AskHN Digest

1. Ask HN: What do you think about the no-code movement?

Top comment by jerf

It's interesting, but always calibrate their claims against the fact this is about the tenth time this movement has come around. This movement literally goes back to COBOL. That is not a typo. It's not only likely older than you are, but probably much older than you are.

I recognize COBOL may not seem like "no-code", but that's just because "no-code" is a stupid label. "No-code" doesn't mean "no code" just like "serverless" still runs on a server.

I would say the main problem with the no-code hype is the idea that it is a leader. It is not. It is a follower. "Normal" code goes out, hammers things out over the course of literally decades, and then, when it has finally settled what the best couple of ways to do something is, it's finally time for the "no code" solutions to come in and systematize that for a larger audience. Nothing wrong with that. Power to the people and all that.

It just goes wrong when no-code advocates put the cart in front of the horse and make grandiose claims about replacing all developers or something. That's not the direction the stream flows in. No-code can't operate without the "normal" developers doing immense amounts of work charting the territory and building the infrastructure to get there. There is no chance of them displacing "normal" software developers; they are structurally incapable of it. Woe unto the no-code startup that doesn't understanding this dynamic, and foolishly tries.

2. Ask HN: How is the “metaverse” concept different from the Second Life boom?

Top comment by Shank

Conceptually speaking, the difference with AR/VR is that you can have a truly immersive experience, which really does give you more possibilities than just Second Life, which was always just a 3D game world on a 2D screen. The pitch from Meta and with AR/VR is that with the ability to use 3D space, you can actually turn Second Life-style virtual worlds into something useful with actual tangible benefits. For example, VR/AR sense-of-presence totally outclasses video calls, if the intent is to feel like you're really in a room with someone. VRChat is already one of the most popular VR apps for a reason.

Long term, I think that you have to look at it like this: most desktop computing is very very 2D centric and touch centric. If you want to, e.g., buy a product on Amazon, you're dealing with photos and imagery of a product, and reviews. But if you had a "Metaverse equivalent" you could view a 3D model, see it in action, and physically size compare it to other objects in your house much easier than manually checking dimensions.

Obviously the applications and benefits aren't as clear cut right now. I'm not sure that the windowed operating systems we have today would have been the obvious way that computers would be used if it weren't for constant iteration on keyboard centric UI and experimentation over many years. That same innovation trend hasn't happened with AR/VR, and "the metaverse" that people talk about now will likely be totally different 20 years after it becomes a thing, post-iteration and innovation.

3. Ask HN: How do you manage your personal documents?

Top comment by jpl56

I put all paper documents I receive on top of a stack. Therefore it's roughly sorted by date.

If I need to get an invoice from last december, I just lookup around this date in my stack.

Time spent to store information : 0 ; time spent to find something : a few minutes, once every other month.

Every five years, I take the bottom of the stack and file it in the cellar. And I come back from the cellar with 10 year old documents I can either trash (in my office secured bin) or keep in my filing box.

I also keep contracts (insurance, bank, ...) in this filing box.

Last thing : All documents that will be used for my tax returns (at least the equivalent of it in France) go in one folder. I will use it once a year then file this in the "taxes" box.

4. Ask HN: Coping with cancer in the family

Top comment by elt

My daughter was diagnosed with cancer at 3 years old (stage 4).

I took "family leave", which is possible depending on which state you live in (within the US at least). I was able to take three months of leave (at a reduced pay).

I lived in the hospital the entire time. I never went back to work though, I just couldn't find the focus, time or effort to be productive in a work/team environment. I honestly lost all "care" for work. I couldn't push myself to care at all and work on something when I was sitting in the same room as my daughter and seeing what she was going through.

My daughter is now 6 years old and I still haven't gone back to work.

What has helped me? Not much.

Seeing the care and love from a few friends and family members has certainly helped me and my family, but at the same time I have grown to dislike a lot of people that weren't around at that time. I feel like I learned who my real family and friends are.

If you're wondering how the friends and family helped... they were simply there, repeatedly. They helped us when we were in New York for treatment far from home. They quit their job and flew from their home country to live with us for over a year to help take care of our other daughter while we were living in the hospital.

Reading Marcus Aurelius' Meditations (Gregory Hayes translation) helped me really think long and hard about my life and what matters (and what doesn't matter). It certainly helped me push forward.

5. Ask HN: What was it like to use BBS?

Top comment by MandieD

A nerdy girl fighting with her much more socially-adept little brother over use of the phone line their parents gave them for Christmas, typing AT commands into XModem on the TRS-80 her uncle gave her after he moved on to PCs, using a 300 baud modem that did plug into the telephone line (not an acoustic), but required listening to the carrier tone and hitting the red Connect button at just the right moment… to play Legend Of the Red Dragon and download the Anarchists’ Cookbook and see if someone responded to a message you posted on FIDONet a few days ago

6. Ask HN: Starting a career as a programmer in my mid-40s

Top comment by Jugurtha

Short path:

- "Learn Python the Hard Way" by Zed Shaw. 52 exercises to teach you just enough Python to be able to continue.

- Next, an excellent course by Reddit's co-founder, Steve Huffman, CS253. It was discontinued from Udacity, but is available on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAwxTw4SYaPlLXUhUNt1w...

It will take you through the basics of the internet, HTTP, browsers, requests, cookies, databases, caching, hasing, passwords, by having you build a web application. Granted, it's on Google App Engine, but still, most of the router syntax out there is similar (webapp2 from web.py, similar to Flask, Tornado, and others).

You will learn a lot, and you'll see the result right in your browser by having a live web application. You can then take that knowledge and develop tools for yourself and others and put them online for all to access and use.

If you want to do it better and "leap-frog", read Brett Slatkin's "Effective Python: 90 Specific Ways to Write Better Python". This book will make you write code as if you had been coding for years... But, that's only doing it "right", you need something to do right in the first place: you've been in business, strategy, and operations, and you've been trained in mechanical engineering: I think you are in no shortage of ideas and things to code, so have a it.

You're in an excellent position of having been at the intersection of a bunch of cross pollinated fields, and you'll have a new skill to bring them together and do wonders. All the best!

7. Ask HN: What's your ideal city in a 100% remote world?

Top comment by rococode

Tokyo!

Pros:

- Safe almost everywhere even at night and generally very clean

- Infinite amount of things to do, you'll never finish exploring new restaurants (with delicious food) and stores

- International events happen there: conferences, concerts, etc.

- Very walkable (including the metro), especially around city center

- Reasonable housing prices - high, but comparable to cities in the US

- Politeness is baked into society and unpleasant interactions with strangers are very rare

- Rest of the country is fairly accessible by train for a weekend trip, and there's plenty of beautiful nature if you get out of the city

Cons:

- Difficult language and few people speak any English

- Fairly closed society/culture, you'll always be an outsider (but there are plenty of expats)

- Toilets in restaurants often suck and public trash cans are rare

- Bureaucracy is quite bad and inaccessible if you aren't fluent in Japanese

- Work culture is bad, though being remote could make that a non-issue

Some runner ups:

- Lisbon (excellent weather, low prices)

- Copenhagen (super safe, great quality of life)

For me though, the top 3 criteria by far are 1) a lot to do, 2) very safe, and 3) don't need a car, and Tokyo is pretty much the only major city that meets those.

8. Ask HN: Any indications Copilot scans your local files?

Top comment by orangepanda

Yes, other files open in your IDE may also be scanned.

From terms of service [1] (Which I'm sure everyone reads)

> when you edit files with the GitHub Copilot extension/plugin enabled, file content snippets [...] will be shared with GitHub, Microsoft, and OpenAI, and used for diagnostic purposes to improve suggestions and related products. GitHub Copilot relies on file content for context, both in the file you are editing and potentially other files open in the same IDE instance.

[1] https://docs.github.com/en/github/copilot/github-copilot-tel...

9. Ask HN: Connect to the Internet the old way during next Ethiopian lockdown?

Top comment by iptrans

Back in the day dial-up over GSM was supported via Circuit Switched Data (CSD). However, many carriers discontinued support for CSD when it was superseded by GPRS and EDGE. Furthermore, even if this was supported, it would most likely be turned off by the government when they disable Internet access.

This leaves you with the GSM voice channel which is only 9.6 kbps. The voice channel is further impaired by the audio compression which makes it rather unsuitable for data transmission. You should probably not expect data rates of more than 2.4 kbps.

However, a voice channel is a voice channel. If nothing else you should be able to use a modem via an old school audio coupler to your head phone jack using a very low bitrate modulation. Theoretically you could do the same with an app if you can find or make a softmodem app.

Failing anything else, there are a number of TCP over sound libraries that you could hack to work over a telephone call.

10. Ask HN: Why crypto is rising so fast when its not creating value?

Top comment by spicyusername

- Excessive Liquidity: There's money sloshing around the global economy looking for a place to go.

- Crypto Marketability: It's become very easy for people to buy and sell cryptocurrency.

- Speculation: Regardless of what problems cryptocurrencies pretend to solve, their actual value so far has only been as a speculative investment. Like traditional equities, cryptocurrency is benefiting from the highly speculative market we live in right now and the FOMO of investors trying to make a quick return.

The situation that you're seeing with cryptocurrency has historical precedent with investment bubbles involving other technologies that were perceived to be "world changing". The bicycle mania [1] of the late 19th century and the dotcom bubble [2] of the late 20th century being notable examples.

1: https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/revisiting-the-great-british...

2: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dot-com_bubble