Yes, for pure coders, this is a terrible resume. It looks like she is using the right side of the brain for something left-sided. But, that's the point.

How many coders do you know can show an interest in both design and code (same for designers)? To have an aptitude and interest in both code and design is something very hard to find, and to be able to express the fusion of the two is a challenging process for many who are aching to stretch the boundary set by text heavy, information-only resumes that do not communicate nearly what you want it to. (How much design skill, creativity, and passion can you communicate with just information?)

Yes, I would never hire her for algorithm optimization, but if she was building a website that doesn't innovate technologically but rather creates social, cultural, aesthetic or other value (which the majority of startups do) - I would take a second look.

For what its worth though, I do think the graphs are a little hard to read but not hard to navigate, especially if I'm looking for a particular skill to hire for. Its easy to see if she has Ruby skills, for instance - but its hard to see the overall picture of what skills she has without spending a lot of time on it.

What helped me a lot is learning my personality type based on the MBTI model (or any model, they're all pretty similar) - study it and find out your potential compared to other types. This gives you a more accurate scale to view your potential, and a more accurate scale will give you a more well defined measurement of success.

For instance, personality typing predicts varying degrees of hard-workingness based on nothing else but your disposition. A lot of people can't accept this even though life itself seems to indicate it and have wrong expectations for themselves. This is very unhealthy if you put all your hopes here and can't manage to fulfill it.

I already wrote my thoughts on this here: therubyway.wordpress.com/2010/07/09/how-to-view-yourself/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1549281

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

I think most of the mental barriers and frustrations of learning a new programming language is not knowing what you can do with it, not knowing the right syntax, or not knowing what the program is doing during execution - the block interface removes most of these problems while still preserving a programmer's mindset. Hopefully this will convince some of the 'hardcore' programmers that it is a legitimate language, even if developing with it is a bit slower than typing.

I haven't played with it for a while - they were planning to add function blocks, but I don't know if they did.

Also - lots of kids actually have played with scratch. If you look at the website, there are 1.1 million projects and 150,000 members. So - this next generation is really poised to make this platform their own. Maybe it will be their TI-83?

The problem I find is this: HN is the best source of news for 'new stuff' being released in javascript, nodejs, ruby, python, and other software communities. However, HN also has TONS of posts that are interesting but not what I'm looking for and quite frankly, a waste of time.

I go online and try to find the newest frameworks , plugins or libraries that could be useful to my field of study - but I end up getting 'caught' in useless interesting information like iPad commentary or machine learning beautification techniques.

So I thought: What if sites like JQuery.com had a JQuery news, rails had Rails news, etc. All the JQuery related stuff could be posted there and so if I wanted to find out the newest plugins or blog posts on JQuery tutorials, I would go there to find it. It would be great for the software community, and it would make my life easier.

Then I thought, what if all these sites aggregated back to HN?

Basically, my idea is an embeddable Reddit - communities can embed a news submission system into their sites, which aggregates back to a central site. It's primary purpose is to help existing communities get more communal by encouraging a sub-community the way HN has its own private community.

However, because its aggregated into one site, it may also increase traffic between (software) communities, enhance awareness and growth of up-and-coming projects, and can be the start of a business.

That's my idea folks - comment on it or execute on it if you would like.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1123466

Points: 2

# Comments: 2

Also for syntax highlighting - take a look at codemirror. I've used it before and have been very satisfied with its performance and functionality.

I had a similar idea, but create the whole IDE on wave. Several advantages:

1) Programmable - you can add in functionality to the IDE much more easily by adding gadgets or even robots.

2) It gets rid of the concept of 'local copy' altogether, and makes your development project accessible from anywhere by anyone. It also means that you only have to set up one test environment rather than everyone's local environment.

3) You can have as many test servers or production servers as you want. One robot to manage multiple servers at once. This robot is essentially a remote command line connected to serveral test/production servers. This makes cheap servers (100$ wall servers anyone?) useful.

The majority of people enjoy doing one type of thinking and hate doing the other, which causes this culture difference. Depending on the class of problems that a field has to tackle, the community may be dominant in one or the other. Mathematics is a field in which a random walk style of exploration can yield fascinating results, while an engineering field is much more likely to benefit from a focused approach. Usually, the type of thinking that yields more results becomes dominant in the community and gets the right to snub the other.

The difference and contention, I think, arises purely out of the dislike of doing the type of thinking that you're not naturally inclined to. This dislike is rooted in unfamiliarity and a strong sense of worth that parallels our inclinations. The contention is rarely settled by arguments of logic, efficiency or practicality - it is not that people don't believe in logic, but rather because the arguments don't address the core issue. The core issue is our natural inclinations, which at its roots, are innate or at least solidly ingrained in us by the end of childhood.

I think the library itself has great video support but not much else.

The robot thing is not inane because it is part of the distributed/federated document editing, and it has media elements attached to it rather than just text. In IRC, you only talk to people for the most part, so bots in IRC are centered around facilitating that purpose. With Wave, you talk, work, and plan with data that can take any form - a much broader scope that allows robots to do much more than just 'user logged in, user logged out'.

The reason why I think it is a strong alternative to project collaboration tools is because of 'see as you type' and its robot capabilities. Yes, it has a nice document model, but that isn't the key feature for me.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=631857

Points: 14

# Comments: 13

Nice try - it needs some work before it is an essay. I think I would agree with the conclusion, but there is way too much rambling, anecdotal evidence, and personalization - and you sound like you can't contain yourself at some points, which makes it sound on the whole unprofessional. Also, give us a summary in the introduction - we don't want to read it all as it is way too long for its own good.

If you want to learn how to properly draw conclusions from examples, learn statistics. Stats is all about making sure you have sufficient evidence (large sample sizes, small p-values) to back up a correlation.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=584723

Points: 1

# Comments: 1

I think everyone can pick up reading by phrases to a certain extent. Scanning full pages or even paragraphs is probably a innate skill that isn't learnable.