Excellent read. There is a lot of great advice in this post, especially the note about urgency at the end.

Here is an article I like a lot that shows just how bad a bad programmer can be. http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000781.html

Basically to sum it up, the author mentions a very simple question that he asks potential programming candidates to solve. This kind of question is the kind of question you can solve by making it through two/three chapters in any programming book, yet the number of people, even senior level developers, that can't get it is astonishing.

I remember that article - I quickly reassured my self by writing fizz-buzz in Perl, Ruby and PLSQL (my three most used languages) - no great achievement, but I am better than the majority of comp-sci grads apparently!

Yea, me too. I mean, while I'm not part of the hacker culture, I always understood the point of it was more for recognition than actually hurting anyone. This very much goes against that.

AFAIK "Hacking" is the creative implementation of any technology to do something it wasn't designed to do.

Cracking and griefing regrettably fall under that umbrella as well, as do physical assaults perpetrated with technology.

Definition of creative (ditionary.com):

>1. having the quality or power of creating. >2. resulting from originality of thought, expression, etc.; imaginative: creative writing. >3. originative; productive (usually fol. by of).

Adding blinking gifs to a homepage does not create anything, it does not result from any originality of thought nor is is productive so I would argue that it is not hacking.

You're right. It's not.

The word "hacking" has, in the media, taken on a meaning which is different from the meaning that it had originally - and the meaning that you'll most often find around here. Sadly, though, the use is so common that arguing against it is pretty much hopeless. It seems that outside of the hacker community (proper sense of the word), you probably shouldn't call yourself a hacker, since the first thing that will come to people's minds is this.

This isn't hacking. This is 'cracking' - and a more disgusting form of it than usual, a form meant to physically harm people.

Actually the earliest recorded references to hacking (in the documents of the MIT Tech Model Railroad Club which is generally acknowledged as the origin of the term) all have the term used in the mallicious (if mischevious) sense such as phone phreaking.

Good luck getting the media to call people "crackers."

Oh man, this kinda reminds me of "The Incredible Machine", but much cooler. I used to love that game. I actually helped make a 3D version in school with some friends as part of ACM.

I've experienced a little bit of this same sentiment when I tell people I am using flex for my current idea. They look down at me almost, without having ever touched flex. Most people quickly equate it to flash (ok it does run in a flash player and makes use of action script), but its vastly different. There is no drawing, keyframes, etc. Now, I'm not saying it's for everyone, but it does make creating certain things exponentially easier. Ok, done ranting.

There is a small difference here in that the author proposes simplifying the experience of using a database, while requiring your users to have a properly-versioned flash player complicates the user experience. Less-supported OSes and browsers will inevitably have trouble working with proprietary data.

The letter attached to this article is one of the hardest hitting letters I've ever read and makes for a good read.

Really neat. While not as technical, on Shacknews they just posted the HD feed of the Epic Games presentation on the engine enhancements that they've done for Gears of War 2. Looking good: http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/51906

I'm personally using flex for my current app. I don't recommend it for every app, but for what I am doing it makes perfect sense. It makes doing a lot of things that would be difficult in AJAX extremely easy. But like I said, not for everyone.

I completely agree with you. I recently left my career at one of the larger banks and the additional time has made all the difference. Now I get to spend time prototyping various ideas I never would have been able to otherwise with very small blocks of time. Best decision, ever.

Yea, I agree on the feature you just mentioned. I think it would be really helpful. I mean, there is a jobs tab, but that's only for previous YC companies.

Anyways, it wasn't so much that I was trying to be secretive, but like I said, I am willing to change the idea and didn't want to scare anyone off by mentioning anything in particular and I think that seems to have worked out nicely cause I have been talking to someone for a little and we are changing around the idea already, to something we both think is better. So that was where I was coming from.