nailer 16y ago
        > the actual pattern and placement need not be as proposed. Doesn't matter. Do you have a Reddit account? They, like a lot of sites, have stored passwords in clear text before, and these passwords have also been compromised.
        • zyfo 16y ago
          Related anecdote: I've actually googled my password and found a unecrypted database table on a deserted sandbox page.
  • Revisor 16y ago
    Use Keepass instead and remember just one very strong master password. http://keepass.info/ http://keepass.info/
• corruption 16y ago
  Due to homeostasis, a diet or exercise programmes effectiveness is inversely proportional to the length of time you have been using it. Average minds think alike, great minds think differently.
• noodle 16y ago
  if you're going to have to sit down and power through a task that will take you a long time (cramming for an exam, a weekend marathon coding session, etc), operate in cycles of 20-30 minutes of focused work and then 5 minutes of something unrelated (preferably something entertaining/distracting/social). your mind will stay sharper, it'll be easier to focus, and you'll last longer before you burn out.
• slig 16y ago
  "The prisoner falls in love with his chains." — Edsger Dijkstra
  • hugh3 16y ago
    I'm not sure of the value of metaphorical platitudes that aren't actually true in the real world. Find me an actual prisoner who's in love with his actual chains and we can talk.
    • aaronblohowiak 16y ago
      stockholm syndrome
      • hugh3 16y ago
        Still metaphorical. A prisoner may, under exceptional circumstances, grow to love his (or more likely her) captor, but the chains?
• jorangreef 16y ago
  One of my first hacks as a kid was to change the opening copy for Civilization by editing the game's text files to read that I created the universe. One of my next best hacks was discovering King Solomon's Proverbs: http://bit.ly/aJpmva http://bit.ly/aJpmva
• parka 16y ago
  It's not what you don't know that will hurt you. It's what you know for sure that ain't so. I think it's a quote from Mark Twain.
• jokermatt999 16y ago
  If you find yourself worrying too often, ask yourself "Does what I'm worrying about truly matter? Is it really worth obsessing over? Do I even have any control over it?" If the answer to any of these is no, put it out of your mind. It seems like fairly obvious advice, but if you can remember it, it can make your life a lot less needlessly stressful.
• nollidge 16y ago
  Worry a little bit less.
• iuguy 16y ago
  Years back I saw a programme on TV with a British Presenter/Comedian, Griff rhys jones, talking about anger. He'd get wound up about so much trivial stuff it's unreal and he just seemed to be going through life being angry and upset. So my gem is this: Stop getting mad or angry about what happens, especially if you can't change it. If someone screams at you, don't waste the energy screaming back, it's done, there's nothing you can do to change it. Just work out what you want to do next to get the best result and do it.
• nollidge 16y ago
  Use more than one operating system on a regular basis.
• jbert 16y ago
  Achievement comes from continually building something, not repeatedly starting new projects.
• JoeH 16y ago
  Perfection is the enemy of good. Good is the enemy of at all. (I attribute the last bit to Paul Buchheit)
  • apower 16y ago
    What does it mean?
    • run4yourlives 16y ago
      Just do it, basically.
    • jtheory 16y ago
      If you're trying to make it perfect, you'll waste all of your time in tiny unimportant details (and you won't even manage to make something good). There are a lot of would-be writers with beautifully polished first chapters, and nothing else. Software is the same. Likewise with making it good -- everything takes longer than estimated, and so life will likely intervene to stop you working before you even have anything working at all. Lesson: get it working first (however badly), and evolve it from there.
  • frankus 16y ago
    I've heard it as "Perfect is the enemy of done."
• smallegan 16y ago
  "You miss 100% of the shots you don't take." -Wayne Gretzky
• iamwil 16y ago
  "Kiss her, you idiot... " http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=372723 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=372723
• psyklic 16y ago
  Say your name as a statement.
• ueoa 16y ago
  bash control-r. If you don't know what I'm talking about, go try it.
  • keefe 16y ago
    looks like it searches history for a match and puts that command in
  • endlessvoid94 16y ago
    This has saved me so much pain.
  • pjscott 16y ago
    That's amazing. I wish I'd known about that sooner.
  • jodrellblank 16y ago
    Always wondered: press control-r and type ls, it shows the last command where I used ls. I press up to get the second-last command where I used ls, and instead it shows me the second last command used, full stop, outside control-r mode. How does one cycle through ctrl-r results?
    • kashif 16y ago
      Press Ctrl-R again.
    • tjpick 16y ago
      keep hitting C-r to keep cycling backwards.
• jyothi 16y ago
  When People stop growing, the organization stops growing and then the decline starts ...
• rubinelli 16y ago
  Stand up and stretch now. You don't do it half as often as you should.
  • noverloop 16y ago
    it might be worth noting why you should stretch. When muscles aren't used, they contract. When you sit down a lot, some of the muscles that attach to your spine are probably contracted. This leads to lower backaches and worse.
  • jberryman 16y ago
    And do a few pushups!
• jiganti 16y ago
  "There seems to be two types of encouragement others give me: encouragement and discouragement."
• muon 16y ago
  Keep reading.
• jyothi 16y ago
  Hiring tip - "The mind, sharp but not broad, sticks at every point but does not move" ~Tagore
• ericingram 16y ago
  I consider this an MVC routing gem (yml): <code> routes: - domain: :user_id.mydomain.com - uri: /:controller(/:action)* </code>
• ghotli 16y ago
  Never pick up anything by it's top.
• keefe 16y ago
  "waiting is, until fullness." Lack of patience can push us into doing all sorts of useless work just so that we feel like we're doing something.
• run4yourlives 16y ago
  This too shall pass. Works for everything in life, which is both a blessing and a curse.
  • jtheory 16y ago
    "entropy" ;)
• kidkoala 16y ago
  (This was originally posted on Craigslist as "Advice to Young Men from an Old Man") 1. Don’t pick on the weak. It’s immoral. Don’t antagonize the strong without cause, its stupid. 2. Don’t hate women. It’s a waste of time 3. Invest in yourself. Material things come to those that have self actualized. 4. Get in a fistfight, even if you are going to lose. 5. As a former Marine, take it from me. Don’t join the military, unless you want to risk getting your balls blown off to secure other people’s economic or political interests. 6. If something has a direct benefit to an individual or a class of people, and a theoretical, abstract, or amorphous benefit to everybody else, realize that the proponent’s intentions are to benefit the former, not the latter, no matter what bullshit they try to feed you. 7. Don’t be a Republican. They are self-dealing crooks with no sense of honor or patriotism to their fellow citizens. If you must be a Republican, don’t be a “conservative.” They are whining, bitching, complaining, simple-minded self-righteous idiots who think they’re perpetual victims. Listen to talk radio for a while, you’ll see what I mean. 8. Don’t take proffered advice without a critical analysis. 90% of all advice is intended to benefit the proponent, not the recipient. Actually, the number is probably closer to 97%, but I don’t want to come off as cynical. 9. You’ll spend your entire life listening to people tell you how much you owe them. You don’t owe the vast majority of people shit. 10. Don’t undermine your fellow young men. Mentor the young men that come after you. Society recognizes that you have the potential to be the most power force in society. It scares them. Society does not find young men sympathetic. They are afraid of you, both individually and collectively. Law enforcement’s primary purpose is to suppress you. 11. As a young man, you’re on your own. Society divides and conquers. Unlike women who have advocates looking out for them (NOW, Women’s Study Departments, government, non-profit organizations, political advocacy groups) almost no one is looking out for you. 12. Young men provide the genius and muscle by which our society thrives. Look at the Silicone Valley. By in large, it was not old men or women that created the revolution we live. Realize that society steals your contributions, secures it with our intellectual property laws, and then takes credit and the rewards where none is due. 13. Know that few people have your best interests at heart. Your mother does. Your father probably does (if he stuck around). Your siblings are on your side. Everybody else worries about themselves. 14. Don’t be afraid to tell people to “Fuck off” when need be. It is an important skill to acquire. As they say, speak your piece, even if your voice shakes. 15. Acquire empathy, good interpersonal skills, and confidence. Learn to read body language and non-verbal communication. Don’t just concentrate on your vocational or technical skills, or you’ll find your wife fucking somebody else. 16. Keep fit. 17. Don’t speak ill of your wife/girlfriend. Back her up against the world, even if she’s wrong. She should know that you have her back. When she needs your help, give it. She should know that you’ll take her part. 18. Don’t cheat on your wife/girlfriend. If you must cheat, don’t humiliate her. Don’t risk having your transgressions come back to her or her friends. Don’t do it where you live. Don’t do it with people in your social circle. Don’t shit in your own back yard. 19. If your girlfriend doesn’t make you feel good about yourself and bring joy to your life, fire her. That’s what girlfriends are for. 20. Don’t bother with “emotional affairs.” They are just a vehicle for women to flirt and have someone make them feel good about themselves. That’s the part of a relationship they want. For you it is a lot of work and investment in time. If they are having an emotional affair with you, they’re probably fucking someone else. 21. Becoming a woman’s friend and confidant is not going to get you into an intimate relationship. If you haven’t gotten the girl within a reasonably short period of time, chances are you won’t ever get her. She’ll end up confiding to you about the sexual adventures she’s having with someone else. 22. Have and nurture friendships with women. 23. Realize that love is a numbers game. Guys fall in love easily. You’re going to see some girl and feel like you’ll die if you don’t get her. If she rejects you, move on to the next one. It’s her loss. 24. Don’t be an internet troll. Got out and live life. There is not a cadre of beautiful women advertising on Craigslist to have NSA sex with you. Beautiful women don’t need to advertise. The websites that advertise with attractive women’s photos and claims of loneliness are baloney. All they want is your money and your personal information so that they can market to you. The posts on Craigslist by young “women” seeking NSA sex, and asking for a picture are just a bunch of gay troll pic collectors. This is especially true if the post uses common gay lexicon like “hole” as in “fuck my hole” or seeks “masculine” men, or uses the word cock (except in the context of “Don’t send a cock shot.”) There are women on Craigslist. They are easily recognizable by their 2-5 paragraph postings. Most are in their 30's or older. 25. When you become a man in full, know that people will get in your way. People who are attracted to you will somehow manage to step in your path. Gay guys will give you “the look.” Old people will somehow stumble in front of you at the worst time. Don’t get frustrated. Just step aside and go about your business. Know that these are passive aggressive methods to get you to acknowledge their existence. 26. Don’t gay bash. Don’t mentally or physically abuse people because of who they are, or how they present themselves. It’s none of your business to try to intimidate people into conformity. 27. If your gay, admit it to yourself, your parents, your friends and society at large. Be prepared to get harassed. See rule 14. If someone threatens you or assaults you, call the cops. Have them arrested. You have no obligation to self sacrifice because of who you are. As a gay person, you’ll have more social freedom than straight men. Use it to protect yourself. Be prepared to get out of Dodge if your orientation makes your life unbearable. Move to San Francisco, New York, Atlanta, or New Orleans. You’ll find a welcoming community there. 28. Don’t be a poser. Avoid being one of those dudes who puts a surfboard on top of their car, but never surfs, or a dude with a powder coated fixed gear bike and a messenger bag, but was never a messenger. Live the life. Earn your bona fides. 29. Don’t believe the crap about the patriarchy. More women are accepted and attend college. More degrees are awarded to women than men. Women outlive men. More men commit suicide. Men are twice as likely to be victims of violence, including murder. If you consider sexual assaults in prisons, twice as many men are raped as women (society thinks prison rape is funny). The streets are littered with homeless men, sprinkled with a few homeless women. Statically, women are happier than men. The myth that girls are being cheated by are educational system is belied by the fact that schools are bastions of femininity, mostly run by and taught by women. Girls outperform boys in school. It is the boys in school getting fucked over, and prescribed ritalin for being boys. Real wages for men are falling, while real wages for women are rising. Just because someone says something enough times, doesn’t make it true. You have nothing to feel guilty about. 30. Remember, 97% of all advice is worthless. Take what you can use, and trash the rest.
• pmb 16y ago
  Accept the defaults. Or, at least, get so that you can use a computer within 5 minutes of being given the default configuration. It makes your life so much easier. A more general form of this is: choose your battles.
• ttorn1 16y ago
  Drink a lot of water while you read and learn something.
• misterbwong 16y ago
  a) Damn the torpedoes. from:http://www.jgc.org/blog/2009/10/damn-torpedoes.html http://www.jgc.org/blog/2009/10/damn-torpedoes.html b) [paraphrased] So many people think that the keys to their lives are buried somewhere within themselves. These are the same people that go on quests to "find one's inner self." I say people's lives are more like onions. The choices we make define the layers of who we are. When you peel those back, there isn't much at all.
• random42 16y ago
  Always do ls, before running rm (or rm -r). Similarly, Always run SELECT query before running UPDATE/DELETE query, with the same WHERE clause.
• ja30278 16y ago
  echo 'alias mysql="mysql --i-am-a-dummy"' >>~/.bashrc
• deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
• 10ren 16y ago
  - Ask a question. Define the nouns. - Sleep 2 hours extra. - Find a purpose that means something to you (not success/cool/clever).
  • jodrellblank 16y ago
    * - Ask a question. Define the nouns.* Would you explain this, please? Where you means 10ren, or anyone who has an explanation, and this means the quoted sentence.
    • 10ren 16y ago
      Assuming you aren't only mocking: when you're lost in a problem so complex that you don't even know where to start, you can focus your efforts (ie. narrow the scope) by trying to express your concern as a specific question (just one; trying to answer many questions simultaneously is a source of complexity and perplexity). Sounds simple, but this can take a surprising amount of work. It doesn't actually have to be a question - it can be a task, provided it's specific - but the question form really seems to help, perhaps by emphasizing that there's something you don't know, and that that's OK. A question is usually about how to do something to something - ie. the stress is on a verb. It helps to understand what that really means by defining what it is about - ie. the nouns. Defining the nouns is usually pretty straightforward, and often reveals what it is that has made the problem difficult to think about. For me, the nouns are often an input data structure (eg. a grammar + constraints), and an output data structure (eg. another grammar, or a particular function with certain qualities). I tend towards being anti-functional programming, but I have to admit this is pretty much a declarative, mathematical, functional approach. It even feels functional, in that you end up creating new "variables" for new states (ie. immutable not variable), and although there's an explosion of names, things become very clear to express when you have a convenient and precise name for everything (ie. every noun).
      • jodrellblank 16y ago
        Not mocking, and that was a very helpful explanation, thanks.
• Arun2009 16y ago
  My suggestion: spend some quality time knowing yourself, so that you may better lead an authentic and fulfilling life. What does happiness mean to you? What are your strengths and weaknesses? What do you value most? What are your goals? What should they be? How would you define success? Cultivate your mind so that you may do the above better.
• corin_ 16y ago
  A little humour can always make a bad situation a lot better. Best example is something that happened last year that I don't think I'll ever forget. I was in China (Chengdu to be more specific) with a few friends, working for an IPTV company broadcasting from a big event out there. Everything that could possibly go accidentally wrong did. First our connecting flight in the UK was an hour delayed meaning we had to run to catch the flight to Asia. On arrival in Chengdu three of us were quarantined by the government for swine flu (which we didn't have, and were released an hour later). Having got outside the airport and tasted the smog one of our taxi drivers proceeded to drive a few of us to the wrong hotel on the wrong side of the city (small thing but.. it all adds up). This went on for the few days before the event, including half our team getting really nasty food poisening, and 95% of our video equipement (worth six figures) getting lost by the airline we shipped it with. Anyway, it was all pretty tough with seemingly everything going against us for no reason, but the turning point was the most insignificant thing that happend that trip. A few of us were walking back to the hotel the night before the event was starting, going through a large open space, not many people around, and after a few seconds of discussion about its appropriateness... Iain just shouts "CxxT" at the top of his voice. It broke the tension so easily and from then on we really did find it much easier to look on the bright side... Humour can help defuse problems so often, that example just happens to be my favourite (from what was probably the most eventful trip I've ever been on).
• silentbicycle 16y ago
  A lot of problems can be rephrased as an equivalent problem with a known solution. If you're completely stumped, take a break. Go for a walk / bike ride / whatever. The context change can help you see approaches you've overlooked. Get enough sleep, or you'll be too tired to realize you're not thinking clearly.
• espadagroup 16y ago
  Do your toughest thinking, try to solve your hardest problems, and envision your biggest dreams while on the toilet doing a number 2. Something about it just works.
  • sdrinf 16y ago
    On related body hacks: holding your crap back bumps mental capabilities by 50-80%. (Yes, I've got a couple more of these. yes, you can ask for it ;) )
• sev 16y ago
  Life will teach you, one way or another. Better take the easy way if you can. the easy way is learning from others mistakes
• LoneCoder 16y ago
  "But I learn the most from failure, and easily the biggest lesson, by far the biggest lesson, was focus on the product, make sure that it’s a product that customers want, and customers buy, and that there will be a market there." - http://www.npost.com/2007/01/16/interview-with-don-macaskill-ceo-of-smugmug/?intID=INT00183 http://www.npost.com/2007/01/16/interview-with-don-macaskill...
• kmak 16y ago
  There are no sunk cost in life. Even if you got really good at something, if you really want to do something else, you can drop them and start today!
• jorangreef 16y ago
  Innocence is more powerful than experience. "Experience keeps a dear school but fools will learn at no other." Ben Franklin Keep your heart pure. Do everything without arguing or complaining. Guard your tongue. Speak in private of people only what would be helpful for them to hear in public. Keep your word. Do not criticize people in positions of power. Pray for them. When the moment comes that you meet them, and have a chance to influence them, your voice will be authentic and honest. Your voice is like a violin, played well for many years it can develop an incredible resonance.
• SHOwnsYou 16y ago
  I don't want to sound like a jackass, but this thread seemed to get way off topic of technology/entrepreneurship gems and into existential bullshit. Tip: The three hours it took to read How To Win Friends and Influence People taught me more about running a business than 5 years of school and 8 years of employment.
• mr_twj 16y ago
  This letter is framed on my wall thanks to an OP on HN: http://old.nabble.com/Re%3A-TM2-p28707277.html http://old.nabble.com/Re%3A-TM2-p28707277.html
• kristofferR 16y ago
  The only thing you really should be worried about is fear itself. Do what you fear and fear disappears. Fear is the greatest barrier to success. We fail because we fear failure. Stop fearing and live the life of your dreams.
• detcader 16y ago
  Get a Google Reader account. Get an Instapaper account. Get a Dropbox account. Get a Tumblr account, at your own risk. Try Google Chrome.
• vkdelta 16y ago
  Learn unix (if for some reason you haven't)
• vkdelta 16y ago
  "Customer is the king". Live up to their expectations. It doesn't hurt to beat them few times every now and then.
• sids 16y ago
  "If I'm not having fun, I'm not doing it right."
• mathgladiator 16y ago
  learn to listen and be patient for the complaint, for there is the opportunity.
• rizal 16y ago
  Increase efficiency (and maybe avoid injury to the wrist) by minimizing use of the mouse: 1. Vim / utilize your IDE's keyboard bindings 2. Vimperator for Firefox 3. Vimium for Chrome 4. FreeCommander (or any Norton Commander clone) 5. Activate Gmail keyboard shortcuts (Edit: added #1 and #5)
  • Magneus 16y ago
    Consider a tiling window manager if you're a Linux user. Doubly so if you're a console jock. I find it's a great way to cut down on mousing time.