apitaru's comments

> The problem with commenting about how horrifying it is is that it's not a unique observation and therefore not that interesting.

Fair enough. But again - this wasn't a judgement. Maybe I expected a quick vague reference to one of these obvious points.

> How do we do teach them? Not sure.

On one side kids will be kids. On the other hand, adults fail in similar ways, sometimes spectacularly - and then millions of people are allowed to die (Sorry for the dramatic delivery).

These situations have a certain 'smell' to them, which I think kids can identify. Maybe it's not as stinky as stealing, but there's definitely a fragrance.

It'll be great if we can have a red light blink in their heads at the point - an inner voice saying:

"I know what's going on. It's just as wrong as stealing. Option 1: stay away from the situation. Option 2 (better): fine a way to stop it."

How do we teach our kids that it's wrong to steal and lie? I'm guessing here: Train them to defer instant gratification in favor of a higher ground.

I hope I don't sound silly. I'm a young parent and Bob Dylan is playing in the background.

I find it interesting that this is what you took out of the story. I'm not suggesting it's wrong. My immediate reaction was:

1) These kids are evil. 2) Are they spoiled rich kids? 3) How do I reduce the odds of my kid behaving like that in 10 years.

btw - I'd like to hope the kid who video-taped it knew exactly what he /she was doing. Maybe a silver lining in an otherwise depressing bus ride (that and the 100k).

> I'm curious why you wouldn't feel flattered that your creation was noticed and worth copying?

Because I'm human, I guess. Sometimes I'm flattered and sometimes I'm not. It has a lot to do with the nature of project, how it has been copied, who copied it, why they did it.

Understanding this, I'm now trying hard to position myself in situations where I'll be flattered when it happens and disappointed when it doesn't.

> Do you believe ideas can be owned?

I do not, hence the entire premise of my parent post.

You make a valid point but I think other factors are at play in my case.

For starters, the comic you've linked to suggests that I don't come up with many new ideas, but a glance at my HN profile might reveal otherwise.

I think it has more to do with how long I spend in open-mode. I suspect longer than others. I like to marinate on my ideas. I try to give myself a lot of time to solve a problem. The result is a certain level of depth that I might feel extra ownership over. This is a side-effect and an unintentional one at that.

I'm now working hard on optimizing my work-flow to counter this issue. Some of it has to do with releasing things sooner than later (thus feeling less invested in them at that point).

Many of us here have experienced our work getting cloned by others. While I totally get that 'everything is a remix', I still can't help but feel that kick in the gut every time this happens. I am always bothered by how much I care. It took me a while to reconcile this emotional-jerk. Here's how I see it now:

John Cleese has a wonderful talk about how each project consists for 'open' and 'close' modes [1]. In one sentence - open mode is playing around with ideas and stumbling upon a gem in the rough, while closed mode is the execution of polishing that gem to perfection.

Seen through this framework, I would claim that 'cloning' is the act of jumping in on someone else's open-mode work, and forking a new close-mode.

Why do we care when someone does this? I think that as the open-mode is a highly creative process, it is hard to not get emotionally attached to the rough-gems it produces. Some will describe it as nothing shy of birthing an idea. In that sense, the kick-in-the-gut that I feel is probably the sense of loss associated with someone 'snatching my new-born'.

I'm not suggesting that cloning is good or bad, but just trying to provide a reasonable explanation to why we feel pain when someone clones our work - even though we know it's OK.

[EDIT: there are situations where 'cloning' is in essence thievery. And that's not OK. Where to draw the line deserves its own thread.]

[1] John Cleese on creativity http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VShmtsLhkQg

In the past 10 years I was able to support my side-projects (see profile) and family life (we have 2 years old) by not having a day job, but instead carefully choosing freelance projects. Here's how it works:

Freelancing allows me the flexibility to dedicate pockets of time to side-projects that require a push. I simply don't book myself of 3-4 weeks if I know I need the time for a side project. This allows these side-projects to organically flourish rather than wither in the long term. If and when any of these projects become a source of income, I can easily turn my attention to it without having to change my lifestyle.

Regardless of their monetary success (some of my projects are not meant to be products at all), I've noticed that they act as magnets towards the kind of freelancing jobs I'd like to take. This creates a positive feedback loop, as the freelancing gigs often help me push forward at least one of the side projects (code wise or knowledge of the domain).

Overal, the trick is to keep your projects (paid or not) within your core curiosity-zone. If you're just starting out, the mission is to get closer to this zone with every new freelance gig. The end result is that enjoy both the side projets and my freelancing gigs. The line between them blurs more and more every-day.

Great post. I used to often speak publicly. Last week I gave my first talk in years, to a large crowd. I was nervous because of how long has passed since I've last done it, but then I remembered my old habit. Before my talks I used to spend time with the conference goers in the hall, just chatting with them about whatever comes up. This seems to play a trick on the mind, making me feel like I'm speaking to friends rather than a faceless crowd. It worked last week as well. I highly recommend trying it out.

That's great to hear. Overal I love the concept but worry about your marketing. The Bloomberg stunt was clever and fun, but placing the words 'code' and 'easy' side-by-side can lead to frustration on the back-end of your proposition. Coding is hard. Hard-Fun [1]. And that's OK.

[1] http://www.papert.org/articles/HardFun.html

Congrats to Codecademy. I hope they spend it wisely on fulfilling their promise that "Codecademy is the easiest way to learn how to code."

I'm a bit worried about what might happen to all these young potential coders if the marketing doesn't deliver as promised.

Meanwhile, I'd like to propose a much humbler effort which is not intended to compete by any means with codecademy:

We run a little anti-school from our Brooklyn loft. We call it Kitchen Table Coders [1] because we only allow as many people who can fit around our kitchen table. Every weekend we pick a topic that we're excited about and carve out some time to teach it to others.

(btw - we're not a startup nor do we wish to be. If you'd like to start a Kitchen-Table-Coders session in your town, please do. We'll help you get started.)

[1] http://kitchentablecoders.com

This project has tremendous potential for children with special needs. I've basically had to build a similar device from scratch in 2006 as part of my ITP (NYU) thesis project [1]. This could have saved me so much time! Backing it, and hope you will too!

[1] http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/dmal.9780262...

On a somewhat related note, my dad (a dentist and scientist) recently discovered that there are stem cells that are almost as easy to manipulate as embryonic ones .. in our mouthes [1][2]. He always wondered why our gums heal so quickly, even as we age.

[1] Sorry for the PR-ish link (I'll ask him for the actual paper) - http://singularityhub.com/2012/05/10/toothless-no-more-resea...

[Edit 2] Here's the original publication (free) from Stem Cells Journal http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/stem.425/abstract

I found a simple method that works really well: ask the student to invent their own language syntax on paper. We start with a simple language that can draw on screen, and proceed from there.

I'm noticing that Students naturally discover many of the issues and tricks that they would otherwise have to "study" (such as flow of execution, nesting, variables)

I occasionally teach at schools in NY, and this semester my students "invented" the smalltalk syntax. It was heartwarming to witness.

Oh I'm sorry! It was intended for this thread - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3204525

I found a simple method that works really well: ask the student to invent their own language syntax on paper. We start with a simple language that can draw on screen, and proceed from there. I'm noticing that Students naturally discover many of the issues and tricks that they would otherwise have to "study" (such as flow of execution, nesting, variables)

I occasionally teach at schools in NY, and this semester my students "invented" the smalltalk syntax. It was heartwarming to witness.

If I could drive one thing into the collective minds of FaceBook users, it would be this:

"If you're not paying for something, you're not the customer, you're the product being sold" *Andrew Lewis

Having been through the Director, Flash and now HTML5 fads, I dream of a day when this title would suffice on HN:

"Plink, a multiplayer music game"

This is just to say - I enjoyed Plink very much and would have just the same regardless of the technology.

Great job, it's a simple no BS calculator that does exactly what it sais it does. And good call not asking for registration, and going the way of a sharable url instead. I'll be using this. Thanks!

update: I can imagine wanting an account that organizes my urls. It would be cool that have that button on the side, but not push for people to register.

Reading this tutorial reminded me of the first time I realized how handy a bit of math can be for animation. I think it was this little ease-out snippet that opened my eyes (served me well for years to come):

posX += (destX - posX)/ slowdownRate

Moves an item like so: X....X...X..X.X

..And many years later, his son Tristan has made a few drawing machines of his own: http://www.tristanperich.com/Art/Machine_Drawings/

Kyle just posted a new demo video - he's playing around with the idea of the "Scrambler Suite" from A Scanner Darkly - http://vimeo.com/29391633