A favorite, lesser known quote of Fred's from his technical communications course at UNC and a SIGCSE talk. Beyond a software engineer and researcher, he was an extraordinary educator. His design ethos carried through to pedagogy, as well, and has been an inspiration to me. Thanks, Fred.

If you're going to collaborate in a decentralized way you ultimately need an accepted mainline source of truth.

Music Notepad (original): http://graphics.cs.brown.edu/research/music/home.html

Music Notepad (tabletpc): http://graphics.cs.brown.edu/research/music/tpc.html

Mathpad: (Commercialized) http://www.fluiditysoftware.com/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAFGONn4KoQ

Chempad: http://pen.cs.brown.edu/research.html#chempad

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8296052

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6940073

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6669156

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

This is doubly true in a social setting where your friends/spouse/mom/coach can _see_ when you are or are not taking actions toward what you want to improve at.

I use DidSum to track running, blogging, eating healthy, sex, coffee consumption, and more.

DidSum allows you to define the actions you want to improve at. You can track publicly with friends and family and encourage/compare/compete with each other. You can also track privately (some actions I only track with my wife). It has basic analytics, which will get more powerful with time.

We're in a closed beta right now, if you're interested in helping test I'd love anyone interested in this thread's feedback: http://didsum.com/auth/register.html

I enrolled in Brown's Ph.D. CS computer program immediately after undergrad. In retrospect, I was too green to do proper due diligence to find the right fit with advisor and research area. The advisor relationship is extremely important. Within the first year I realized two things: 1) there was no way I'd be happy going deep with this particular research area and advisor for another 5-6 years, 2) I would complete my masters in the first year, fully paid for (with a research assistant "salary" on top) by being on the PhD track. I returned full-time to the company I co-founded while in undergrad after that first year.

No two PhD paths are the same, unlike with JD/MBA. Some folks come in and earn a master's along the way. Some come in with a master's. Some don't pass the (widely different depending on school) bars to advance to the Ph.D. candidate stage (I imagine there's a good bit of attrition here). Some don't find an advisor who can fund them. The requirement of contributing something novel to the body of research, no matter how long it takes, is a higher bar than completing coursework and projects. 6,7,8 years is a lot longer than 2-3.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5471272

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

If the boilerplate for manually getting an SSL connection right in a given language is that obtuse, the "just use our library" pitch is even more compelling.

All this said, I have used Braintree's libraries and they are extremely well executed.

Not exposing REST API documentation externally (it surely exists internally, right?) just feels like a cop out.

(An argument I'm surprised was left out: it's easier for support staff to work with customers integrating with a good library than some home rolled REST client. I can imagine this to be true, but maybe a case of premature optimization if the majority of big API players expose and document their REST APIs anyway?)