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Life, Learning & Writing
The most popular blog posts about life, learning & writing on Hacker News. 280 posts.
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On Programming Languages: Why My Dad Went from Programming to Driving a Bus
I discuss, with stories, why programming language choice matters and provide guidelines, along with an infographic of popular 2017 languages.
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Go and Dogma
[ Cross-posting from last year’s Go contributors AMA on Reddit, because it’s still important to remember. ]
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The non-linearity of productivity
I happen to be going through a very productive time right now. I’m working on a project that I’m very excited about, and the threads are all coming together to create a very satisfying tapestry.
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Naval Ravikant on Reading, Happiness, Decision Making, Habits [audio]
In his most in-depth interview, Naval Ravikant discusses reading, happiness, decision making, habits, the meaning of life, and Mental Models.
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How do you move out of a smarthome?
I've an unhealthy amount of smart gadgets at home. Enough so that it's worth running an orientation session when friends come to visit. This is what the Alexa does, here's which light switches not to use, don't be scared if the Roomba attacks. That sort of thing. I don't know how long we'll live in this place. It's…
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The power of role models
I spent a few days a while back in a board meeting for a national astronomy organization and noticed a property of the population in that ro...
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Do I really have to cite an arXiv paper?
With peak submission season for machine learning conferences just behind us, many in our community have peer-review on the mind. One especially hot topic is the arXiv preprint service. Computer scientists often post papers to
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How to Remember More of What You Learn with Spaced Repetition (2016)
Using spaced repetition in conjunction with other study techniques can help you memorize information much, much more quickly. Here's how to do it.
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Worldbuilding
There is a grand tradition of scientifically minded science fiction authors creating not just the characters in their novels but also the brass tacks scientific details of the planets they reside on. This is the art and science of Worldbuilding .
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Why our outdated brains are making us unhappy
Why your outdated brain is making you unhappy and how to hack it.
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In love with the BBC micro:bit
I finally got my hands on the micro:bit , the BBC ’s new educational computer and spiritual successor to the legendary BBC Micro , and I’m absolutely in love with its potential as a platform for learning how to code.
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Playing with Wolfram Playing Cards
A few weeks ago, I knocked my favorite mug off the counter and it shattered. RIP:
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A Norwegian who knew his tortoises so well that he changed history
This article has previously been published in Norwegian in Aftenposten Historie no. 6, 2015 and Biolog no, 1, 2014. Due to several reques...
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We Can Achieve Anything If We Stop Trying To Do Everything
All good thing take time to achieve. But if you rely on the power of compounding, you don't have to force things.
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ASCII and Unicode quotation marks
Do not use the ASCII character 0x60 (grave accent) as a left quotation mark together with 0x27 (apostrophe), because it will look silly with modern correct fonts.
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A Stroke of Genius: Striving for Greatness in All You Do (1993)
Little has been written on managing your own research (and very little on avoiding other people managing your research); however, your research is much more under your control than you may realize.
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Geek Career Paths
Suppose you’re doing technology, and like doing technology, and your career’s going well, and you find yourself wondering what you’re going to be doing in twenty years. I’ve been down several of the roads you might decide to take, and it occurs to me that talking them over might amuse and inform.
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More Good Programming Quotes (2016)
In my previous post, The Wisdom of Programming Quotes, I called out some quotes that look good on the surface, but turn out to promote the wrong ideas about software development. I have also posted…
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70 job interviews in 17 days
When I was but a wee lad, I dreamed of being a janitor for NASA. There's just something awesome about playing a part, no matter how sma...
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A Hacker Writes a Children's Book
[2018 Update: After posting this article and making it to the top of r/programming and HackerNews sales of the book increased noticeably. The book is now nic...
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Why I left Academia: Part I
Two months before defending my dissertation, I found out that a professor had published my own work ahead of me. My story caught the attention of academics all over the world, going viral in 2017. This post is about why I left academia, and what I discovered when Post-PhD the blog went viral: that I