pgbovine

58 ms·

571.
by pgbovine 17y ago
as other posters on this thread have mentioned, i think it really depends on the community you belong to ... many GNU open-source hackers swear by C and won't touch managed code with a ten-foot-long stick because of their associations with
572.
by pgbovine 17y ago
cool to see mainstream news coverage of a theoretical CS problem. it'd be even cooler if they described one compelling concrete example of a specific way that the world would differ if P=NP, or if P!=NP
573.
by pgbovine 17y ago
(playing devil's advocate here) there is a big overhead in printing out a 10-14 page 2-column academic paper and actually bothering to read it, no matter how easy-to-read it might be ... blog posts could be good teasers to generate interest
574.
by pgbovine 17y ago
If you're concerned about the loss of expressiveness, a related project to look into is RPython, which afaik allows you to program in a less restricted subset of Python and still compile down to efficient C code. When writing in RPython, y
575.
by pgbovine 17y ago
by 'switching' and trying Firefox/Chrome/etc., they are giving up the bookmarks, toolbars, and whatever other customizations they've downloaded and installed on their browser (presumably IE since that's the default that non-geeks use on Win
576.
by pgbovine 17y ago
i wouldn't call RentHop a 'web startup' ... they're a business that operates very much in the real world ... the web is simply their interface for doing meatspace business. i usually think of web startups as existing purely in cyberspace (
577.
by pgbovine 17y ago
i didn't RTFA, but perhaps what that quote is trying to say is that you should choose something that's VERY hard to implement properly but easy for consumers to use. simple interface is key, but if the implementation is also super straight
578.
by pgbovine 17y ago
ok, this is your most convincing post yet. i concede defeat, on two main points ... 1.) i can now understand why my intro regarding high school grades led people to make certain assumptions about what i was trying to say; again, horrible c
579.
by pgbovine 17y ago
thanks for the comments ... you have a good point regarding some of the passages, i'll take them down soon or try to re-work them. i'm glad that you understood the main purpose of that article, which is to highlight what i've observed about
580.
by pgbovine 17y ago
yes, "Boston" would be a disingenuous reply to "What college did you go to". But it would not be a disingenuous reply to "Where did you attend college?" Some people I know say "in China" or "in Canada" ... "in Boston" is just as legit o
581.
by pgbovine 17y ago
the motivation for people i know to do that is less disingenuous ... 4 - if you say that you went to Harvard (or another well-known university), lots of people automatically cringe and think "ugh this guy must be a snob!", so if you're real
582.
by pgbovine 17y ago
i also think this guy is a real tool who hasn't accomplished anything noteworthy in life. and what kind of a stupid username is pgbovine? but seriously, i'm hoping that the level of discourse on HN stays above ad hominem attacks ( http://e
583.
by pgbovine 17y ago
ha thanks for the free advertising :) so, just to preempt any ad hominem attacks, here is what this article is NOT trying to say: 1.) people who did not go to 'name-brand' universities are somehow less intelligent or less deserving of prof
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by pgbovine 17y ago
sorry it's off-topic, but you can download it from here: http://people.csail.mit.edu/akiezun/hampi/
585.
by pgbovine 17y ago
thanks for that post, scott_s! that beautifully sums up the thrust of my article way better than my article actually did ;) sorry for seeming like i'm sucking up, but i think that comments on HN are amongst the highest quality i've seen on
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by pgbovine 17y ago
Hi Confusion, I totally agree 100% with all of your points. I have absolutely no problems with people who choose to devote their energies outside of their schoolwork. My gripe is with kids who don't do that well in school but then vocall
587.
by pgbovine 17y ago
this is the author here ... since this post seems to have spawned the largest thread, hopefully i can address it at its root. i now realized that this was a horrible way to start the article, for several reasons: 1.) it makes people debate
588.
by pgbovine 17y ago
wow, that is quite a stretch from what i said or implied in my article! Here is my central thesis: "Thus, I assert that given two people with comparable levels of intelligence and technical skills, the one who did not go to a name-brand un
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by pgbovine 17y ago
fair enough, that does sound pretty elitist ;) sorry if i offended people with that language. but the rest of that sentence says "... , I have seen a wide variety of personalities and egos amongst computer scientists and software engineers
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by pgbovine 17y ago
hi everyone, this is the author --- wow, i totally didn't expect a random rant of mine to be posted on hacker news :) after monitoring comments for a few hours, i finally had to sign up for an account. First off, I should mention the conte