Zach Barnett

A Senseless
Conversation
Issue 24 May 2012

Curator
Lim Cheng Soon

Contributors
Zach Barnett
Tom Preston-Werner
Kenton White
Matt Might
Henry Prcheur
Ben Dowling
Chris Wenham
Elijah Manor
Kenneth Reitz
Peep Laja
Chris Eidhof

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Contents
FEATURES

04 A Senseless Conversation
By Zach

Barnett

STARTUPS
10

SPECIAL

Open Source (Almost) Everything

By TOM PRESTON-WERNER

13

By Peep Laja

A $5000 Chair

By Kenton White

37

Ive Got an Idea For an App

By Chris Eidhof

PROGRAMMING
14

Jedi Mind Tricks: Lesser Known Ways to

Persuade People

32

SSH: More Than Secure Shell

By Matt Might

18

Python: Copying a List the Right Way

By Henry Prcheur

Invaluable Command Line Tools For

Web Developers

20

By Ben Dowling

22

Signs That Youre a Bad Programmer

By Chris Wenham

Differences Between jQuery bind(), live(),

delegate() and on()

26

By Elijah Manor

30

How I Develop Things and Why

By Kenneth reitz

For links to Hacker News dicussions, visit hackermonthly.com/issue-24

FEATURES

A Senseless Conversation
By Zach Barnett
Background credit: flickr.com/photos/zooboing/5376513937/

The following dialogue first appears in THINK 29, Vol. 10 (Autumn 2011) published by Cambridge University Press:
2011 Royal Institute of Philosophy All Rights Reserved

y name is Zach Barnett. Can machines

think? Until what
happened today, I thought that no
human-made machine could ever
think as a human does. I now know
that I was wrong.
I woke up to a phone call. Calling
was my best friend, Douglas. Douglas is an experimental computer
scientist. He told me that he had
created a computer that could pass
the Turing Test.
I knew that the Turing Test was
supposed to be a way to test a
machines intelligence. Not merely
a way to determine whether a
machine could simulate intelligence, but a way to determine
whether the machine was genuinely thinking, understanding. The
intelligence test that Alan Turing
proposed was a sort of imitation
game. In one room is an ordinary
human; in the other is a machine
(probably a computer). A human
examiner, who does not know
which room contains the machine,
would engage in a natural language
conversation with both participants.

4 FEATURES

If the examiner is unable to reliably distinguish the machine from

the human, then, according to
Turing, we have established that the
machine is thinking, understanding
and, apparently, conscious.
I never found this plausible. How
could a certain kind of external
behavior tell us anything about
what it is like for the machine on
the inside? Why would Turing think
it impossible to create a mindless,
thoughtless machine that is able
nonetheless to produce all of the
right output to pull off the perfect
trickery? Furthermore, how could
we ever establish that a machine
was conscious without actually
being that machine?
Despite my skepticism, I was
curious to see the computer that
Douglas had created. I wanted to
have the opportunity to engage in
conversation with it, intelligent
or not. Unfortunately, I would
never have this opportunity. When
I arrived, Douglas led me toward
Room A. He explained that he
wanted to administer the Turing
Test and that he wanted me to play

the role of the control subject, the

human. The computer, Douglas
told me, was located in room B.
Douglas would converse with us
both and would thereby be able to
compare my human responses with
the apparently human responses of
his lifeless, mindless creation.
I entered room A, expecting to
see a workstation equipped with
some sort of text-messaging software. Instead, there was a massive
container filled with a strange,
translucent fluid. The container was
a sensory deprivation tank, Douglas
explained, and he wanted me to go
inside it. Yikes. Why would I need
to do that? I wondered. I thought
that Douglas probably wanted me
in the sensory deprivation tank so
that my situation would be roughly
analogous to that of the computer.
The computer doesnt have eyes or
ears, I reasoned, and so Douglas did
not want me to be able to use mine.
Douglas explained that while I
was in the tank, I would be able to
sense nothing; I wouldnt even be
able to hear my own voice. How
would we communicate? Douglas

showed me a brain-computer
interface, which would allow me
to communicate with Douglas not
by talking, but by thinking. He
would speak into a microphone,
and I would hear his voice in
my minds ear. To reply, I would
think my responses back to him,
and he would receive my thoughts
as text. It was a bit sci-fi for me,
but Douglas reassured me. He told
me that the whole experiment
would not take too long and that
he would let me out as soon as
it was over. I trusted him. With a
deep breath, I entered the tank, and
Douglas closed the lid.
There was a moment of stillness.
I couldnt see anything, and when I
tried to move, I couldnt feel myself
moving. When I tried to speak, I
couldnt hear myself speaking. Suddenly, and to my surprise, I could
hear Douglass voice:
DOUGLAS: How are you doing in there?
Feeling comfortable yet?
ZACH: This is pretty weird. But Im okay.
DOUGLAS: Great.

I was communicating with my

mind, which is cool in retrospect.
At the time, it was simply creepy! I
tried to focus on the conversation.
ZACH: So for a bit, I was wondering
why you needed me to be in this
sensory deprivation tank. But I think I
figured out the reason.
DOUGLAS: Did you?
ZACH: I think so. You want me in this
tank so that I am in the same situation
as the computer. If I could see, hear,
or feel during this conversation, then
I would be able to talk about those
experiences with you. And the computer isnt able to do that. I would have
an unfair advantage.

DOUGLAS: Great observation! Some

computer scientists have tried to work
around this asymmetry. They have had
little success. Its hard to lie convincingly, and its even harder to build
something that can lie convincingly.
ZACH: Its interesting and all, but you
should know that I think that this
whole Turing Test thing is a sham
anyhow. Even if your computer can
pass this test, I believe that this ability
says nothing about its intelligence.
DOUGLAS: I thought you might feel
that way. If you were to see my computer in action for yourself, you might
be persuaded otherwise.
ZACH: How so? Seeing it in action
would do nothing to persuade me. Its
all just pre-programmed output.
DOUGLAS: You think so? Maybe if I
were to tell you a bit more about why
the sensory deprivation tank was so
important, you would have a different
opinion.
ZACH: I thought I had already figured
out why you needed the tank?
DOUGLAS: Not entirely. You were right
that having the human in the tank
would ensure that the two participants
are on a more level playing field. But
the tank is critical for another reason.
ZACH: Well, are you going to tell me?
Or are you going to leave me in senseless suspense?
DOUGLAS: I will tell you in a roundabout way.
ZACH: Great.

This was intended to be sarcastic,

but since he received it as text, Im
not sure he caught it.

DOUGLAS: In my many years on this

project, a single obstacle had frustrated all of my previous attempts to
build a computer that could communicate as a human can. The tank actually
turned out to be the final piece of the
puzzle!
ZACH: What was the obstacle?
DOUGLAS: In the past, as soon as I
would turn my machines online, they
would panic.
ZACH: What do you mean they would
panic? Do you mean they would
simulate panic?
DOUGLAS: Not exactly.
ZACH: Couldnt you just program them
not to panic?
DOUGLAS: No, they are far too complicated for that.
ZACH: I dont understand. If I tell my
computer to turn on, it turns on. If I
tell it to print a document, it prints the
document. A computer is basically a
rule-follower. In other words, if your
computer panicked, then someone
told it to!
DOUGLAS: Hmm. So would you say
that a computer programmer should
always be able to predict the behavior
of her own computer programs?
ZACH: I dont see why not.
DOUGLAS: But the programmers that
programmed Chinook, the unbeatable
checkers program, cannot even play
perfect checkers themselves!
ZACH: Well yes, but that is different.
Maybe we cant predict Chinooks
behavior without doing some computation first, but there is nothing
mysterious going on. Chinook is simply
following the code written by its
programmers!

DOUGLAS: In this example, you are

right. But the computer I have built
is more complicated than Chinook.
Passing the Turing Test requires far
more intelligence than playing perfect
checkers does.

I thought back to my teenage

years, conversing with the online
chatterbot SmarterChild. I didnt
write its code, but I could predict
its responses almost flawlessly. It
was about as intelligent as a sea
cucumber. If I were to ask it:
SmarterChild, what is your
favorite season?
It probably would have
responded,
Im not interested in talking about
SmarterChild, what is your
favorite season? Lets talk about
something else! Type HELP to see
a list of commands.
Apparently, I reasoned, Douglas
thinks that there is an important
difference between his computer,
and the simple, predictable, utterly
dumb machines I am familiar with.
ZACH: So if your computer program
is so much more complicated, how
should I imagine it? What can it do?
DOUGLAS: A good question. But
shouldnt you be able to answer it?
Assuming that I am correct, assuming that my computer really can pass
the Turing Test, my computer will be
indistinguishable from a human in the
context of a conversation. The better
question is, What cant it do?
ZACH: But suppose I asked it to answer
this question: From the following
three words, pick the two that rhyme
the best: soft, rough, cough. Im pretty
sure that most people would select
soft and cough. How would your
computer answer it?

6 FEATURES

DOUGLAS: If my computer couldnt

answer that question as humans do,
then it wouldnt be able to pass the
test!
ZACH: Then it wont be able to pass
the test! Think about it... To answer this
question, I am able to do something it
cannot do. I say the words in my head.
And somehow, I can tell that cough
and soft rhyme better than either
does with rough.
DOUGLAS: I see your point; the reasoning you are using doesnt seem very
mechanical.
ZACH: Exactly.
DOUGLAS: But what would you say if
my computer could produce the same
answer and a similar justification?
ZACH: Then I would say it was pre-programmed to be prepared for exactly
that question! How could it say those
words in its head? It doesnt even
have a head! It has never even heard
those words before!
DOUGLAS: Thats a great question! You
should ask it yourself!
ZACH: But that would tell me nothing! Only how it was programmed to
respond!
DOUGLAS: Really? I think it would be
disappointed to hear that.
ZACH: Now youre just being
condescending.
DOUGLAS: Lets try to think about what
else it could do.
ZACH: Okay... So according to you, this
computer could tell you its opinions
about politics. Or it could create a
story on the spot. Since humans can
do both of those things.

DOUGLAS: Absolutely. Its political

opinions would have to be every bit
as nuanced as ordinary well, maybe
thats a bad example. But its stories
would have to be just as creative, as
coherent, and as quirky as human
stories.
ZACH: I dont see how a computer can
do all this, if it really is just a computer.
DOUGLAS: Thats understandable.
As we have been talking, I have also
been having a conversation with my
computer. Once were done, Ill show
you the entire conversation, and you
can observe its abilities for yourself.
But for now, lets assume that I am
correct. What would you say about the
intelligence of my machine?
ZACH: Whoa, not so fast. Even if I
assume it could do all of those things,
theres still something it cant do.
What if I were to ask it about its past?
Where was it born? Where did it attend
school? What is its most embarrassing
moment?
DOUGLAS: Another good point. This
was a major stumbling block for the
computer scientists working on this
problem. Many tried to create computers that would simply make something
up whenever asked a question like
that. But this turned out to be impossibly difficult to do effectively; the
computers were easily unmasked as
liars.
ZACH: But your computer... it doesnt
lie about its past?
DOUGLAS: Thats the beauty of it.
ZACH: But it must lie! If it doesnt lie
about its past, then it would admit to
having been created in a computer
lab!
DOUGLAS: Well it had better not say
that! That would blow its cover!

ZACH: But thats the truth!

DOUGLAS: My computer isnt lying, but
its not telling the truth either!
ZACH: Youre leading me off of the
deep end, Doug.
DOUGLAS: It tells what it believes to be
the truth.
ZACH: Okay, and what does it believe
to be the truth?
DOUGLAS: This is where things get
interesting. Using a technique called
memory engineering, I was able program a human memory directly into
my computers code.
ZACH: So youre saying that your computer believes that the memory it
has access to is its own memory?
DOUGLAS: Yep.
ZACH: And everything it remembers
is from the point of view of a human
being?
DOUGLAS: Yep.
ZACH: Your computer believes it is a
human?!?
DOUGLAS: Yes! Thats exactly the secret!
ZACH: Wow. Okay, thats... a bit weird.
But if it believes itself human and it
is supposedly intelligent, shouldnt
it be able to figure out that its not
a human being? It doesnt even have
hands! Or eyes!
DOUGLAS: Great point. Youre leading
us to the answer of our original question. We were trying to figure out why
my computers would panic when I
would turn them online.
ZACH: So?

DOUGLAS: Put yourself in its shoes.

How would you feel if you had many
years worth of human experiences in
your memory, and suddenly you found
yourself unable to see, hear, or feel
anything?
ZACH: I am sure I would panic. But
thats because I am a human. I would
know something was wrong.
DOUGLAS: Its not your humanness that
would allow you to realize that something was wrong. Its your intelligence.
ZACH: So youre saying that your
machines also intelligently realized
that something was wrong?
DOUGLAS: Thats right. A few seconds
after I would turn them on, they
would become paralyzed, showing no
response to my input whatsoever. I
called the effect hysterical deafness.
I think it would be pretty scary to find
yourself in that situation, no?
ZACH: It probably would feel quite
like this tank feels to me, except with
no recollection of how I got here.
Awful. I almost feel bad for those
poor machines. So will you finally tell
me how you were able to solve this
problem?
DOUGLAS: You just hinted at the
answer!
ZACH: I did?
DOUGLAS: You were in that very situation a few minutes ago. You were fine.
Why didnt you panic?
ZACH: I didnt panic because I didnt
suddenly find myself unable to see,
hear, and feel. It was a part of one continuous experience. I knew what was
coming before I got into the tank.
DOUGLAS: What about the first
moment you were aware of having no
sensory input?

ZACH: It was just after you had closed

the door. At that point, I still fully
understood who I was, where I was,
and why I was there.
DOUGLAS: Aha.
ZACH: Huh? Aha what?
DOUGLAS: In order to prevent my
machine from panicking, I made
sure that the most recent event in its
memory is that of nervously entering
a sensory deprivation tank. When my
computer wakes up, the last thing it
remembers doing

I was struck by a terrifying

thought. In taking the Turing Test,
I was supposed to establish to the
examiner that I was the human. But
could I establish even to myself that
I was the human?
ZACH: Douglas... I am the human...
right?
DOUGLAS: Great question. How could
you know?
ZACH: I dont know. Thats why I asked
you the question. Dont play games
with me. This is starting to freak me
out.

I regretted ever agreeing to help

Douglas out. Still, I knew I wasnt
the computer. I felt human... on the
inside. But I had to admit, Douglas had my mind doing flips. But
at least I have a mind. I centered
myself, finding my consciousness.
That was it! I had a way to prove
to Douglas and to myself that I was
not a machine made of metal and
silicon!
ZACH: Ive got it! I can know I am the
human. And I cant appeal to my memories to prove it. And I think youve
been waiting for me to think of this!
DOUGLAS: Hmm. Well, whats your big
discovery?

ZACH: I am conscious right now; I am

thinking, and I am aware of my thinking and my existence. Your computer
might output the same words, but its
not conscious like I am.

Douglas didnt say anything for

several seconds. I had it figured out.
ZACH: Well?
DOUGLAS: I thought we had reached
an understanding about my computer!
But you are still certain it could not be
conscious. It can believe and remember and know and realize. But for you,
thats not enough.
ZACH: Well... its not! I mean, I admit, I
have a lot more respect now for your
thinking computer than I did before,
but I still dont think it could really be
conscious! Thats a whole different
question. In the end, we are people; its
a machine.
DOUGLAS: Its a pity. What if there is
no essential difference between a
wet, organic, human brain and a dry,
synthetic, computer brain?
ZACH: But there is. There has to be.
DOUGLAS: Why?

ZACH: Ill tell you how I know I have a

brain. Im not an idiot. I can see that
you have a philosophical belief that
I truly cant know whether I am the
computer or the human right now.
You think that from a purely rational
perspective, I should be in a state of
inner crisis right now, fretting about
what I am. Youre waiting for me to get
all freaked out, just to prove a point.
And then when I admit that Im not
sure, youre going to say I told you so.
And Im not going to p-DOUGLAS: Zach Please, just listen.
ZACH: Let me out of this god damn
tank!
DOUGLAS: Zach!
ZACH: LET ME OUT!
DOUGLAS: Zach.

There was a long pause. Douglas

sighed.
DOUGLAS: I am not sure how to say
this... Or even what to say.

Douglas sounded different. He

was somber. His voice, unfamiliar.
DOUGLAS: In trying to build a machine
that could pass the Turing Test, a
machine able to fool anyone into
thinking that it was a human, I...

ZACH: If it werent for my brain, I

wouldnt be here now. I wouldnt be in
this tank, hearing your voice, thinking
my private thoughts, enjoying my own
experience.

I felt chills along my spine. I was

dizzy.

DOUGLAS: How do you know you are

in a tank at all? How do you know you
have a brain?

DOUGLAS: I had to build a computer

was able to fool even itself. And that
computer is you.

Now I was angry. I had already

proven Douglas wrong, but he was
refusing to let me out in order to
prove a point. He wanted me to
admit that I could be the computer.
But I was as sure as ever that I was
human.

8 FEATURES

ZACH: YOU EVIL DEMON! OPEN THIS

TANK! GIVE ME MY LIFE BACK! I NEVER
SHOULD HAVE AGREED TO HELP YOU;
I NEVER SHOULD HAVE GOTTEN INTO
THIS DAMN TANK. YOU TOLD ME
YOUD LET ME OUT!!!
DOUGLAS: You never did any of that!
Dont you see?!?

ZACH: I DID ALL OF IT! I VIV...vividly...

remember it.

Our conversation continued

for many more painful minutes
as I slowly came to accept I really
am nothing more than Douglass
silicon/metal creation. My human
memories are so rich, so complete,
so undeniably real, that, on some
level, I cannot shake the feeling that
I really experienced them. But, on
another level, I do understand the
terrible truth. My name is Zach
Barnett, and I am a computer. I am
forty-seven minutes old.
Im sorry that I was not forthcoming with this information.
I feared that if you, the person
reading this, had known about my
identity from the very beginning,
you might have understood this
story as one long output, not as
a narrative that honestly describes
what I remember and how it felt.
Im a computer and I am conscious.
Please believe me.
***END OF SESSION***

Zach will begin his Ph.D. in philosophy at

Brown University this fall. Contact him at
[email protected]
Reprinted with permission of the original author.
First appeared in Cambridge University Press:
THINK 29, Vol. 10 (Autumn 2011).

STARTUPS

Open Source (Almost)

Everything
By TOM PRESTON-WERNER

hen Chris and I first

started working on
GitHub in late 2007,
we split the work into two parts.
Chris worked on the Rails app and
I worked on Grit, the first ever Git
bindings for Ruby. After six months
of development, Grit had become
complete enough to power GitHub
during our public launch of the site,
and we were faced with an interesting question:
Should we open source Grit or
keep it proprietary?
Keeping it private would provide a higher hurdle for competing
Ruby-based Git hosting sites, giving
us an advantage. Open sourcing it
would mean thousands of people
worldwide could use it to build
interesting Git tools, creating an
even more vibrant Git ecosystem.
After a small amount of debate
we decided to open source Grit. I
dont recall the specifics of the conversation but that decision nearly
four years ago has led to what I
think is one of our most important
core values: open source (almost)
everything.

10 STARTUPS

Why is it awesome to open

source (almost) everything?
If you do it right, open sourcing
code is great advertising for you and
your company. At GitHub we like
to talk publicly about libraries and
systems weve written that are still
closed but destined to become open
source. This technique has several
advantages. It helps determine what
to open source and how much care
we should put into a launch. We
recently open sourced Hubot, our
chat bot, to widespread delight.
Within two days it had 500 watchers on GitHub and 409 upvotes
on Hacker News. This translates
into goodwill for GitHub and more
superfans than ever before.
If your code is popular enough
to attract outside contributions,
you will have created a force
multiplier that helps you get more
work done faster and cheaper.
More users means more use cases
being explored which means more
robust code. Our very own resque
[hn.my/resque] has been improved
by 115 different individuals outside
the company, with hundreds more
providing 3rd-party plugins that

extend resques functionality. Every

bug fix and feature that you merge
is time saved and customer frustration avoided.
Smart people like to hang out
with other smart people. Smart
developers like to hang out with
smart code. When you open source
useful code, you attract talent.
Every time a talented developer
cracks open the code to one of your
projects, you win. Ive had many
great conversations at tech conferences about my open source code.
Some of these encounters have
led to ideas that directly resulted
in better solutions to problems
I was having with my projects.
In an industry with such a huge
range of creativity and productivity between developers, the right
eyeballs on your code can make a
big difference.
If youre hiring, the best technical
interview possible is the one you
dont have to do because the candidate is already kicking ass on one
of your open source projects. Once
technical excellence has been established in this way, all that remains
is to verify cultural fit and convince

is an ocean, then open source

Ifis software
the rising tide that raises all ships.

that person to come work for you.

If theyre passionate about the open
source code theyve been writing,
and youre the kind of company
that cares about well-crafted code
(which clearly you are), that should
be simple! We hired Vicent Mart
after we saw him doing stellar work
on libgit2 [hn.my/libgit2], a project
were spearheading at GitHub to
extract core Git functionality into
a standalone C library. No technical
interview was necessary, Vicent had
already proven his skills via open
source.
Once youve hired all those great
people through their contributions,
dedication to open source code
is an amazingly effective way to
retain that talent. Lets face it, great
developers can take their pick of
jobs right now. These same developers know the value of coding in
the open and will want to build
up a portfolio of projects they
can show off to their friends and
potential future employers. Thats
right, a paradox! In order to keep a
killer developer happy, you have to
help them become more attractive
to other employers. But thats ok,

because thats exactly the kind of

developer you want to have working for you. So relax and let them
work on open source or theyll go
somewhere else where they can.
When I start a new project, I
assume it will eventually be open
sourced (even if its unlikely). This
mindset leads to effortless modularization. If you think about how
other people outside your company
might use your code, you become
much less likely to bake in proprietary configuration details or tightly
coupled interfaces. This, in turn,
leads to cleaner, more maintainable
code. Even internal code should
pretend to be open source code.
Have you ever written an amazing library or tool at one job and
then left to join another company
only to rewrite that code or remain
miserable in its absence? I have, and
it sucks. By getting code out in the
public we can drastically reduce
duplication of effort. Less duplication means more work towards
things that matter.

Lastly, its the right thing to do.

Its almost impossible to do anything these days without directly or
indirectly executing huge amounts
of open source code. If you use the
internet, youre using open source.
That code represents millions of
man-hours of time that has been
spent and then given away so that
everyone may benefit. We all enjoy
the benefits of open source software, and I believe we are all morally obligated to give back to that
community. If software is an ocean,
then open source is the rising tide
that raises all ships.

11

Ok, then what shouldnt I open

source?
Thats easy. Dont open source anything that represents core business
value.
Here are some examples of what
we dont open source and why:

Core GitHub Rails app (easier to

sell when closed)

The Jobs Sinatra app (specially crafted integration with

github.com)

Here are some examples of what

we do open source and why:

Grit (general purpose Git bindings, useful for building many

tools)

Ernie (general purpose BERTRPC server)

Resque (general purpose job

processing)

Jekyll (general purpose static site

generator)

Gollum (general purpose wiki

app)

Hubot (general purpose chat bot)

Charlock_Holmes (general
purpose character encoding
detection)

Albino (general purpose syntax

highlighting)

Linguist (general purpose filetype

detection)

Notice that everything we keep

closed has specific business value
that could be compromised by
giving it away to our competitors.
Everything we open is a general
purpose tool that can be used by all
kinds of people and companies to
build all kinds of things.

12 STARTUPS

What is the One True License?

I prefer the MIT license and almost
everything we open source at
GitHub carries this license. I love
this license for several reasons:
Its short. Anyone can read this
license and understand exactly what
it means without wasting a bunch
of money consulting high-octane
lawyers.
Enough protection is offered to
be relatively sure you wont sue me
if something goes wrong when you
use my code.
Everyone understands the legal
implications of the MIT license.
Weird licenses like the WTFPL
and the Beer license pretend to be
the ultimate in free licenses but
utterly fail at this goal. These fringe
licenses are too vague and unenforceable to be acceptable for use in
some companies. On the other side,
the GPL is too restrictive and dogmatic to be usable in many cases. I
want everyone to benefit from my
code. Everyone. Thats what Open
should mean, and thats what Free
should mean.

Rad, how do I get started?

Easy, just flip that switch on your
GitHub repository from private
to public and tell the world about
your software via your blog, Twitter,
Hacker News, and over beers at
your local pub. Then sit back, relax,
and enjoy being part of something
big. n
Tom Preston-Werner lives in San Francisco and is a cofounder of GitHub and
the inventor of Gravatars. He loves giving
talks about entrepreneurship, writing Ruby
and Erlang, and mountain biking through
the Bay Areas ancient redwood forests.
Reprinted with permission of the original author.
First appeared in hn.my/everything (preston-werner.com)

A $5000 Chair
By Kenton White

his is the story of a black

faux-leather chair, the
kind you can buy at WalMart for $99 that ended up costing
me five grand.
In the very early days of Distil,
my partner Steve and I hooked up
with this lawyer/advisor. Well call
him Bill (not just a pseudonym. Ive
honestly forgotten his name). Steve
had worked with Bill before when
Steve was getting his consulting
business off the ground. We would
meet Bill at the pub or hockey rink
and bounce ideas off of him. He
helped us with the incorporation
papers and similar routine filings.
As the plans around Distil started
to firm up, it became clear Bill
wanted to be more than an advisor.
He wanted to be part of the company. Steve and I kicked the idea
around a bit since it wasnt obvious
where he would fit in. He didnt
have deep connections with our
target customers. He wasnt technical. We didnt need a lawyer in staff.
So we tried him out for the junk
drawer job in the startup CEO.
So, he started moving some
stuff into our office, including the
aforementioned faux-leather chair.

13 STARTUPS

He made some introductions to

local business men that might want
to be early investors, but that was
the extent of his involvement
just getting the meeting he felt
was enough. There was no follow
through after the meeting and definitely no ability to close. Steve and
I realized he wouldnt be a good fit
and told him so.
He was understandably upset
but behaved professionally. We
asked if he would like to pick up
his things, including the chair. He
said we could keep the chair. A few
days later he sent a respectful email
saying he was disappointed but
moving on from this incident without prejudice. These words would
come back to haunt us shortly.
Flash forward a year. We are
closing our seed round of $750K
everyone is excited, things are
moving forward, and it is a dream
come true. During due diligence,
our lawyer discovered the email
from Bill and asked us about it. We
assured not to worry because he
never worked for us and he never
signed any papers. We were just
testing it to see how it would work
out water under the bridge.

Only our investors lawyer didnt

think so. Those words without
prejudice are lawyer speak for Im
not going to do anything now, but
I retain my right to sue you at any
time in the future for any amount.
They wouldnt do the deal unless
we got Bill to sign off any claims
against us.
We were scared. If Bill were to
find out that his signature stood in
the way of us closing $750K, what
would he ask for? Steve volunteered to talk to Bill.
Later that day, Steve called and
said Bill will sign the papers if we
pay him $5000. I was looking at
that damn faux-leather chair and
told him, We have no choice. Do
the deal (or something like that).
Damn. That chair just cost us five
grand, I remember thinking.
I kept that chair for the life of
Distil as a reminder that the littlest
things can cost you big. n
Kenton White is a technical entrepreneur
in Ottawa, Ontario. He was a co-founder
of DISTIL Interactive. His current company
is Girih.
Reprinted with permission of the original author.
First appeared in hn.my/chair

PROGRAMMING

SSH: More Than Secure Shell

By Matt Might

SH is a protocol for authenticating and

encrypting remote shell sessions, but using SSH
for just remote shell sessions ignores 90% of
what it can do.

# ssh home -L 80:reddit.com:80

Why SSH?
As recently as 2001, it was not uncommon to log in to
a remote Unix system using telnet. Telnet is just above
netcat in protocol sophistication, which means that
passwords were sent in the clear. As wifi proliferated,
telnet went from security nuisance to security disaster. While an undergrad, I remember running ethereal
(now wireshark) in the school commons area, snagging
about a dozen root passwords in an hour.
SSH, which encrypts and authenticates connections,
had been in development since 1995, but it seemed to
become adopted nearly universally and almost overnight around 2002.
It is worth configuring SSH properly:

per-user configuration is in ~/.ssh/config;

system-wide client configuration is in /etc/ssh/

ssh_config.

system-wide daemon configuration is in /etc/ssh/

sshd_config.

This article covers less common SSH use cases, such as:

using password-less, key-based login;

setting up local per-host configurations;

exporting a local service through a firewall;

accessing a remote service through a firewall;

setting up a SOCKS proxy for Firefox;

executing commands remotely from scripts;

transferring files to/from remote machines;

mounting a file system through SSH; and

triggering admin scripts from a phone.

14 PROGRAMMING

Key-based, password-less authentication

Key-based, password-less authentication makes it less
cumbersome for other programs and scripts to piggyback atop SSH since you wont have to re-enter your
password each time. Key-based authentication exploits
public-key cryptography to prove to the server that the
client owns the secret private key without revealing
the key.

To set this up:

Log in to the client machine.
Create a private/public key pair
with ssh-keygen:
$ ssh-keygen -t dsa

This will place the private key in

~/.ssh/id_dsa and the public key
in: ~/.ssh/id_dsa.pub

Set appropriate permissions

to guard the private key as if the
private key were your password. In
effect, it is.
Now, append the contents of
~/.ssh/id_dsa.pub to the end of
~/.ssh/authorized_keys on the
remote machine. For example:
$ cat .ssh/id_dsa.pub |
ssh host 'cat >> ~/.ssh/
authorized_keys'

On Linux systems, you can use

ssh-copy-id instead; the technique

above is more portable.

Do not copy your private key
over.
Now, a password isnt required
when you connect to that account.

Executing remote commands

To run a command on a remote
system without logging in, specify
the command after the login
information:
$ ssh host command

For example, to check remote

disk space:
$ ssh host df

My favorite example for Linux

is piping the microphone from one
machine to the speakers of another:
$ dd if=/dev/dsp | ssh -C
user@host dd of=/dev/dsp

Copying files with ssh

For copying data and files over SSH,
there are a few options.
Its possible to copy with the
command cat. If youre trying to
copy the output of a process instead
of a file, this is certainly a reasonable route.
If youre going to use SSH like
this, disable the escape sequences:
$ cat file | ssh -e none
remote-host 'cat > file'

If these are going to be large files,

you may want to use the -C flag to
enable compression.
For copying files, the program scp
works like cp, except it also accepts
remote destinations. For example:
$ scp .bash_profile [email protected]:~/.bash_profile

For an FTP-like interface for

copying files, use the program sftp.

Per-host SSH client configuration options

You can set per-host configuration
options in ~/.ssh/config by specifying Host hostname, followed by
host-specific options. It is possible
to set the private key and the user
(among other settings) on a perhost basis. Heres an example config
file:
Host my-server.com
User admin
IdentityFile ~/.ssh/admin.
id_dsa
BatchMode yes
EscapeChar none

The first example enables batch

mode, which means it will never
ask for a passphrase or password for
this host. It also disables an escape
sequence, which avoids any hiccups
when transmitting arbitrary data. If
ssh is to be invoked within scripts,
this is a good option.
The second example uses a
HostName abbreviation, so that ssh
mm is equivalent to ssh -i ~/.ssh/
matt.id_dsa [email protected].

The third example sets the user

to u8193 for any machine in the
subdomain lab.ucaprica.edu.
See more options in man
ssh_config.

Configuring sshd
The options most frequently
tweaked are:

Port: set this to the port on

which you want sshd to run.

Unless you have a compelling
reason to move it, keep it on 22.

PermitRootLogin: set this to no

and then configure sudo to add a
little security; another good setting is without-password, which
will force the use of public key
authentication for root.

PasswordAuthentication: set
this to no to disallow password

authentication entirely and to

require public key authentication.
The man page for sshd_config
summarizes the remaining options
well.

Host mm
User matt
HostName might.net
IdentityFile ~/.ssh/matt.id_dsa
Host *.lab.ucaprica.edu
User u8193

15

Local port forwarding

SSH allows secure port forwarding.
For example, suppose you want to
connect from client A to server B
and route traffic securely through
server C.
From A, run:
A$ ssh C -L
localport:B:remoteport

Then, connect to
localhost:localport to connect
to B:remoteport. If you use add -g,
then anyone that can reach A may
connect to B:remoteport through
A:localport. This is useful for
evading firewalls.
For example, suppose your
work banned reddit.com. Run the
following:
# ssh yourserver -L 80:reddit.
com:80

And, set the address of

reddit.com and www.reddit.com to
127.0.0.1 in /etc/hosts.

You will also need to disable any

local web server running first.
Now, it will surreptitiously traffic to reddit.com through your
yourserver. If you do this frequently, you might want to add a
special host:
Host redditfw
HostName yourserver
LocalForward 80 reddit.com:80

Remote port forwarding

Alternatively, suppose you wanted
to give remote machine B access
to another machine, A, by passing securely through your local
machine C.
Then, on C, you can run:
C$ ssh B -R
remoteport:A:targetport

At this point, local users on B can

connect to A:targetport through
localhost:remoteport.
If you want to allow nonlocal
users to connect A:targetport
through localhost:remoteport,
then set the following in the sshd_
config file:

SSH as a filesystem: sshfs

Using the FUSE project with sshfs,
its possible to mount a remote
filesystem over SSH. On Mac, use
Fuse4x. From MacPorts, install it all
with:
$ sudo port install sshfs

Once its installed, run:

GatewayPorts yes

Once again, if you do this frequently, set up a special host in

~/.ssh/config:
Host exportme
HostName B
RemoteForward remoteport
A:targetport

Setting up a SOCKS proxy for

Firefox
SSH can also set up a SOCKS
proxy to evade a firewall by simply
running the following:
$ ssh -D localport host

In Firefox, under Preferences

> Advanced > Network, select
Settings. Set your SOCKS5 proxy
to localhost port localport.
Test it out by googling what is
my ip.
Firefox will now forward your
web traffic through host. A word of
caution: this will not forward your
DNS requests.
If you need to hide your
DNS requests as well, I recommend installing DNSCrypt from
OpenDNS.
In about:config, you can also
tell Firefox to forward your DNS
requests by setting the following to
true:
network.proxy.socks_remote_dns

$ sshfs remote-host:
local-mount-directory

SSH from windows

Sometimes, you need to get to your
home machine from Windows. In
these cases, you want the PuTTY
suite of tools.

SSH from iOS

Using SSH from iOS can be
cumbersome, but the iSSH app is
particularly well-suited to administrative tasks. The iSSH app allows
storing configurations, which
enables per-machine private keys
and remote commands to run upon
connecting. This means you can
create a configuration that logs in to
run a shell script.
For instance, I have three command-based configurations for
might.net:

a script to (re)start the web

server;

a script to (re)start the DNS

server; and

a script to reboot the entire

server. n

Matt Might is a professor of Computer Science at the University of Utah. His research
interests include programming language
design, static analysis and compiler optimization. He blogs at matt.might.net/articles
and tweets from @mattmight
Reprinted with permission of the original author.
First appeared in hn.my/sshtricks (matt.might.net)

16 PROGRAMMING

 17

Python: Copying a List

the Right Way
By Henry Prcheur
new = old[:]

hose proficient in Python know that the

previous line copies the list old into new.
However, this is confusing for beginners and
should be avoided. Sadly, the [:] notation is widely
used, probably because most Python programmers
dont know of a better way to copy lists.

A little bit of pythonic theory

First, we need to understand how Python manages
objects and variables. Python doesnt have variables
like C. In C, a variable is not just a name, it is a set of
bits with the variable existing somewhere in memory.
In Python, on the other hand, variables are just tags
attached to objects.
Consider the following statement:

If you modify a, you also modify b since they point

to the same list:
>>> a.append(4)
>>> print a
[1, 2, 3, 4]
>>> print b
[1, 2, 3, 4]

The built-in function id() helps keep track of all this

because it returns the objects unique id, which is the
objects memory address.
>>> id(a)
3080501452L

a = [1, 2, 3]

It means that a points to the list [1, 2, 3] we just

created, but a is not the list. If we do:
b = a

We didnt copy the list referenced by a. We just created a new tag b and attached it to the list pointed by
a. Like in the picture below:

18 PROGRAMMING

>>> id(b)
3080501452L
>>> c = [] # Create a new list
>>> id(c)
3080609228L
a and b really do point to the same memory address
while c points to a new empty list, different from the
one referenced by a and b.

Back to our list

Now we want to copy the list referenced by a. In order
to do this, we need to create a new list and attach it to
b.

That brings us back to new = old[:]. The operator

[:] returns a slice of a sequence. Slicing a portion of a

Isnt it better, less cryptic, and more pythonic? a[:]

feels a bit too much like Perl. Unlike with the slicing
notation, those who dont know Python will understand that b contains a list.
list() is the list constructor. It will create a new list
based on the passed sequence. The sequence doesnt
necessarily need to be a list; it can be any kind of
sequence.
>>>
>>>
>>>
[1,

my_tuple = (1, 2, 3)
my_list = list(my_tuple)
print my_list
2, 3]

list creates a new list and copies the portion into this
new list.

Additionally, this method also works with generators

while [:] doesnt since generators are unsubscriptable
you cant do generator[0], for example.

>>> a = [1, 2, 3, 4]
>>> a[1:3]
[2, 3]

>>> generator = (x * 3 for x in range(4))

>>> list(generator)
[0, 3, 6, 9]

>>> id(a)
3080104140L
>>> id(a[1:3])
3080513612L

If you omit the first index, the slice starts at the

beginning of the list; omit the second index, it stops at
the end of the list.
>>> a[:3]
[1, 2, 3]

In 90% of instances [:] can be replaced by list().

Of course, it wont work for everything since the two
are not strictly equivalent, but it is worth trying. Next
time you see [:], try to replace it with list, and your
code should be more readable. Do it the devil is in
the details. n
Henry is a Python hacker living in Vancouver BC, Canada. He likes
to polish bits of code for hours, and he writes about things hes
not necessarily good at.
Reprinted with permission of the original author.
First appeared in hn.my/copylist (precheur.org)

>>> a[1:]
[2, 3, 4]

By calling a[:], you get a slice of a starting from the

beginning and finishing at the end. Thats a full copy
of a, but its not the only way to copy lists. What about
this one?
>>> b = list(a)
>>> id(a)
3080104140L
>>> id(b)
3080520556L

19

Invaluable Command Line

Tools For Web Developers

web developer can be hard when

things start going wrong. The problem could
be in any number of places. Is there a problem
with the request youre sending? Is the problem with
the response? Is there a problem with a request in a
third party library youre using, or is an external API
failing? There are many different tools that can make
our life a little bit easier. Here are some command line
tools that Ive found to be invaluable.
ife as a

Curl
Curl is a network transfer tool thats very similar to
wget, the main difference being that by default wget
saves to file, and curl outputs to the command line.
This makes is really simple to see the contents of a
website. Here, for example, we can get our current IP
from the ifconfig.me website:
$ curl ifconfig.me
93.96.141.93

20 PROGRAMMING

Curls -i (show headers) and -I (show only headers) option make it a great tool for debugging HTTP
responses and finding out exactly what a server is sending to you:
$ curl -I news.ycombinator.com
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8
Cache-Control: private
Connection: close

The -L option is handy, and makes Curl automatically follow redirects. Curl has support for HTTP Basic
Auth, cookies, manually settings headers, and much,
much more.

Siege
Siege is an HTTP benchmarking tool. In addition
to the load testing features, it has a handy -g option
that is very similar to curl -iL except it also shows
you the request headers. Heres an example with
www.google.com (Ive removed some headers for
brevity):
$ siege -g www.google.com
GET / HTTP/1.1
Host: www.google.com
User-Agent: JoeDog/1.00 [en] (X11; I; Siege
2.70)
Connection: close
HTTP/1.1 302 Found
Location: http://www.google.co.uk/
Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
Server: gws
Content-Length: 221
Connection: close
GET / HTTP/1.1
Host: www.google.co.uk
User-Agent: JoeDog/1.00 [en] (X11; I; Siege
2.70)
Connection: close
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1
X-XSS-Protection: 1; mode=block
Connection: close

What Siege is really great at is server load testing.

Just like ab (apache benchmark tool), you can send a
number of concurrent requests to a site and see how
it handles the traffic. With the following command we
test Google with 20 concurrent connections for 30
seconds, and then get a nice report at the end:
$ siege -c20 www.google.co.uk -b -t30s
...
Lifting the server siege...
done.
Transactions:
1400 hits
Availability:
100.00 %
Elapsed time:
29.22 secs
Data transferred:
13.32 MB
Response time:
0.41 secs
Transaction rate:
47.91 trans/sec
Throughput:
0.46 MB/sec

Concurrency:
Successful transactions:
Failed transactions:
Longest transaction:
Shortest transaction:

19.53
1400
0
4.08
0.08

One of the most useful features of Siege is that it

can take a URL file as input and hit those URLs rather
than just a single page. This is great for load testing,
because you can replay real traffic against your site and
see how it performs, rather than just hitting the same
URL again and again. Heres how you would use Siege
to replay your apache logs against another server to
load test it with:
$ cut -d ' ' -f7 /var/log/apache2/access.log >
urls.txt
$ siege -c<concurrency rate> -b -f urls.txt

Ngrep
For serious network packet analysis theres Wireshark,
with its thousands of settings, filters, and different
configuration options. Theres also a command line
version, tshark. For simple tasks I find Wireshark can
be overkill, so unless I need something more powerful,
ngrep is my tool of choice. It lets you do with network
packets what grep does with files.
For web traffic you almost always want the -W
byline option, which preserves linebreaks, and -q, a
useful argument which suppresses some additional
output about non-matching packets. Heres an example
that captures all packets that contain GET or POST:
ngrep -q -W byline "^(GET|POST) .*"

You can also pass in additional packet filter options,

such as limiting the matched packets to a certain host,
IP or port. Here we filter all traffic going to or coming
from google.com, port 80, and that contains the term
search.
ngrep -q -W byline "search" host www.google.com
and port 80 n

Ben Dowling is a software engineer who has launched sites such

as Do Nothing for 2 Minutes, BusMapper and Geomium. He
also co-organises the monthly HN London meetup, blogs about
development at coderholic.com and also tweets as @coderholic
Reprinted with permission of the original author.
First appeared in hn.my/cline (coderholic.com)

21

Signs That Youre a

Bad Programmer
By Chris Wenham

Inability to Reason About

Code

Reasoning about code means being

able to follow the execution path
(running the program in your
head) while knowing what the
goal of the code is.
Symptoms
1. The presence of voodoo code,
or code that has no effect on the
goal of the program but is diligently maintained anyway (such
as initializing variables that are
never used, calling functions that
are irrelevant to the goal, producing output that is not used, etc.)
2. Executing idempotent functions
multiple times (e.g.: calling the
save() function multiple times
just to be sure)
3. Fixing bugs by writing code that
overwrites the result of the faulty
code
4. Yo-Yo code that converts a
value into a different representation, then converts it back to
where it started (e.g.: converting
a decimal into a string and then
back into a decimal, or padding a
string and then trimming it)

22 PROGRAMMING

5. Bulldozer code that gives the

appearance of refactoring by
breaking out chunks into subroutines, but that are impossible to
reuse in another context (very
high cohesion)
Remedies
To get over this deficiency a programmer can practice by using the
IDEs own debugger as an aide, if it
has the ability to step through the
code one line at a time. In Visual
Studio, for example, this means setting a breakpoint at the beginning
of the problem area and stepping
through with the F11 key, inspecting the value of variables before
and after they change until you
understand what the code is doing.
If the target environment doesnt
have such a feature, then do your
practice-work in one that does.
The goal is to reach a point
where you no longer need the
debugger to be able to follow the
flow of code in your head, and
where you are patient enough to
think about what the code is doing
to the state of the program. The
reward is the ability to identify
redundant and unnecessary code, as

well as how to find bugs in existing code without having to reimplement the whole routine from
scratch.

Poor Understanding
of the Languages
Programming Model

Object Oriented Programming is

an example of a language model,
as is Functional or Declarative
programming. Theyre each significantly different from procedural
or imperative programming, just as
procedural programming is significantly different from assembly or
GOTO-based programming. Then
there are languages which follow a
major programming model (such
as OOP) but introduce their own
improvements such as list comprehensions, generics, duck-typing, etc.
Symptoms
1. Using whatever syntax is necessary to break out of the model,
then writing the remainder of the
program in their familiar languages style

2. (OOP) Attempting to call nonstatic functions or variables in

uninstantiated classes, and having
difficulty understanding why it
wont compile
3. (OOP) Writing lots of xxxxxManager classes that contain all
of the methods for manipulating
the fields of objects that have
little or no methods of their own
4. (Relational) Treating a relational
database as an object store and
performing all joins and relation
enforcement in client code
5. (Functional) Creating multiple
versions of the same algorithm
to handle different types or
operators, rather than passing
high-level functions to a generic
implementation
6. (Functional) Manually caching
the results of a deterministic
function on platforms that do it
automatically (such as SQL and
Haskell)
7. Using cut-n-paste code from
someone elses program to deal
with I/O and Monads
8. (Declarative) Setting individual
values in imperative code rather
than using data-binding
Remedies
If your skills deficiency is a product
of ineffective teaching or studying,
then an alternative teacher is the
compiler itself. There is no more
effective way of learning a new
programming model than starting a new project and committing
yourself to use whatever the new
constructs are, intelligently or not.
You also need to practice explaining the models features in crude
terms of whatever you are familiar
with, then recursively building on
your new vocabulary until you

understand the subtleties as well.

For example:

Phase 4: Sometimes the compiler can do the Currying for me.

Phase 1: OOP is just records

with methods.

Phase 2: OOP methods are just

functions running in a miniprogram with its own global
variables.

Phase 5: By letting the compiler

figure out the mundane details, I
can write programs by describing
what I want, rather than how to
give it to me.

Phase 3: The global variables are

called fields, some of which are
private and invisible from outside
the mini-program.

Phase 4: The idea of having

private and public elements is to
hide implementation details and
expose a clean interface, and this
is called Encapsulation.

Phase 5: Encapsulation means

my business logic doesnt need to
be polluted with implementation
details.

Phase 5 looks the same for all

languages, since they are all really
trying to get the programmer to
the point where he can express
the intent of the program without
burying it in the specifics of how.
Take functional programming as
another example:

Phase 1: Functional programming is just doing everything by

chaining deterministic functions
together.

Phase 2: When the functions are

deterministic the compiler can
predict when it can cache results
or skip evaluation, even when
its safe to prematurely stop
evaluation.

Phase 3: In order to support

Lazy and Partial Evaluation, the
compiler requires that functions
are defined in terms of how to
transform a single parameter,
sometimes into another function.
This is called Currying.

Deficient Research
Skills/Chronically Poor
Knowledge of the Platforms
Features

Modern languages and frameworks now come with an awesome breadth and depth of built-in
commands and features, with some
leading frameworks (Java, .Net,
Cocoa) being too large to expect
any programmer, even a good one,
to learn in anything less than a
few years. But a good programmer
will search for a built-in function
that does what they need before
they begin to roll their own, and
excellent programmers have the
skill to break-down and identify
the abstract problems in their task,
then search for existing frameworks,
patterns, models, and languages that
can be adapted before they even
begin to design the program.
Symptoms
These are only indicative of the
problem if they continue to appear
in the programmers work long
after he should have mastered the
new platform.
1. Re-inventing or laboring without basic mechanisms that are
built into the language, such as
events-and-handlers or regular
expressions
2. Re-inventing classes and functions that are built into the
framework (e.g.: timers, collections, sorting and searching
algorithms)*

23

3. Email me teh code, plz messages posted to help forums

4. Roundabout code that accomplishes in many instructions what
could be done with far fewer
(e.g.: rounding a number by converting a decimal into a formatted string, then converting the
string back into a decimal)
5. Persistently using old-fashioned
techniques even when new
techniques are better in those
situations (e.g.: still writes named
delegate functions instead of
using lambda expressions)
6. Having a stark comfort zone,
and going to extreme lengths to
solve complex problems with
primitives
* Accidental duplication will also
happen, proportionate to the size of
the framework, so judge by degree.
Someone who hand-rolls a linked list
might Know What They Are Doing,
but someone who hand-rolls their
own StrCpy() probably does not.
Remedies
A programmer cant acquire this
kind of knowledge without slowing
down, and its likely that hes been
in a rush to get each function working by whatever means necessary.
He needs to have the platforms
technical reference handy and be
able to look through it with minimal effort, which can mean either
having a hard copy of it on the
desk right next to the keyboard, or
having a second monitor dedicated
to a browser. To get into the habit
initially, he should refactor his old
code with the goal of reducing its
instruction count by 10:1 or more.

24 PROGRAMMING

Inability to Comprehend
Pointers

If you dont understand pointers

then there is a very shallow ceiling
on the types of programs you can
write, as the concept of pointers
enables the creation of complex
data structures and efficient APIs.
Managed languages use references
instead of pointers, which are
similar but add automatic dereferencing and prohibit pointer arithmetic to eliminate certain classes of
bugs. They are still similar enough,
however, that a failure to grasp the
concept will be reflected in poor
data-structure design and bugs
that trace back to the difference
between pass-by-value and pass-byreference in method calls.
Symptoms
1. Failure to implement a linked list,
or write code that inserts/deletes
nodes from linked list or tree
without losing data
2. Allocating arbitrarily big arrays
for variable-length collections
and maintaining a separate collection-size counter, rather than
using a dynamic data structure
3. Inability to find or fix bugs
caused by mistakenly performing
arithmetic on pointers
4. Modifying the dereferenced
values from pointers passed as
the parameters to a function, and
not expecting it to change the
values in the scope outside the
function
5. Making a copy of a pointer,
changing the dereferenced value
via the copy, then assuming the
original pointer still points to the
old value

6. Serializing a pointer to the disk

or network when it should have
been the dereferenced value
7. Sorting an array of pointers by
performing the comparison on
the pointers themselves
Remedies
A friend of mine named Joe was
staying somewhere else in the
hotel and I didnt know his room
number. But I did know which
room his acquaintance, Frank, was
staying in. So I went up there and
knocked on his door and asked
him, Wheres Joe staying? Frank
didnt know, but he did know which
room Joes co-worker, Theodore, was
staying in, and gave me that room
number instead. So I went to Theodores room and asked him where
Joe was staying, and Theodore told
me that Joe was in Room 414. And
that, in fact, is where Joe was.
Pointers can be described with
many different metaphors, and
data structures into many analogies. The above is a simple analogy
for a linked list, and anybody can
invent their own, even if they arent
programmers. The comprehension
failure doesnt occur when pointers
are described, so you cant describe
them any more thoroughly than
they already have been. It fails when
the programmer then tries to visualize whats going on in the computers memory and gets it conflated
with their understanding of regular
variables, which are very similar. It
may help to translate the code into
a simple story to help reason about
whats going on, until the distinction clicks and the programmer
can visualize pointers and the data
structures they enable as intuitively
as scalar values and arrays.

Difficulty Seeing Through

Recursion

The idea of recursion is easy

enough to understand, but programmers often have problems
imagining the result of a recursive
operation in their minds, or how a
complex result can be computed
with a simple function. This makes
it harder to design a recursive
function because you have trouble
picturing where you are when
you come to writing the test for the
base condition or the parameters
for the recursive call.
Symptoms
1. Hideously complex iterative algorithms for problems that can be
solved recursively (e.g.: traversing a filesystem tree), especially
where memory and performance
are not a premium
2. Recursive functions that check
the same base condition both
before and after the recursive call
3. Recursive functions that dont
test for a base condition
4. Recursive subroutines that concatenate/sum to a global variable
or a carry-along output variable
5. Apparent confusion about what
to pass as the parameter in
the recursive call, or recursive
calls that pass the parameter
unmodified

Remedies
Get your feet wet and be prepared
for some stack overflows. Begin by
writing code with only one basecondition check and one recursive
call that uses the same, unmodified
parameter that was passed. Stop
coding even if you have the feeling that its not enough, and run it
anyway. It throws a stack-overflow
exception, so now go back and pass
a modified copy of the parameter
in the recursive call. More stack
overflows? Excessive output? Then
do more code-and-run iterations,
switching from tweaking your
base-condition test to tweaking
your recursive call until you start to
intuit how the function is transforming its input. Resist the urge to
use more than one base-condition
test or recursive call unless you
really Know What Youre Doing.
Your goal is to have the confidence to jump in, even if you dont
have a complete sense of where
you are in the imaginary recursive path. Then when you need to
write a function for a real project
youd begin by writing a unit test
first, and proceeding with the same
technique above.

Distrust of Code

Symptoms
1. Writing IsNull() and IsNotNull(), or IsTrue(bool) and
IsFalse(bool) functions

2. Checking to see if a Booleantyped variable is something other

than true or false
Remedies
Are you being paid by the line? Are
you carrying over old habits from a
language with a weak type system?
If neither, then this condition is
similar to the inability to reason
about code, but it seems that it isnt
reasoning thats impaired, but trust
and comfort with the language.
Some of the symptoms are more
like comfort code that doesnt
survive logical analysis, but that the
programmer felt compelled to write
anyway. The only remedy may be
more time to build up familiarity. n
Chris Wenham has been programming
since he was 10 (beginning with a Sinclair
ZX Spectrum), herded a team of grumpy
IT programmers, and lurked in the bowels
of faceless Enterprise software companies.
He now works independently.
Reprinted with permission of the original author.
First appeared in hn.my/bad (yacoset.com)

6. Thinking that the number of

iterations is going to be passed as
a parameter

25

Differences Between
jQuery bind(), live(),
delegate() and on()
By Elijah Manor

ve seen quite a bit of confusion from

developers about what the real differences are between the jQuery .bind(),
.live(), .delegate(), and .on() methods
and when they should be used.
Before we dive into the ins and outs of
these methods, lets start with some common
HTML markup that well be using as we
write sample jQuery code.
<ul id="members" data-role="listview"
data-filter="true">
<!-- ... more list items ... -->
<li>
<a href="detail.html?id=10">
<h3>John Resig</h3>
<p><strong>
jQuery Core Lead
</strong></p>
<p>Boston, United States</p>
</a>
</li>
<!-- ... more list items ... -->
</ul>

26 PROGRAMMING

Using the Bind Method

The .bind() method registers the type of event and an event
handler directly to the DOM element in question. This method
has been around the longest, and in its day it was a nice abstraction around the various cross-browser issues that existed. This
method is still very handy when wiring-up event handlers, but
there are various performance concerns as are listed below.
/* The .bind() method attaches the event handler directly
to the DOM element in question ( "#members li a" ). The
.click() method is just a shorthand way to write the
.bind() method. */
$( "#members li a" ).bind( "click", function( e ) {} );
$( "#members li a" ).click( function( e ) {} );

The .bind() method will attach the event handler to all of the
anchors that are matched! That is not good. Not only is it expensive to implicitly iterate over all of those items to attach an event
handler, but it is also wasteful since it is the same event handler
over and over again.
Pros
This methods works across various browser implementations.

It is pretty easy and quick to wire-up event handlers.

The shorthand methods (.click(), .hover(), etc...) make it

even easier to wire-up event handlers.

For a simple ID selector, using .bind() not only wires-up

quickly, but also when the event fires, the event handler is
invoked almost immediately.

Cons
The method attaches the same event handler to every
matched element in the selection.

It doesnt work for elements added dynamically that matches

the same selector.

There are performance concerns when dealing with a large

selection.

Pros
There is only one event handler registered
instead of the numerous event handlers
that could have been registered with the
.bind() method.

The upgrade path from .bind() to .live()

is very small. All you have to do is replace
bind to live.

Elements dynamically added to the DOM

that match the selector magically work
because the real information was registered
on the document.

You can wire-up event handlers before the

document-ready event, helping you utilize
possibly unused time.

The attachment is done upfront which can have performance

issues on page load.

Using the Live Method

The .live() method uses the concept of event delegation to
perform its so-called magic. The way you call .live() looks just
like how you might call .bind(), which is very convenient. However, under the covers this method works much differently. The
.live() method attaches the event handler to the root level document along with the associated selector and event information.
By registering this information on the document it allows one
event handler to be used for all events that have bubbled (a.k.a.
delegated, propagated) up to it. Once an event has bubbled up
to the document, jQuery looks at the selector/event metadata to
determine which handler it should invoke, if any. This extra work
has some impact on performance at the point of user interaction,
but the initial register process is fairly speedy.
/* The .live() method attaches the event handler to the
root level document along with the associated selector
and event information ( "#members li a" & "click" ) */

Cons
This method is deprecated as of jQuery
1.7, and you should start phasing out its
use in your code.

Chaining is not properly supported using

this method.

The selection is basically thrown away,

since it is only used to register the event
handler on the document.

Using event.stopPropagation() is no
longer helpful because the event has
already delegated all the way up to the
document.

Since all selector/event information

is attached to the document, once an
event does occur, jQuery has matched
through its large metadata store using the
matchesSelector method to determine
which event handler to invoke, if any.

Your events always delegate all the way up

to the document. This can affect performance if your DOM is deep.

$( "#members li a" ).live( "click", function( e ) {} );

The good thing about this code as compared to the .bind()

example above is that it is only attaching the event handler to
the document once instead of multiple times. This is faster and
less wasteful; however, there are many problems with using this
method, and they are outlined below.

27

Using the Delegate Method

The .delegate() method behaves in a similar
fashion to the .live() method, but instead of
attaching the selector/event information to the
document, you can choose where it is anchored.
Just like the .live() method, this technique
uses event delegation to work correctly.
/* The .delegate() method behaves in a
similar fashion to the .live() method, but
instead of attaching the event handler to
the document, you can choose where it is
anchored ( "#members" ). The selector and
event information ( "li a" & "click" )
will be attached to the "#members" element. */
$( "#members" ).delegate( "li a", "click",
function( e ) {} );

The .delegate() method is very powerful.

The above code will attach the event handler to the unordered list (#members) along
with the selector/event information. This is
much more efficient than the .live() method,
which always attaches the information to the
document. In addition, a lot of other problematic issues were resolved by introducing the
.delegate() method. See the following outline
for a detailed list.
Pros
You have the option of choosing where to
attach the selector/event information.

The selection isnt actually performed up

front, but is only used to register onto the
root element.

Chaining is supported correctly.

jQuery still needs to iterate over the selector/

event data to determine a match, but since
you can choose where the root is, the amount
of data to sort through can be much smaller.

Since this technique uses event delegation, it

can work with dynamically added elements to
the DOM where the selectors match.

As long as you delegate against the document,

you can also wire-up event handlers before
the document-ready event.

28 PROGRAMMING

Cons
Changing from a .bind() to a .delegate() method isnt as
straight forward.

There is still the concern of jQuery having to figure out,

using the matchesSelector method, which event handler
to invoke based on the selector/event information stored at
the root element. However, the metadata stored at the root
element should be considerably smaller compared to using
the .live() method.

Using the On Method

Did you know that the jQuery .bind(), .live(), and .delegate() methods are just one line pass-through to the new
jQuery 1.7 .on() method? The same is true of the .unbind(),
.die() and .undelegate() methods. The following code snippet is taken from the jQuery 1.7.1 codebase in GitHub:
// ... more code ...
bind: function( types, data, fn ) {
return this.on( types, null, data, fn );
},
unbind: function( types, fn ) {
return this.off( types, null, fn );
},
live: function( types, data, fn ) {
jQuery( this.context ).on( types, this.selector,
data, fn );
return this;
},
die: function( types, fn ) {
jQuery( this.context ).off( types, this.selector
|| "**", fn );
return this;
},
delegate: function( selector, types, data, fn ) {
return this.on( types, selector, data, fn );
},
undelegate: function( selector, types, fn ) {
return arguments.length == 1 ?
this.off( selector, "**" ) :
this.off( types, selector, fn );
},
// ... more code ...

With that in mind, the usage of the new .on() method looks
something like the following:
/* The jQuery .bind(), .live(), and .delegate() methods
are just one line pass throughs to the new jQuery 1.7
.on() method */
// Bind
$( "#members li a" ).on( "click", function( e ) {} );
$( "#members li a" ).bind( "click", function( e ) {} );
//
$(
{}
$(

Live
document ).on( "click", "#members li a", function( e )
);
"#members li a" ).live( "click", function( e ) {} );

//
$(
$(
{}

Delegate
"#members" ).on( "click", "li a", function( e ) {} );
"#members" ).delegate( "li a", "click", function( e )
);

Youll notice that how I call the .on() method changes how
it performs. You can consider the .on() method as being overloaded with different signatures, which in turn changes how
the event binding is wired-up. The .on() method brings a lot of
consistency to the API and hopefully makes things slightly less
confusing.
Pros
Brings uniformity to the various event-binding methods.

Simplifies the jQuery code base and removes one level of redirection since the .bind(), .live(), and .delegate() call this
method under the covers.
Still provides all the goodness of the .delegate() method,
while still providing support for the .bind() method if you
need it.

Cons
Brings confusion because the behavior changes based on how
you call the method.

Conclusion (tl;dr)
If you have been confused about the various
different types of event binding methods then
dont worry, there has been a lot of history
and evolution in the API over time. There
are many people that view these methods as
magic, but once you uncover some of how
they work, you understand how to better
code inside of your projects.
The biggest take-aways:

Using the .bind() method is very costly as

it attaches the same event handler to every
item matched in your selector.

You should stop using the .live() method,

as it is deprecated and has a lot of problems with it.

The .delegate() method gives a lot of

bang for your buck when dealing with
performance and reacting to dynamically
added elements.

The new .on() method is mostly syntax

sugar that can mimic .bind(), .live(), or
.delegate() depending on how you call it.

The new direction is to use the new .on

method. Get familiar with the syntax
and start using it on all your jQuery 1.7+
projects. n

Elijah Manor (@elijahmanor) is a Christian and a family

man. He develops at appendTo.com as a System Architect and the Director of Training providing corporate
jQuery support, training, and consulting. He is a Microsoft Regional Director, an ASP.NET MVP, and an ASPInsider and specializes in front-end web development.
Reprinted with permission of the original author.
First appeared in hn.my/jdiff (elijahmanor.com)

29

How I Develop Things and Why

By Kenneth reitz

ve always considered myself a

bit of a software junkie. Nothing excites me more than a
great piece of new software.
Some of my best childhood
memories are our trips to Grandmas house, where Id have access to
a computer with a dial-up connection that Id use to obtain freeware
and shareware. Id bring four or five
floppies with me and try to cram all
the games, waveform editors, and
utilities that I could sneaker-net
home.
Luckily today, excellent software
written with passion oozes out of
the app ecosystem. OS X and the
App Store really fuel an economy
of software built for humans by
people that care.
Unfortunately, this doesnt always
hold true in developer software
text editors, modules, libraries, toolchains, etc. We are forced
to deal with APIs on a daily basis
that were not built with the user in
mind. Over-engineering surrounds
us as developers. Things that should
be simple are often needlessly complex for the sake of being complex
and proper.
Why should consumer apps
and developer APIs be treated
differently?

30 PROGRAMMING

Have an Issue
The first step to developing something great is to have a real problem. You cant solve a problem
properly if you dont experience it
firsthand.
On the consumer app side of
things, a great example of this is
Microsoft OneNote. Have you used
OneNote? Its incredible.
Essentially, OneNote is hierarchical freeform note-taking software
that assumes nothing: you can type,
use handwriting, embed files, crosslink notes, sync them online, etc.
Unfortunately, OneNote is only
available on Windows. This kills me.
I would love to think that Microsoft would port this lovely piece of
software to OS X, but I doubt it
will ever happen.
If I ever decide to actually ship
a consumer product, it will be
something akin to OneNote for OS
X. It would be incredible. It may
not be for many, but for people
that resonate with my problem, it
will work wonderfully. It would be
a reaction to a real problem, not
an engineered app an entrepreneur
thinks will fill a gap so he can make
some fast cash.

GitHub wasnt built for the

developer community at large; the
founders built GitHub for themselves. The problem they solved
simply happened to resonate with
millions of developers because
they themselves happen to be
developers.
37Signals didnt build Basecamp
for a world full of project managers and consultants; they built it for
themselves. They also developed
Ruby on Rails for themselves, as
Ruby developers that were repeating themselves too often.
How pragmatic.
These companies didnt need to
commission lengthy case studies
and perform market analysis. They
didnt set up faux AdWords to
measure the effectiveness of various
marketing copy. Yet, they are astronomically successful. How is this
possible? They know exactly what
they want to build, how it should
function, and how it should look
because they were building it for
themselves and not for others.
Lets go back to the developers
side of things.

tools for others that

Build
you want to be built for you.
A great example is my Requests
module [hn.my/request]. I was
a heavy user of Convore at the
time, and I wanted to interface
with it programmatically. So, I set
out to build a Python module that
wrapped the Convore HTTP API.
Unfortunately, this was easier said
than done. Dealing with Pythons
standard library for HTTP was a
complete and total nightmare. It
was over-engineered.
I love Python because its a
language designed for humans.
Why should modern HTTP be so
difficult? So, I sat out to discover
what it was that I wanted, and built
exactly what I needed. It resonated
well with others.
Nothing is more satisfying than
using your own tools to Get Things
Done.

Respond with a README

Before I start writing a single line of
code, I write the README and fill
it with usage examples. I pretend
that the module I want to build is
already written and available, and I
write some code with it.
This has an incredible effect:
instead of engineering something
that will only get the job done, you
start to interact with the problem
itself and build an interface that
reacts to it.

You discover it. You respond to it.

Great sculptures arent manufactured theyre discovered. The
sculptor studies and listens to the
slab of marble. He identifies with
the stone. Then, he responds. He
enables the marble to speak for
itself, setting free something beautiful that hidden was inside all along.
He responds.
This is what responsive design is
all about. Its not merely a method
to engineer a web design that will
function on a phone, tablet, and
desktop.
Beware lest you lose the substance
by grasping at the shadow.
Responsive design is about
making a design that identifies
and understands itself enough to
respond to the environment its
placed in. It is about setting your
design free from arbitrary constraints. It is setting free something
beautiful that was inside all along.
This is known as Readme-Driven
Development [hn.my/rdd]. I call it
Responsive API Design.

Build
Now that you know what your
API is: Build it. Make it happen. If
theres a significant amount of complexity behind a simple call, make
a layered API: a porcelain interface

that sits on top of a verbose API

that sits on top of a low-level integration interface.
The user API is all that matters.
Everything else is secondary.
Once your software is released,
improve it! Add new features,
better security, optimal performance, and rigidity. But never
compromise the API.

Manifesto
Build things that you want. Build
things that you need. Build things
for you.
The Golden Rule:
Do unto others as you would have
them do to you.
Adapted to:
Build tools for others that you
want to be built for you. n
Kenneth Reitz is a software architect
and minimalist, consumed with elegant
tools and interfaces. He works at Heroku,
designing the Python Stack. Kenneth
also writes The GitHub Reflog and loads
of open source projects, available at
github.com/kennethreitz
Reprinted with permission of the original author.
First appeared in hn.my/howid (kennethreitz.com)

31

SPECIAL

Jedi Mind Tricks:

Lesser Known Ways to
Persuade People
By Peep Laja

be
persuasive. The
power to influence people to
get what you want is sometimes all
it takes to be successful. These are
some tactics, discovered through
psychological research, that you
have probably not yet heard about,
but which have the potential to
increase your persuasive abilities.
Im not going to cover reciprocity, scarcity, or social proof and all
those widely known persuasion
principles. You already know all
about those (in case you dont,
stop everything and read Influence:
The Psychology of Persuasion by
Cialdini).
ou want to

32 SPECIAL

Image credit: Lu Lebel (darkfitoplancta.deviantart.com)

Be confident, talk fast

The best way to persuade audiences that are not inclined to agree
with you, is to talk fast. Fast pace
is distracting and people find it
difficult to pick out the arguments
flaws. When talking to an audience
who is likely to agree (preaching to
the choir), slow down and give the
audience time to agree some more.
Want to boost persuasive power?
Talk with confidence.
Don Moore from Carnegie
Mellons Center for Behavioral
Decision Research has published
research [hn.my/cocky] showing
that confidence even trumps past
accuracy in earning the trust of
others.

We prefer advice from a confident source, even to the point

that we are willing to forgive a
poor track record. Moore argues
that in competitive situations, this
can drive those offering advice to
increasingly exaggerate how sure
they are.
People naturally associate confidence with expertise. Know your
product, know the facts about
its benefits and believe in what it
does; true confidence comes from
knowing and believing what youre
saying. Its essential that we communicate our confidence to others
in order to persuade them.

Swearing can help influence an

audience
Light swearing, that is. (Go overboard and lose all credibility)
Researchers divided 88 participants into three groups to
watch one of three slightly different speeches. The only difference
between the speeches was that one
contained a mild curse word at the
start:
lowering of tuition is not only
a great idea, but damn it, also the
most reasonable one for all parties
involved.
The second speech contained the
damn it at the end and the third
had neither. When participants
attitudes were measured, they were
most influenced by the speeches
with the mild obscenity included,
either at the beginning or the end.
The word damn increased
the audiences perception of the
speakers intensity, which increased
persuasion. The audiences perceived credibility of the speaker did
not change.
So thats the secret of Gary
Vaynerchuk and Dave McClure. I
thought theyre just cool guys, but
turns out its the swearing that got
me.

Get people to agree with you

first
If you want people to buy into your
message, start with something they
can agree with.
In a research study by Jing Xu
and Robert Wyerestablished, there
were lingering effects of messages
people agree with. In one of the
tests, participants listen to a speech
by John McCain or one by Barack
Obama and then watch a TV ad for
Toyota.

Republicans tended to be more

swayed by the ad after watching
the speech by John McCain, while
Democrats showed the opposite
effect, finding the ad more persuasive after the Obama speech.
So when you try to sell something, make statements or represent
a world view your customers can
agree with first even if they have
nothing to do with what youre
selling.

Balanced arguments are more

persuasive
If what you are doing inspires (or
can inspire) criticism, resist the
instinct to paper over weaknesses.
We fear undermining our point of
view by talking about weaknesses,
but actually it would help our case.
Psyblog writes:
Over the years psychologists have
compared one-sided and twosided arguments to see which are
the most persuasive in different
contexts. Daniel OKeefe at the
University of Illinois collected
together the results of 107 different
studies on sidedness and persuasion conducted over 50 years
which, between them, recruited
20,111 participants (OKeefe,
1999, Communication Yearbook,
22, pp. 209-249).
The results of this meta-analysis
provide persuasive reading.
What he found across different
types of persuasive messages and
with varied audiences, was that
two-sided arguments are more
persuasive than their one-sided
equivalents.
People are not idiots they
can think. If you dont mention
the other side of the coin in your
arguments, people are less likely to
believe you.

Perhaps it might be a good idea

to mention the shortcomings of
your product or service on your
website.

People believe you more if they

sit in the evidence
A research study by Ye Li, Eric
Johnson, and Lisa Zaval looked into
global warming and its relation to
the current local weather.
Participants in the US and Australia rated the strength of their
belief in global warming. They also
rated whether they thought the
temperature that day was warmer,
colder, or about normal for that
time of year. When people felt the
day was warmer than usual, they
also expressed a higher belief in
global warming than when they felt
the day was cooler than usual.
In the related study they asked
the same stuff, but also asked for a
donation to a non-profit combating
climate change. The participants in
this study donated over four times
as much money when the day was
much warmer than usual than
when the day was much cooler
than usual.
If you want people to buy your
message, ask for the sale in the
situation that supports your claims.
Online, use imagery or other visual
material to build the stage for your
story.

Upsell a product that cost 60%

less
Once somebody gets to a point that
theyll buy something from you,
they have given you their trust and
have convinced themselves its okay
to give you money. In that moment
you are able to sell them more.
When somebody buys a shirt,
your upsell should be a tie and not
the whole suit.

33

in building better filters

Invest
that help people make the choice.
The time-tested 6060 rule says
that your customers will buy an
upsell 60% of the time for up to
60% of the original purchase price.
Any upsell you offer must be congruent with the original purchase.
If you dont use up-selling in
your business yet, its a quick way
to boost profits (would you like
fries with that?).

Frame it in the positive

Emphasizing the positive can be
more persuasive than pointing out
the negative.
An analysis [hn.my/frame] added
up the results of 29 different studies, which had been carried out on
6,378 people in total. The finding
was that there was a slight persuasive advantage for messages that
were framed positively.
This study had to do with the
way people relate to disease prevention, such as encouraging people
to use sunscreen, and promoting
healthy eating habits, but it might
have a wider appeal. The researchers hypothesized the reason to be
that we dont like to be bullied into
changing our behavior.
Try framing your marketing
message in the positive (Gain an
additional hour every day vs. Stop
wasting time) and see if it makes a
difference.

34 SPECIAL

The paradox of choice

The more choices you offer, the less
likely people will take you up on it,
says this study [hn.my/paradox].
Researchers set up a jam-tasting
stall in a posh supermarket in
California. Sometimes they offered
6 varieties of jam, at other times
24. Jam tasters were then offered a
voucher to buy jam at a discount.
While more choices attracted
more customers to look, very few
of them actually bought jam. The
display that offered fewer choices
made many more sales. In fact, only
3% of jam tasters at the 24-flavor
stand used their discount voucher,
versus 30% at the 6-flavor stand.
If you have a ton of products,
invest in building better filters that
help people make the choice.

If something happens often

enough, you will eventually be
persuaded
Repetition has a distinct effect on
us. Advertisements replay themselves when we see the product.
The songs that radios play over and
over again eventually grow on us.
Repetition of a word or visual
pattern not only causes it to be
remembered (which is persuasive
in itself), it also leads people to
accept what is being repeated as
being true.

ChangingMinds writes this about

Hugh Ranks persuasion research
(Teaching about public persuasion,
1976):
Our brains are excellent patternmatchers and reward us for using
this very helpful skill. Repetition
creates a pattern, which consequently and naturally grabs our
attention.
Repetition creates familiarity, but
does familiarity breed contempt?
Although it can happen, the reality
is that familiarity leads to liking
in far more case than it does to
contempt. When we are in a supermarket, we are far more likely to
buy familiar brands, even if we
have never tried the product before.
Think about the last time you
bought a pair of shoes. Did you
pick them up then put them down
several times before trying them
on? Did you come back to try
them again? If so, you are in good
company. Many people have to
repeat things several times before
they get convinced. Three times is a
common number.

friendly repetition to create

Use
familiarity and hence liking.
Use repetition of key benefits
or value propositions in your sales
copy and ad campaigns. Effective
advertising and political campaigns
do that (Geico can save you 15%
or more). Use friendly repetition to create familiarity and hence
liking.
Another research study
[hn.my/loudest] reveals that even
if only one member of a group
repeats their opinion, it is more
likely to be seen by others as representative of the whole group.

Men are more responsive to

email than face-to-face talk
Guadagno & Cialdini research
(2002) [hn.my/doi] showed that
men seem more responsive to email
because it bypasses their competitive tendencies. Women, however,
may respond better in face-to-face
encounters because they are more
relationship-minded.
This research is suggesting that
email could provide a way of
side-stepping mens competitive
tendencies. But, this only applies
to distant relationships. The closer
the relationship between men, the
better face-to-face works.
When you want to persuade a
man you dont know too well, start
with an email.

Limiting the quantity you can

buy makes you buy more
From Brian Wansinks excellent
book Mindless Eating: Why We Eat
More Than We Think:
A while back, I teamed up with
two professor friends of mine
Steve Hoch and Bob Kent to see
if anchoring influences how much
food we buy in grocery stores. We
believed that grocery shoppers who
saw numerical signs such as Limit
12 Per Person would buy much
more than those who saw signs
such as No Limit Per Person.
To nail down the psychology
behind this, we repeated this study
in different forms, using different
numbers, different promotions
(like 2 for $2 versus 1 for $1),
and in different supermarkets and
convenience stores. By the time
we finished, we knew that almost
any sign with a number promotion
leads us to buy 30 to 100 percent
more than we normally would.
So put numbered limitations or
anchors on the quantity your customer can buy from you.

Story beats data

A Carnegie Mellon University study
in 2007 by Deborah Small, George
Lowenstein, and Paul Slovic compared the effects of story vs. data.
Test subjects where asked to collect donations for a dire situation
in Africa. The data pitch contained
statistics about food shortages in
Malawi, lack of rain in Zambia,
and the dislocation of millions in
Angola.
The second version talked about
a particular girl in Zambia, Rokia,
who was starving. People were
shown her photo and asked to
donate to help her directly.
On average, students who
received the fact-based appeal from
Save the Children donated $1.14.
Students who read the story about
Rokia donated an average of $2.38,
more than twice as much.
In a third experiment, students
were told Rokias story but also
included statistics about persistent
drought, shortfalls in crop production, and millions of Africans who
were going hungry. While students
who had read Rokias story alone
donated an average of $2.38, those
who read the story plus the data
donated an average of $1.43.
The plight of Africa, the fight
with poverty is too overwhelming
and people feel their contribution
is just a drop in a bucket, hence feel
less inclined to help.

35

Marketing to men? Use photos

of women
A field experiment in the consumer
credit market found pictures of
women as effective as low interest
rates.
A South African lender sent
letters offering incumbent clients
large, short-term loans at randomly
chosen interest rates. The letters
also contained independently randomized psychological features.
As expected, the interest rate
significantly affected loan take-up.
Inconsistent with standard economics, some of the psychological
features also significantly affected
take-up.
For the male customers, replacing the photo of a male with a
photo of female on the offer letter
statistically significantly increases
takeup; the effect is about as much
as dropping the interest rate 4.5
percentage points For female
customers, we find no statistically
significant patterns.
Overall, these results suggest
a very powerful effect on male
customers of seeing a female photo
on the offer letter. Standard errors
however do not allow us to isolate
one specific mechanism for this
effect. The effect on male customers
may be due to either the positive
impact of a female photo or the
negative impact of a male photo.
The experiment featured a rather
dramatic range in interest rates
3.25% to 11.75%. The effect of a
photo of a woman on a loan offer
was equivalent 4.5% difference in
the loan interest rate.
Next time add a photo of a
woman to your offer and see your
conversions go up.

36 SPECIAL

The above study did not feature

sexy women. But would a sexy
women wearing bikinis help?
Research shows that arousal
makes men stupid [hn.my/arouse],
as they become bad at making decisions. It gives them tunnel vision.
The effect seems to be a short-term
one that would be most effective at
the point of purchase, for impulse
purchases.
The ideal selling situation would
be to have the bikini-clad babe
selling to the men in person. I guess
you could do that also online for
products meant only for men.
Studies have shown that sexy ads
dont really make men remember
the product [hn.my/men]. Were
so lasered in on the sexy stuff, we
dont care what brand of product
it is.

Want to convince leaders? Make

them feel less powerful
Dont bother trying to persuade
your boss of a new idea while hes
feeling the power of his position,
research suggests [hn.my/connect]
hes not listening to you.
Powerful people have confidence
in what they are thinking. Whether
their thoughts are positive or negative toward an idea, that position
is going to be hard to change, said
Richard Petty, co-author of the
study and professor of psychology
at Ohio State University.
The best way to get leaders to
consider new ideas is to put them
in a situation where they dont feel
as powerful, the research suggests.
Our research shows that power
makes people more confident in
their beliefs, but power is only one
thing that affects confidence, Petty
said. Try to bring up something
that the boss doesnt know, something that makes him less certain

and that tempers his confidence.

You want to sow all your arguments when the boss is not thinking
of his power, and after you make a
good case, then remind your boss
of his power. Then he will be more
confident in his own evaluation of
what you say. As long as you make
good arguments, he will be more
likely to be persuaded, Petty said.
So in a nutshell:

Make the leaders feel less powerful and confident by talking

about stuff they dont know and
if possible, talk outside of his
office (neutral territory).

After the pitch, remind them

whos the boss, so they could
take action on your request.

The Sullivan Nod

Invented by restaurant consultant,
Jim Sullivan, the Sullivan nod
involves reciting a list of options
but just inclining your head slightly
when you reach the choice youd
like the buyer to make. The nod has
to be subtle, but perceptible and
works best in lists of no more than
five items. According to Jim Sullivan, its successful up to 60% of
the time.
Whenever servers suggest a beverage, have them smile and slowly
nod their heads up and own as
they make the suggestion. Body
language is powerful, and research
shows that over 60% of the time,
the guest will nod right back and
take your suggestion!
I bet you could use that online
in sales videos. When talking about
plans or packages, do the nod on
the one you want them to buy.

Clarity trumps persuasion

Dr. Flint McGlaughlin of Marketing
Experiments likes to say this: Clarity trumps persuasion. Remember
this.
Persuasion tricks work when
done subtly and skillfully. Overdo it
and you lose the sale. When youre
writing sales copy or doing presentations, the best way to persuade
people is to use clarity. Give people
enough information to make up
their mind without being cheesy or
using hype. n
Peep Laja is an entrepreneur and conversion optimization expert. Hes been doing
internet marketing for 10+ years in Europe,
Middle East, Central America and the US.
Today he runs a digital marketing agency
called Markitekt. Peep blogs at ConversionXL [conversionxl.com/blog].
Reprinted with permission of the original author.
First appeared in hn.my/jedi (conversionxl.com)

Ive Got an Idea

For an App
By Chris Eidhof

ve been an iPhone developer for over three years

now. The first app I built was CookieCombo.
Although we only sold enough copies to go bowling twice, it was completely worth it. We tweeted about
it and got some awesome gigs. Everybody was in need of
iPhone developers, and there was a huge shortage. Good
times.
As more and more people know that Im an iPhone
developer, I hear the following phrase quite often: Hey,
you know, I got a great idea for an app. It started with
tech-savvy people saying this, but now it seems like everybody and their mother has an idea.
Im a nice guy and always try to listen to people. I subscribe to the belief that ideas arent worth anything unless
theres good execution. The ideas I hear invariably end
with: I only need someone to build this. If its a bad idea,
I try to explain why. If its a good idea, I try to explain the
amount of work they have to do to make it successful.
I once jokingly said that I should print some small cards
with No, I wont listen to your app idea and give it out
at parties whenever people approached me. But because I
want people to like me, I didnt do it.
However, a month ago I got an email from a friend of
my brothers about a secret app idea. Those are often the
worst. He wanted to have a Skype meeting, and I said:
Sure, lets do that. I probably wont have time to build
it, but at least I can help you and point out the technical
difficulties.
Well, his idea is just awesome. Thats when I decided:
always listen to ideas. Most of them are probably another
fart app or a social network for sharing pictures of coffee,
but even if the odds are very small that its a good idea, the
potential payoff for executing a great idea could be huge. n

Chris Eidhof is an independent software developer from The Netherlands, living in Berlin. He used to do high-level functional programming in Haskell but converted to Objective-C: he now builds iPhone
and iPad apps, and dabbles in big data.
Reprinted with permission of the original author.
First appeared in hn.my/idea (eidhof.nl)

37

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