adidum

I am a junior programmer and would like to implement a couple personal projects, would love to get advice on some architectural aspects. Is there a place on the internet where experienced software engineers are willing to share advice on design/architecture matters? I'm not sure if HN is one of those places, but if it is, here is an example of the kind of questions I have: How do I bootstrap a web and Java application that keeps track of a number of parameters that each accumulate values over time, then I need to display graphs with those values and most importantly, determine correlations between those parameters. I'd love to re-use some existent Java frameworks for all this, but especially the correlation part. Thank you!

what better place to ask this question than HN? If you could do it all over again, how would you it? Imagine yourself in your early teen years, fully capable of self-teaching and already with a solid foundation of maths and sciences, yet you never really got into much computers technology (have not done any programming). But now you want to get into it, you have the time and want to make it a learning experience with the future in mind, rather than an immediate goal of being able to program on a language or two ASAP. At the same time you'd want it to have it moderately exciting, practical, that you can start using somehow computers in projects that a child is more interested, like robotics rather than pure software. How would you do it? What resources you'd use? Would you start with a functional language when you'll start applying the concepts you learn or not? This is not a hypothetical question, somebody needs your advise.

I need help understanding where we are today in terms of technology able to "understand" natural text and extract some meaning from it. Here is a case problem, just an example: I am researching a certain medical issue with which I'm dealing. Of course there are many websites that contain some information on that. Some are really good, and even contain some quality forums where people posted a lot in terms of their experiences and knowledge. The thing is, there are literarily thousands of relevant threads, and some contain... over 6500 posts. I DO KNOW that there is valuable information for me on those threads, but how do I get to it? It just isn't feasible reading all that. I need a solution to help me comb through that. Highlight facts that are commonly endorsed or refuted. Provide some stats about that so I know where to steer my attention, at least. I'd like to understand your opinion if technology can indeed be applied in this sort of problems. I personally feel strongly so. Then I need some guidance on how to proceed about building that. I have a programming background but I am not an active programmer anymore. Yet, I would like to learn what is needed and try to build this. Not only to serve my need but I think it can scale to many other scenarios. I have a feeling this is far from trivial challenge, yet maybe we have advanced enough to take on it. Please give me your opinion on this issue, and most importantly some leads at what to look. Thank you!

I am attempting a come back as a programmer, after an unbelievable absence of 3 years. I need your help to refocus, and select the right technologies for what I'm going to need in the near future. Here is my story: Java developer for about 10 years, up to exactly 3 years ago when I quit because of some major family issues that required my full time attention all this time. But there was something else, that is important for me to always keep in perspective: I was really burnt down and I also became unhappy because my profession took so much time from me, actually all of it, for constantly having to learn something new and being good at what I was doing. I actually love learning, but I my profession didn't leave time for learning anything else besides computers, and life is so much more than computers. I guess I'm a generalist more than a specialist. So this is the first half of my question, how can I be a hacker but in the same time have a real life outside computers. How do you balance both?

Having said that, I am ready to start again and I thought I'd start fresh, since my Java is probably already a bit rusty. I've been looking these days at things like Ruby, Python and a few LISP flavours. I am attracted to LISP because of the paradigm change it requires, and I'm not really new to it, I used it a bit in the university. The reason I want to come back is because I do love technology, always did, and I already have a project lined up, for which I'm looking to select a set of technologies that will make productive ASAP. This project is a directory of local activities for people. The closest model I can think of is Craigslist, with the major difference that all the listings have a temporal dimension, they start and end at some time, and that people can rate and comment on those listings. As an example of such activity, let's say a chess class, that starts in 2 weeks and goes for 3 months, 2 days a week. The project is about aggregating such activities, broken down on categories and geographical areas. How would you do such project, most efficiently? This project is important for me to get it done successfully and on a timely fashion, I don't have time for too much trial and error, to spend much time learning something that turns out not a good choice. That's why I decided to ask you guys. I would like to choose something that doesn't have a steep learning curve, so I can became proficient with it sooner than later, something with great support for web applications, tried and stable. Should I stick with Java, since it's the only language I am now familiar with it, and it has so many mature web frameworks? Or is this a good time for me to take the leap towards something like LISP? I must admit the idea of a paradigm shift associated with my comeback sounds very appealing to me. I've already started replacing relational databases when it comes to the data model with something more semantic, like TopicMaps and/or RDF. In the same time I want to be realistic and maximize my chances of a successful comeback and project completion. Sorry for the long post, thanks a lot for your kindness.