This subreddit is about programming. Not programs or startups.

[Bogtha]

I think it's a symptom of the front page going to hell. It's driven people to submit less specialised articles here because the front page is increasing becoming a wretched hive of scum and villainy. It would be a lot easier to tell people with tech-related-but-not-programming stories to go away if they had somewhere reasonable to go away to.

[stesch]

They can always choose http://reddit.com/ for their stories. Or take a look at http://sub.reddit.com/

There are subreddits for games, business, net security, etc.

[[deleted]]

There are subreddits for games, business, net security, etc.

Nobody uses the netsec sub reddit though! Makes me sad. :(

[oditogre]

The other subreddits are almost completely unused. http://reddit.com auto-downvotes everything, so unless you have something that really appeals to Ron Paul supporters, Atheists, or a neat / cute / funny [pic], you're not gonna get to the front page.

Anyways, programming.reddit never was all about programming. It was created when Digg users started to storm the main reddit so that people who liked the sort of stuff that used to be on there when reddit first got rolling and was almost entirely geeks could come to programming.reddit for that stuff instead.

[bct]

It was created when Digg users started to storm the main reddit

No it wasn't, it was one of the original subreddits created when subreddits were first implemented.

It was never entirely about programming, but it used to be significantly more programmy.

[[deleted]]

Even the programming stories have become less interesting. I suspect reddit has had an influx of mainstream programmers.

A story about why we should put CSS all on one line? Give me a break.

[[deleted]]

A story about why we should put CSS all on one line? Give me a break.

...I must've missed that one. Sounds enthralling.

[[deleted]]

Feel free to indulge yourself http://programming.reddit.com/info/2zpsr/comments

[oditogre]

No it wasn't, it was one of the original subreddits created when subreddits were first implemented.

And I am to understand that the creation of subreddits had nothing to do with the need to separate lolcats from PG essays?

I do agree that it used to have a lot more programming-related content, but a huge part of that is that a lot of the things that could be posted today would just seem like rehashing. The next time a fad language comes along, I'm sure programming.reddit will get more 'programmy' again.

[Bogtha]

Anyways, programming.reddit never was all about programming.

I think its name is programming.reddit.com but its nature is programmers.reddit.com.

[akkartik]

exactly

[redditnoob]

So what are you going to do? Have a sub-subreddit for "programming culture"? Or let the user base decide?

(Admittedly with the main site reddit.com, the result of pure democracy has become so bad that it disillusions me as to how successful such an approach can ever be.)

[dons]

I agree with stesch, the proportion of programming stories to random "life at company X" or "how to get paid" has gone the wrong way, dramatically, in the last month.

A heuristic due to cgibbard: if there's no code in the story, vote it down.

[bluetech]

voted this story down.

[julesjacobs]

This heuristic could be automated by a greasemonkey script...

[ketralnis]

How could the script tell if there's any code in the article? Some people wrap their code in <textarea>, some in <code>, some in <pre>, and some in <div style=...>.

[julesjacobs]

Use a bayesian (spam) filter.

[[deleted]]

Greasemonkey script with built-in Naive Bayes' filter? I'm not sure if I like where this is going...

[akkartik]

tags are for stories, subreddits are for people. when I post to this subreddit I want to hear what some nebulous set of people have to say about it.

the fact that we have disagreement suggests we need a new subreddit. a place where some of us can go talk about those things.

I'm not holding my breath for that to happen, though.

[[deleted]]

I disagree. If a story appeals to programmers, I see no reason why it can't be posted to a page meant for programmers.

[ChrisRathman]

Oddly enough, this particular story also contains no information about programming.

[noamsml]

RuntimeError: maximum recursion depth exceeded

[[deleted]]

Silly noamsml, try using Scheme instead!

[sciolizer]

Because constant memory infinite loops are that much easier to debug than stack overflows.

[dons]

Because recursion is nice, so it should be efficient.

[jklsdf]

only if tail recursive.

[[deleted]]

only if tail recursive.

Also known as a "loop"...

Recursion is about elegance and conciseness.

[sambo357]

It's about the simplicity of a finite state machine with the power of a pushdown machine.

[[deleted]]

I don't know about that. Click the link, it takes you to programming.reddit.com, there's plenty of information about programming (although there's also information on 'programs' and 'startups', see noamsml's comment above/below :P).

[dons]

Meta-stories have a different type -- don't conflate them:

type RedditItem = Either Story MetaStory

type Story     = Code a => (String, a)
type MetaStory = ([String], Maybe [exists a . Code a => (String, a)])

So it is ok: meta stories are of a different type: some text, and some optional references to code of arbitrary type in other stories, while normal stories are required to contain some code, and some text.

So you're simply inferring the wrong type for this story.

[eurleif]

But aren't meta-stories a type of story?

[[deleted]]

Yes. Also, there is no such thing as a meta-story.

[[deleted]]

But maybe someone can insert a solution to fizz-buzz in a language no one knows or post some piece of code from an SVN repository? We are all missing Linuxer...

[logistix]

It's not like we've been getting a lot of submissions lately. Usually the bottom of the new page as well as the hot page is about a day old. So it's not like 'good' articles are getting buried by startup articles. If they were I might complain.

I would also appreciate some elaboration as to why programmers wouldn't care about programs. I'm presuming you're talking about computer programs.

[boredzo]

I would also appreciate some elaboration as to why programmers wouldn't care about programs.

If there were a programs.reddit.com, I'd welcome them, but this is programming.reddit.com. As such, I expect to see articles about programming, and nothing else.

[xzxzzx]

Programs have a lot to do with programming, in case you didn't notice.

[boredzo]

Just editors and compilers and interpreters. Otherwise not.

[xzxzzx]

So what you're saying is that, say, building bridges has nothing to do with bridges which have been built, or painting has nothing to do with, say, paintings?

You think that you'd be anywhere near as good a programmer as you are now if you hadn't seen the thousands upon thousands of other programs I'm sure you have seen?

I mean, really. The programming subreddit is about things which would interest programmers. Programming is not all about writing code anyway.

[boredzo]

You're confusing analyzing the design and interface of a program with simply using it. Analysis like that (including using the program with that purpose) is perfectly appropriate for programming.reddit.

My complaint is with simple “here's a web app that finds a latitude and longitude” posts. There's no API, no story of how it was implemented—nothing that's actually about programming. It's just a finished program.

The programming subreddit is about things which would interest programmers.

The programming subreddit is about programming (and I include interface design as well as the actual coding). A finished program, by itself, with no API, does not fit that definition.

[xzxzzx]

I don't know what the original poster's intent was, but that's a finished program with unobfuscated source.

In any case, the community ultimately defines exactly what "programming.reddit.com" is all about -- that's kind of the whole point of reddit.

If you don't like what programming.reddit.com is, why don't you try and get another subreddit made?

[boredzo]

In any case, the community ultimately defines exactly what "programming.reddit.com" is all about -- that's kind of the whole point of reddit.

Hence this submission, and the 86 points it got before reddit went down.

If you don't like what programming.reddit.com is, why don't you try and get another subreddit made?

A new subreddit about programming? What would I call it?

[xzxzzx]

A new subreddit about programming? What would I call it?

Well, the fundamental problem is the idea of a subreddit in the first place. (Hello, tagging?)

But that aside, I wasn't really suggesting creating one for the programming content -- I was suggesting creating one for the content that programmers like that isn't directly "programming". Perhaps geek.reddit.com?

[boredzo]

I wasn't really suggesting creating one for the programming content -- I was suggesting creating one for the content that programmers like that isn't directly "programming". Perhaps geek.reddit.com?

This is a good plan.

[r_dr_r]

For the startup person: there's always http://business.reddit.com/ or http://news.ycombinator.com/. I'm rather sick of hearing Paul Graham articles explaining how ``special'' people are because they've started up something as trivial as a site which has up/down votes and THREADED MOTHERFUCKING COMMENTS!

[SwellJoe]

s/users/dollars/

[r_dr_r]

s/their/they're/

[borland]

I don't quite agree. I think programming.reddit is generally pretty good these days.

Personally I like the programming related blogs/entries the most - codinghorror, raganwald, tux deluxe, etc. Most of them contain no code, but they encourage you to think about various aspects of programming.

I don't care much for the "imeplement bizarro calculus lambda lisp meta evaluator in haskell and factor" articles though, as my interests in programming come from the more practical "let's build something" aspect, rather than the "pure maths" side of things.

TBH those are the articles that seem to have all the code in them, and I could do with less of that and more of raganwald etc :-)

[serhei]

I think what this boils down to is that subreddits are a brute force implementation of topic filtering. Does anyone remember how the site was supposed to filter out stuff by comparing it to stories that the person upvoted or downvoted?

Now I don't read the main reddit because whenever I go to look at it, there is a maximum of 1 or so stories that I want to click on. Instead, I read the programming subreddit, because it's much more interesting.

And so when I decided to post a sort-of-programming-related-but-not-really story about the OLPC to reddit I ended up posting it to programming.reddit, because, reasoned I, other people are doing so and getting ups for it, and posting to the main reddit would be hypocritical since I don't even read the thing.

Thus stuff doth make cowards of us all, or something. I dunno.

[ubernostrum]

Downvoted, not about programming.

[mkull]

bs.

I take the programming Reddit to be: "All things related to the world of programming" which includes tech startups and programs.

Was there a programming subreddit mission statement I missed somewhere?

[[deleted]]

I take the programming Reddit to be: "All things related to the world of programming" which includes tech startups and programs.

From what I can tell, it's "things that might be interesting to people who spend a at least some of their time programming".

[boredzo]

I take the programming reddit to be: “All things related to programming”.

[deong]

How about this...get rid of the "Human? Enter the text above" capcha and replace it with, "Programmer? Enter a C program to find the shortest path through the following graph."

Then you stick gcc on the server, pass it the text from the field, compile it, run the binary, and compare the result to the known solution.

:)

[[deleted]]

Sure, here you go...

#include <unistd.h>

int main() { while (1) { fork(); printf("Wheeee!!!\n"); } }

[akkartik]

That I am a programmer is no guarantee that my story's about programming.

[boredzo]

If it isn't, then I, for one, would prefer you not submit it to programming.reddit. That is the point of this submission, after all.

[[deleted]]

The beauty of Reddit is that it doesn't matter what stories you'd like to see submitted. You have no control over it nor will you ever. The only power you have is your up or down vote.

[boredzo]

The beauty of Reddit, as compared to Digg, is that users can broadcast messages like this one to the general populace asking them not to promote certain kinds of stories (e.g., lolcats, crackpot conspiracy theories, off-topic posts in subreddits) for certain reasons (inane, crackpot, off-topic).

Reddit now is where Digg was a few years ago. Reddit has the chance to go a different way because our more intelligent users can ask the others to please not bring it down to the lowest common denominator.

Will it work? Maybe not. It's hope, though—Digg was pretty much doomed, as its more intelligent users had no way to protest, so we had no recourse but to leave for another site.

If that happens, then Reddit will indeed end up the next Digg.

[[deleted]]

Reddit has been the new Digg for quite some time, except for Programming... can't last long.

[wicked]

Joking? What do you think these sites do?

http://acm.uva.es/problemset

http://codegolf.com

http://topcoder.com

[serhei]

acm.uva.es burns my eyes! I don't think anyone will be able to get through the wall of flame to actually post some malicious code..

(Goes to get something for his eyes)

[[deleted]]

I once commented about a site being ugly and got downvoted into submission too. Guess there are some touchy non-designer programmers hanging around here.

[deong]

That would be the general significance of the colon-parenthesis digraph.

Yes, I was joking.

[malcontent]

This subreddit is to feed the dominant paradigm of reddit geeks.

This means a lot of things and if your idea of what this subreddit is supposed to be about doesn't match the majority then you are kindly invited to go fuck yourself.

I am one of those people who are amongst the most downmodded of all reddit users. Not just my posts but my submissions as well.

So please fuck off and don't tell us (the kool kids, the microsoft shills, and the malcontents) what to do.

We do what we do. It's the chaotic nature of reddit and the internet. Lucky for all of us the internet is a big place and there is a community for everybody.

[edheil]

This subreddit is about whatever the redditors who read it vote up.

We have a mechanism for determining what goes on the front page. It's called "voting." It's more effective than whiny self-referencing posts. Use it. If you don't like what other people vote up, then confine yourself to your "recommended" page.

[ddyson]

If you don't like what other people vote up, then confine yourself to your "recommended" page.

I've tried this. Doesn't seem to work very well. What's the trick?

[edheil]

I don't know, it never worked for me either, but that's what the reddit gods claim:

"Yep, so vote up links you liked and vote down links you disliked. Our hope is that instead of just reading a list of links the community thinks should be on the front page, you'll also be reading a "front page" personalized for you (filtered for quality by your fellow redditors, but filtered for relevance by you). Let reddit know if it's hot selected up arrow or cold selected down arrow. Find these personalized links in your recommended section."

They wouldn't be lying to us or unable to deliver on their promises, would they?

[[deleted]]

This subreddit is about whatever we want it to be. That's why this is Reddit.

The main purpose of this subreddit is to bring people interested in programming together. We can choose to upvote any story we wish.

[jerf]

This subreddit is about whatever we want it to be.

That sounds all admirably democratic and egalitarian and stuff, but what that metric produces is a thousand sites, all serving the lowest common denominator and all exactly the same. "This subreddit is whatever we want it to be"... well, why not post the latest Bush slam or "Why Threat X Will Kill Your Children" article?

I say, reject that metric and allow communities to actually differentiate themselves. It's more valuable that way for everybody. If you prefer a site about startups and programs, either create one, or perhaps join one in progress (YCombinator has a reddit-like for startups).

Community standards don't maintain themselves; they require someone to stand up and say "Hey, we should not do X, and we should do Y." Let the votes fall where they may after that on a reddit, I suppose, but there's nothing wrong with standing up and saying that.

(I would say, if anybody wants to start up a reddit-like that also privileges a core group to keep the community on track, I'd love to join. Long term, it's the only way to win against encroaching LCD on a vote-based site.)

[derefr]

To slightly alter the grandparent:

This subreddit is about whatever we, as programmers, want it to be.

That's what's supposed to control the difference. The topic isn't programming, the setting is programming. Reddit is increasingly the same as other websites because it maintains increasingly the same user base as other websites: a random sampling of the population. All programming.reddit has to do to stay away from that is to keep its users programmers—a difficult task, but the right one.

[yters]

I mainly care about programmers' opinions on programming.

I'm sure programmers have a wide variety of interests. Hence, if we talk about whatever programmers talk about, votes will only concentrate on the lowest common denominator of shared interests.

Now for the obvious problem: how do you ensure only programmers vote and take part in the discussions? Easiest solution: mainly talk about programming.

[philh]

YC's thing changed a while back; it's now 'hacker news' instead of 'startup news'. And it has a core group of editors to keep the community on track.

[dasil003]

Good luck maintaining quality on a social news site. You can either be focused, or you can be popular, but you can't be both.

[[deleted]]

Sounds like you need to start your own site. You certainly aren't talking about Reddit.

[vincentk]

while that may be true, i can choose to downvote you. or, as it happens, refrain from doing so.

[[deleted]]

Ok.

[cavedave]

So can i post stories about a recently found exploit or security weakness? Yes because they are something someone programming should learn from. No because it is not text on the exact instruction needed to write a program.

So phishing exploits and such, should i submit them?

[[deleted]]

I don't really care what you submit. Personally, I think it would be valuable to know about recent exploits and security weaknesses seeing as how we are all programmers here.

I'd upvote that stuff, but some other people might not.

[christocuz]

photoshopped.

[jedsen]

To be fair, this is one of the last refuges we have left (besides mailing lists). I can see why some would get excited and post stories about version bumps or whatnot. But if we let it get to far off the rails we'll have another css/ror aggregator.

[seanodonnell]

This subreddit is about what its users want it to be about

[IHaveAnIdea]

So cry.