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I found myself surprised yesterday reading the thread about Harvard[1] when 2 people brought up how much Adderall is abused there, how easy it is to acquire, etc.

Can you remark on exactly how much medicine otherwise prescribed for ADHD is abused by people in the valley? Is it 1 out of every 10 employee at Google, for example? Is it mostly concentrated in startup settings?

[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5311168


Might not have very good data from self-reporting, especially in the workplace.


You've reminded me of this video talking about coffee now: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTVE5iPMKLg

Is there really any good reason why I shouldn't be drinking a lot of coffee? It seems I see as many researches claiming I shouldn't drink much coffee as I see researches claiming I should. I'm not sure what to think about coffee at this point.


At one period of my life, I drank enormous amounts of coffee. One weekend, I found myself yelling at every member of my family. I decided to totally stop. This was painful with headaches and irritability for about a week.

Then, once that was all out of my system, I noticed that my sleep was different. More calm, somehow.

The last bit convinced me to continue not drinking coffee. I now do perhaps one cup a week, or less.


Doctors also used to recommend that people smoke cigarettes.


> But don't pretend it's for your wrist pain.

I don't think people would pretend it's for physical pain if it were simply legal.


You've got a point


So, I'll ask the noob question that has previously been getting asked to death but there's finally new reason to ask once more: someone who's had little to no prior experience with Django, and still is very much a novice with Python -- do you suggest they start using Django with Python 3 or 2?


Python 2

I really, really wanted to say to you Python 3, because:

- It is better (it fixes some annoyances)

- Django is working really great with it

But some things (that Django uses, but are not Django) are not working yet. Things like MySQL adaptors, South, etc

Or maybe go with Python 3 and wait for the issues to be fixed, they probably will, soon enough


The Python 2 v 3 conundrum seems to have been going on for an eternity. It must be putting off new adopters in their droves. For a start, you have to make an important decision about which flavor to install and how to get started right at the beginning, with no canonical right answer to the dilemma. Do the great and the good in the Python community realize how damaging this is, and how such a thing should never ever be allowed to happen again ?


How do you propose this be implemented? By abandoning Python 3, or shooting the dissenters who still insist on Python 2?


I have no idea what to do about 2 v 3 now. The grandparent is a genuine question, and my perspective is as a casual sometime Python user rather than a serious Python user. I am personally frustrated by the problem every time I'm tempted to get serious about Python. I'd love to know whether the key Python people acknowledge the problem in the way I've framed it and whether they have resolved to avoid something similar happening again in the future once this issue (finally) works itself out one way or another.


Are packages not updating because it's a lot of work, or because updating will break backwards-compatibility?


A little bit of both

There are ways to write software that's compatible with both Python 2 and 3 (using six for example: http://pythonhosted.org/six/)

But I guess it's mostly developers not having the time to update (it's easier if you kept it updated and not using some old constructs)


The tipping point is getting closer but I would still recommend Python 2.X for the time being, primarily for third party support.


Python 3 support in Django 1.5 is experimental. I would wait until Django 1.6 is launched or there are well-known, well-working examples of Python 3 implementations of Django on high traffic sites.


FWIW, that "experimental" label doesn't quite mean that 1.5 isn't ready for prime-time; it's more about setting community expectations. Please see my reply elsewhere in this thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5289006) for more details.

ETA: That said, the advice to stick to Py2 right now is probably good. There's still some key missing 3rd party packages, so you'll generally be happier as a Py2 user right now.


Alas, I replied before your post. I agree with you completely.

I'm really looking forward to migrating a few projects up to Python 3 and Django 1.5. It's going to be awesome!


I have been running Django 1.5 on Python 3.3 since 1.5c1 - ran into zero problems. It is solid...

but... a lot of packages are not ready for 3 yet. So it depends how far you want to go.. Playing around by yourself? I'd go with Python 3... if you need to leverage a lot of the packages you'll need to drop down to 2.7


I would say 2 because every package out there works with it, not the case with 3 still. So it will be easier for you to follow docs and tutorials.

Plus, 2 is not going away in near future, and you'll be able to pick up 3 easily after that


i'd say that if you want to learn python, go with 3. if you want to build something on third party libraries while learning python at the same time, start with 2.


I will now get Reddit gold.

Protip for hopeful startups: there's a really, really good chance I'll pay you money (whatever your thing is), if you accept bitcoin payments. I personally want to see bitcoin be successful, and I'll go quite a ways to realize that wish in whatever small ways I can.


Out of curiosity, what makes you want to see bitcoins be successful so much? A backend programmer I'm working with wants to include bitcoin payments in a site but I'm not convinced.


why wouldn't you accept payment for soemthing? Taking payments in BTC is very easy there are a multitude of copy and paste code snippets that will do it for you. Unlike taking paypal or visa there are no hoops to jump through.


I guess my real question is how many people actually use it. I know for a lot of people it has a tendency to sound a bit scamy when you first hear about it. I feel like for those people it might be a turn off. Feel free to prove me wrong though.


plenty, have a look at bitmit.net, an ebay clone that uses bitcoins for payment, then look at bitpay - a bitcoin payment processor, they provide services to 2500 companies, reddit just adopted it so that will increase the nuber of users, it is still in early adopter stage but that is still a large volume of users.


What is the most expensive virtual good you'd purchase with bitcoin? Would you pay 100 bitcoins for a year of .com domain registration? :)


100BTC = $2,715



What you say resonates very much with my experiences too.

Do you happen to have book recommendations maybe that talk about this at a greater length?


Argument and rhetoric is a whole field of study. Prof. David Zarefsky at Northwestern has a good set of lectures on the subject which are on Amazon. The outline is here: http://thefulldialectician.synthasite.com/resources/ZAREFSKY...

My exposure to the subject has been in the legal context. This is a popular textbook on legal argumentation: Gardner, Legal Argument: The Structure and Language of Effective Advocacy. Someone has an older edition for cheap on EBay: http://www.ebay.com/itm/LEGAL-ARGUMENT-THE-STRUCTURE-AN-/310.... The text is quite general, not all that specific to the legal context.


Thanks very much! I'll definitely look into these.


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