Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

So you "just need a hacker", huh?

subwindow.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 114 posts

Re: So you "just need a hacker", huh?

#91

Post by dkokelley »

chaostheory wrote: post #59
pg wrote: post #44

This would be better if the half that consists of mere insults was replaced with some ideas. There's a lot more you could say about this phenomenon, like why it happens, and what the solution might be. Once again the top story is an embarrassment to News.YC. And unfortunately it is mostly the recently arrived users who voted it up. Maybe it's inevitable that I'll have to turn on some form of vote weighting.

The link itself maybe an embarrassment, but the discussions surrounding it on YC are somewhat less emotional and pretty interesting; and they do touch upon the reasons why it happens (particularly the thread started by mixmax)

I wonder about the behavior of HN users. Do they vote up an article for the article, or for the discussion taking place?

Sure the (original) article does not deserve to make it to the top of HN, so why is it up there? Is it being up-voted because of the content of the article, or the content of the discussion, or because commenters have posted in a popular article and want their comment seen/possibly up-modded?

The last case is obviously the least desirable, but what about the other two? What should the community be voting on?

Re: So you "just need a hacker", huh?

#92

Post by azanar »

kingkongrevenge wrote: post #31
webframp wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

traditionally the hackers have been the most undervalued in the whole equation.

Philip Greenspun wrote convincingly about how programmers are under valued because they fail to treat programming as a proper profession. They don't dress and otherwise present themselves professionally. They fail to interface professionally with customers and analysts as a doctor or lawyer would. Programmers themselves tend to demand a management style that treats them as a cog in the machine, where they are fed det…

This concept of professionalism depends very much on who you ask. Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister, the duo behind Peopleware, might suggest that the problem isn't with the behavior of the programmers, but rather with the definition of a proper professional, and by extension the proper profession. I also think your claim of what programmers want is hasty; my experience, albeit somewhat limited, suggests that there are programmers who fill any spot on the scale between autonomy and cog.

For that matter, here's a link to the essay by Philip Greenspun: http://philip.greenspun.com/ancient-history/professionalism-....

From what I gathered from the article, you're misrepresenting him. His qualifications are much more about giving back to the community and actually giving a damn that it is about aesthetics. Perhaps I didn't find the essay you're referencing?

Finally, I don't think you're metaphor using the corporate lawyer or financial analyst is accurate. The corporate lawyer, especially, has far more public exposure than does a programmer, and maintains his image as much or more for the company's sake than his own.

Re: So you "just need a hacker", huh?

#93

Post by icky »

pg wrote: post #58
wumi wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

with the considerable amount of traffic that HN can drive to a link/ blog (and such a specific audience) any thought that the "recently arrived users" may be gaming HN?

There has been an increase in spam lately, but there was no sign of that here. I wish...

> I wish...

The elided part is probably the most interesting. Don't let CagedLionGate turn you into a self-censor, pg.

Re: So you "just need a hacker", huh?

#95

Post by derefr »

pg wrote: post #63
chaostheory wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The link itself maybe an embarrassment, but the discussions surrounding it on YC are somewhat less emotional and pretty interesting; and they do touch upon the reasons why it happens (particularly the thread started by mixmax)

I noticed that too. It's like stone soup. Still, chicken soup would be better.

You could take out the stones after the soup gets going--edit the post to be a self-reference link, rather than an outbound one. That would make it clear that the post is not valued, but the discussion is.

Re: So you "just need a hacker", huh?

#96

Post by joseakle »

t0pj wrote: post #89
pg wrote: post #44

This would be better if the half that consists of mere insults was replaced with some ideas. There's a lot more you could say about this phenomenon, like why it happens, and what the solution might be. Once again the top story is an embarrassment to News.YC. And unfortunately it is mostly the recently arrived users who voted it up. Maybe it's inevitable that I'll have to turn on some form of vote weighting.

Perhaps keeping tabs on how karma is used. Are the recently arrived users simply voting up articles yet not adding any comments of their own to explain why they've voted up? How about this? If a person votes up an article (which costs a point), a contributing comment by the same person can start out at 2 points instead of 1. You're basically paying back the point taken to vote up an article. This would give more ince…

This sounds similar to the rules Yahoo Answers has.

What about users who vote up a story so that it is stored in their history? I do it often, i like a story but don't think i have much to add to the conversation, but still want to keep it.

Re: So you "just need a hacker", huh?

#97

Post by lacker »

pg wrote: post #44

This would be better if the half that consists of mere insults was replaced with some ideas. There's a lot more you could say about this phenomenon, like why it happens, and what the solution might be. Once again the top story is an embarrassment to News.YC. And unfortunately it is mostly the recently arrived users who voted it up. Maybe it's inevitable that I'll have to turn on some form of vote weighting.

Vote weighting is possible, but maybe it's too extreme yet blunt for the problem at hand. Vote weighting would affect all articles, but really there's a specific problem of popular-but-trashy articles that you want to target.

For example, you could add a penalty for negative-rated comments. A trashy article is more likely to cause the sort of argument that gets comments downrated.

Or you could try to classify the comment contents and organization to get a sense of how "argumentative" vs "quality" they are. Bayesian if you want. You could use article contents, too, if you had a scraper.

Either way the ranking algorithm will have to get more complicated as time goes on. Logically you should have more information with more users, so the quality of articles should actually get better. The problem with vote weighting is that by downweighting votes you are discarding this extra information rather than using it more cleverly.

Re: So you "just need a hacker", huh?

#98

Post by SwellJoe »

tim2 wrote: post #87
SwellJoe wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't work for rates "competitive" with those at eLance or Rent-A-Coder. I've done projects through those sites, and despite explicitly stating, "Don't bother with lowball offers--we're looking for good work, not low prices. We are developers, and we will be judging your experience and code harshly." I still got bids of 150 bucks for a project that I would have billed a weeks worth of hours for. They, of course,…

In theory, but we're talking about guys who think that you love programming so much that you'll just work for some of their worthless equity.

True. Asking any amount is probably enough to weed out the folks who think hackers are inter-changeable and completely devoid of business ideas or acumen. Of course, you can also just say, "No thanks, I'm working on my own idea for the time being. Best of luck to you, though." That's what I do.

Re: So you "just need a hacker", huh?

#99

Post by [deleted] »

carpal wrote: post #38
carpal wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are two main differences: 1) Apple was a hardware startup. Hardware startups need funding and someone to aggressively sell the product in person to big vendors. Software startups don't usually need that kind of person (unless they're going after the Enterprise cookie). 2) It was in the 70's, and startups were, in general, harder to start than they are now.

I went a bit more in-depth here: http://subwindow.com/articles/12 It turns out that Apple is a totally perfect example.

[deleted]

Re: So you "just need a hacker", huh?

#100

Post by demallien »

chaostheory wrote: post #75
tom_rath wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can you create a useful product if you haven't identified the use?

luck in combination with the Max Strategy (continually trying different things all the time): a lot of products did not identify their use before hand, or their real use was discovered accidentally after they were made. post it notes - started as a failed adhesive. a coworker found that it worked well using it with paper and a gospel hymn book snood - (a very popular puzzle bobble variant) the programmer made it beca…

I'd agree with that. The one piece of software that I have written that people choose to use (as opposed to being forced to because the code is embedded in the widget they just bought)has got to be the most trivial thing I have ever done - a multicast bridge that I hacked together one afternoon. It has some trace that is very useful for the proprietary multicast protocol that we use.

That stupid bridge, that I wrote because I needed it one day, is now in regular use in three different companies (mine plus two parteners). I get support emails for it to add features or fix bugs about once a month.

If you find it useful, chances are that others will find it useful too.

That said, I think that the Y-Combinator crowd should probably pay more attention to resolving non-programming needs. Most programming tasks already have good tools these days, because if a programmer sees a need, she can code it herself straight away, and programming tasks have lots of programmers identifying programming needs.

For example, I put together a stupid little app a few weeks ago that took a pdf document from Paris Town Hall that lists the addresses of all handcapped parking spaces in Paris. The app reads the list, sends the addresses to yahoo maps to get the long/lat, and then puts the results in a .gpx file for loading into gs devices. Yet another dumb app, but I've had more than 200 downloads of that .gpx file in only a couple of weeks. It's popular because there are apparently few programmers trying to solve problems in the handicapped problem space.

Post reply on HN