Pretty RFC

RFCs are documents produced by The Internet Engineering Task Force, and many are official standards for various Internet protocols. This site indexes and formats these documents for easier finding & viewing.

Note: most RFCs can't be prettified at the moment, as their source files are unavailable to the public and need to be requested from rfc-editor.org. I'm working on this.

Kicksend (YC S11) goes free. Send unlimited files to anyone.

“Oversharing can happen way too easily,” said my friend, a new parent. “I’m guessing when [my daughter] is 16, she won’t want whatever person is trying to date her to be able to stalk her through time. ‘Hey girl, I liked that swimsuit you wore to the beach when you were 10 months old.’”

This guy and the millions like him are directly in the crosshairs of Kicksend, an app for sharing large batches of photos and videos with small, specific groups of people. For all the reasons you’d want to share your most precious memories with just a few rather than the unwashed many, the Kicksend premise works and is welcome in a world that’s just about shared-out.

Today, the company is relaunching its web app and is making all its applications — including mobile, web, and desktop — free of charge.

“Over the past few years, it’s gotten easier to take large numbers of high quality photos and videos and blast them out to everyone you know,” said Pradeep Elankumaran, CEO of Kicksend, in a release this morning.

“However, sharing those photos with a subset of your contacts or sending full quality personal images to just your family members is still remarkably difficult. That’s where we come in.”

The company got its start at Y Combinator, Silicon Valley’s most hallowed incubator program. With the relaunched app, the team is now giving its users a new user interface and a new set of features.

Here’s a sneak peek at the new look:

Shiny.

You can send photos and videos to friends and family privately, and sort contacts into lists for faster, easier sharing. The app also brings baked-in commenting, and it lets you send any type of file to any email address.

And now it’s all free. Previously, the startup had tested out a freemium model; users got to send up to one gigabyte each month free of charge. Now, you can send as much as you like, also free of charge.

The Mountain View-based startup was founded in 2011. In addition to a small amount of YC money, the team has also received seed funding led by True Ventures with participation from Digital Garage, Ron Conway’s SV Angel, Start Fund, and Milo.com CEO Jack Abraham.

Image courtesy of Hasloo Group Production Studio & Rido, Shutterstock

Please learn to write

Please Learn to Write

There’s been lots of buzz on the topic of whether or not you should learn to code. As an engineer, I don’t have unbiased thoughts on the matter. I tweeted Jeff Atwood’s piece because, well, I agree that it’s pretty silly to think that the world is going to be a better place if the Mayor of New York City learns how to code. I agree with Atwood that his valuable time would be better spent elsewhere.

I believe there are essential skills you learn as an engineer who codes. It teaches you how to structure your thinking, and the process looks something like this:

I have this thing I want to to build.
I have a finite set of tools that enforce a certain set of rules I must follow.
And… go.

Coding is unforgiving. Its structure is well-defined and enforced by whatever interpreter or compiler you might be using. You are punished swiftly for obvious errors. You are punished more subtly for the less obvious ones.

Once you’ve mastered a particular language, you’ve also mastered a means of thinking. You understand how to decompose a problem into knowable units, and you learn how to intertwine those units into pleasant and functional flow. Perhaps you’ve figured out how to get that flow to perform at Herculean scale. There is no doubt in my mind that this is an essential and valuable skill for anyone to learn and master.

However, there is a language you could master that teaches many of the same lessons, appears far more forgiving in terms of syntax, and has immediate broader appeal.

The language you can learn is your own.

I argue that there is an essential set of skills that intersect both with writing words and writing code. Let’s revisit the process:

There’s this thought I want to write.
I have finite set of words, a target audience, and, likely, a certain article length that all serve as constraints.
And… go.

Writing appears more forgiving because there is no compiler or interpreter catching your its and it’s issues or reminding you of the rules regarding that or which. Here’s the rub: there is a compiler and it’s fucking brutal. It’s your readers. Your readers are far more critical than the Python interpreter. Not only do they care about syntax, but they also want to learn something, and, perhaps, be entertained while all this learning is going down. Success means they keep coming back - failure is a lonely silence. Python is looking pretty sweet now, right?

The articles on Rands keep getting longer and longer, and as I’m finishing a piece, I worry, “Is it too long?” I worry about this because we live in a lovely world of 140-character quips and status updates, and I fret about whether I’ll be able to hold your attention, which is precisely the wrong thing to worry about. What I should be worried about is, “Have I written something worthy of your attention?”

Writing is the connective tissue that creates understanding. We, as social creatures, often better perform rituals to form understanding one on one, but good writing enables us to understand each other at scale.

Now… go.

A friend and mentor once said, "The difference between a good engineer and a great engineer is that the latter wields a word processor as well as they do a compiler." I think that's true. Good post!

Jim, I like your statement, but please replace engineer with programmer. People who code are not engineers and are not required to adhere to professional standards like professional engineers. "Software engineer" is an arbitrarily manufactured title.

Gustav,

Some people who code are engineers. I'm an Electronic Engineer but about 75% of my job is writing firmware. I used to be a programmer before I did my engineering degree, I don't think there's really much in it between what I did as a "programmer" and what I do now as an "engineer".

At the company I work for there are hardware guys and software guys. We work to the same standards.

Cheers,
Al

p.s., all the job titles I've had have been arbitrary.

I think you just outlined why it is beneficial for people to learn to code, even if they won't ever write code professionally – it's a much clearer example of a domain that requires the subject to decompose their goals into clear, explicit components. If the 'world' doesn't need more programmers it certainly doesn't need more writers! But the world would certainly be a better place if there were better programmers and better writers, and practicing either is the best way to achieve that. Jeff wrote that programmers should strive to write as little code as possible. That same principle applies to writers as well!

"... I fret about whether I’ll be able to hold your attention, which is precisely the wrong thing to worry about. What I should be worried about is, “Have I written something worthy of your attention?”

Yes.

I also agree that learning to *communicate* through writing is more useful for most people than learning to *code*, but still think EVERYBODY needs an intro to programming. Not so they can *write code*, but so they have at least a glimmer of appreciation/understanding around the algorithms that influence and control so much of our lives.

Gustav, I agree - I prefer "craftsman" to engineer.
Professional engineers did not build the Taj Majal, the Hagia Sofia, or il Duomo in Florence. They build a lot of strip malls though.
I've seen a lot of Java code that smells of engineering, but there are a few craftsmen building beautiful things with it, too.

"Writing appears more forgiving because there is no compiler or interpreter catching your its and it’s issues or reminding you of the rules regarding that or which."

I agree with you. But should not that also include grammar?

"I have a finite set of tools that enforce a set certain of rules I must follow." I believe it should be: "I have a finite set of tools that enforce a certain set of rules I must follow."

You probably have a typo in the second item of your first bulleted list. "enforce a set certain of rules"

"The shame of speaking unskilfully were small if the tongue onely thereby were disgrac'd: But as the Image of a King in his Seale ill-represented is not so much a blemish to the waxe, or the Signet that seal'd it, as to the Prince it representeth, so disordered speech
is not so much injury to the lips that give it forth, as to the disproportion and incoherence of things in themselves, so negligently expressed. Neither can his Mind be thought to be in Tune, whose words do jarre; nor his reason in frame, whose sentence is preposterous; nor his Elocution clear and perfect, whose utterance breaks itself into
fragments and uncertainties. Negligent speech doth not onely discredit
the person of the Speaker, but it discrediteth the opinion of his
reason and judgement; it discrediteth the force and uniformity of the
matter and substance. If it be so then in words, which fly and 'scape censure, and where one good Phrase asks pardon for many incongruities and faults, how then shall he be thought wise whose penning is thin and shallow? How shall you look for wit from him whose leasure and head, assisted with the examination of his eyes, yeeld you no life or sharpnesse in his writing?"

--Timber, or, Discoveries made upon Men and Matters, by Ben Jonson

"Now, it is clear that the decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes: it is not due simply to the bad influence of this or that individual writer. But an effect can become a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing the same effect in an intensified form, and so on indefinitely. A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts. The point is that the process is reversible. Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble. If one gets rid of these habits one can think more clearly, and to think clearly is a necessary first step toward political regeneration: so that the fight against bad English is not frivolous and is not the exclusive concern of professional writers."

-George Orwell, "Politics and the English Language"

It's neither learning to code nor learning to write; rather learning to solve problems via a repeatable process that really matters. Writing and coding are merely good ways to practice the Problem Solving Process: Identify the Problem ("there's this thought I want to write"), find the tools you have available to help you solve this problem ("I have a finite set of tools that enforce a set certain of rules I must follow") and use those Tools to solve the problem (Go). Ending, of course, with test your solution (compile / discover if your readers thought it was worth reading / were amused).

Some people will learn the "how to think" in a more structured environment such as coding, while others will respond to writing better. As long as we all learn to solve problems elegantly, the world will, indeed, be a better place (cheesy smile here).

To Gustav and Matt van Horn: A good craftsman is a good engineer. The best programmers I've worked with follow rigorous engineering discipline, with good naming conventions, tidy code and strong processes for everything that isn't code (e.g. releasing). A craftsman in any medium should be able to do things repeatably and in such as way that someone else can maintain their creation later.

"I have a finite set of tools that enforce a set certain of rules I must follow."

Yes, you should learn to write.

For the engineering side-thread, I believe the point Gustav was making is that "engineer" actually means something in most areas. In many states, you can't legally refer to yourself as a professional engineer unless you are a licensed PE.

I let my coders figure out "how". My job is to tell them "what" and "why", and together we figure out "when".

there is no compiler or interpreter catching your its and it’s issues

I fully realize the irony of me pointing this out, but I think you mean "catching yours and its issues".

Writing involves communication, just as programming does. That's why in both cases you use language. But there is an essential difference, in that most people don't understand the power of a highly constrained context with exactly followed instructions. And even for non-programmers, many repetitive tasks on their computers can benefit from being automated.

Without a basic understanding of the power of automated instruction following, multiplied by enormous clock rates, all of modern computer technology is just magic. It is dangerous to have a population that believes in magic.

Normm said: "Without a basic understanding of the power of automated instruction following, multiplied by enormous clock rates, all of modern computer technology is just magic. It is dangerous to have a population that believes in magic."

I agree. And it takes only the gentlest intro to demystify the magic. I watched my daughter's fellow five-year-old classmates "programming" a turtle logo simulation with a plush toy and floor tiles. No computer, just one kid (holding the toy) "interpreting" the other kid's "code". Within a couple days, switching to programming in logo on the computer was no big stretch for them.

Nearly anyone *can* and I believe *should* learn to program. And to reference an earlier Rands post, I also believe everyone should learn a bit of neuro/cog science and the psychology of motivation and manipulation. Between big data and behavioral economics (hmmm gamification), humans are being mind-hacked in increasingly sophisticated, subconscious ways. Simply knowing it's happening is not protection from the effects of exposure, but at least we can make more informed choices about what to avoid.

Great read, I enjoyed this a lot.

Just to throw my 2 cents at the engineering comments, I am currently studying for my MEng in Software Engineering, a qualification whose title I think is wholly appropriate.

You can have craftsmen, creatives and also engineers in software. It's all about the approach you take, and (in my opinion) the type and scale of software you are building.

To give some backup to having "software engineer" be more than a "made up title", in my country I would be allowed to become a Chartered Engineer, based on the graduation from this course. That is the same list that holds architectural, electrical and mechanical engineers.

Hmnn.

Is programming "essential" to learn? Probably not. But it is equally difficult to gasp on the belief that learning to write better is a lot more essential as well.

{Please learn to write}, sounds to me as a diversion. Please don't acquire the knowledge that I consider only myself and few others to be worthy of having. Please focus on writing!

Where has the missing middle gone to vacation? It is perfectly possible to both learn to write better and learn to code.

Surely, coding is not essential. But I find it decreasingly silly and increasingly horrendous to find people complain about other people wanting to learn to code. You make programming sound as if this was this esoteric knowledge that only so few are worth of and that most people would do terribly.

If major Bloomberg wants to learn to code. So what? The world is never going to become a worse place when the amount of knowledge about a topic is increased. I cannot really find a good explanation for how is it that there are apparently so many people that still believe that there are cases in which less people gaining knowledge about a topic is a preferable thing.

Also, what if you already have nurtured writing for a good while and want to try other things for once? I am not sure what your opinion about Bloomberg's writing is, and I am sure that like any human being there is always room for improvement. But I am going to take the wild guess that his political position has a sort of implicit requirement for knowing language a little well.

Besides, just because you are a software engineer it does not mean people cannot enjoy programming with out your methodologies. Structural engineers do not own physics and Painters do not own aesthetics - It seems a little arrogant for software engineers to believe they own programming. Rest assured that having some few people learn your secret language won't mean they will own become engineers and flood your software projects with bad code you will have to debug - That bad code will come regardless of whether Bloomberg convinces a couple of extra kids to become software engineers or not.

@Jason Baker, I believe the statement was correct as written, although some punctuation might have helped.

there is no compiler or interpreter catching your "its" and "it’s" issues

Jason Baker,

There's no irony, you've misunderstood. He was referring to confusing "it's" with "its".

Although I'd have probably put:

..."there is no compiler or interpreter catching your 'its/it’s' issues"

Many more words have been written about the Golden Gate bridge than engineering hours spent building it. I'd argue the latter has provided more benefit to society. I can also assure you China is preparing to beat us senseless by training more coders, not more writers.

If anything, I'd call this article too short.

I miss Steve Yegge's interminable blog posts.

Length was just fine! good read and points.

Maybe there are unintended consequences but I'd certainly like to have more politicians that know how to code deciding on things like SOPA, PIPA, ACTA, CISPA etc than not.

I agree with your observation about language wholeheartedly. For the record, my biggest gripe was about presumption. The unstated assumption is that the Mayor plans to do this learning on "taxpayer time" (and that he was serious). But what if he merely wants to learn to code on his own time for personal fulfillment? Perhaps it's a personal enrichment goal. What right does anyone have to tell the man how he ought to spend his free time? In short, the whole topic is inflammatory, presumptuous and silly.

Hacker News

Pretty RFC

Kicksend (YC S11) goes free. Send unlimited files to anyone.

Please learn to write

Please Learn to Write